howto

Make Your Own Film Developer and Fixer Using These Household Items

Last week, photographer Brendan Barry created a timely tutorial on how to turn your bedroom into a giant camera, and use it to take actual pictures. But what if you don't have any photographic chemicals around for developing and fixing those images? Barry's got you covered.

Shooting Stacked Macro Photography on a Budget

Need a photo project while confined to your home for weeks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic? Here is a guide on shooting stacked macro photography on a budget!

How to Find Your Photography Style Fast

Let’s not waste any time. What is the most important element in someone’s photography style? The quick answer is repetition.

Top Tips: How to Photograph a Church Wedding Ceremony

I love a photography challenge and there’s nothing more challenging than shooting a church wedding ceremony. Forget everything else that happens during the course of a wedding day, the ceremony is the grand occasion. The awesome moments that your couple have been waiting for happen here, so you need to be ready.

Back-to-Basics: 7 Street Photography Tips for Beginners

Photographer Evan Raft recently published a list of 7 helpful, back-to-basics tips for anybody who is interested in getting started with street photography. If you're a beginner, this video is a great place to start before going out and trying to capture your first few street shots.

Adding Foreground Flare to Portraits

There are a million-and-one ways to add creative flares and effects to your shots in post-production after you’ve taken the image, but nothing beats the look and feel of an image that has used in-camera flares and bokeh effects.

Three Ways to Use RGB Lights in Your Portrait Work

RGB LEDs are a relatively new piece of technology, and a wonderful addition that photographers should be taking advantage of. Before this technology existed, we were forced to resort to adding gels to our strobes in order to add a pop of color into our images. This worked well (and still does) but having the ability to change the hue and saturation of your lights with the flip of a switch or turn of a dial is incredibly useful.

5 Pieces of Street Photography Advice You Should Ignore

Street photographers are not known for their reserve. We are happy to give advice on gear, framing and technique. But I believe the best photographers are those who also seek advice and look to learn from others. That said, not all advice is equal, and some ideas are outdated, narrow minded, or just plan wrong.

A Complete Guide to Using Off Camera Flash for Wedding Photography

Wedding photographer Reggie Ballesteros gets a lot of questions from aspiring wedding photographers, and one of the most common is: how do you use off-camera flash? So he's created a comprehensive guide that covers his entire process—from the gear he uses, to his thought process during setup, through execution.

Nine DIY Filmmaking and Photography Hacks Using Cardboard

YouTuber Jordy of Cinecom.net recently put together a list of DIY filmmaking and photography hacks that are proving to be quite popular. In just under 7 minutes, he covers 9 hacks, all of which use cardboard to make the magic happen.

How I Built a Custom Charging Board for All of My Camera Batteries

Recently I became—as I’m sure many of you already are—utterly sick of the endless chargers and cables in my studio. It's a mess of wires that always seem to get tangled and it always ends up looking like Medusa on a bad hair day.

Creating Homemade Photography Backdrops on the Cheap

Anyone who has had any exposure to still life photography or studio work will know just how expensive backdrops can be. I have a couple from Kate Backdrops company, one of which I use very often, but I've been hankering after a few more.

Refracted Rose: A Fun Valentine’s Day Macro Photography Idea

It's Valentine's Day and a good opportunity to grab some flowers and celebrate our love for photography with another creative project. I didn’t want to miss my chance, so I grabbed some red roses and in today’s post I will share my set-up for a Valentine's Day 'Refracted Rose' photo.

7 Tips for Taking the Perfect Beach Silhouette Photo

Silhouette images can really pack a punch -- they can be very striking and have the ‘wow’ factor. But how do you take them? Follow the tips below to take your own perfect beach silhouette images!

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.

7 Tips for Better Black and White Street Photography

COOPH recently got together with London-based street photographer and co-founder of Street Photography Internationa Alan Schaller to talk about one of the most deceptively difficult forms of photography out there: black and white street photography.

Why Umbrellas are the Most Under-Appreciated Lighting Modifier

In this short tutorial, well-known portrait and fashion photographer Lindsay Adler will show you how to use "the most inexpensive and under-appreciated" lighting modifier to capture beautiful studio portraits. She's talking, of course, about the lowly umbrella.

9 Simple Tips for Taking Better Photos of Waterfalls

Landscape photographer and YouTuber Mads Peter Iversen has released a helpful on-location tutorial for anybody who wants to photograph waterfalls. The beginner-focused tutorial runs you through 9 simple tips that will help you take better, more deliberate photos of this common landscape photography subject.

11 Secrets to Up Your Night Street Photography Game

I’m going to share with you 11 secrets that will help you up your night street photography game. These tips are based on what I teach paying customers on my London Soho Night Street Photography workshops, but don’t worry if you’re coming to one, I have many more secrets!

5 Shots You Need to Get When You Are the On-Set Photographer

The first time I was hired to photograph on set at a music video was decades ago. The client was a record label and they didn’t give me any detailed instructions. I was just starting out and it didn’t even occur to me to ask just what I was supposed to take pictures of.

You Can Restore an Old Pelican Case with a Heat Gun

I was recently offered a free Pelican case, and she seemed too young to die. She was structurally sound, so I felt some plastic surgery would make her look 10 years younger... and it did.