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5 useful gear and camera tricks to get difficult shots the easy way

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There are certain techniques that ubiquitous to commercials we often see on TV. But achieving some of them can be quite tricky and/or expensive to achieve. They often utilise difficult-to-master techniques or require expensive equipment like motorised camera sliders.

Well, in this video, commercial filmmaker Joris Hermans blasts through five camera and gear tricks that he uses on actual shoots. Tricks that let us get some of those shots without requiring any extra gear. Well, maybe just a little cardboard and some gaffer tape.

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Quick tip: Use tent pegs to stop your light stands falling over on location

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One of the most common questions I see on social media, especially just after somebody’s posted an image shot on location with flash, is “How do you stop your light stands from falling over?” – which isn’t an unreasonable question to expect. When it’s just you and your subject, how do people stop their light stands from falling over?

Well, you could carry a bunch of heavy sandbags around with you, or make sure to hire an assistant for all of your location shoots, but photographer Wayne Speer has another idea – especially when shooting in locations with soft ground. He uses tent pegs and rope.

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Here are 40 hints and tips to help you get the most out of Lightroom

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I have used Lightroom for a number of years now for everything from my wedding photography to commercial work to portraits to landscapes. I use it alongside Photoshop, but for the average photographer, Lightroom will be able to handle the bulk of the work.

In this article, we are going to go through 40 ways to speed up your editing and make the most of this powerful tool.

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Check out these 10 workflow hacks to make your video life a little easier

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We all run into issues during the course of our shoots, whether they be for photos or video. We pick up little tricks here and there to help us with our future workflow going forward. Caleb Pike is no exception, and in this video, he tells us his top ten “hacks” to help make his life a little easier when shooting video.

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Five composition mistakes you should avoid with your photography and how to fix them

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Composition is one of those things that often gets talked about in photography. After all, it’s one of the fundamental aspects of it. If your composition is bad, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the exposure good or if you’ve even got your subject in focus. We all know about the “rule of thirds” and the “golden ratio”, but there’s so much more to composition than that.

In this video, photographer Joris Hermans talks about the five compositional mistakes he sees being made all the time. Mistakes you should avoid, and how to avoid them.

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Here are Five product photography tips and tricks to get those creative juices flowing

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Product photography is a lot of fun to experiment with, even if you’re not a product photographer. It can teach us things about composition, light and how different surfaces react to that light which we might not otherwise have discovered. But once you’ve gone past the basics, how do you push yourself to go that bit further?

In this video, the folks at COOPH offer up five great tips for creative product photography that you might not have thought of. Some will challenge your technical abilities while others are just to get those inspirational juices flowing.

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This is how food and drink commercials can fool you with their trickery

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It’s not much of a secret that a lot of commercials including food and drinks aren’t really showing you what you think they’re showing you. But this video shows off quite a few “food” photography tricks that I hadn’t seen before. Screwing a pizza down to a wooden board? Who does that?

Anyway, while you do have to be careful using some of these tricks if you’re actually selling the product you’re claiming to show – you don’t want to get into legal trouble with advertising standards authorities – this video does present some very neat tricks indeed.
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This genius trick gives you an infinite white background for shooting small products

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This is one of the coolest “hacks” I’ve seen in a while. When tasked to shoot a bunch of small products on a white seamless, you have two options. You can either build a white seamless set, light it and get everything just perfect. But that takes a lot of time and effort.

The other option is what filmmaker Justin Gustavison did. He strapped a white piece of card to his camera, placed the camera on a turntable and then surrounded it with the subjects he had to shoot. Justin posted the results to Instagram and it looks like it works brilliantly.[Read More…]

How to create a perfect (fake) burger for a photo shoot

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You probably already know why burgers look delicious in ads, yet they usually look pretty sad when you unwrap them. It’s because food photographers often use some dirty tricks to make food look appetizing. In this video from Well Done, food stylist Rishon Hanners transforms a sad, drive-through cheeseburger into a delicious-looking Whopper. She will show you how to create a perfect burger for your photo shoot – well, at least a picture-perfect one.

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These are four lesser-known “secret weapons” of wedding photographers

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When we do a photo shoot, there are a lot of things to think about if we want to take great photos and make our clients happy. We focus on choosing the right gear for the task, organizing our time and so on But there are some things we can do that seem so small, yet they can be of great help. In this video, Wes Perry will share with you four of these lesser-known, but powerful “secret weapons” that will make you more efficient as a wedding photographer. And they have nothing to do with gear.

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