As a product photographer, I use paper in various different ways as a background for still-life photos to keep costs down for creative shooting. In this article, I'll show you how I do it and how you can do it too.
Light shaping tools are very expensive. What if you could take any object and turn it into a modifier? That would save you a lot of money as well as give some unique results. In this article, I will share some everyday objects that you can turn into light modifiers to get different looks.
Almost anything can be used as a light modifier. As long as it interacts with light in one way or another, it can be considered a light modifier. In this article, I will show you how to build a do-it-yourself (DIY) softbox with things you likely already have around at home.
I recently found a very practical solution for diffusing a camera flash. The solution is perhaps the most practical thing available during the COVID-19 pandemic: the spare medical mask that I kept on my bag.
If you want ideas for getting creative with portrait photography while on a shoestring budget, check out the work of the Mexican photographer Omahi. In addition to sharing his imaginative work, Omahi also shows behind-the-scenes photos of how they're made.
PrismLensFX unveiled a set of Variable Prism Filters back in March that lets photographers achieve prism effects using specially-designed lens filters. Upon seeing the prism filters, landscape photographer Christian Mögnum Möhrle decided to try his hand at making his own do-it-yourself version.
Every year, a pine tree close to our house produces the most perfect cones, and I often pick up a handful of them on my way home. The cones are undeniably beautiful, but not of much practical use. Or so I thought, until one day it hit me that a cone would make a rather nifty SD card holder.
In this article, I'm going to show you how you can make a DIY darkroom safelight using very simple products from IKEA. Yes, IKEA the store that sells furniture that's almost made of cardboard.
Sometimes, you’re forced to work with what you’ve got, even if that means just the flashlight on your phone. In this 10-minute video, you’ll learn 5 ways to light portraits using just a phone flashlight.
After our flight to NYC got canceled last summer, we got stuck in Chicago for one night with no light painting tubes, no dress, no tripods, and no battery chargers. During the shuttle ride to the hotel, we started joking about using a bed sheet to fake a dress and to use whatever we could find in the hotel room as a light-painting tool.
Need a chuckle? Alex over at I did a thing made this 4.5-minute tongue-in-cheek video showing 5 creative camera tricks you can use... if you're a cheapskate.
Controlling and modifying light is a lot of what photographing with studio lights and battery-powered strobes is about. Especially when it comes to portraits, I like to work with my lighting setups so they add something that is not perfect or flat.
Want a cheap way of shooting right under the surface of water without having to buy a special housing for your camera? Alex over at I did a thing recently built himself a PVC periscope-style device for a total cost of around $10, and the results are great.
Want a cheap and easy way to white balance photos without having to buy a color checker or special cards? Here's a neat hack: you can actually use ordinary white plumber's tape -- the kind you use to seal pipe threads.
Can you use a flip-flop -- or any solid item, for that matter -- as a graduated neutral density (AKA grad ND) filter? Sure. But, it doesn’t work in all situations.
Here's a 6-minute educational video by Shutterstock in which filmmaker Todd Blankenship discusses the basics of diffusing light and introduces three cheap options for doing so... including a $5 shower curtain.
Professional portrait backdrops can cost over $1,000 apiece. If you'd like to get creative without getting broke, photographer Jessica Kobeissi has a thrifty DIY idea for you in this 4.5-minute video. She shows how you can create a custom backdrop using less than $5 in materials purchased from your local dollar store.
Lighting equipment can be expensive, but sometimes you can get great results using makeshift products that won't put a dent in your wallet. Here's a 15-minute video from Dustin Dolby of workphlo that looks at how you can shoot high-quality product photos using something as basic as an IKEA MELODI lampshade.
I recently got bored and decided to expand a super-budget project I'm working on. I love gridded beauty dishes for dramatic artsy stuff, beauty, and as a generally very versatile modifier. However, even a cheap one is out of budget for this project. So... I made one.
Product photography is something that I've always been interested in, but never saw myself making a career out of. However... when I do get to take product photos, I do enjoy it quite a lot.
There is an almost endless supply of lighting modifiers available on the market right now, some are cheap and some of the better ones are certainly a lot more expensive. But does cost directly relate to quality? Well, a lot of the time yes it does if you're referring to build quality.
