Hot Photography Posts
How To: Create time lapse photography
There are several ways to do time lapse photography, my favorite involves using a digital still camera and a controller. Once the photos are taken, I demonstrate how to to stitch the photos together into a finished movie. You could also use a digital video camera with controlling software to do time lapse.
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: Set up your camera for the Gary Fong Whale Tail
Instructions on how to set aperture and shutter when using the Gary Fong Whaletail light diffuser.
How To: Make a polaroid pinhole camera
Interested in making a pinhole camera out of an old polaroid packfilm camera? This will give you instant pinhole photos rather than waiting for a lab to process the film.
How To: Turn a Sink Strainer into a Soft Focus Camera Lens Filter
Soft focus photography can produce some beautiful images when used properly. It's used a lot in beauty and glamour shots, but can be applied to other types of photos as well. Some digital cameras have pre-programmed settings for soft focus shots, but if you're using a DSLR, you'll need a special lens or filter to do it.
How To: Use a Holga camera
Here are some tips about the Holga camera. The Holga is a plastic camera that takes unique, distorted pictures. This instructional photography video is good for people who just got their Holga camera and want to learn some photographer's tricks.
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: Build a PVC Shoulder Rig Stabilizer for Your DSLR Camera for Under $25
When you're capturing video with a DSLR, not having some type of stabilization system can lead to some pretty awful and shaky scenes. Camera instability is not only painful to watch, but breaks the fourth wall. Once that the invisible barrier between filmmaker and audience is apparent, it may break down that magical relationship between the two.
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.
Quick Tip: Use a Wired Headset as a Shutter Release Trigger for Your DSLR Camera
Whether you're trying to get an unconventional angle or just want to include yourself in the picture, there are plenty of times when a remote trigger can come in really handy. Of course, if you want to buy one, you have tons of options. But if you already have an Xbox 360 headset, all you have to do is plug it in. YouTube user Gurnarok accidentally found that by plugging his Xbox headset into his camera's remote port, the on/off toggle triggered the shutter release and flash.
How To: Blur Fireworks with Your DSLR for Some Wicked July 4th Photos
Try "unfocusing" your photographs for some dreamy, evocative and somewhat abstract takes on life. Check out the two tutorials (here and here) from Michelle Geoga of Lights! Camera! Photoshop! for tips on unleashing the blur-power of your camera. You can see plenty of example images there to help you out.
How To: An Extensive Guide to Creating Bokeh Photography
Bokeh (which translates to "blur" in Japanese) is a photography technique referring to the blurred areas of a photograph. Basic bokeh photographs often have one point of focus, while the background falls away into a dreamy, blurred haze.
How To: Create a Light Painting Vortex Using a DIY Reusable Steel Wool Cage
There's no shortage of uses for steel wool, but the majority of them tend to be on the pyromaniacal side, like DIY fireworks. This trick by Mike Mikkelson is no different—it uses a homemade reusable "wool cage" to create a spinning vortex of light, like in the photo below. You can do this with just a piece of steel wool on a cable, but Michael wanted something he could easily reuse no matter how many shots he took, so he built a small cage to house the steel wool out of chicken wire, a small ...
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: Clean fungus off of your camera lens
Have you ever found a camera lens that you forgot you left in the basement or garage? Have you ever been shooting out in the rain and lost track of time? If any of these things have happened to your camera, you may have developed a fungus. Not to worry! It is much easier than you would think to clean a fungus off your camera. This tutorial will walk you through the process, step by step so that you clean your lens safely and perfectly every time.
News: Creating the Cosmos With Ink, Paint & Water
Artist Pery Burge uses water, paint and ink to create images that look like they might have been captured by the Hubble Telescope or under the super-zoom of a powerful microscope.
News: Iowa Fireman Hacks Camera to Snap Photographs from Outerspace
Iowa firefighter Pete Lilja has modded the software of a Canon powershot to record images of Earth, from as high as 85,000 feet!
How To: Learn the parts of a Diana+ 35mm camera
Watch this photography tutorial for an out of the box look at the Lomography 35mm film back for the Diana+ and Diana F+. It's great to have a vintage film camera, but these days most of the individual camera parts are mysteries to the amateur photographer. Have fun learning to use your Diana camera.
How To: Take a nude portrait
The human body is art, and a nude portrait is a great way to capture its details and nuances.
How To: Repair the write protection on an SD card
In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to repair the write protect on an SD card. An SD card is a non-volatile memory card format that is used in portable devices. If the write protect on a SD card is broken, the user cannot record any files onto the card. To fix this, viewers will need a small piece of scotch tape. Put the tape on the notch of the SD card. Do not cover the metal tabs at the back. This video will benefit those viewers who have a SD card and would like to repair the write p...
How To: Take Long-Term Pinhole Exposures Using a Beer Can Camera
Interested in experimenting with long-term pinhole exposure, but don't want to spend a lot of time or money on the setup? Well, why not start by cracking open a cold one? You're going to need it for this project anyway—drinking it is just an added bonus.
