SCUFI

Hi there! We hope you all are having a safe, relaxing, and fun summer! We are partway through our fifth week of Focus on Nature summer camp. Our theme this week is rocks and minerals; how cool! Rocks present all kinds of textures and patterns that can only be noticed if you look at them close up. This brings me to the topic of the blog post for this month!

Do you know what SCUFI (sk-uh-fee)  means/ represents? SCUFI is an acronym for “Shoot close up for impact”. This word and its meaning were created by Focus on Nature and SCUFI is not only fun to say, but is easy to remember!

The purpose of SCUFI is to teach and remind young photographers that the closer they physically get to their subject, the more details they will capture in their photos. During in-school workshops, we show students photos of a very detailed nature subject. See some of these SCUFI shots below.  We ask them if they think they would have been able to photograph the fuzzy hairs on the stem of a dandy lion or the spikes on an interesting-looking flower if they were standing 5 giant steps away. The students understand that these small, intricate, minute details and aspects can only be seen when getting right up close. 

Shoot close up for impact! Breaking this tagline up even further, we encourage photographers to shoot close to their subject, to create impact! When students take a great close-up photo, they receive plenty of “ooooo”s and “ahhh”s during the slideshow of all student’s best-edited photos of the day. 

If shooting close-up is something you haven’t tried while taking photos, give it a try next time you find yourself with a camera in hand. However, if you are familiar with SCUFI, feel free to send us your favourite SCUFI shots via DM on Instagram, we love to see what nature lovers in the Focus on Nature community are up to!

July is nearing its end, but summer is far from over! We are so excited to continue to teach our summer campers about SCUFI and share their photographs with you all! Stay safe everyone!