DIYPhotography.net

Hey all, Benjamin "Von Wong" Montreal Based photographer here.

As a photographer who does creative collaborations and who freely invites fans he has never met before to attend shoots, I often end up with large sets of people to manage. Many photographers I know prefer to keep groups small and tight knit because they find that things can quickly get out of control but I have found that with a little careful management you can keep things fun for everyone AND deliver awesome imagery at the end of it.

I think one of the things that became a signature for me is that attending one of my shoots if fun. In this post, I'll share my thoughts on what makes the shoot fun, while keeping it productive. Bare in mind that this article is written specifically for creative collaborations, not for professional work. While it's a good idea to keep always keep shoots fun getting the image becomes the first priority when it is a paid job. Click to continue ›

In 2006 the Beatles released a new album - Love. It was pretty weird considering John was long dead, but after some googlling I realized that it was a new reworked version of some of the songs made by the band's original producer, Sir George Martin. It was based on the bands already exiting recordings, demo tracks and bits that never made it to any of their prior albums.

One of the songs (track #22) is an acoustic version of While my guitar gently weeps, written by George Harrison, where Eric Clapton joins the band (AFAIK the only time where anyone ever joined a recording by the Beatles). For me this song is even better than the original track (please no flame wars on this :). If you know the story of Harrison, Clapton and Patti Boyd you know how touching it is to hear those two guitar legends play together.

Back to now, I have 18 versions of this song. It is just one of these songs that everybody loves playing. I love it too. This is why I wanted to create an image for this song based on the immortal line "I look at the world and I notice it's turning While my guitar gently weeps".

The general idea was to shoot a Star Trail photograph with a guitar player in the foreground of the frame. This idea has been bouncing in my head till a sketch was entered into my sketch book. Well, it stayed in the book for a while till my exams were over, and then it was time to play. Click to continue ›

While this is not 100% related to DIY, it is something that I had given quite a lot of thought to over the years.

I guess this is one of those "big" questions. How do we actually know that our internal feelings and perceptions match the feelings and perceptions of those we share ideas with. Particularly, how do we know that color is perceived similarly by different people. The short answer is that we don't. Vsauce makes a great presentation of this idea. Click to continue ›

Dreams of flying by German photographer Jan von Holleben is a unique series that visualizes the dreams of children.

Interestingly enough the inspiration for the project was a counter point to how children are treated in modern photography. Click to continue ›

Laya Gerlock is no stranger to the blog and has been one of the most prolific guest writers we ever had, always coming up with crazy ideas - 4 feet Ring light, CF carbon lens hood, putting stars in the model's eyes. Today he shares something that is between the realm of DIY and romance - how to make the perfect proposal in a photography studio. You'll have to read to the end to find out the answer to THE question...

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Here is a useful idea, using Photoshop's adjustment layers for quickening and improving retouching.

While usually adjustment layers are used for... how should I put it... adjusting, Calvin Hollywood shows a different way of using them. Rather than use adjustments layers to tweak the photo, he uses them as temporary 'check layers'. Those layers are actually your ordinary adjustment layers, but taken to extreme to reveal otherwise hard to find flaws in retouching. Click to continue ›

When I saw Vesa Lehtimäki's photos depicting the life on the freezing planet of Hoth I was immediately drawn to it. Partly because I am a Star Wars fan boy and partly because they looked so darn good that I had to learn more about how they were taken.

I mean, just swap those little plastic characters with people and you could actually believe that this series is photojournalism at its best.

I contacted Vesa and asked him a bit about the process, the setups and the inspiration for the series. The answers I got were a solid proof that inspiration and motivation trump gear and budget. Click to continue ›

Swedish photographer Christian Åslund was fascinated with the view seen from the elevated sky scrapers in Hong Kong. The idea of arcade-like views was later sold to shoe maker Jim Ricky and a campaign was born. It was fascinating to learn how the idea was conceived and executed from start to finish. The actual shoot took only four days (2 scouting, 2 shooting), a team of three and was done with a single camera and lens: Nikon 3Ds with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens on the tele side. More photos and some insights after the jump. Click to continue ›

Here is what happens when great talents are combined with great resources. Physician and astrophotographer Robert Gendler was granted access to the Hubble Space Telescope archives (actually we all are)

Instead of stitching an image made solely from the Hubble data, Robert filled in the blanks with photographs he and a fellow astrophotographer taken in New Mexico. The result is a glorious photostitch of the M106 galaxy. Click to continue ›

I love Von Wong's weekly videos, in this installment Ben breaks down both a photo shoot and the post production he made for the band Trio Dinicu. While the video is short it is packed wit goodies, starting from how Ben and the band infiltrate the Disney Concert Hall. Ben, the three band members, assistants, Elinchrom Ranger heads and all, through a neat t-shirt lighting trick ending with some placements tips.

The tutorial ends with some very impressive photoshop tutorial dealing with a way to clean noise while retaining texture. This is the technique that made the photo look semi-painted.

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