Walkthroughs

The 14 frame per second continuous shooting speed of the Canon 1D X DSLR probably isn't a feature you'd associate with studio-lit portraiture, but that's exactly what Australian fashion photographer Georges Antoni demonstrates in the short clip above. Using the Broncolor Scoro for stobe lighting, Antoni unleashes the full FPS potential of the camera in order to capture a model dancing in as many still frames as possible.

Not too long ago, I was approached by a newspaper (Journal Le Droit, a large daily newspaper distributing print in the Ottawa-Hull area) asking if I would allow them to print a few of my pictures in an upcoming special feature on a nearby town, Rockland, Ontario. Having photographed much of Rockland in the past three years, I gladly accepted and figured that I could somewhat benefit from some exposure.

Every so often, we share a story about how powerful the Internet (and six degrees of separation) can be in reuniting owners with things they lose, whether it's a camera that spent four years in the ocean or a roll of film lost in a blizzard.

Photographing apex predators on land is one thing, but do it in the ocean and it's an entirely different ball game. This behind-the-scenes video follows underwater photographer Marc Montocchio of 36North on a trip he took to the island of Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. His goal was to capture a photograph of a free swimming blue marlin, which required the fishermen helping him to "fish" with a lure and no hook.

Some people who find themselves on hard times try to have themselves arrested so that they can eat for free in prison. It turns out that people in Southern California can do the same thing for a free studio-style headshot. Cat Cora, a chef on the Food Network show Iron Chef, recently got booked for a DUI after drinking three beers and getting behind the wheel. Her mugshot wasn't taken until 11 days after her arrest, so Cora had time to have her hair and makeup done in order to pose for a …

Starting in 2007, Disney and portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz have collaborated on a series of advertisements called the Disney Dream Portrait Series. Each ad features a portrait of one or more celebrities dressed up as famous Disney movie characters. Along with the advertisements, Disney has also been releasing some behind-the-scenes glimpses showing how the photographs came together. The video above shows actress and model Olivia Wilde posing for Leibovitz as the Evil Queen from Snow …

Remember Danny Cohen? He's the photographer who plastered a 43-foot banner onto a bridge in an effort to become David LaChapelle's photo assistant. He recently came up with another creative photographer promo, this time in the form of a pop-up card.

Ireland-based photographer David Hunt recently came up with the brilliant idea of turning an old broken battery grip into a small computer that can be connected to his Canon 5D Mark II. After buying a Raspberry Pi computer for €35, he modified the battery grip and stuffed the computer inside.

iPhone users who want to flaunt their inner photography geek can buy special skins or cases that transform their phone into a camera look-alike. That option wasn't awesome enough for photographer Jake Potts of Bruton Stroube Studios, who recently decided to use his phone's glass back to create an ambrotype photo using the wet plate collodion process!

As we shared last week, being a sports photographer at the Olympics is a difficult task: battling a round-the-clock schedule and a sea of competing photographers, hauling around a boatload of gear from venue to venue is just the least of your concerns.

Here's a video that offers a peek into the life of a Reuters photographer covering the Olympics. It features photographers and editors on the Reuters team talking about the joys and challenges of shooting the biggest sporting event in the world.

Reuters photographer Luke MacGregor doesn't know much about astronomy, but he had the idea recently of photographing the full moon rising up into the Olympic Rings found on London's Tower Bridge. Armed with a phone app that informed him of moonrise times, he spent two evenings trying and failing to create the photo. Finally, on the third evening, he succeeded: …

Scott Schuman, or The Sartorialist, made it big in the blogging, photography, and fashion worlds by having his fashion street photography blog become an Internet sensation. If you think he's unique in his subject matter, however, boy are you mistaken: he's simply one of the most famous.

Snapping a photograph while driving isn't the smartest, safest, or easiest thing to do. How then should one go about snapping pictures of the interesting things you drive past without breaking the law or putting people at risk? …

This advertising photograph for the new Mini John Cooper Works GP looks like a piece of CGI artwork, but it's a lot more photo than render. It also looks like it was shot at high speeds, but it was actually photographed at a crawl. Shot during a top-secret nighttime photo shoot at the Circuit Paul Ricard in France, the photo required long exposure photography, fake smoke, gigantic lights, and a fancy moving camera rig.

Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

Have you ever wondered how Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson made Frodo Baggins the hobbit so much smaller than Gandalf the wizard? Aside from using CGI and child body doubles, the filmmaking team also employed brilliant forced perspective techniques that tricked viewers with optical illusions.

Last year we shared the work of artist Frank Kunert, a man who builds and photographs extremely detailed tongue-in-cheek miniature worlds that look rather ordinary upon first glance. This short behind-the-scenes video shows how he goes about creating his images, driven both by a perfectionism and a design to not do any post-processing on his analog images. You can check out Kunert's work over on his website.

Sports photographers sitting close to the action occasionally take a beating when athletes leave their field of play. This happened yesterday to Reuters photographer Mike Segar while he was shooting the Olympic basketball game between Spain and Australia. While trying to dive for a loose ball, Spain's Rudy Fernandez slammed into Segar and injured his head. Segar has written up an interesting post on what it was like to suddenly find the cameras pointed at him: …

Here's a beautiful behind-the-scenes video that takes us on an adventure with Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen as he shoots extreme skiing at the foot of Mont Blanc. Bendiksen was testing the Leica S2 medium-format DSLR -- typically thought of as a studio camera -- to see how it stands up in harsh outdoor environments.

Ian Ruhter is a Los Angeles-based photographer that creates massive wet plate photographs using a giant camera van. We featured a popular short film about his work back in April, and now here's another short behind-the-scenes look by Laura Austin. Austin followed Ruhter around for a day to see how he creates the images in his project, titled "Silver & Light". One interesting thing we find out is that some police officers aren't too friendly towards giant mobile cameras.

Next month a project called Red Bull Stratos will attempt to set a new world record for highest free-fall skydive in history. Skydiver Felix Baumgartner will leap from 120,000 ft (36,600m or 22.7 miles), breaking Joseph Kittinger's record of 102,800 ft set in 1960.

What would you pack in your camera bag to shoot the biggest sporting event in the world? PopPhoto has a great interview with Getty photographer Streeter Lecka in which he talks about preparing for (and shooting) the Olympics in London.

Here's a great behind-the-scenes video by The Creators Project featuring Li Wei, the Chinese photographer whose gravity-defying photographs have captured the world's imagination. You can see some of his work in this interview we did with him back in 2010.

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.

Imagine you're a staff photographer for a morning news show and you're told you will be photographing hilarious movie stars Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis for a piece on their upcoming movie The Campaign. Yipee right? Well, now imagine the next sentence you hear from your photo editor is that you'll have only three to four minutes before they have to move on, and the whole shoot has to take place in the hotel room where you're meeting them. Excitement gone; panic sets in.

Car photography isn't nearly as glamorous or talked about as portrait, wedding and landscape photography, which is probably why you probably have never heard of John Jackson. But well-known or not, he happens to be a great example of the free, "doing what you love" (and taking pictures of it) lifestyle that so many people look for photography to give them.

If you've ever flipped through a surf magazine and wondered how some of those incredible barrel riding pictures were taken, then this two part Momentum documentary on surf photographer Zak Noyle will be particularly interesting to you.

Here's a cool video showing what went on behind the scenes when photographer Sasha Leahovcenco was asked to shoot a drum stick ad for Vater Percussion. His subject was drummer Mike Johnston and everything from his choice of venue to the ideas that led to the final two shots make for an awesome ad. In fact rock band photographers may want to store this away for future reference, especially the main ad shot with all the drum sticks, which was created using only natural light.

Back in November of last year, we featured a project by photographer Max de Esteban titled Proposition One that consisted of pseudo-X-Ray photos of deconstructed gadgets. Max carefully deconstructs old gadgets, coats them with white spray paint, and puts them back together while photographing each step. He then spends 2-3 weeks combining all the different layers together to create a see-through view of each gizmo. The behind-the-scenes video above shows one of his images being made.

The latest issue of Sports Illustrated magazine features 18 baseball photographs by sports photographer Brad Mangin across 6 of the opening pages. Not just any photographs, mind you, Instagram photos.

Like everyone else who heard that Kodak was discontinuing Kodachrome in 2009 -- and that Dwayne’s Photo would not develop the slide film after 2010 -- I shot as much Kodachrome film as I could acquire, before that "last developing day" deadline.

