Ideas

I Created a Virtual Street Photography Exhibition in Animal Crossing

A couple of weeks into the coronavirus lockdown of 2020 and I’d noticed, among the many mentions on social media timelines of toilet paper shortages, sourdough fanaticism, and the essential viewing experience that is Tiger King, was a computer game called Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

When Was the Last Time You Tried Local Travel?

So you have spent years packing up your camera and jumping on a plane. Then a pandemic shut down borders killing travel plans overnight and you are not sure where your next story is going to come from. Where do you go for those sweet photos or that glorious content you had been able to churn out as fast as you could make it?

Photos of Flowers from a Freezer

These days we’re all trying to come up with new photo ideas to do around home, but how many of you have thought, ”Hey, I’ll freeze some flowers in water?” That’s a new one for me, but fortunately I know someone here who does that, and she’s happy to share her secrets.

Taking ‘Travel Photos’ Through Google Maps During Lockdown

Creative Director Yousuke Ozawa—whose 'Satellite Fonts' project went viral back in 2014—is at it again. In order to keep his sanity during lockdown, he started taking "digital vacations" through Google Maps, and capturing Street View travel photography.

This Photographer is Printing Photos on Algae

There are various mediums and techniques you can use to create prints of your photos, but have you considered using algae? That's what photographer Russell Marx has been experimenting with, and the result is impressive.

This Night Sky Timelapse is Not What It Seems

Here's a beautiful new short film titled "Night Light" by UK-based photographer and filmmaker Arthur Cauty. While it may look like timelapse photography, it's actually comprised entirely of still photos with motion and lighting added in.

How I Shoot Solargraphs with a Digital Camera

Solargraphies (pinhole images on photographic paper that capture months of the sun arching across the horizon) were a thing starting sometime in the 2000s. When this caught on broadly in the early 2010s, it got a lot of people excited for film again.

Three Creative Photo Techniques to Help You Embrace Imperfection

This period isn’t easy for anyone. Professional photographers are struggling with the implications of being on lockdown and suddenly having to stop all work from one day to the next. Hobbyist photographers may be in a similar situation with jobs, children and household duties all being juggled in an unprecedented dance that is completely new and unknown.

This Photographer Made a Working Camera Lens Out of LEGO

Weird lens enthusiast and YouTuber Mathieu Stern has created another fun stay-at-home DIY lens while stuck in quarantine. This time it's a functional camera lens, complete with focusing mechanism, made almost entirely out of LEGO bricks.

5 Ways to Creatively Upskill Your Wedding Photography at Home

COVID-19 isolation is a tricky time for wedding photographers. Upskilling might already be on your radar as you think about putting time into your wedding photography business over this time where weddings have been banned pretty much across the globe. But I’d like to suggest some out-of-the-box ways that we can upskill as wedding photographers in this time that you might not have thought of yet.

Model Lets Photographers Control Her DSLR Over ‘Zoom’ for Long-Distance Photo Shoots

I am a traveling model, working in the industry for a little over 20 years. I also work on a drag racing team as a promotional model and videographer. I had two tours planned for the east coast in March & April, but unfortunately these plans have canceled due to COVID-19. With my tours canceled and race scheduled changed, I was out of work for the unseen future. Time to get creative!

I Took a Virtual Photography Road Trip Using Google Street View

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been asked to stay home and shelter in place. This restriction has only increased my desire to explore and road trip. I still need to create and think critically throughout this time, but if I can’t go to new places, how can I make new work?

10 Astrophotography Ideas You Can Do From Your Backyard

With many of us stuck in lockdown, quarantine, and self-isolation, I thought I’d share 10 ideas for astrophotography that you can do from home, even if you live in a light-polluted town or city. If there’s one thing that this pandemic has taught us, it’s that we’re all in this together and astrophotography and astronomy only help to solidify that sense of unification.

Remotraits: Shooting Portraits via Facetime Through Various Materials

Because of the quarantines currently sweeping the country and world, creatives have had to get especially creative to make collaborative art in spite of distance. I’ve seen photographers shooting portraits of people from the sidewalk and through windows. I’ve also seen photographers shooting via conferencing apps. I, too, recently conducted my own remote portrait sessions, which I’ve decided to call Remotraits.

