fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

Search Results for: posing

Photographer Creates Surreal Photos Of Homeless Dogs, Helps Them Find A New Home

by 6 Comments

Budapest based photographer and artist Sarolta Bán wanted to put her talent and social impact to a good use. Over the years her surreal  style drove a following of over 124,000 Facebook fan and now she is giving something back to the community.

Ban is using her talent to aid sheltered dogs find a new home by taking their photos and recomposing them into surreal works of art.

The project asks for photos of animals in need of shelter. Ban will then create a wonderful composite of him/her/it to raise visibility for adoption and will later award the photo to anyone who adopts the dog. On the project page she shares:[Read More…]

Touching Group Portrait For Sick Friend Done With Shaved Heads

by Leave a Comment

There aren’t many single moments in life that you can lay your finger on and say that your life before that moment is completely different from the life after that moment. Discovering you have cancer is definitely a life changing moment. And is it in that moment that you need your supporting environment – friend and family – the most.

Last month, one of Gerdi McKenna’s friends wrote an email asking Gerdi friends to come and make a group portrait for her. Having diagnosed with breast cancer, all of Gerdi’s friends accepted the invitation.

But, this was not a trivial group shot. To show their empathy, Gerdi’s friends all shaved their heads prior to posing for the portrait, which despite the sad circumstances is one of the most touching portraits I’ve seen.[Read More…]

Stop shooting the same shot over and over again

Today we’re going to talk about letting go of your zoom ring, moving your feet and dealing with a habit a lot of us have, me included, the habit of shooting the same safe shot over and over again.

I realize I’m generalizing here, but most photographers have “safe shots”, shots they know how to pull off 10 out of 10 times, shots they know will please the client and shots that will put money in the bank. Now let me be very clear from the get go, this is a good thing. I know that a specific light set up, a specific vibe at the shoot and a specific way of asking questions and talking to the client will get me a specific kind of portrait, that makes people happy. I’m so dang happy that I have those set ups ready to go, because a bunch of times those shots are exactly what the client want, and other times when my head just isn’t working and I’m not feeling it, I can use those setups to make a shoot work. What I don’t like is that I have at various points, and I assume I’ll get there again, been stuck in only shooting these safe shots. It is an easy place to get stuck because you know the shots work, and you know you aren’t risking messing the shoot up. But if you get stuck there, you stop developing your vision, and that is a really bad thing. So, without more intro-ado, let’s get to the point of the thing, stuff that I know have helped me a truckload with getting out of the safe-shot-rut.[Read More…]

Photographing Ontario’s Largest Indoor Rock Climbing Gym

by 3 Comments

When I recently got a call to go photograph Ontario’s largest indoor rock climbing gym, my first though was:

Yes, of course I’ll do it!

My second though was:  How the heck am I going to do it!

Do you know that feeling when you are watching a sit-com on TV and you start thinking…I swear the Simpson’s already did this…?  That is basically what I feel like when I am facing a tough lighting challenge…I swear David Hobby already did this…!

And yep – he did – back in 2010 in the Strobist article “On Assignment: Earth Treks, Pt. 1″.

I totally admit that I basically stole appropriated David Hobby’s approach to lighting a giant indoor rock climbing gym, but I think the approach to lighting a huge, dark indoor space using a combination of studio strobes, small strobes (speedlites) and ambient light is still worth further discussion.

[Read More…]

Shutter Dragging Explained

by 7 Comments

A participant in one of my workshops asked me about taking a photo of their iPhone while using an off-camera flash. The main problem he had was that he couldn’t see the iPhone’s screen when using a flash.

So for this week’s article  I am going to talk about dragging the shutter – or in layman’s term – how-to or why-to lower your shutter speed while using a flash. I will show different scenarios so you can better understand much how (and why/when) to do this.[Read More…]

Self Challenge: Shooting The 4 Elements In A Single Exposure

by 8 Comments

While I was doing my 365 Day Project, I did a photo of the four elements: Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. I shot this photo around three years ago, I was quite new to photography and was still learning a lot of new things (which I still do now)… Shooting the 4 elements seemed like quite a challenge, because it involves different exposures and the different timing for each element. When I first shot this, three years ago, I had no choice but to shoot each element separately and compose them in photoshop.[Read More…]

Awesome Cold Look With CTO Gel And Tweaking White Balance

by 16 Comments

A few weeks back I wrote an article about stopping down the ambient light by 2-3 stops and using flash to expose for your subject, kind of a Magic Bullet look. Today I wanted to make an addition to that article – how you can add a CTO gel to your flash and change your white balance to get a different feel and add “Whapak” to your shot.

[Read More…]

Fix it in Photoshop?

by 11 Comments

During my talk for Lancaster Photographic Society recently, I was asked a question that I’m also going to answer here. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something along the lines of…

“Is getting the right exposure in camera really all that important? Can’t we just nudge it in Photoshop?”

Before I start, I want to clarify a definition here, and a difference between “right” and “technically correct”. It is perfectly possible to make an exposure that is “right”, but not “technically correct” when you shoot with your post processing in mind in order to maximise the capabilities of your camera’s sensor.[Read More…]

What Happens When the Photographer Become the Client?

by 22 Comments

When I was still practicing law a lifetime or two ago, some of my colleagues and I used to say that the practice of law would be so much more enjoyable without the damn clients. Obviously this was just a form of letting off steam when dealing with a problem client– usually accompanied by copious amounts of bourbon. When I made the jump to photography ten years ago, It didn’t take long for me to learn that the same maxim held “true,” regardless of whether I was carrying a brief case or a camera bag. It appears that problem clients are everywhere.

Even in the mirror, if you’re not careful.

Let me explain.

[Read More…]

Recent Posts