Do It Yourself

Solargraphy is a technique in which a fixed pinhole camera is used to expose photographic paper for an absurdly long amount of time (sometimes half a year).

At the beginning of the month we featured a creative lamp shade made using slide film. Here's a new idea: curtains. Jacki Vance-Kuss over at Yarn Zombie took Kodachrome slide film and aluminum chainmail rings and created a unique curtain for her front door.

When I've needed to take quick self portraits with my DSLR, one of the tricks I've discovered is to focus the camera using the reflection in the UV filter. As long as my eye is directly over the center of the lens in the reflection, then I know the center autofocus point is focused on my eye.

If you'd like to take nicer looking photographs of small objects, but don't want to spend money buying a real light tent, you can always check out do-it-yourself options. There's all sorts of DIY tutorials on the web, but this paper and binder clip tutorial by Nathan Moroney over at The Mostly Color Channel caught our eye. All you need are some pieces of paper and 4 binder clips.

Personalized mugs with your mug on it, photo blankets, and good ol' fashioned framed pictures are all fine and dandy, but they can get old fast.

If you want a reflector to play with lighting, but don't want to shell out money for a real one, you might want to try making an aluminum foil reflector. They're cheap, easy to make, and decent at providing fill light for harsh shadows.