French photographer Philippe Echaroux recently decided to challenge himself in the area of shooting portraits of strangers. Instead of using high-end camera equipment, he decided to use an iPhone and light his subjects using a McDonald's Big Mac box.
Nearly every professional studio I’ve ever used has these "polyboards" and you‘ve probably even seen them yourself but may not have known what they’re used for. Polyboards are polystyrene boards that usually measure 4 feet wide by 8 feet high and are normally 2 inches thick. One of the other defining characteristics is that they are often white on one side and black on the other.
High-end photo backdrops can cost over $1,000 apiece. When photographer Jeremy Cowart couldn't find a backdrop he needed a few days ago, he had an idea: Cowart drew his own backdrop on an iPad Pro and printed it out at 40x80 inches on a $4,000 professional Canon printer.
Here's a simple little life hack for photographers: wine storage can sometimes double as great camera lens storage. A shelf or rack designed for wine could be a way to keep your lenses organized and ready to go.
Beauty dishes are great pieces of equipment to have in your lighting arsenal, but they come at a price. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a dish, yet using a cheap shoot-through umbrella can easily produce the same effect, as this 10-minute tutorial by Joe Edelman shows.
I needed a monitor hood for quite some time but wasn't willing to pay the retail prices charged for them, so I decided to build one myself. In this tutorial I'll show you how to build your own DIY monitor hood for less than $12.
Remember Nicolas Vuignier, the skier who shot bullet time by swinging his iPhone around his head? He's back again with another brilliant idea: he shot "poor man's drone" footage by throwing his GoPro into the air.
Toronto-based photographer Peter McKinnon created this short video that shares 8 clever, quick, and easy camera hacks in the span of about 90 seconds.
My name is Nick Fancher and I'm a portrait and commercial photographer who specializes in lighting, specifically with the use of small flash in unconventional locations.
Low quality photos and videos are often referred to these days as being "potato quality," or so bad that they look like they were taken using a potato. But for photographer Colin Lowe, "potato quality" is a spot-on description for some of his photos because they were literally taken with a potato.
My name is Philippe Echaroux, and I'm a French celebrity photographer and an ambassador for Hasselblad and Elinchrom. I recently had to do a portrait shoot at a large studio in Paris, but for this shoot I decided to have a bit of fun.
This article is about how you don't always need fancy lights for photo shoots: I recently shot the outdoor nighttime fantasy photo above, titled "The SpellBinder" and featuring Kara Markley, using only the light from candles and iPhone flashlights.
I recently built a Trash Cam out of a trash can, large format lens, and Sony a7S II. The project was an attempt to find an inexpensive housing for a large format lens.
I recently built my own DIY large format camera using scraps. The idea of this camera started with vintage profile spotlight that I wanted to restore, only to discover that some of the internal lens elements were shattered. The only lens element that was undamaged was the front element. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that this element can project an image circle big enough to cover an 8x10 area.
Typically, the term “gobo” is reserved for the lens filters and patterns that are affixed to theater lights. The terms “flag” or “cucloris/cookie” are actually more accurate for what we’re going to be using in this post, which is an object placed between the light and the subject, but not attached to it.
For several years now, Camranger has been pretty much the only choice if you want to tether your Nikon, Sony or Canon DSLR wirelessly to your phone or tablet.
Advanced camera stabilizers are becoming cheaper and cheaper these days, but if you're the type of person who enjoys building the things you use, here's a neat tutorial for you. Product Tank released a 7-minute video showing how you can create a DIY stabilizer using LEGO pieces.
Want to shoot long exposure photos in bright daylight without having to shell out big bucks on a neutral density (ND) filter? Try using a piece of welder's glass -- the kind that protects your eyes while welding. The 13-minute video above by photographer Mathieu Stern provides a nice overview of this photo hack.
In late 2014, I was given a few pieces of piping -- what you might call trash, but which I call the "ring of fire." It ended up being an incredibly useful tool in my photography. I quickly decided to add it to my (now literal) bag of tricks along with Prisming, Lens Chimping, my Broken Freelens, and Anamorphics.