Archive for Do It Yourself

DIY Toy camera presets for Lightroom

Given the popularity of the Holga, Lomo, and the other toy cameras out there, I suppose it was only a question of time before some enterprising soul would release Hipstamatic, the app which lets you take cool, toy-camera like photos on your iPhone. There's something about that app which jars quite viciously with me, however: Unlike the 'real' toy cameras, this app doesn't actually alter the iPhone camera at all. And despite getting pretty awesome results (if you like that style of photography, of course), it's all post-processing. That got me thinking... It has to be possible to make my own post-processing presets for Lightroom, to turn my carefully lit, exquisitely sharp and ridiculously high-resolution camera RAW images into blurry, colourful, vastly attractive garbage. So I created a couple of presets for Lightroom 3 - and I'll walk you through the thinking behind one of them and I'll show you how to make your own. How's that for a double whammy of awesome?

Read all of DIY Toy camera presets for Lightroom (5 comments so far)

BeetleCam: Safari via remote control

I've done a fair bit of work with Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas in the past - they're both ludicrously talented photographers and great guys. They also have a knack for DIY - and I have to say that their newest project is one of the ones that has interested me most recently - What do you get when you strap a camera to the top of a remote controlled car? You get their incredible BeetleCam. The modern world of wildlife photography is saturated with thousands of talented photographers producing a huge number of fantastic photographs. As a result it is difficult to produce original shots without really pushing the boundaries and striving for new perspectives. Often, this means putting yourself (or the camera) into places that many would consider impossible.

Read all of BeetleCam: Safari via remote control (4 comments so far)

Paid-for photo competitions

The blog you're currently reading is relatively high profile. I have written about photography competitions in the past (including the inspiredly-named 'How to win photography competitions', which, if you haven't read it, is worth a peek, if I may say so myself, and I may, because, well, this is my website, and I happen to quite like promoting my own articles in ridiculously long run-on sentences in parantheses when I really ought to be writing about completely different things, like the actual topic of this article, and I hope that you might in time forgive me for wasting your time with this aside). Anyway, as a result, I frequently get approached to help people judge their photography competitions. Recently, however, I've received a series of e-mails (about ten in the past few months!) asking if I would pretty please judge their paid-for-contests. The idea is that aspiring photographers pay an entry fee (anything from $10 per photo via a $500 site membership to a $100 per photo fee structure). They then get entered into a photography contest, and the best photo wins.

Read all of Paid-for photo competitions (7 comments so far)

Building a laser trigger for your camera

There are loads of reasons for why you could want to trigger your camera remotely - to avoid camera shake, for example, or to be able to take a photograph of yourself without having to rely on a timer. If you want to build more ambitious projects, however, you may have to consider getting more exotic. I recently built a little device which triggers my camera whenever a laser beam is broken. It is about as simple an electronics project as you can pull off, but it's going to form the base of a couple of other cool projects I'll be working on going forward (stay tuned...), so I figured I'd do a quick post explaining how I did this.

Read all of Building a laser trigger for your camera (21 comments so far)

Colour illusion

Have you ever wished that you could make it look as if your black and white photos were in colour? Well, through the magical powers of chromatic adaptation, you can! Someone posted a really cool optical illusion on Reddit today, and one of the commenters was wondering how it is done. As it turns out, it's really quite easy, so I decided to tap out a quick little tutorial. Here is how:

Read all of Colour illusion (3 comments so far)

How to clean your dSLR sensor

So you have spent thousands on your camera and you're wondering how to clean it? Well it's a good question to ask; a dirty sensor will impact every single one of your images, as it is - quite literally - the focal point of all the camera's technology. That's right, your hard earned dollars reduced to the mercy of the elements. Scary thought eh? Despair thee not, young padawan, help is at hand... Well, good news! You are in the right place place to learn how to simply, cheaply, and quickly clean your DSLR and get back to the important part; taking photos.

Read all of How to clean your dSLR sensor (26 comments so far)

Nude self portraiture

Taking photos of yourself has a certain under-tone of intimacy about it at the very least; but choosing to shed your clothes and do the same thing adds a whole new dimension to the experience. One of my long-time readers, Brigitte, told me her approach to nude photography; She doesn't share her photos with anyone, but decided to take them for her own sake. It made me think; I know that my blog is quite strongly in favour in sharing all your photos with the whole world, but perhaps that misses a little bit of the point; Who are we, in fact taking photos for? Anyway - that's a topic for another post... Today, it's Brigitte's turn...

Read all of Nude self portraiture (3 comments so far)

Digital Schizophrenia

One of the first things I started doing when I started shooting digital images, was thinking of ways of doing digital double exposures - adding one part of an image to another - for a greater impact of my digital shots. It turned out to be relatively simple, but carrying high impact. All it takes is suitable photos, a copy of Photoshop (or the Gimp, which is sort-of nearly as good as Photoshop, but free), and a bucket full of time... Have you made any cool images using this method? Post them somewhere on the internet - your blog, perhaps - and add a link to the comments, so we can admire the photos!

Read all of Digital Schizophrenia (27 comments so far)

DIY pinhole for dSLR

If you've been around photography for a while, you've probably come across the term 'pinhole'. Basically, it's the simplest form of bending-light-into-the-shape-you-need-it-to-be you can possibly do. A well-built pinhole camera can take gorgeous photos, with incredible depth of field, with a wonderful lo-fi look to them. But what if you can't be bothered getting your hands dirty with sheet film, developing or even having to build your own pinhole camera? If you fancy having a go at pinhole photography while using your trusty digital SLR, then this is everything you need to know to build your first pinhole 'lens'.

Read all of DIY pinhole for dSLR (15 comments so far)

Pan and scan, baby

If your digital camera has just packed it in, or you just feel like shaking things up a little bit, why not consider alternative photography? After all, using a camera isn't the only way to get stuff into your computer for processing... Instead of scanning your prints, why not skip the camera altogether and scan the objects you're photographing?

Read all of Pan and scan, baby (10 comments so far)