Photographers Rachel and Daniel at Mango Street decided to try out a few "photo hacks" they found on TikTok. These sorts of quick "hacks" are notorious for being fake or exaggerated, and they wanted to see which ones actually work, and which ones are only "meh."
Photographer, filmmaker, and YouTube superstar Peter McKinnon is better known for his video work these days, but he recently took a step back to share a simple photo "hack" that can yield more dramatic portraits in a matter of seconds.
Our friends over at COOPH have put together a fun video that might just inspire you to break out the umbrella for a fun photo shoot this weekend. The rapid-fire video goes through 5 creative photo "hacks" that you can do with a spare umbrella and a few other odds and ends like fairy lights, aluminum foil, and duct tape.
In this video and article, we’ll show you how you can use a bridal veil to create interesting flares and light leaks in-camera. It can be hard to get the right amount of flare in an image, especially when the sun is overpowering the frame. Here is a simple trick we like to use to block just enough sun to get the perfect shot.
Here's a handy trick that may be useful for beginning photographers: did you know that you can bend your reflector to change the quality of the light on your subject?
Wedding photographers are always looking to take creative, novel portraits and a quick, simple trick is often sitting right in their pocket. By using a phone screen as a reflective surface, it is possible to cover up unsightly elements, add intrigue, and make an image that much more interesting.
Want to learn portrait lighting but don't have a model you can spend hours and hours with? Here's a 4-minute video in which photographer Ed Verosky offers a simple suggestion: Buy a cheap mannequin head to practice your skills.
Here's a helpful 4-minute video in which photographer Phillip McCordall shares a few tips and tricks for dealing with reflections in still life photography.
Suppose you come home from a trip in which you shot many rolls of film. You want to develop your film chronologically, but found that you forgot to label them with their order. What do you do? I have a solution... a chemical solution (photography joke): smell your film.
I like to keep the amount of kit I have to carry with me to a minimum. Every single pound counts when you're scrambling up the side of a snowy mountain, and if you've ever had to pay excess baggage charges at the airport you will probably appreciate my 'less is more' mentality!
Here's a simple tip that could come in handy: put a metal washer on your keychain for the purpose of tightening your tripod quick release plate.
If you're a casual photographer, you probably don't have so many tripods that you have a hard time storing and organizing them. But if that is a problem that you or your studio struggle with, here's a clever solution: you can use a snowboard rack as a tripod storage solution.
The New York-based Lixi Studios shares this finding in the 3-minute video above.
Here's a little tip for those of you who shoot with Fuji Instax film while out and about: once you're done exposing a pack of film, you can use the empty plastic pack as a container to hold your Instax photos.
If you ever find yourself needing or wanting to use a newer Nikon G lens on an older Nikon film SLR camera, a little piece of string can help you do so. Since Nikon G lenses lack an aperture ring for manually adjusting aperture, the string is used to do the adjustment mechanically.
Back in May, we featured a clever hack by photographer Paul Adshead that involved using an IKEA storage box as a $6 laptop sun shade for outdoor shoots. Now he's back again with another nifty photo trick: using a smartphone and a car phone mount for photographic lighting.
YouTube woodworking guru Matthias Wandel just posted this video about how he recently discovered that he can use his tripod as a simple DIY camera stabilizer for some casual filming. After doing some experiments with a DIY glidecam system, Wandel found that he actually got the smoothest shots by simply pointing the legs of his big and heavy Manfrotto tripod out and running around with his camera attached to it.
Photographer Michael Zelbel of Good Light Magazine published this short video tutorial on how you can use a simple white shopping bag as a cheap way to add soft off-camera lighting to your portraits.
Want to remove the glow in your model's ears when photographing them in front of a bright background? Instead of dealing with the problem in Photoshop, you can fix it during the shoot itself with just a bit of gaffer tape.
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!
Here’s a quick and easy photo hack: cut a slice out of a white film canister to soften the …