If you like miniature photography, I’m sure that you’ve heard of Tatsuya Tanaka. This Japanese artist has created and photographed thousands of miniature dioramas so far. Yes, thousands, because there’s one for each day of the past nine and a half years. Tanaka’s creativity kept blooming even in lockdown. In fact, he turned the situation into his advantage and used coronavirus-related items to create his dioramas. And so, masks, gloves, thermometers, and of course – toilet paper – have become miniature worlds that I even want to visit!...

Austrian photographer Markus Hofstätter has shared a few of his impressive projects with DIYP so far. His latest project is as always ambitious, unusual, time-consuming, and totally worth the effort. While walking around a flea market, Markus found a huge 500mm Petzval lens, produced around 1860. It was in a pretty bad condition, but Markus had an idea. He bought this rare gem, restored it, and took some fantastic portraits with it....

If the name Flóra Borsi rings a bell, that’s because chances are slim that you haven’t seen her work. And if you have, you’ve probably wanted to see more of it. After sharing with you some of Flóra’s amazing self-portraits a few years ago, we bring you more of this talented lady’s work. Her series Animeyed II blurs the line between a human and an animal, staring straight at you with both human and animal eyes....

I see the posts. You see them, too. A session gone wrong because a photographer didn’t know want to do. And they didn’t know what to do because they hadn’t yet acquired the skills necessary to do that thing they were hired to do. They said “yes,” before they knew what they were doing. I remember one such story. A gal had agreed to photograph a family at a beachfront hotel; a family that hadn’t been together in years....

Karen Alsop and her team behind heART Project have put smiles on sick children’s faces so many times. Two years in a row, they organized The Christmas Wish Project, which brought joy and festive mood to sick children across Australia. But this year, the project has grown much bigger and it has gone global! The project assembled a team of over 110 photographers and creatives who volunteered to photograph children in 10 cities around the world....

Photographing fast paced action packed sports can be tricky enough as it is. For some, it presents even more challenges. Such is the case with Loren Worthington. After a spinal cord injury, Worthington lost the use of three of his limbs. Along with it, his ability to play sports. Nearly twenty years later, the camera allowed Worthington to reconnect with his passion for athletics. Bound to a wheelchair, he has a unique perspective on sports photography....

After Skylum, Adobe has decided to join the party and give us an AI-powered sky replacement feature. Soon, you’ll be able to automatically replace the sky in Photoshop in only a couple of clicks. Adobe has shared a sneak peek at a new feature, and I have to admit that it looks quite impressive! The new Sky Replacement feature will be nested under the Edit menu. Go to Edit – Sky Replacement, choose the sky from the gallery of presets click on it, and the sky will be instantly updated....

Every year, a pine tree close to our house produces the most perfect cones, and I often pick up a handful of them on my way home. The cones are undeniably beautiful, but not of much practical use. Or so I thought, until one day it hit me that a cone would make a rather nifty SD card holder. Besides the SD cards designated for regular use with my camera that are stored in a proper holder, I also have a bunch of cards that I use only occasionally....

These days, along with a new US leadership transition, comes the online transition. The White House Flickr account has been scrubbed, changes have been made to the White House website, and social media has had a little bit of a reboot. Including the official @POTUS Twitter account. The Hill, and several other outlets, are reporting a bit of a cock up with Twitter’s reset, though. The header image originally used on the account was of a crowd waving little American flags in front of the Capitol during the inauguration....

The first place was awarded to Marcus Yam from the USA for his striking portrait taken in Gaza City. But there are many more amazing photos in the jury’s selection, so let’s take a look. Marcus took his winning image on the evening of 25 May 2021 in Gaza City, four days after a cease-fire was declared in the 11-day battle between Palestinian militant factions and Israeli forces. “Gaza is a small place, and it was full of news photographers....

