Shooting stills and video with drones is ridiculously popular, and shows no signs of slowing down. A lot of drone shots, though, are very much just the same old thing everybody else is doing. Occasionally, though, you come across something special and interesting. The work of 20-year old Gabriel Scanu is such a thing. Looking at Gabriel’s Instagram feed, you can’t help but constantly catch yourself saying “wow!”. Based in Sydney, Australia, Gabriel has art running through his veins....

Planning is fundamental in many types of photography, and it plays a key role when you want to photograph the Milky Way. To the contrary of what many people think, our galaxy is visible throughout the year, but the most interesting area to shoot, the galactic center, is only visible for a few months depending on your location. To help you plan your Milky Way images, every year I create some calendars where you can quickly see the best days to photograph the Milky Way in your location....

I’m a big fan of collaborative projects, both as a participant and as a mere observer. Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami has just finished a pretty epic one and he’s kindly shared the results with DIYP. His little film camera traveled 16,284 km (10,118 miles) between 27 photographers. The journey started in Tehran where it also ended when the last negative was shot. During its 11-month duration, the project has told a story of solidarity, trust, and collaboration between people, and it’s a story that brings back faith in humanity....

Why only have round bokeh, when you can get it all sorts of shapes? You can achieve shaped bokeh by cutting a shape in black paper and placing it on the lens. Or if you’re too lazy or not really precise, you can even buy premade shapes. But what if I told you there’s a way to achieve square bokeh with nothing but a lens? Mathieu Stern presents you with a cheap lens that has a square aperture, so it creates super-interesting square bokeh....

If there has been one message all of us have heard over the past few months, it’s been this: Stay at home! It’s important to repeat it and to do it in different ways, and Tony Fero and Helena Juan have found their own way. They have photoshopped people out of iconic artwork to symbolically “send them home,” which resulted in an inspiring and unique project. Tony and Helena have made a dedicated Instagram page for their project and named it Mándalos a casa (Send them home)....

Sometimes, you come across a DIY film camera that’s just beautiful in its simplicity. The LIMES 120 is one such camera. Made from an old Hasselblad medium format film back, it shoots 120 roll film and sports either an Industar 110mm f/4.5 lens and a tea can, or a pinhole. Created by photographer Daniele Sandri, a comparison of the camera was recently posted to the Branco Ottico website to show off each of the two lenses....

There aren’t too many cameras out there in the Open Source world. At least, not digital ones and certainly not digital ones with interchangeable lenses and sensors. There are a few but not many! And this project from electronics engineer Gaurav Singh is one of them. An open-source USB 3.0 camera with interchangeable lenses, thanks to a built-in C mount, as well as interchangeable sensors. The camera communicates with its host over Type-C USB and is designed primarily for industrial use....

For some, the prospect of setting up a bunch of tripods, stands, equipment and wiring it all together is just too much of a pain to want to deal with when you want to shoot a 5-minute video. It’s what puts a lot of people off wanting to even try starting to make YouTube content. Or at least, it stops them posting as often. But Caleb Pike has the solution....

Russian rock band Leningrad from Saint Petersburg has recently released a new video. It’s for their new song Кольщик (Tattoo Artist), and it features an absurd sequence of mistakes in reverse. When I first saw it, I couldn’t stop watching. The quality of the footage is brilliant, and the sequence of events is so captivating, that you’ll stick with it until the very end. And what’s best – you’ll feel exactly the same when you watch it in reverse....

Making things work in a way they’re not supposed to (or at least, a way they’re not designed to) is always fascinating to me. And this one is particularly ingenious. Payload delivery systems are widely available for drones, although they typically require separate radio transmission systems. That’s a pain on a tiny drone like the DJI Mini 2. You wouldn’t think the Mini 2 could handle carrying much extra weight, but it’s thrust to weight ratio makes it pretty strong....

I’ve never had the chance to have a good look around an active film lab. I’ve been developing my own film at home for years now, and film labs have mostly died out since then. But there are still a few out there, and they seem to be making enough to stay in business, too. Jay P Morgan at The Slanted Lens had the opportunity to get a good behind the scenes look at what goes on inside one of them....

For this production with Or Samson we wanted to do something that we did not see before, but we also wanted to raise the technical bar so the photos will not be easy to reproduce. I was chatting with Adi Kropik (my go-to MUA), and we thought that levitating a female magical goth would both pose a good challenge, but also create some great photos. The art side was “easy”, we are not strange to magic....

Photoshop has a whole bunch of different blend modes but knowing what they all do… Well, even many of the most advanced Photoshop users don’t know what they all do. That not knowing could be holding you back, though. And this video is a perfect example as to why. I’ve been using Photoshop since about Version 3.0 (yes, I’m that old), but I don’t recall ever once using the “Divide” blending mode....

We’ve seen many awe-inspiring timelapses, photos, and videos of rocket launches shot from the Earth. But have you ever wondered what does it look like from space? In this timelapse captured from the International Space Station (ISS), you can see a rocket launch from an entirely new perspective. The video above shows Russian Soyuz-FG carrying a Progress MS-10 (or 71P) module launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which brings supplies to the ISS....

If you own a Canon and use their strap. Have you ever wondered what that little rubber thingy on the end of the strap is? I did, and I don’t even use a Canon. Turns out this little rubber thingy is a cap. And not just a cap, it is used to block the view finder so there are zero light leaks and flares. It’s usefull for when you are doing extra long exposures, light shooting stars at night....

When shooting action sports or car races, there’s always a risk that someone will get hurt. As a photographer or filmmaker, that’s the risk you have to take. But as this video shows, sometimes an accident can be prevented if you only keep a safe distance from the subject. The video was posted to Instagram by cinematogr. It doesn’t provide any context, but it shows a situation that will make most of us almost feel this cameraman’s pain:...

Advertisements The Landscape Photographer of the Year 2020 is Chris Frost with his magical photo of Woolland Woods in Dorset. Winning the 13th annual contest earned him not only the flattering title of Photographer of the Year, but also the £10,000 prize. “Taken in spring of 2018 in a wooded area close to Milborne St. Andrew in Dorset, this was the third visit to the area in a matter of days,” Chris explained....

Even when all repair services discard your camera or lens as “irreparable,” there’s still a way to repair it. Mr. David Hilos can fix all the gear others can’t (or won’t). This 49-year-old Filipino based in Singapore is communications engineer, but he is also a hobbyist camera repairman who can save your gear no matter what happened to it. Photographers know him as “camera whisperer” and he is a miracle worker when it comes to repairing photo gear....

The photo features a tiny seahorse tightly grasping a pink, plastic cotton swab in the waters near Indonesian island Sumbawa. This poor animal, and many others, swim and drift surrounded b the enormous amount of trash and sewage. Justin took the photo last year and recently posted it on his Instagram account. As he describes it, it’s a photo that “he wishes wish didn’t exist but now that it does [he] wants everyone to see it:”...

We’ve seen awe-inspiring photos of different natural phenomena: lunar fog bow, Aurora Borealis, storms… But a 1,000-feet long spider web blanketing a large part of a town? I’ve never seen anything like it, but photographer Alexandros Maragos witnessed it and managed to capture it in a series of unbelievable photos. The 1,000 feet long spider web covered Aitoliko town in Western Greece. “The web has been built by thousands [of] spiders of the Tetragnatha genus,” Alexandros writes on his blog....