Here's a short news segment on artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey that contains a brief section on the duo's amazing giant grass photo prints (skip to 2:43). We get a glimpse of how they use a projector to print images onto sheets of grass with the help of photosynthesis.

This idea came to me after I had shot this photo in the daytime. I had been seeing a lot of celestial-type shots on the Internet, but most were just landscapes with no action. My main focus is action sports, and I love a challenge. I figured I would give it a try.

At some point or another, as a creative professional, you will have the option to exhibit work to the public. Exhibitions are a great tool to market yourself, and your work to potential clients and art buyers.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video in which photographer Mike Butler walks through how he went about planning and photographing the 35-storey Hotel Intercontinental in Downtown Miami using 8 1000W DP lights by light painting portions of the scene and stitching them all together in post.

To celebrate its 100th year anniversary, Paramount Pictures gathered together 116 of Hollywood's most famous stars for an epic group picture. Photographer Art Streiber used 57 strobes to light the scene, and spent just under 6 minutes snapping 63 frames using a Hasselblad H2 and 150mm lens.

Around this time last year, we featured a video on developing film using coffee and vitamin C. And now, the folks behind the Caffenol blog (which was named after the nickname given to the "home brew" developer) have put together a video showing that it's possible to do something similar using red wine instead of coffee and photo paper instead of film.

Ever notice how food at McDonald's never looks like the ones pictured in advertisements? Here's a behind-the-scenes video that offers a look at how McDonald's burgers are photographed.

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.

Want to shoot photographs of rainbow-colored smoke? Just strap some color gels to your flash(es). Photographer Sean Wyatt used three snooted flashes with two colored gels on each flash to create a rainbow blend of color. He then used the setup to photograph smoke from burning incense sticks.

Here's another behind the scenes video showing fashion street photographer Scott Schuman (AKA The Sartorialist) at work, this time in Madrid.

A while back I was too cheap (lazy?) to get around to purchasing some speedlights and in typical DIY fashion for me, I figured I could replicate most results using nothing more than a flashlight. So one evening with my friend Sean and his wife, we decided to try out some long exposure light painting ideas.

Here's another video featuring SF photo shop Photobooth and its tintype portraits. Will and Norm of Tested talk to shop owner Michael Shindler, who goes in depth into how tintype photographs are created and the science behind the process.

Someone finds your work on Flickr. They contact Getty Images to buy it. Getty Images contacts you for permission to sell it to their buyer. Do you do it?

As behind-the-scenes videos go, this one is pretty short, but it still offers an interesting look at how photographer Thomas David put together his popular Dust and Dance photo shoot. Obviously there was some post processing involved to go from initial image to final product, but it's always great to see a talented photographer put a novel idea into action.

Since November 2011 I’d been thinking about an astrophotography project: take a photo of the moon each day from full moon to full moon, then combine it into a seamless movie that looks as if someone had moved the sun around the moon for one minute. I found similar videos, but most were simulations done in software, or photographic ones that weren’t very smooth. Seemed simple enough, mostly because I didn’t see the complications that would come along with this project caused by... physics.

Canadian fashion model Coco Rocha is quite talented at "freestyling" poses, or doing a bunch of useable poses off the top of her head in rapid succession. Last year a video showing Rocha doing 50 poses in 30 seconds went viral on the web. The video above shows her doing 19 "action poses" in just 30 seconds for a fashion cover shoot. Who knew modeling required so much cardio?

Nokia made quite a splash earlier this year by unveiling the PureView 808 -- a smartphone with a large 41-megapixel sensor and a high quality Carl Zeiss lens. The 8-minute behind-the-scenes video above -- filmed entirely with the phone, by the way -- is the story of how this device was born, starting from a napkin sketch in a Tokyo bar. Nokia is currently the world's largest manufacturer of cameras, and devoted 400 employees toward the creation of the PureView 808.

How do you go about demanding payment from a local newspaper if you discover that they've infringed upon your copyright? Blogger Duane Lester of All American Blogger recently found an article of his reprinted nearly verbatim, typos and all, by the Oregon Times Observer in Oregon, Missouri. He then decided to pay a visit to the newspapers offices with a letter in hand to demand payment from the editor face to face. The video above shows how the confrontation unfolded.