Did you know you can shoot aerial photos and videos by putting a stabilized camera on a boomerang? Victor Poulin of Boomerangs by Vic recently attached a Mobius 1080p action camera to the top of a boomerang.
When you're just starting out in photography, you may not have a lot of money to invest in putting together a high-end arsenal of studio lighting equipment. By being resourceful, however, you can do a lot with a little.
In the 23-minute video by the lighting brand Sekonic, photographer Tony Corbell demonstrates how you can create 10 completely different lighting scenarios in the studio for products and portraits with a single large softbox.
If you'd like to experiment with some do-it-yourself photography hacks and tricks, check out this new video by DigitalRev. Over the course of 10 minutes, Kai shares 10 different cheap and simple hacks you can do with ordinary things you'll find lying around your house.
Like the world’s tidal waters, photographic creativity ebbs and flows for many of us. Sometimes creativity can use a jump-start, an artificial method to get the photographer to start looking at the world in a new way in order to facilitate, restart, refine, or improve your photography.
There are many ideas on how to get yourself to push through an artistic block or inspire you to further expand your boundaries. Not all of them involve the camera. Several websites and books publish a mix of assignments or exercises for the intrepid photographer. I prefer the exercises that 1) involve using your camera, 2) are less assignment-based, and 3) are fun!
COOPH just released this fun little 3-minute video that shares 8 tips, tricks, and ideas for smartphone photography. It's a dose of inspiration for getting creative with the camera in your pocket.
A few weeks ago, Colin Devroe, a friend from Twitter, introduced me to the concept of a panoselfie when he created a Flickr group for it and tweeted at me.
How do you go about shooting a quick photograph if you need to include both of your hands in the frame? One guy had a solution that turned into a classic sequence of photographs.
Want to play around with studio lighting from the comfort of your own home without dropping any money on …
Looking for a new photo concept to try your hand at? The Cooperative of Photography just released this short video with 7 different photo tricks and ideas you can do the next time you're in search of ideas.
Without context, the images in Cosmos by photographer Marcus DeSieno may look like colorful and abstract images created with some mysterious method. Read the description and captions, and you may experience a sense of revulsion.
Each of the photos was created by introducing photographic film to bacteria collected from various places, both unusual and ubiquitous. The microscopic organisms eat away at the film, creating a series of abstract artworks.
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.
Want a simple battery-powered time-lapse camera that you can leave in locations for up to a year? A hacker who goes by "val3tra" is trying to build one. The goal of his project is a camera that can continuously photograph a scene for months or years on time while powered only by a handful of ordinary batteries.
You wouldn't expect lifelogging cameras to be the source of tear-jerking footage, but the folks at Huggies Korea recently launched a heartwarming project that'll get you, as they say, right in the feels.
There are a few ways to deliver images to your clients: on a DVD, on a flash-drive, or through a custom online gallery. The first two ways are the most interesting to me, since they let you creatively wrap up the contents with your logo, add custom-made photo albums, “thank you” cards and a lot of other nice things that will leave a positive impression with the client. This shows that you care about your clients as well as your reputation.
If you’re looking for a good way to deliver your photos to the clients, in today’s showcase I bring together 20 fantastic packaging and presentation ideas for you.
Looking for a slick and unique way to share your contact info and photo portfolio with prospective clients? Check out the swivelCard, a transforming business card that doubles as a USB drive when you fold it a certain way.
Despite the early sunrises, late sunsets and harsh daytime sunlight of summer it’s still one of our favorite times for photography. Being outside with your camera in the warmer months just feels so good.
If you’re struggling to come up with creative ideas during summer, however, we’ve got a few tips that might help.
Last November, photographer Jeremy Cowart revealed OKDOTHIS, a two-and-a-half year collaboration between himself and the development team at Aloompa to create an app that inspired creatives to be... well... more creative.
And now, in the name of continuing to keep the creative community on their toes, OKDOTHIS has announced a 2.0 revamp of what is essentially its entire platform. The app, website and overall structure of the platform is much more streamlined now, featuring a more unified and easy-to-use design across the board.
It's easy to plateau when you're experimenting with light painting photography, and as a result, this fun genre can often turn into a flash in the pan hobby.
And so, in order to help sustain your interest in what I think is a worthwhile endeavor and an under appreciated form of photography, I've decided to provide a few of the toys and tricks I've picked up in my experiences. These are things that have helped respire my interest in the past. Hopefully they'll motivate you to continue experimenting as well.
Want a crafty way to show off your travel photos? Try creating a personalized photo map, with states, provinces, or countries in the map replaced with pictures showing you in those locations.
Years ago, well-known Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis went through a collection of the gear he takes on his photo and video shoots. But given the great deal of change in technology -- and capital on his side -- since then, he recently created a completely new and updated video showing, again, his must-have gear for photo and video shoots.
Nokia recently teamed up with light painting photographer Ian Hobson to prove to the world that a smartphone as advanced as the 1020 was capable of capturing awesome light painting shots. The resulting video is part tutorial, part inspirational, part Nokia ad -- and if you can ignore the last part, the first two make it well worth a couple minutes of your time.
One of the more difficult things about being a creative is having to come up with fresh ideas on a daily basis, constantly challenging yourself and expanding your horizons. These things aren't always easy and it's not uncommon to find yourself in a creative rut with (seemingly) nowhere to turn.
