I have no idea where I first heard this, but it’s extremely true: “the main difference between painting and photography is that the painters need to work hard to put things into their images, whereas photographers have to work hard to take things out of their images.” Painters start with a blank canvas, and every single thing that ends up in the final piece of art is a result of careful craftsmanship, years of hard-earned skill, and raw intention. The photographer’s canvas, on the other hand, is all of the world’s visual chaos, and he or she must deploy an equivalent amount of craftsmanship, skill, and intention to weed out all the fluff.
This video shows how focal length and zooming affect subject-background relationship in your photos
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I believe you already know that “zooming with your feet” and changing the focal length can affect the relationship between your subject and the background. In this short video, you can see the effect of both coming close to the subject and changing the focal length, and how it affects the final look of your image.
Three ways to make the best out of your background in the studio
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Portrait photographers pay a lot of attention to their subjects, but sometimes they don’t pay so much attention to the background. In this video, Jeff Rojas will show you three key ways to make the best out of your studio background and make your photos even better.
Do a background check before shooting wildlife photos to get a variety of shots
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When photographing wildlife – much like hiring a new employee or going on a date with someone you met online – it’s essential to do a background check. What is behind the animal that you’re photographing?
The background can completely make or break an image. It’s essentially the canvas that you’re painting the rest of your picture on top of. By paying more attention to what’s going on back there you can vastly improve your images.
I’m going to show you four photos. They all feature the same Tenerife Lizard and were all taken a handful of seconds apart. The only thing I changed between each image was my physical position in relation to the lizard, giving me an entirely different background each time. Let’s have a look!
Super Easy and Cheap DIY Product Photography Setup
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Everyone needs to photograph products once in a while.
Whether it’s for an etsy shop, ecommerce retail, eBay, a Shopify store or just for the occasional Craigslist sale; it’s really handy to be able to do your own high quality product photography.
In this article, I will show you a super easy, low cost, product photography setup that anyone can use to create very high-end looking DIY product photography.
How to get colored background without a backdrop or Photoshop
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In his previous tutorial, Malaysian photographer Andrew Boey showed you why a white wall is the only backdrop you’ll ever need. After turning white to black, in his latest tutorial, he teaches you to get all kinds of vibrant colors from a plain white wall. You don’t need a backdrop or Photoshop, but some speedlights, light modifiers and color gels.
How to make DIY “rusty wall” background out of plywood
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Guys at raw.exchange offer tons of great resources for photographers and retouchers. They are devoted and serious and put a lot of effort in their packages, and for this article, they shared with us how they built a “rusty wall” background – out of wood!
“Why would you make a DIY rusty wall” you may ask. Well, one of the very attractive packages is their Rusty Wall background textures. It features 82 hi-res background textures of a rusty way, taken from different perspectives. And although they are master retouchers, their background is a real deal. So, if you’re less into Photoshop and more into DIY and building, or just curious to see how raw.exchange background comes to life – carry on reading. The kind guys from raw.exchange shared with DIYP how to make the rusty wall background out of wood.
How photographing background plates can help you in your work
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Do you have the habit of photographing plates? This doesn’t refer to food photography, but to the backgrounds you capture to give you more options when you get to the editing process. In this video, Jay P. Morgan shares some great advice why photographing plates is important and how they can be useful for your work. They can definitely save you sometimes and help you get the shot even when everything seems lost.
How zooming with your lens and your feet changes relationship between foreground and background
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Before you raise your torches and pitchforks, this is not another post about how focal length affects your subject, or whether you should “zoom with your feet” or not. I’m sure you’ve already seen how changing focal length and/or distance changes perspective, but this video answers an important question – what can you do with this information?
Jay P. Morgan shows examples how changing your focal length and getting closer or further away from the subject affects the relationship between the foreground and the background. Knowing this helps you achieve different things in a shot, gives it different looks and meanings, or helps you avoid distracting elements.
How I shot the Photoshoper’s wet dream: A PSD room where you can control 34 different lights
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(hit play on this movie to see what this article is about, this is not a computer generated image, it’s all done in camera – see the final product here)
As someone who deals with compositing on a daily basis, I foud myself in a restless state. And I don’t mean that restless state that all us creatives are in, I mean something that was extreme even for me. I am always struggling with backplates, so I started making a wish list of what the perfect backplate would be. What would it look like? Turns out it’s not an easy question, and it definitely does not have an easy answer. Making that backplate required a $50,000 camera and ended up as a 14 Gigabyte file. But I have finally found how I want my backplates to be. Here is the story of how I made it.
