Photography

How To: Choose a narrative theme for a photo series

This instructional photography video provides some helpful tips on how to build narrative ideas surrounding body of photography work that you'll want to create. You can use these techniques when building a book, a web site or a series of consistent images for your story. You will not only make your photography work more interesting, but working with narrative will train you to become a better story teller.

How To: Get more megapixels and wider angles with a DSLR

Everyone who has a digital camera, no matter how high-end, wishes that they had more megapixels and wider angles at their disposal. Do you want to increase your megapixel count without buying a really expensive camera or camera parts? This video will show you some tricks for taking pictures with more megapixels and wider angles without buying a nicer camera, which will make your photos look better and make your work more professional. You will need Photoshop, but if you're serious about photo...

DIY Photo Processing: How to Develop Film at Home for Cheap Using Coffee, Red Wine, or Tylenol

Not many people use film cameras anymore, so it can be hard to find the materials to develop your own photos at home since most local camera stores are closing. But it's actually relatively easy to make homemade developer, and you can make it with a few relatively common ingredients.

How To: Use the timer setting on your Nikon digital SLR

If you're starting to use your digital SLR for the first time, it can be quite confusing to determine what all its functions mean as well as where to find them and how to use them.

How To: Stop Saying "Cheese"! Here's How You Smile More Naturally for Photos

I hate having my picture taken. It's awkward, and I almost always end up thinking, "Is that what I look like all the time?" Most of us think we look awful in photos, probably because we all subconsciously act and carry ourselves a little differently when we know there's a camera on us.

How To: Develop Kodachrome Film (B&W Hand Processing & Kodak's K-14 Process)

Remember KODACHROME? That color reversal film from Kodak? The film that was the inspiration for Paul Simon? The only brand of film to have a state park named after it?

How To: Take photographs like Gregory Crewdson

In this Ovation TV original special, acclaimed photographer Gregory Crewdson shares with us his insight into his photographic techniques. Like a film, he uses a lot of production, a lot of lighting, a lot of set design. He is an American photographer best known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods. Learn how to take pictures like this master artist.

How To: Build a Cheap and Easy Optical Zoom Lens for Your Smartphone

Love taking photos with your smartphone, but don't have a zoom? This tutorial by Unitips will show you how to DIY one with a few simple parts. All you'll need is 1/4" bolts, washers, and wingnuts (two each), some sheet metal, and a pair of binoculars.

How To: Control Your Samsung Smart Camera with Your Android or iOS Device

Samsung is helping photographers in getting more utility out of their cameras with their new Samsung Smart Camera App. With it, your device becomes a powerful viewfinder for your Samsung camera, allowing you to not only frame shots, but control multiple aspects of the camera, right through your phone.

How To: 5 Incredibly Cheap and Smooth DIY Camera Mounts for Inside or Outside of Your Car

Shooting a photo or video in a car can be rather difficult without a proper mount, and if you want to secure your camera outside the car, it can be just plain expensive. Luckily, there are tons of DIY camera mounts for both inside and outside your vehicle, and most of them are pretty cheap to make. Here are some of the best.

How To: Mod Your Old Polaroid Camera for Wet Plate Collodion Photography

Wet-plate collodion photography is a process that lets you develop a photo onto a piece of glass. It has some neat applications, but it's not a simple process, and most people use a special camera to do it because the silver nitrate used to process usually ends up leaking, which would ruin a regular camera.

How To: Create Stunning Double Exposure Portraits with Your DSLR Camera (No Photoshop Required)

There are plenty of ways to take double exposure photos, even if all you have is your cell phone. If you have access to a darkroom (or Photoshop), you can do it by stacking negatives. But if you have the right kind of DSLR, you can do it right from your camera by using the multiple exposure setting.

How To: Build your own 35mm lens adapter for a Canon HV20 camera

You don't have to spend lots of money for an expensive lens adapter! You can make one at home. This tutorial shows you how you can take some basic camera equipment, a little extra hardware and make a 35mm lens adapter for a Canon HV20 digital camera.

How To: Use the Vivitar 285HV professional camera flash

Got a new Vivitar 285HV and having trouble using the flash? No problem! This video will describe how to use the flash on your new camera and gives some other great tips for new owners! The flash on this camera can be a little different to use than an automatic flash because you have to manually set the settings. Since you can see what the picture looks like if you aren't satisfied you can use the tricks in the video to play around with the flash settings until you get the perfect shot.

