fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

Lighting Technique: How to photograph people with top-down sci-fi lighting

by Leave a Comment

I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that it’ll be a short and sweet one this week ;) Nothing mind-bending or buried in lighting theory, just a simple 2 light setup with some colour! – (famous last words).  The idea behind this look for me was to create a sci-fi style of light coming directly from above. Couple that with some contrasting colour from below and a little separation behind and I’m done.

In my mind I wanted it to be smokey or hazey like those spooky 80s sci-fi movies. So either a misty night or even smoke from spaceship exhaust – think, ‘Close encounters of the third kind’. This isn’t strictly super-relevant, but early ideas like this can help you immensely when it comes to lighting a subject if you know what you’re trying to achieve first.

[Read More…]

How to colour grade nighttime footage quickly in Adobe Premiere Pro

by Leave a Comment

Colour grading nighttime footage can be difficult. You’ve often got a lot of contrast to deal with, particularly when light sources appear in your shot and the camera often doesn’t see the muted nighttime colours (or the bright lights!) the same way we do with our eyes. While there are a lot of great in-depth tutorials out there for serious colour grading, sometimes you just need a “quick fix”.

In this video, Stephen from Stephen and Janaka walks us through a quick colour grading process for nighttime footage in Adobe Premiere Pro that literally only takes a couple of minutes to apply.

[Read More…]

How to use Lightroom CC’s Color Grading feature to get the most out of your raw files

by 3 Comments

Lightroom started to overhaul its Lightroom CC UI in around October 2020, switching the old split toning feature into a new Color Grading feature with more video editing style colour wheels rather than basic sliders and a standard colour picker. But it’s a feature that still confuses some Lightroom users who have only ever dealt with the previous split toning feature and have never worked with video before.

The Colour Grading feature does the same thing that the Split Toning tool did, except it lets you do a lot more, too, and it lets you do it a bit more intuitively. In this video, Kevin Raposo walks us through the settings and details of the Color Grading feature to show us how the feature works and how we can use it to enhance and improve our images.

[Read More…]

How I shot these vertical panoramic images in the world’s most stunning churches and cathedrals

Vertical Churches of the World is a project that began in 2012 in New York. It’s been ongoing since then and the project has been featured by numerous news agencies, blogs and articles from around the globe (including here on DIYP). I felt it was now time to put some of the images into a book, which you can find here, and I thought I’d put this article together to explain a little about how I create them.

When entering a church, mostly in the Gothic style because of the lengthy nave, try and find the center of the aisle. If you are lucky enough to be able to use a tripod to shoot, set up a bit closer to the front of the church’s altar and try and capture the dome above the altar. If you are shooting free-hand, find the same spot closer to the altar. Your goal is to capture in a panorama the whole church vertically from the altar to the narthex (the back of the church) while shooting the ceiling along the way.

[Read More…]

This simple product photography walkthrough offers everything you need to know to get started in product photography

Product photography can be such a fun genre of photography to explore, even if you don’t want to do it for a living. Perhaps you just want great pictures of your own products to sell in your Etsy store or maybe you just want to show off your new toys in an effective way to your Instagram followers. Whatever the ultimate use, it’s still product photography and if you want to do it well, then you’ll want to watch this video.

Coming from Lucy Martin, this product photography walkthrough goes through what she considers to be the essentials of what you might need but also explains why you might need them. Everybody’s needs are different and Lucy goes through several different options that are useful for the budget-minded photographer as well as how you can expand it in the future to produce the best product shots possible.

[Read More…]

How to set up your lights and balance colour tones to get that orange and teal look in-camera

by Leave a Comment

The blue and orange look (also often referred to as “Orange and Teal”) has been popular in cinema for a long time, but massively so in the last few years as easy video editing and colour grading features have come into easy reach of anybody with a camera. With free editing software like DaVinci Resolve out there, it’s easy for anybody to do in post now. Shift the shadows one way, the highlights another and you’re good right?

Well, sort of, but not really. If you want to do it well, you also need to light your scene for it. In this video, cinematographers Valentina Vee and Alissa Rooney walk us through the lighting setup to shoot these colours together. They walk us through a full lighting breakdown, explaining how to balance the colour tones together to make them feel seamless throughout.

[Read More…]

All you could ever want to know about aperture (and more)

by Leave a Comment

If you’re feeling a little rusty on camera functions and settings, or simply want to brush up on your basic knowledge then you could do a lot worse than watching this video presented by photographer Andrew Boey. It is quite literally everything you could ever possibly want to know about aperture!

[Read More…]

This simple camera strap trick helps you get steadier handheld photos and video

by Leave a Comment

DIYP’s own resident travel photographer Dave Williams has taken to the road, travelling (for now) the UK for some off-grid living in a van to explore and photograph as much of it as he can. On his entry into Scotland, Dave came to visit me so I could take him to explore the local river and woodland.

While out, Dave showed me an excellent camera strap tip to help you get steadier videos and photos when shooting handheld. We’ve all seen the trick of holding the camera out right in front of us and bracing the strap against the back of our neck, but this technique is very different and still gives you a lot of freedom of movement. Naturally, I forced him to give me his phone so I could film it to show the rest of you!

[Read More…]

Three beginner off-camera flash mistakes you really need to avoid

by 1 Comment

When you’re first starting out photographing people with flash, it can be a bit overwhelming. Even if you’re used to shooting with natural light, the pieces don’t all click into place right away and it’s easy to make mistakes and not be entirely sure how to rectify the problem. So, here’s Francisco Hernandez with three of the mistakes he sees new off-camera flash photographers making and how to resolve them.

[Read More…]

How to use scrims and strobes outdoors in bright sunlight for amazing portraits

by 3 Comments

So before my regulars start to suspect that I’ve been kidnapped and forced to write this against my will, yes this is indeed a lighting setup article that involves natural light! But don’t worry, we’ll quickly skip over the easy, beginner daylight setup and move on to the adult version that combines gels and strobes later on. So, if you’re suspiciously U.V. averse to the point where you could star in an Anne Rice novel, don’t worry, stick around to the end and I’ll have something a little more visually engaging for you there.

[Read More…]

Recent Posts