Thankfully, there's a new app in town that is designed to help you out of those kinds of situations while simultaneously keeping you on your game even when you are inspired. It's called OKDOTHIS.
Here's something that could very well be the "next big thing" in wedding photography: slow motion photo booths. Check out the hilarious video above for an example of what one such booth recently produced.
Benjamin Zank is a young fine art photographer based in New York City. He caught the photography bug a few years ago, at the age of 18, after picking up a Pentax ME Super 35mm film SLR from the attic of his grandmother's house, and has been creating incredible concept images ever since.
Here's a neat photo idea: capture a city's skyline in the reflection on the front of a camera lens. Photographer Christopher Anderson recently shot this picture of the Minneapolis, Minnesota skyline -- a picture that landed on the front page of Reddit.
Creative, imagination-filled wedding photographs are starting to become quite trendy -- at least online. Earlier this year, we shared viral photos of bridal parties running for their lives from a T-Rex and from Star Wars Imperial Walkers.
Chicago-based wedding photographer Steven Kowalski also joined in on the fun, creating the epic Star Wars-themed photograph above at a wedding earlier this month.
I've got a few days before my big summer vacation, so I thought I'd hammer out an incredibly impractical display technology!
Madhava Bence Kalmar is a 22-year-old Hungarian photographer who's currently studying at the University of Brighton in the UK. Passionate about experimental and portrait photography, he has been working on a project that combines the two. It's called "Stone and Silver," and involves printing black and white photographs on rocks instead of traditional mediums.
"Can you help me with my camera?" I get that a lot, as I'm sure do most camera weenies whose geek credentials are a little too obvious.
And most of the time I'm happy to co-operate. Ideally, I get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing somebody is going to have legible images of a key moment in their lives. At worst, at least there'll be one less uncontrolled on-board flash to blind me.
Latte art is something that's often the subject of photographs, but have you ever seen an latte artwork that is a photograph?
A coffee business over in Taiwan recently came up with the idea of providing a unique product to customers by having photographs of their faces printed directly onto the foam of the coffee they're ordering!
Once you've lived somewhere long enough, it's easy to fall into a photographic rut. We're not talking about a running low on creativity (read this if you're dealing with creative burnout), we're talking about running low on places to shoot.
Photographer Darren Johnson ran into this problem, and was frustrated at the amount of work he had to put in to track down new photography locations online. That's why he created ShotHotspot: a new website that intelligently uses sites like Flickr and Panoramio to find and rank photo hotspots in your area.
Have you ever wanted to make the video you shot on your DSLR look like it's playing at 1000fps, or make people warp in and out of your time lapse, on perhaps contort faces like putty? Then come explore the glory that is Twixtor. If you're not already familiar with the software plug-in created by RE:Vision Effects then I highly suggest you check out the information below, study up, and dive in.
If you don't already know, essentially Twixtor allows you to take your footage and slow it down to upwards of 1000fps by estimating what the frames needed in between would look like and filling in the gaps. Now it does have its limitations. Your footage has to be at least 60fps for the end result to be worthwhile, and if there's too much movement you'll start to get this warping effect around the movement (although used purposefully even the warping can be a fun tool).
You may never take local birds and weeds for granted again after spending some time with Meet Your Neighbors, a photo project aimed at documenting the huge variety of the biosphere one species at a time.
The advent of the GoPro has brought about a real surge in adventure and sports photography/videos. Suddenly amateurs have been able to capture some of their pro-level tricks and treks and share them with their friends and the Internet.
While some people tend to look down on amateur-level photography, I think most would agree that at least this avenue has actually made things far more exciting. What has made this instance so different? Well, while some are satisfied simply strapping their GoPro to their head and jumping on a mountain bike (exciting in and of itself) others have found some more inventive ways of utilizing their camera.
I was cleaning out my gear drawer recently when I came across a couple of holders for Cokin filters. The filters had long since been sent to an eBay afterlife, but tossing the cases started me thinking, mainly about how I hadn't missed the things a bit.
Recently published patent applications filed by Nikon offer a glimpse into what the company may be working on for future DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. The three technologies spotted are: illuminated lens mounts, dual lens contacts, and a hybrid viewfinder.
Faced with another birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, a place my daughter loves but low ISOs do not, I decided to get creative. I shot a collection of photos with a set of three Yongnuo YN-560 and YN-560 II flashes with a diffuser cap/"omni bounce" inside of small lampshades placed along the table.
Photographer Nick Fancher tells us that he recently came up with an interesting way of customizing the catch light in subjects' eyes. If, in your portraiture, you place white or black foam boards to control the amount and direction of bounce light, you can also use white and black gaffers tape to control what goes on in your subjects' eyeballs!
Most high-end digital cameras (not named Ricoh) aren't designed to be modular. If you want a new sensor in your camera, you'll need to buy an entirely new camera. Want to use a different lens system? You're out of luck.
What if there existed a universe in which all the major camera companies came together to form an extremely versatile modular digital camera? That's what Korean designers Dae jin Ahn and Chun hyun Park are attempting to answer with their concept camera design, called Equinox.
Brooklyn-based photographer Romain Laurent's "Tilt" project from 2009 is one that turns an oh-so-simple concept into unique photos that instant grab your attention. Each photograph shows a person standing, walking, or skateboarding in an urban environment, except the whole world is tilted around them.