How To: Load film into Kodacraft tanks

This video will be useful to a select group of people, who are still interested in developing film by hand using the Kodacraft film canisters. Practice loading Kodacraft film tanks with plastic film aprons. Use an exposed roll of film to do try this process in the light. Now, let's see if you can do it blindfolded, or in the dark room.

How To: Clean a camera lens & get rid of smudges

Professional camera cleaning is expensive and usually more than you need. Follow these simple steps to keep your lenses clear and smudge-free.

How To: Turn a Styrofoam Bowl into a DIY Beauty Dish for Your Camera's Flash

A beauty dish is a device that redistributes the flash on your camera to make the lighting more flattering in portraits. It's called a "beauty dish" because it's used most commonly in fashion and beauty photography.

How To: Take photos of floating / flying / levitating people

Do you believe you can fly? Or at least, believe that you can take pictures where it looks like you or other people are flying? Or at least jumping really high? This video will show you how to take pictures of flying, floating, levitating, or high-jumping people using a digital camera, tripod, stool, and photo editing software like Photoshop or GIMP. Either way, the effect is surprisingly easy to create and can help you make some really amazing photos.

How To: Make a wide-mouthed screaming face in Photoshop

Munch's The Scream is one of the world's most famous paintings, and at least since it was painted people have had a fascination with images of larger-than-life mouths screaming. This video will show you how to use Photoshop to create some cool screaming face effects, like making the mouth huge and distorted or even making it cover the entire face! The effects are cool and easy, so try it!

How To: Build a 4x5 pinhole camera

Attention photography lovers! Put down the digital camera for a day and try this DIY project out, constructing a camera that dates back to as early as 4th century BC.

How To: Make a Super Cheap Pinhole Lens Filter for Your DSLR Camera

There are tons of ways to make your own pinhole camera out of everything from a juice box to a pine nut. If you have a DSLR, you can make a DIY pinhole lens for it for just a few bucks. David O'Sullivan over on DIY Photography made this one using a cheap body cap and an aluminum can. Here's how to make your own. David put up a template you can follow to make things easier, so start off by downloading it, then use a ruler to draw a line directly through the center of the body cap. Cut out the ...

How To: Make a face more symmetrical and balanced in Photoshop

The relationship between one side of your body - including your face - to the other is not like that of a twin to a twin. Rather, most people don't know that the left and right side are more like sisters than twins. This means that one leg may be a millionth of a degree shorter, or that your left ear is slightly smaller than your right.

How To: Convert a halogen lamp into a makeshift ring light

In this tutorial, we learn how to convert a halogen lamp into a makeshift ring light. Instead of pointing this light straight at the person you are photographing, you can use a ring light to make the halogen light less harsh. The prices for ring lights are very expensive, so making this yourself can save you a lot of money. First, go out and buy a round metal mesh object wherever you can find one. You will also need tin foil, a plastic cup, and wire cutters. First, set the metal bowl on top o...

How To: Protect Your Camera from Rain with This Hands-Free DIY Umbrella Holder for Your Tripod

When you're shooting in the rain (or other extreme weather conditions), there's a lot more to think about since cameras and water don't exactly mix well. An umbrella will protect your gear, but unless you have someone to hold it for you, it can be a pain to use.

How To: Make a Super Cheap Soft Box for Pro-Looking 'Soft' Light in Your Photos

Remember the young Parker who taught us how to make fun things like the ghost trap from Ghostbusters and the cheap severed leg effect? Well, he's definitely grown since then, and in his latest video he takes a more practical approach to DIY with a cheap and easy soft box for you home photography studio.

How To: Use the Harris Shutter Effect to Get Crazy, Colorful Action Photos

Want to take vibrant photographs like this one? You won't find this filter in Instagram, and that's because it's a little more difficult than just slapping a digital filter on a solo photo. The extra RGB colors are created using a special strip device called the Harris shutter, invented by Robert Harris of Kodak.

How To: Develop Black & White Film with Caffenol

If MacGyver ever needed to develop some black and white film, this is how he would do it. Check out this awesome recipe for film developer, which uses instant coffee, Vitamin C, and washing soda to set up your own darkroom developing lab.

