This article was contributed by Annie Button

It’s never too late to pick up a new hobby, and if you’re looking for something accessible to sink your teeth into, but that also has a learning curve, then photography could be the answer. This visual hobby is loved by all generations. As well as allowing you to express your creative side, photography is great for documentation, increasing mindfulness, and improving memory recall.

You need little more than a camera to pick this hobby up. Modern smartphones are also perfectly capable of taking beautiful and vivid pictures. This ease of entry means photography is perfect for starting at any level, whether you have never taken a picture in your life or are looking to get back into it. Let’s look at some of the reasons why photography is a great hobby to pick up as you enter retirement and how it can keep your memories alive.

How to Get Started with Photography

The first place to start with photography is getting a camera. Fortunately, if you own a smartphone you can start your hobby straight away with that instead. In fact, smartphones are a great entry point into photography. You won’t need to invest in any special equipment before you know whether it is a hobby you enjoy.

If you find yourself enjoying taking pictures on your smartphone, you can consider graduating to an entry-level DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) or mirrorless camera.

These camera types allow you to experiment with your settings while you continue learning about composition, framing, and tones. However, if you just enjoy taking pictures of your family, friends, and surroundings, you can still use your smartphone to capture every moment.

Documenting Life Events

Photographs are often great inspiration for reminiscing. They can help you remember specific events in your life or spark conversations with friends and loved ones. As we enter later life, we come to realise that life is about important moments. Our cameras and smartphones are great ways to make sure we document them as much as possible.

Whether it’s a cup of tea in the park with your oldest friend on your granddaughter’s first birthday, being there with your camera helps you to reflect on the good times later. Remember, you can be in your photographs, too, so the memories can feel even more like they’re your own.

Age-related memory loss is a common part of getting older. While it can be cause for concern, it’s also a great reason to start enjoying photography for its recall benefits. You may even feel like unleashing your inner Steven Spielberg and take videos for more interaction as you watch your memories back.

Capturing the Important People in Your Life

As well as the big milestone events, photography also helps to keep the memories of the people in your life front and centre. By capturing photographs of those important people, you are helping to strengthen your emotional bond with them and the past.

When you come to look at your photos again, you can look back fondly on a specific moment. It might be a relative with a particularly contagious laugh or a friend who just dropped their birthday cake – each memory and person in your life is different.

Remember the Places That Matter

As well as helping you to remember people’s faces, photography can help you to pinpoint certain locations, places, and settings that matter to you. From a holiday in Greece to the way the clubhouse at your old golf club was decoration, photographs are full of details that job your memory.

Making New Memories

If you have been a keen photographer throughout your life, then you will have a rich personal history of pictures and images to look over. Each represents a specific time in your life and many will transport you right back.

Or, you may have never taken a photograph in your life. Perhaps you regret not being able to reminisce as easily as you would like. The great thing about photography is that it doesn’t matter what has happened before. You can use your camera to make new memories.

Improving Your Social Life

Consider joining a photography club to help you in your quest for those new memories. Meeting up with like-minded people is a great way to share your hobby and expand your horizons. Whether you are interested in portrait photography, wildlife, landscape, abstract, or anything in between, finding people to share your hobby with enriches the experience.

Don’t Neglect Your Photos

Linda Henkel, a Psychology Professor at Fairfield University, says, “Photos are an effective tool for memory retention only if we take the time to look at photos.” She adds, “We need to take the time to look at photos after the experiences and reactivate those mental representations.”

This is a useful point that highlights how taking photographs is just one half of the photography experience. Looking at the images you take is the other. Revisiting your photographs, or photos your family or friends have taken, helps to improve memory recall. Plus, you spent the time and effort creating these images. Why shouldn’t you get to enjoy the results?

A Way to Get Outdoors

Being in nature has a wonderfully restorative effect on our mental and physical health. From breathing in clean air, to decreasing feelings of anxiety and depression, a visit to your local park, beach, or river really helps to get you out of a slump. But if we don’t have a purpose, then sometimes it can be difficult to motivate ourselves to visit the great outdoors.

Developing a photography habit is certainly a great way to encourage regular visits to the outdoors. There are a multitude of subjects and scenery to take photos of. Being outdoors also helps you to get some gentle exercise as you walk and travel over different terrain, tackling the occasional hill or two.

This is a great, low-impact way to improve your heart health without putting too much strain on your body. Natural light is also one of a photographer’s best tools, helping to increase visible colour and adding contrast to your photos.

Start Taking Photos

All that is left to do now is find your smartphone, dust off your old camera, or borrow a friend’s and start snapping. From improving memory recall to increasing social interaction and embracing the great outdoors, there are plenty of reasons to pick up photography as a hobby.

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