DIYPhotography.net

For me one of the questions when seeing a photograph in an interesting interior is often how did they find the house, how did they get permission to shoot there and how did they squeeze all the lighting gear inside.

Photographer Mark Wallace shows how it's done. They don't go looking for a house, they build a small set out of a few pieces of wood. Mark gives us the full walk through of a set he build for a recent book cover shoot. Everything that is not in the frame is one big don't care, which makes the set building way easier than it sounds.

This clip is the first of two parts, so check out Mark's channel for the follow up next week.

Set Building via iso1200

Click to continue ›

A while back we featured a nifty way to slide your camera while taking time lapse movies. At the core of that system there was a BBQ rotisserie motor. It is a very common item, but hell to carry on location.

If you own a slider rail or a dolly (or if you hacked one yourself, or if you own a skateboard), you can take the concept of sliding with you on location.

Norwegian photographer Joakim Fjeldli takes the concept of motorizing a slider, an Igus DryLin in his case, and adds portability. Click to continue ›

Sometimes you want to add a 1/4" threading to objects that don't have threads. It makes sense. I mean, all the mounting gear is already built to support 1/4" thread: Tripods, light stands, swivels...

This allows you, for example to position a flashlight on a swivel and have full control over it's angle and direction. Or mount a point and shoot on a bicycle handle.

Photographer David Sr. Lapeer showed a smart way of doing this on the DIYP flickr threads: Click to continue ›

If you've been following some of the video tutorials we've had here at DIYP, you probably noticed the skateboard dolly that was featured here a few weeks back.

Photographer and videographer Martin Taylor shows us how to build a much fancier dolly which is partially based on a skateboard. This dolly however, is smaller (will fit on table), has a head mount that can support an SLR and can be set to move in circles. It's all Martin from here. Click to continue ›

Photographer David Martinez thought that $110 is a bit too much for a magic arm. He came up with his own version for half the price. It's all David from here.

Over the years I have found a few broken clubs laying near tee boxes on golf courses. Graphite shafts are usually very stiff and I always thought they might be repurposed. So I have collected a few of them. Well it just happened that I was in thinking about buying a Magic Arm recently. A friend had one and it was pretty sweet but the price was kinda crazy. Click to continue ›

A long while back I got familiar with Stick In a Can method for light positioning through the (sadly retired) Pro Photo Life Blog by Jim Talkington. In this post, I'll show how to make one of those and what are some great uses for them.

A stick in a can is the poorman's solution for positioning lights in three dimensional space. Basically it combines a stick, which provides some height and a cement filled can which provides anchoring weight. It works great for positioning worklights, reflectors and just about anything you can clamp.

The Caterpillar above was shot using one of those stick in a can and some magic. (more on the magic in a future post). Click to continue ›

The next hack is pretty trivial so if you have a seamless backdrop mount already feel free to skip forward, if not here is a way to build such a mount for as little as $5. (Actually, the mount by itself is about $2, the other three are for some extras).

Actually, This is how I mount (and store) my seamless white backdrop at my basement studio, and thought it may have some sharing value if you are in a similar position and space confined.

I started off with two angle strong ties, the ones you use to bind wooden beams together. I am using the ones that are about 7cm on each side of the angle. Click to continue ›

UPDATE: Looks like Kurbster droped out of flickr taking the very excellent set of strobist studio with him. I am going to leave the post here as the text still has value, although the images were soooooo much better to understand the concept from.

Just spent some good amount of time over at Kurbster photo stream. Seems like he completely nailed the whole, turn-a-room-into-a-strobist-studio thing.

Kurbster challenged Home Depot classic departments and generously turned some cheap and ordinary items into studio elements.

I'm gonna go over some of the challenges that Kurbster so elegantly solved.

The following idea kinda reminds me of what do you get when you cross kinda jokes. You know, like: What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. Or what do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? A woolly jumper.

Ok, so what do you get when you cross a GPS flash mount with a Mount it anywhere camera tripod? (Answer after the jump). Click to continue ›

The following post is a guest post from James Evins- an automotive photographer from Houston. 

Hi! My name is James Evins, and I am going to talk to you guys (and girls) about a nifty way to build your own automotive rig! Who doesn't love rig shots? The sense of motion achieved and the interesting angles that would be nearly impossible in a car to car or panning shot make automotive rigs an invaluable tool to automotive photographers. Click to continue ›