News: Conjuring the Apocalypse on Tabletop: Lori Nix Talks Dioramas

Lori Nix is a photographer whose stunning work depicts curious scenes of danger and disaster: abandoned spaces, architecture in a state of extreme deterioration, natural calamities, and more. But the mysterious places she captures with her 8x10 large format camera aren't actual found locations—they're meticulously fabricated miniature dioramas.

How To: Use Sekonic light meters to balance flash and ambience

In this episode of Digital Photography 1-on-1, host Mark Wallace goes in depth on the subject of light metering and flash balancing. Making use of a Sekonic light meter, Mark shows how to read the light levels in a room, and explains how to interpret those readings in order to adjust flash levels, ISO levels, and alternative light source manipulation. Mark also goes over the important roles that aperture settings and film speeds play when attempting to successfully balance flash and ambient l...

How To: Add Creepy Apparitions to Your Halloween Photos Using the Pepper's Ghost Illusion

Photographers have been using the Pepper's Ghost Illusion for over a century to play up the level of creepiness in their photos. Many of the pictures that claim to be real "sightings" use this technique to project a ghostly figure into the background of their images. Today, it's still used in theatre, "scary" rides at amusement parks, and haunted houses all over the world, which makes it a great photography trick for Halloween time. As shown in the tutorial below by Make's Jason Poel Smith, t...

How To: Build a Weatherproof Camera Enclosure for Long Term Time-Lapses

There are plenty of ways to create time-lapse photos and videos, but most of them are taken over the course of several hours. If you want to do a longer term shoot over several weeks or months, you'll need a battery that can last that long, and you probably don't want to leave your DSLR sitting somewhere for that amount of time anyway.

Light Painting with Fire: How to Create a Badass Wall of Flames!

Believe it or not, capturing a beautiful shot of a vehicle is more difficult than you think. Sure, you can just snap a photo, but capturing the design, detail, and essence of the car is a whole other story. Lighting, location, settings, and angles are play into how well the photographic representation turns out.

How To: Take a Crazy Self-Portrait of You Holding Yourself

David Talley, a 19-year-old fine art photographer, has been widely praised for his surreal self-portraits. Many of them take hours to set up and shoot, and even more time to post-process through Photoshop or any other photo editing program.

Extreme Light Painting: Artist Uses Just One LED to Trace Entire Rooms with Light Waves

How many trips up and down the stairs do you think it took artist Janne Parviainen to create this incredible topographical light painting? Apparently, quite a few. Using only one LED, he moves around his house, tracing all of the surfaces. Sometimes the exposure times are up to 30 minutes to achieve this effect. He's done similar projects in the past, like these fun, but slightly creepy skeletons. Check out Janne's website and Flickr profile to see more of his work.

How To: Take better photos by understanding depth of field

In this video from clickherephotography we learn how to take great photos by using depth of field. In a picture of a bird he used an aperture of about 5.6 which increased the shutter speed on a 300mm Canon lens. With depth of field you can blow your background out. If you used a higher aperture, a lot more of the bird would have been in focus and a bit of the background would have been in focus. By using an F-stop and this aperture, you really bring the bird or whatever object is in the foreg...

How To: Use an old flash on a new digital camera

Old camera equipment like flashes and lenses are often praised by modern photographers, but getting them integrated into new digital photography setups can be a challenge. This video will show you some tips for using old flashes with new digital cameras, including a great trick for making your digital camera recognize the flash by covering one specific contact. Don't get a new flash, use an old one with the skills you learn in this video.

How To: Use picture control settings on your Nikon digital SLR

Recently purchased a brand new digital SLR? Learn how to use your camera's functions properly by watching this tutorial on how to use your picture control settings on your Nikon digital SLR.

How To: Rasterbate rasterized images from any picture

Empty walls? This is the perfect solution. The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size. Rasterbating is when you make a photo out of several photos.

How To: Load film into a Hasselblad back

This is a how-to video featuring the A12 film back for a Hasselblad 500 series camera. Watch this photography tutorial to begin using your antique Hasselblad camera and all of its confusing parts. Once you are aware of the unique film loading process for this camera, you can adopt this camera into your photography practice and begin shooting.

How To: Use a two-flash setup

Learn how to use 2 flashes by watching this model shoot in a small space using two off-camera flashes with Gary Fong Whaletails attached.