Refractographs are photographs of the beautiful patterns formed when light reflects and refracts through an object. Stunning as they look, you would think that there was a lot of post processing or digital manipulation involved, but there’s not, and in the above video, photographer Rob Turney gives you a step-by-step guide to taking them yourself. Read more…

Flect is a simple device I developed to take photos through glass without reflections or glare from the surrounding environment. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one for yourself.
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Canadian photographer and DIY enthusiast Matt Bechberger wanted to improve the ergonomics of his Mamiya 645 medium format camera without shelling out money for an “expensive, hard to find, and ugly” grip, so he decided to make his own. He ended up creating a beautiful custom wooden grip that attaches to the bottom of the camera and features a shutter release at the top.
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Here’s something that may not be relevant to most of you, but if you enjoy dabbling in do-it-yourself gear hacks you might find it interesting. Milan-based photographer and freelance engineer Andrea Biffi came up with an interesting way of creating a shutter release cable connector for his Canon DSLR. Instead of buying an actual remote and slicing off the plug end, he decided to cast his own out of hard rubber.
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Photographer Jesse David McGrady has a super simple trick for adding a hazy, ethereal effect to your photographs: wrap a plastic sandwich bag around your lens. It sounds ridiculous and silly, but the results you get are actually quite nice!
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In this post, I will share some of my techniques and experiences of backing up photos using a tablet while traveling.

Like most other landscape/nature/travel photographers, when I am on a multi-day or multi-week photo tour, I face the problem of backing up my photos from the memory cards. A laptop computer is a nature choice for most people. With a laptop, we can copy files between the memory cards, laptop disk drive, and external disks. We can even do some light editing.
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Here’s a tutorial on how to capture an exploding water balloon in the precise moment the balloon pops, while the water still holds the shape of a balloon. I didn’t want to invest any money in laser barriers or something similar, so I built a very simple mechanism. It doesn’t give me perfect timing, but it produces acceptable results.
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With the cost of my local neg scanner in London being £40/hour for a Hasselblad Flextight, I have been digitising using a DSLR for a quite a while. The results can be extremely good as long as a little time is put into the setup to begin with.
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Photographer Váncsa Domokos created a neat do-it-yourself camera accessory that uses optical fibers to control the direction and intensity of a flash unit’s light. Instead of having light come directly out of the flash unit, the accessory redirects it through a thick bundle of optical fibers, allowing you to point the light in any direction — and in different directions if you’d like.
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In the past, we’ve shared how you can create a cheap and simple rain cover for your camera and lens using a Ziploc bag. While that solution is effective in protecting your gear, it might make it a bit difficult to adjust your lens and operate the rings.

If you’d like a little more access to your lens, you can also create a rain guard using the plastic cylindrical cover that comes with writable optical discs.
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