How to Shoot Beautiful Family Photography at Home

You don’t have to be out and about to capture beautiful photographs of your children. The homes we live in may not strike you as being particularly photogenic, but think about how many of your childhood memories revolve around the house you grew up in. It's the ideal backdrop.

How to Shoot Portraits Through FaceTime

If anything good has come out of the current lockdown, it’s the many wonderful ways people have been finding to stay creative. When the coronavirus began to take hold and necessary government instructions rendered my wedding and portrait photography business inoperable, I had to deal with the shock and financial implications of it like any other photographer. It also threw up another challenge: how do we as creatives stay creative?

This Photographer Shot a Wet Plate Portrait Over Video Chat

Photographers around the world have been getting creative to keep their skills sharp during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and widespread home quarantine. While many photographers are experimenting with doing remote photo shoots over video chat, Shane Balkowitsch took it to a new level by capturing a wet plate portrait.

My Friend Sent Me on a Photo Quest During Social Distancing

My friend Jon Gilchrist and I were talking about cabin fever and ways to stay active while also socially distancing during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. He had the idea to come up with a route on Google Earth and Street View for me to bike and take a few pictures on.

These Stock Photos Are Selling in the Coronavirus Pandemic

It is very hard to find any positives in the virus that is sweeping the world and creating havoc with every economy. But one thing that is happening in our stock world is that images and videos are being sought by buyers that just never existed before.

You Can Use Any Lamp in Your House as a Tripod

Photographer and YouTuber Peter McKinnon has just shared a brilliant little camera hack that's blowing people's minds. In his most recent 2-minute tips video, he shows how any bedside lamp can be used as an impromptu tripod (monopod, actually).

10 Things To Do When Stuck at Home as a Photographer

Now that most of us are stuck at home with possibly no income, times are tough. But we can use these times to our ‘advantage’ and do things we normally wouldn’t do or don’t have time for. Some of us can’t even go out anymore to take pictures in nature because we’re grounded. I live in the Netherlands and we’re still allowed to go out of the house, but other countries like Italy and France for example, are completely grounded.

The Eye Contact Conundrum in Street Photography

There are so many factors to potentially juggle for any given street/documentary situation that eye contact for me tends to fall a bit to chance -- if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It is rarely something I feel makes or breaks an image, but more frequently I’ve been thinking about what specific function working to achieve (or deliberately avoid) eye contact could offer to my photographs.

Wanted: A Panoramic Photo Calculator App for My Phone

I have in mind a program that would be of great assistance to anyone trying to do panoramic pictures. I am confident that someone who understands the math and how to create an app would make short work of it. That is certainly NOT me! I do know it would be quite useful for me and I would happily pay a few bucks for it in the app store. (I use Android!)

Photography as a Zen Art

Sometimes you know about two things in completely different parts of your brain, and then one day, for no reason, you put them together and your head explodes — a cascade of understandings like the last scene in “Usual Suspects”. After 40 years of taking pictures, that happened to me. One idea changed me overnight. And if you have a camera it will change you, too.

How to Shoot Creative Macro Photos of Skeleton Leaves

Today we are going to use skeleton leaves and glycerin for a creative macro project. Skeleton leaves are fascinating and intricate structures that make great subjects for macro photography and creative projects.

These Oversized Objects Were Shot with Photo Tricks and Zero Budget

For our latest project, Oversized Normality, we wanted to create an unreal world while at the same time achieve a realistic final result even if we had changed the proportion of an object 1:1000 times. We wished to accomplish this without using any advanced VFX techniques, which would have required a higher budget and more time.

Henri Cartier-Bresson Photos Reimagined as Satirical Paintings

In this article, I am going to share a huge project in which Henri Cartier-Bresson’s black and white photos are reimagined into satirical paintings. What would Bresson see if he were still shooting today? The colorful paintings will definitely give you a glimpse!