How To: Photograph well-lit isolated objects on a white background
Not all of us have an entire photo studio in our houses. In fact, unless you're a professional photographer, you probably don't have much space at all in which to create solid looking shots.
How To: Take multiplicity or sequence photographs
Multiplicity photography is a type of photography where you take multiple images of the same subject in different parts of the same frame, then combine them digitally to create a photo with multiple different images of the same person, animal, or object in the same setting. This is also called sequence photography when it's used in sports. This video will show you how to do it with a digital camera and Photoshop, creating amazingly cool-looking results.
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...
How To: Shoot directly from your camera to your hard drive
Sick of transferring megabytes and megabytes worth of photos into your computer, only to send them to your hard drive? Skip the middle step and learn how to shoot directly from your camera to your hard drive with help from this video by Pro Photo Life. Get your photos to your hard drive quicker and easier with the tips and tricks given here.
How To: Tilt-shift photography to create a miniature effect
Kipkay from Make Magazine shows us how to create a photographic illusion, making things look smaller than they really are with tilt-shift photography. Materials needed include rubber plunger, an oversized lens, a plastic body cap, a single lens (or digital single lens) camera, a hot glue gun, a sanding file, and a disposable object for a plastic backing, such as a VHS tape case. With this great tutorial and a little work, create the illusion of a miniaturized world with this photographic tech...
How To: Make a mini tripod for your camera with a tennis ball
Turn an old tennis ball into a nifty camera tripod in just minutes. Inspired by an Instructables.com project: http://www.instructables.com/id/SDMK5MWFDO29GEZ/
How To: Set up a big white infinity sweep for photo studio
This instructional photography video shows how to setup large white infinity backgrounds in the photo studio. The key components to this setup is include this six foot octobox softbox light, which requires quite a bit of power; a framed aluminum reflector; the background itself is vinyl floor painted white; and a black baffle to shield the camera from lens flare. Set up professional looking shoots and take great portraits with this tutorial.
How To: Photograph shiny metal and reflections
Watch this instructional photography video that introduces a very important principle (the law of reflection) when applied to photographing shiny objects in the 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: Take evenly lit professional high definition photos
You can take high resolution photos with just about any digital SLR, but whether these high resolution photos turn out impressive depends on setting, lighting, and the compliance of your subjects to pose. While photographing your friends and family in everyday life has these aforementioned conditions already set for you, if you take photos in the studio many factors can be adjusted to your liking.
How To: DIY your own SuperMacro lens with working aperture
In this video, learn how to take apart any old lenses you may have a fuse them together into the ultimate SuperMacro lens. This absolutely gorgeous tutorial will show you, step by step, exactly how to create this fantastic eye piece and take incredible photos with it.
News: Spy With Google Street View
Need to find some directions? No problem, use Google Maps. Want to find some spy photos of yourself? No problem, use Google Street View.
News: Photograph Beams of Light
More science-geek-art: amazing photographs by Alan Jaras. Apparently the images have not been altered in any way (computer generated or color treated) and are true reproductions of light refraction patterns captured on film.
How To: Use gobos in photography
Here is a Harper Point Photography video on gobos for fashion photography. Nathan gives a simple but effective photo tip for creating dynamic light with a cardboard 'go-bo.' The gobo is a lighting element that texturizes lighting by blocking in strategically. Apply these directly to a light to shine texture or to light with words as a projector would.
How To: Use a Diana camera shutter release lock
This photography tutorial shows you how to make a better shutter release lock for Diana Plus and vintage Diana cameras. This is helpful for low light situations and long exposures. You can make a replacement shutter release lock with a clothes pin and a file. Have fun taking night photographs with this handy tool.
How To: Take a timelapse picture with a compact digital camera
Digital cameras are the best way to take a quality timelapse pictures. While there are a variety of great cameras out there, you don't have to spend a lot of money. Watch this video photography tutorial and learn how to take a timelapse picture with a compact digital camera and how to choose a digital camera to meet your photography needs.
How To: Photograph a nude woman
Learn how to photograph the beauty of the female form. We will show some of the things you will need to know to take great, tasteful shots of the female nude…from finding models, to posing, composition, and lighting. Photograph a nude woman.
Photo of the Day: Meanwhile, in Afghanistan...
From Boston.com's The Big Picture, what a real-life version of the Green Hornet's gas gun might look like. Taken in Afghanistan in February of this year, an Afghan army recruit is pictured shrouded in a cloud of shocking green smoke as he participates in a graduation parade after an oath ceremony at Ghazi military training center—an American effort to strengthen Afghan forces so they can fight against Taliban strongholds.
How To: Use the .thm files when filming movies with a Canon camera
What's this mysterious .thm file? Why are they cluttering up your SD card? Can they be safely deleted? This video has the answers! A .thm file is created specifically by Canon cameras when you're filming a movie, and this video shows you how to use your .thm files.