Photography

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.

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: 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: 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: Make 2D Pics Look Like 3D Objects Using This Optical Illusion Camera Trick

How do you make a plastic bottle sit on top of a Rubik's Cube without a Rubik's Cube? It may seem like a brain teaser, but it's more like something you would see in an Escher drawing. An optical illusion. A three-dimensional world trapped in a two-dimensional image, which is exactly what's going on in this Rubik's Cube illusion.

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: 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: 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: This Easy Photo Trick Makes Fireworks Look Like Brilliant Sky Creatures

Anyone who does a lot of photography knows that the right exposure can make all the difference in the world. Taking a picture of something in motion requires a long exposure, so if you've ever wondered why your fireworks photos never quite turn out right, your shutter speed could be the key. Photographer David Johnson decided to put a twist on the classic long-exposure fireworks photo. Normally, when people take photos of fireworks displays, they just set a long exposure for somewhere over 3 ...

How To: Use a photographic enlarger

A photographic enlarger is a piece of equipment used to produce photographic prints from film or glass negatives. Learn more about photographic enlargers and how to use them from a professional photographer in this free video. Use a photographic enlarger - Part 1 of 26.

How To: Take UV Pictures

This video will show you how you can take UV (ultraviolet) pictures with any basic camera. In a few easy steps, you too can be seeing the world in a whole new way.

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: Introducing Lights! Camera! Photoshop! – Your Complete Guide to DSLR Photography

So you just bought Photoshop, a DSLR camera and your first flash. Now what? If you have some experience with photography, but you're not completely fluent with the software and equipment, WonderHowTo's newly featured World Lights! Camera! Photoshop! is essential.

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: 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 the Perfect Booty Selfie

Today you can be just like Kim Kardashian and take an awesome booty selfie. Taking a booty selfie is So Easy a Guy Can Do It!

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: 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.

CES 2015: The CUBE Action Camera, Polaroid's Answer to the GoPro

Polaroid's answer to the masculine-fueled GoPro comes in the form of a tiny family-friendly square, fittingly named the Polaroid CUBE. Starting at a very modest $99.99 , the water-resistant action camera comes in all different colors, shoots HD video at 1080p, allows users to take 6MP pictures, and supports a microSD card of up to 32GB. Attached to the bottom of the cube is a magnet that allows you to stick the camera in many places, including the side of a car (though the Polaroid representa...

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.

How To: Use the Manfrotto Super Clamp

Did you ever have trouble keeping a steady shot with a camera or camcorder when you didn't have a tripod ready? In this video, Steve from Cameras Brookwood shows you why a Manfrotto Super Clamp might just be the tool for you. A Super Clamp can open up to three inches and attaches any camera weighing up to fifteen kilograms to a post, beam, or table. To use the Super Clamp, open it fully and place it around the object that you want to attach it to. Turn the crank until the Super Clamp is snug,...

How To: Load 120 film onto stainless steel reels

Ever try to load a roll of film onto a reel and into a sealed developing tank in complete darkness? If you have, you know that anything unexpected can throw a kink into your personalized process of developing photographs. This video demonstrates how to load film onto stainless steel reels. If you are interested in developing film by hand, it is a good idea to be aware of all types of winding reels and developing tanks so you don't fumble in the darkroom.

Do-It-Yourself: High Speed Photography Tips & Tricks

High speed photography is awesome. Who doesn't love looking at bullets smash through glass or annihilate a tomato? Or see a babe in a swimsuit do a strikingly slo-mo wet hair flip?

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: Turn an Old Kit Lens into a DSLR Macro Lens in Five Minutes

There are tons of ways to make a macro lens for your smartphone, but if you need one for a DSLR, it's not quite as simple as using a magnifying glass or a drop of water. If you have an old kit lens, though, you can turn it into a macro lens in no time—all you have to do is remove the front element. For this hack, Juha Loukola over on PetaPixel used a Canon 38-76mm lens, but says that the process should be pretty much the same for other lenses.

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.

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 Your Photos More Fun with These DIY Bokeh Effects Lens Filters for Your DSLR

In photography, bokeh refers to the blurry or out-of-focus parts of a shot. Bokeh can be good or bad—it all depends on how you use it. There are tons of ways to create a bokeh effect, whether you go the traditional route with lens filters, digital with Photoshop, or even from your iPhone. With filters, you can use the blurred spaces to produce different shapes and colors. If you have a DSLR and want to experiment with bokeh, this tutorial by Chris Perez over on Apartment Therapy will show you...

How To: Make a Mini DIY Camera Tripod Using Old Disposable Razors

Choosing the right tripod stand can be a difficult decision, but if you want to avoid the hassle and save some money, making your own easy to use tripod can be the best way to go. If this tennis ball tripod isn't right for you, then maybe this disposable razors one by Instructables user Jawasan will do. This tripod stand only works for small cameras, so make sure yours is light enough before you start.

How To: Frame black and white photos

Have a wonderful black and white photo? Time to frame it! Learn to frame black and white photos, including matte options, frames, glass, laminates, hangers, and more in this free photography video series on framing taught by expert Minnie Bell.

How To: Make your own Variable-ND filter with cheap circular polarization filters

Looking for a Variable-ND filter without having to spend $300? There's a way that you can actually make your own for as little as $10-$20 using some cheap circular polarization filters! Instead of getting a picture tutorial, in this video, you will get a fully commentated walkthrough of the process that he uses to remove the lenses and more to create his own filter!

How To: Walk like a male / female model on the catwalk

Are you interested in fashion? Let's try a catwalk. For guys, walk straight and the feet shouldn't cross while walking. For girls, walk with one foot in front of the other, look straight forward and shoulders should pull back. Walk with your hands on the hip or let loose. There must be attitude on both the boy as well as the girl which will create a niche. This will help in launching your fashion career as well as maintain your posture.

How To: Set up your Canon 580EX II at the Master Mode setting

So you want to control the flashes on your camera using a remote, and you know that you need to get to Master mode on your Canon 580EX II to be able to do that. But Canon made Master mode for this particular model of camera very difficult to locate and enable. However, this video shows you every single step you need to take with your camera in order to be able to set up this particular functionality for your next shoot!

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: 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: Photograph a white product with a white background

Need to shoot a product with a white background? Well, taking photos with a white backdrop can be tricky if your subject is white also. Watch this behind the scenes photography video to see how to photograph a white product with a white background. This style of shoot is quite standard for eshops which need product photos with a white background. It takes a couple flashes and a goo camera to get it down, just watch and see for yourself.

How To: Load 120 film into a Paterson plastic reel

Many people have trouble loading 120 film into developing reels when they are first starting. In the darkroom, it's tricky business to wind film and load it into a developing tank. Find out what works for you and repeat the process until it becomes second nature. If you are interested in developing your own photographs, you will need to know this process backwards and forwards, using all types of film, reels and developing tanks.

How To: Make a pinhole camera and darkroom

Learn how to take photographs without a lens and develop film in your bathroom. Taken from the masters of the "weekend project", Bre Pettis and Make Magazine, you are sure to get some entertainment out of creating a camera and darkroom. Make sure to download the PDF to get all the details.