howitwasmade

I’ve been taking photos all of my life. Something that I realize now started from a young age: I’ve been genetically disposed with bad eyes, but it was only discovered around the age of ten. This forced me to look closely at what was in front of me for a long time. Once I got tested and got glasses an entire world opened up. As a result, I’ve always looked at things and people with an appreciation I doubt I could’ve had any other way.

It’s a hunger to try and capture what I see in the moment as it presents itself, be it a theme or a feeling, a relationship or a time. There’s always a story to tell and that’s why we take photos.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with the small and wondrous world of macro imaging, predominantly as a macro videographer, but also in the stills realm as of late.

One thing that is a constant in any form of creative imaging is the need to constantly update, modify and adapt the base equipment we are dealt when we make our already-expensive gear purchases. Recently, I've been focusing my attention on adapting photographic flash guns for macro photography.

I'm photographer John Nakatsu of K+J Studios based out of Seattle, and in this post I will share a step-by-step account of how I made a photo booth for weddings and events.

Starting back in May of 2014, I finally put my first foot forward in the making of a 16x20 inch bellows camera. The idea to build a camera was nothing new to me, but I was always hesitant to begin construction since I am the type of person that prefers to work off a set of blue prints and directions. Unfortunately, since my drawing skills aren't amazing, it was pretty difficult to visualize and plan a solid blueprint of the project - which ultimately forced me to bite the bullet and simply begin construction of the camera and problem solve along the way.

For years I’ve struggled with my workspace, I’ve had loads of different ones, from small ones in the corner of the living room in my old apartment to ones that take up my entire 3 metre wide office in my current house, they have all had their merits but most frustratingly I have never truly liked working at any of them. They’ve all had massive issues that have made working at them difficult and as a result they are hardly the most inspiring way to work in the office.

Richard Roberts is a freelance creative retoucher and digital artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the past decade, he has worked on advertisements and promotional materials for clients that include Fox, HBO, Mountain Dew, Under Armor, Kelloggs, and Gillette.

For most of his projects, Roberts will capture snapshots of the image at various stages of compositing -- glimpses are later combined into animated GIFs that show how the various images were made.

One of photographer Jeff Paradiso's big projects this past year was to create a sideways room for "anti-gravity" photos. These are images in which the viewer is disoriented in regards to which way is up.

My name is Michael Pistono, and I'm a 28-year-old photo enthusiast living in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was recently playing around with a reflection photo when I had the idea of creating another one out of a puddle -- one that featured both tall buildings and an airplane.

The photo I ended up creating in Photoshop (shown above) went viral online. Here's a look at how it was made.

Check out this portrait of the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse by photographer Paul Mobley and digital artist Mike Campau. Can you tell how it was created?

It’s fun to print big, but when a client recently asked me to create an image more than four stories tall I have to admit it was really outside of my usual perspective.

I bought a used Mamiya RZ67 Pro II a month ago, a huge medium format studio SLR with a negative area a full five times larger than the sensor on a Nikon D800 or 5DMKIII "full frame" camera.

A decade ago, the kit I bought would have sold for 5 figures, but thanks to film's loss in popularity, I was able to get it for less than a tenth of what it cost new.

This camera is a poor man's large format camera. It is made with a simple shoebox acting as a dark room.

Fashion company Pierre Cardin did a marketing campaign earlier this year that revolved around the slogan: "Simply Cool." It enlisted the help of Brazilian art director Cláudia Xavier and luxury still life photographer Norimich Inoguchi for a series of advertising photographs. The creatives decided to convey that "it's cool to wear Pierre Cardin" in a very literal way: they photographed various clothing items and accessories frozen into large blocks of ice.

Taking a page out of The Beatles' book, Slovenia- and Croatia-based band Zebra Dots has an album cover for their debut record that features a zebra lane cross walk. Instead of strolling across it, however, the band members are lying on top of the thick lines, with their bodies blended into the zebra lines and their heads serving as dots. (You can also see it as musical notes on a staff).

Back in August we shared a mesmerizing stop-motion video titled "Dream Music: Part 2" and created by Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams. The team spent 6-8 hours of work photographing every 3-4 seconds of the 8-minute music video. All in all, the project took six months to complete. The video above presents a behind-the-scenes look at how the whole thing was done, with director's commentary, deleted scenes, and a bunch of time-lapses of the time-lapse being shot.

We first featured photographer Matthew Albanese's Strange Worlds project back in 2010, not too long after the project's inception. His amazing images appear to show beautiful outdoor scenes, but were actually shot on a tabletop in his studio. He creates extremely detailed dioramas that take months to complete, and then uses various photographic techniques to make the scene look like the real world. It's like the opposite of using tilt-shift lenses to turn the world into a miniature model.

The photo above is the album cover for Jay-Z's 2009 album Blueprint 3, featuring a photo of a pile of musical instruments and recording equipment with three red lines across the front. It might look Photoshopped -- an easy way to create such an effect -- but it was actually done with perspective trickery and good ol' fashioned hard work.

This photograph by artist Chuck Anderson has received over 30,000 notes on Tumblr since it was posted back in September of 2010. It might look like a Photoshop creation, but Anderson assures us that what you see is straight off the camera.

Think you're good with Photoshop? Graphic designer Alexander Koshelkov created this amazing time-lapse video showing how he created an epic plane crash image in Photoshop using elements found in other photographs (e.g. freeways, an airplane, destroyed engines and cars). The project took Koshelkov nearly 4.5 hours and required 244 separate layers.

Photographer Blair Bunting made this photograph for a Discovery Channel ad promoting the show Deadliest Catch. Can you figure out how Bunting shot it without putting the model's body at risk? The trick is to use a few high powered leaf blowers and some liquid that looks like blood.