creative

These Working Cameras Were Made With the Strangest Things

Brendan Barry is a UK-based large format photographer who has a curious passion for creating working cameras out of the most random everyday objects you could think of. ILFORD featured his work earlier this year, and here's a look at some of his cameras and the photos they shoot.

3 Ways to Use Plexiglass for Creative Portraits

As a portrait photographer, it can often be difficult to keep thing interesting in the studio. Adding a unique element to your images can help them stand out while also allowing you to have little fun. The unique element that I added for my most recent shoot was just a simple piece of plexiglass. Here are three ways you can use a sheet of plexiglass and some simple household supplies to unleash your inner creative.

These Light Painting Photos Were Shot by Splashing in Water

Light-painting photographer Denis Smith is perhaps best known for creating giant spheres of light in photos. For his latest series, titled "Liquid Light," Smith brought his light tools into waist-deep water for beautiful photos of light bursting forth from the surface.

Adobe Made a Quiz That Reveals What Creative Type You Are

Adobe just launched a fun little online quiz that helps creatives figure out their creative type. The "simple and relatable yet robust and science-informed creative personality assessment" is inspired by popular personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.

5 Macro Photo Ideas to Shoot at Home

Want to get creative without leaving the comfort of your own home? Here's a 5-minute video by COOPH that contains 5 ideas for macro photographs you can do with a small budget, simple gear, and everyday items.

Creative Lighting Using an Optical Snoot

I am always looking for new and easy ways to light part of an object or create interesting light in an image, and I think I have found the perfect tool for just that and so much more! Pixapro's Optical Snoot has opened up a more efficient way to be able to do this.

The World’s First Etch A Sketch Camera

Self-taught programmer Martin Fitzpatrick of Two Bit Arcade has created the world's first Etch A Sketch digital camera. It captures digital photos and then outputs them by drawing them onto the Pocket Etch A Sketch "screen" found on the back.

I Photographed My 5-Year-Old Girl as Captain Marvel

My daughter loves female superheroes and I love making her superhero dreams come true. The other day she literally thought she was a superhero. She came home from school one day and told us that her friends had made fun of her because of her worn down shoes. To my surprise, she didn't seem too affected and so I kept asking for more details. After all, she is a 5-year-old who makes up a bunch of stories anyway, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

This Guy Makes Creative Reversed Videos by Talking Backwards

Lithuanian filmmaker and musician Saulius Jegelevičius has a creative and unusual YouTube channel called Backward Picnic. Instead of complex editing or effects, each of the videos is simply footage played backwards... and Saulius talks backwards while recording to speak "forwards" English in the videos.

Film Photos Captured with 5 Seconds of Sound Before and After

Photographer Mario Cipriano has started a new project titled "Light Sounds Light" using a technique he calls audiophotography. Cipriano is using a digital audio recorder to capture the sound context behind each of his film photos, resulting in a fascinating way of experiencing the photographer's work.

The View-Master Photography Promo

Photographer Lians Jadan recently spent months brainstorming in hopes of creating an effective promo. He came up with the idea of sending out his work to prospective clients with a retro View-Master-style viewer.

This DSLR Costume is Fully Functional Camera

By day, Yohei Shimada is a Japanese commercial photographer. When Halloween rolls around, Shimada becomes Cameraaman, a human-sized, fully-functioning DSLR camera that roams the streets of Japan to photograph other costume-wearers.

Photographer Turns Drone Shot Into a Facebook 3D Photo

Facebook's new 3D Photos feature is designed for photos captured using the depth map-based Portrait mode in the latest smartphones. Photographer Oat Vaiyaboon went beyond smartphones and turned a DJI Mavic Pro drone photo into a Facebook 3D Photo by creating his own depth map.

A Message from a Spider to Arachnophobes

Hi, my name is Charlie and I’m a giant house spider. I share my house with a human macro photographer named Maxim Piessen. My roomie loves to take photos of insects and other small organisms. We have always been on the same wavelength.

How this Creative One-Shot Scene Was Done to Show the Passage of Time

The Showtime series Kidding has an episode that introduces a character by seamlessly showing how a single room in her home transformed over a long period of time as she recovers from addiction. It might look like CGI or clever editing, but it was actually done with careful choreography and a single take. The split-screen behind-the-scenes video above shows how it was shot.

Photographing Perfume Packaging Using Everyday Objects

As a still life photographer, I spend a lot of time in my studio experimenting with different types of products. In a recent shoot, I did just this by photographing a perfume box. But instead of photographing the packing by itself, I used everyday objects to create the scene.

Lucky Accidents: Viewing Corrupted JPEG Photos in a New Light

I've always had bad luck with portable hard drives. Over the years I have had failures with several brands and models, so nowadays I have almost everything in the cloud for more security. The last time this happened was a couple of months ago: one of my backup hard drives became corrupt, I took it to the tech and they gave me a very high quote that at the moment I could not afford to pay.

These 16 Self-Portraits Were Shot Using Only Home Lighting

Back in February, I created several self-portraits using only lights from around my house. I wanted an exercise in something outside of my current comfort zone and to challenge myself to get back to my photography roots.

How I Shot a Nova Terra Cosplay Photo in the Desert

As a photographer, I've never really planned my shoots too much. I kind of look at what I'll be shooting and think of cool-looking images. Then I try my best to match what I'm seeing in my head through photography and sometimes post-production.