These days, making a landscape appear as if it were inside a jar would typically be relegated to Photoshop. In the past, it was done by the use of double exposures. In a double exposure with analogue, you’re shooting twice without advancing the film. So, you’re basically adding one photograph on top of another (like Photoshop’s “Add” blending mode). But there’s really no substitute for doing it in-camera. You can do this with modern DSLRs, but it’s a little more tricky than it was with film....

Lighting manufacturer Quasar Science has announced the availability of their newest Rainbow Series RGBX LED lights, the Rainbow 2 and the Double Rainbow. These tubular LED lights create what Quasar Science describes as “intense, realistic lighting with multiple individually controllable pixels” to deliver both high quality white light as well as well saturated colour that can fit into small spaces. The Rainbow 2 comes in 2′, 4′ or 8′ lengths featuring 10, 24 or 48 pixels respectively....

If you are a retoucher and have not already upgraded to Photoshop 2019, just don’t! at least until the following bug is fixed. It seems like the latest Photoshop update to Photoshop CC 2019 broke some layer blending modes or at least the Color blending mode. Color layer blending mode should replace the hue and saturation of the layers below it to the one on top. In the photo above, provided by Stefan Kohler, that means that the color inside the circle should be cyan....

As you can see from the video above, Ring’s Always Home Cam (I’m callin’ it RAHC because that’s becoming a pain to keep typing out already) essentially sits there waiting to be triggered by an alarm elsewhere in the house. Once one is triggered, it springs into life, alerting the owner and streaming its view to their smartphone. It’s described as a “compact, lightweight, autonomously flying indoor camera” and it flies along predetermined paths set by the user to help check out your home for you when nobody’s there....

Sachtler has announced its new “aktiv” series of fluid video heads. Designed to replace their popular FSB model heads, the aktiv line is focused on speed and easy operation. There are four models in the new lineup, which are the aktiv6, aktiv8, aktiv8T and the aktiv10. They all share the same design principles but vary in load capacity, weight and size. The differences between the models are basically down to size and load capacity and in the case of the aktiv8T the type of camera fitting used....

Google’s Pixel phone has received a lot of attention since it was announced just a few short weeks ago. This attention is most notably caused by its camera. After quite a boastful announcement, DxOMark gave it the highest score it’s ever given to a mobile device. There’s a little sample footage out there now, but not a lot of it shows off the true range of capabilities. YouTubers Nat and Lo were given a pair of Google Pixel phones for a day to go and play with....

Samsung has officially released Galaxy S9, the first smartphone that lets you change the aperture on its camera. While it has several improvements over the previous generation of Samsung phones, it also comes with a couple of new and interesting features regarding the camera capabilities, such as the super-fast 960fps slow-motion. Along with the Galaxy S9, there’s also the larger Galaxy S9+, which has a dual camera. Similar to the previous model Galaxy S8, the S9 also comes with Dual Pixel system....

Samsung are looking to massively upgrade the storage capacity of next generation mobile devices. The company have now announced a new 512GB storage chip. They say that this it the first 512GB embedded flash storage solution for use in mobile devices. It offers “unparalleled storage capacity and outstanding performance for upcoming flagship smartphones and tablets”. It’s that tablets bit that’s really got me interested. I’m actually quite happy with a phone that has only 64GB or 128GB, as long as I have a way to offload what’s stored on it....

I’ve run many, many workshops and one-on-one sessions for photographers who want to move into the world of video. Wherever I am and however experienced the photographers are, one of the biggest questions they all have is about editing. For many of the photographers that I deal with, they don’t plan on editing their own videos. Rather, they plan on shooting the videos and then getting someone else to edit it for them....

Film photography is still very appealing to many photographers, but the problem is that it can get pretty expensive to buy and develop film. You can make it cheaper by shooting expired film, and it should work out well in many cases. But will it work if the film expired 20 or more years ago? Well, it just might. In fact, you may end up with some fantastic shots! In this video, Mathieu Stern tested out two rolls of film which both expired two decades ago....