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Blender for photographers – Compositing photography with CG elements

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I started in photography as a stepping stone into digital art. As with most photographers, I started taking pictures of everyone and everything. It was not fun hiking with me; I was the guy stopping every five minutes to take pictures of trees and rocks.

During that time I was mesmerized by 3d artworks and by the incredible landscapes and props other artists were creating. Even though I was eager to start creating 3d artworks, the technical difficulty and the steep learning curve kept me from it. Or at least it was a good excuse. But then… the donut tutorial came out, and then, everything changed. We’ll it sounds a bit dramatic, but it really was a good starting point to start delving deeper into 3d.

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It took photographer 70 hours to create this “Paint splatter factory” image

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Photographer Steve Kazemir has shared some of his amazing work with us before. He often takes water or paint splash photos, and even builds automatic setups for them. Once again, he has created a stunning image using a simple setup, some Home Depot items, and a lot of time and patience. After 500 photos and around 70 hours, Steve created this fun “Paint Splatter Factory.” And this series of videos, he shares the entire process with you.

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The Dark Room photo project mixes life-size models with 1:6 scale DIY props

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I was listening to my favourite band Sentenced and their album “The Cold White Light”. While listening I started thinking “Should I make images from the songs in my favourite album?”. Well, that was the original plan in February 2020. Now ideas have gone on their way and I have over forty sketches in my sketchbook. I have picked some pieces from other bands too like Queen, Metallica, Mötorhead, Stam1na…

When ideas started to circulate I ended up pretty quickly in the idea that all the images would have the same environment. Some kind of room or a cell with a dark and depressing feel. It was clear from the beginning that images would also have some surreal and dreamlike elements. It is a collection of images of what a dark mind might look like from the inside.

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These animal composites look like they come from your trippiest dreams

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I love good composite work. Even though it’s a different art form from photography, it’s strongly connected to it and it lets your imagination go wild. Ted Chin (previously) creates some of the trippiest composites I’ve seen, and he has kindly shared his latest work with us. His images show animals in environments where only imagination can put them, making his work look as if it comes straight from the dream world.

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Artist spends 1,000 hours creating these soothing images

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While composite photography is not my strong side, I wholeheartedly enjoy seeing composite work from other artists. Multidisciplinary artist adnan. is one of the talented people I recently discovered, and I loved his work. He takes everyday photos with his iPhone or a camera. And then, with some Photoshop magic, he turns them into soothing, pastel art that will soothe your eyes and soul.

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This stunning short film is a made of timelapse star trails with light painted landscapes

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The lockdowns around the world have us all thinking a little outside the box right now when it comes to our photography and filmmaking. We’re not able to get out to shoot our usual subjects, so we start to experiment and try new things.

For photographer and filmmaker Arthur Cauty, that meant looking back on some of his old work to see if he could make something new out of it. And that’s exactly what he did. His short film Night Light is a mixture of timelapse sequences of star trails mixed with long exposure night sky and light painted landscape photographs he’s made. And the final result is quite beautiful.

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How to shoot great product photos with just one light… and a diaper

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Product photography can be a lot of fun. For many photographers right now, it’s the only type of photography they can really try. They often don’t need a lot of space, and you don’t really need a lot of gear to shoot them, either. For small things, you can usually get away with just a camera and lens and one light – and a bit of work in Photoshop compositing things together.

That’s what Peter Lindgren does in this video, with the assistance of fellow photographer, Jonas Häll. They use very minimal gear to get a very impressive final result. Their camera Sony’s new ZV-1 compact vlogging camera to shoot the images and only a single light source is used. It offers some great tips for making your beer look ice cold, including some you might not have seen before.

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How to photograph a clear liquid bottle using inexpensive gear and unusual modifiers

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Bottles are always a fun and challenging photography experiment, especially ones that contain crystal clear liquids like vodka. I don’t buy vodka often and when I do, it rarely tends to stay full long enough to have any time in front of the camera, but Dustin at Workphlo has definitely put some thought into photographing this one using some low budget kit and very interesting techniques.

If you’ve watched Dustin’s videos before, you’ll know he’s a fan of compositing when it comes to product photography. And this particular technique pretty much requires it as he cuts paper to act as reflectors on just small sections of the bottle’s label.

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Skylum shows off the new Luminar 4 Sky Replacement feature in action

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Sky replacements are fairly common in photography these days. Not everybody is shooting a camera with a wide enough dynamic range to always capture a well-exposed subject without a blown out sky. Or, perhaps the sky on the day you were shooting is just a bit boring. Typically, we take to Photoshop to do the sky replacement and blend it in with our foreground scene.

Luminar 4, though, is coming with a new AI Sky Replacement feature, first mentioned last month. Now, Skylum has released a video showing the sky replacement feature in action in the latest beta edition of Luminar 4.

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How to blend two landscape photographs together in Photoshop

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Part of the joy of landscape photography for me is standing around and waiting for the light to change. You put your camera on its tripod, compose a shot and wait, taking photos every few minutes, whenever the sky or light or whatever looks interesting.

I caught the tail end of a storm in Santorini, Greece, with heavy clouds blowing over right at sunset. An hour or so later and it was blue hour, with streetlights and buildings lit up. Both photos are below, after being edited in Lightroom using the Lightroom Develop System.

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