Ever since I became interested in photography, I would occasionally read a story about someone who’d used it to help them through an emotional low-point or mental ill health. Little did I realize that I would become one of them, too. Photography has had a positive impact on my life and helped me get through the past year. I was feeling down most of the time after a traumatic event and a particularly rough period of my life....

About three weeks ago, I asked DIYP readers to build a softbox. It was meant for fun and education. To add some zap the good guys at B&H chipped in with a Westcott Apollo Speedlight set and a strobe (Nikon SB700/Canon 430EX II) for the best design. I literally fell of my chair seeing all the great submissions. The amount of creativity with the build was huge with sizes and materials covering just about any possible element on the face of the planet (including the rare element IKEAtnium)....

Making cameras move in ways that are different can be a challenge, especially as cameras and all their associated bits seem to keep getting bigger and heavier. In a recent short film release, Skywatch, filmmaker Jason Levy needed to produce a camera rig which orbited around an object in a scene, early on in the film. There was no commercial solution available, so he made his own. It’s called the Spin Rig and we’ve seen similar such rigs before, although mostly on a much smaller scale or designed for lighter weight cameras like GoPros....

The visual identity of a photographer is no different than that of any other company. Although you may have spent years creating a photographic style that is uniquely your own, your images are only part of the elements that compose your photographer branding. Have you ever purchased a bottle of wine because you liked the label? Was the logo scripted and elegant in a way that you associate it with a fine-tasting pinot noir?...

There are some rather mad people on the Internet. And they don’t get much madder than the folks at Syrp Lab. But building a DaVinci Resolve style system of colour grading in Microsoft Excel isn’t quite as crazy as it might first appear. You see, under the hood, DaVinci Resolve is essentially just running some maths when it changes the colour of your images. Maths is all Excel does, too....

Thanks to lens mount adapters, you can play with vintage lenses on modern cameras and get some of their bokeh goodness in digital photos. Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami made a simple modification to one of these vintage lenses. By flipping a single optical element, he has created “magic bokeh” which adds a dreamy, unique feeling to images. In this video, he shares a process and a couple of sample photos he took after modifying the lens....

Sometimes, you aren’t able to get access to the types of real locations you need in order to photograph somebody. Sometimes the location might have a fee to rent it, there might not be enough time to arrange it, or it may simply be out of bounds. But there are other ways around the problem. Like reconstructing it in your own studio space. When the background is thrown out of focus, it’s easy to fake all kinds of looks....

What do you do when you have to produce a stylized shoot on a shoestring budget? Use colors and paper, of course. I was hired by designer Ofek Bergman to shoot her new clothing collection. Well, hired is not really the term here, as it was more of a pro bono for a starving art student. As usual with this kind of production, almost everyone chipped in and donated their time in exchange for portfolio images, a learning experience, and a great day with great creatives....

Editor’s Note : Digital storyteller and friend of DIYP, Ted Chin has been guest posting on the official Photoshop Instagram account. This particular post is a fantastic double exposure tutorial, which Ted and Adobe have allowed us to share with you here on DIYP. A simple technique with very effective results. Hey guys! It’s Ted (@eye.c) here. Today I’m going to show you how to create a double exposure portrait in just few simple steps....

Creating reflections in Photoshop is one of those things that people have been trying to master ever since those early Photoshop experiments hinted that it was even possible. There have been a lot of plugins available to perform this task over the years, but it’s possible to do it natively in Photoshop without any third-party plugins. In this video, Unmesh at PiXimperfect shows us a technique we can use to create very realistic looking reflections in our landscape photos using Photoshop’s three-dimensional workspace to not only create a reflection but also waves and ripples....

If you’d like to explore macro photography and you’re not willing to invest thousands of dollars in professional macro lenses, photographer Adam Kappa has quite an affordable solution. He shares the setup he uses for macro photography which all of us can use with minimum investment. It involves a kit lens, a cheap external flash, macro tubes and a DIY diffuser. So, with less than $100 of additional gear and some DIY magic, he achieves really great results....

‘365 Days of Photos’, ‘One Photo a Day’, ‘One Shot, One Day’, ‘365 Days Challenge’ – do they sound familiar to you? Have you ever wanted to take at least one photo a day, every day… and I mean – every single day? Well I did. I read few interesting articles about it and I must say that I got so excited back then. Put high demands on your shots....

The hotly anticipated follow up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece, Blade Runner, is finally here. Blade Runner 2049 is largely being hailed as a cinematography success, although it isn’t performing quite as well as expected. One thing that has resonated with people, though, is the colour grade. Especially after yesterday in the UK. In this video from Theo Miesner we learn how we to create this orange apocalyptic look look in post using DaVinci Resolve....

Setting up a green screen to record footage of a subject that will be cut out and composited into another background has become commonplace these days. What is ultimately a pretty straightforward process, however, can be a difficult one to learn. This video presented by Doug Guerra from B&H shows us some tips and techniques to help eliminate a lot of the common issues faced, such as colour spill, key fringing around our subject, and only partially removed backgrounds....

I’ve been sitting around for the last week trying to find something I can share with you all that will really enhance your enjoyment and time efficiency when editing your photos. That’s when I stumbled upon this absolute gem of a program! This guy “TimarIuveo” on YouTube has essentially made an action that tells your mouse to move up or down 20px and then click when you push the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard....

You may think that a single light isn’t enough to shoot magazine-worthy and professional-looking editorial portraits. But in this video, Elaine Torres shows you how to pull it off. She demonstrates a photo shoot with a single light and a two-light setup, so you can pull it off in a small studio or even at home. For a single-light or two-light setup, Elaine prefers modifiers such as octaboxes, beauty dishes or parabolic umbrellas....

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of our learning process. Still, it’s good to learn how to avoid them, so we can grow and make our work better. Nerris Nassiri from Aputure shares five biggest mistakes all beginner cinematographers make. But to be honest, photographers will recognize themselves in some of these, too. Did you make them when you were still new to cinematography/photography as well? 1. Shooting wide open all the time As a photographer, I plead guilty to this one....

There’s a reason that 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. Email marketing is a valuable tool for photographers to promote their work to potential and existing clients. Virtually every person on the internet has an email address, and email marketing is an effective way to send messages directly to customers and gain prospective clients by reaching an already engaged audience. Unlike social media, your message is delivered to your audience by you “personally” through your own channel via email marketing....

This is one of the most underused features of mirrorless cameras today – and many later DSLRs that came before them. We’re talking about the custom saved settings feature. These settings presets, usually accessible via the mode dial on top of your camera, allow you to instantly recall a set of saved settings whenever you need them. They’re massively helpful when regularly using your camera in different situations. In this video, photographer Rick Bebbington walks us through how and why he sets them up on his Sony A7R IV mirrorless cameras....

After Google Pixel’s score of 89 and taking the first place on DxO Mark Mobile, there’s now a new king. HTC’s newly announced U11 takes over the throne and scores 90, thus becoming the highest-rated phone on DxOMark Mobile so far. This phone has a range of well-performing features, but at DxO, they particularly emphasize its low noise and fast autofocus. As they point out, these two features were the key to achieving the highest score and taking over the first place....