TUTORIAL SINGKAT PHOTOGRAPY

Automating Your Slider for About 20 Bucks

A while back we featured a nifty way to slide your camera while taking time lapse movies. At the core of that system there was a BBQ rotisserie motor. It is a very common item, but hell to carry on location.
If you own a slider rail or a dolly (or if you hacked one yourself, or if you own a skateboard), you can take the concept of sliding with you on location.
Norwegian photographer Joakim Fjeldli takes the concept of motorizing a slider, an Igus DryLin in his case, and adds portability

DIY Compositon Frame

This one's is just a fun little trick, that you may find useful when you don't have your camera around but still want to play photographer, or better yet, director.
It's a DIY 35mm Cropper. that you can use to frame or to wear around tour neck to prove yourself as a true photo geek.
You could buy a fancy version over at ETSY, which is all nice and dandy and copper made, but you can make one your own using an old slide frame.
First, get some old positive slide. Those are getting more and more scarce, so you better hurry.

Quick Tip: Make Your Strobe Shine With Toothpaste

Here is a quick one, that I think has not been around the yet.
After using your strobe for a while, the plastic top will get oxidized a bit, maybe get some stains. You know, it just aint looking as it used to any more. The shine that your old relations used to have is gone.
Luckily there is a quick way to fix that. Using sulfuric acid toothpaste. It is an old trick used to clean beat up headlights, and it worked wonders for my strobe.
Here is how you do it in three quick steps.

Light Painting: People On Magical Fire

Here’s a light painting trick you can do on the cheap that yields a neat result. And besides...Who doesn’t want to look like a super hero?
If you aren’t familiar with Light Painting, check out the light painting primer or the tools of the trade posts here on the blog.
If you are familiar with Light Painting, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to pull an image with this technique.
Start by picking up a few of these electric glow sticks. You can find them in the outdoors section in department stores, or on Amazon right here

Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques - A Book Review

I'll be the first to admit, Photoshop and I don't get along as well as I wish we had. And it's not because I'm a purist or anything. If possible, I'd try to get the good stuff SOOC (Strait Out Of Camera), but the truth is, almost all my pictures go through some level of retouching. Near the end of the post you can see how this portrait of Mika looked before applying some retouching. (Click for larger view)
Recently I got a copy of Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques (long name, I know). And While I don't usually review books, let alone Photoshop books, the book helped me make a huge jump in my post-processing, I hope that by sharing my thoughts on it can help others too.

Use A Cheapo Inflatable Wheel To Create Wonderful Camera Tossing Pictures

We all love a good camera toss. Yes we do. What we don't love is broken cameras. On the floor crushed to smithereens.
You can avoid the crush in several ways. My favorite being an hydraulic system pistons with two shock absorbing cushions on each direction. Of course that system is not invented yet, and even if it was, it would probably cost a small fortune. You know hydraulic pistons are sooooo expensive.
Lucky flickr user Robert Couse came up with a cheaper alternative. I, of course, strongly recommends against using it, unless you have an old canon lying around ;)
Enter Gaffers tape, cardboard and an inflatable device. The image is self explanatory.

Built Your Photography Travel Dream Case

I just love this project by Joris van den Heuvel. It is an exemplary project of following a larger skeleton for making just about any travel flight case.
Strobes, cameras and lenses can definitely fit in, but all the lighting modifiers would go in a different bag - a bass case :)
Most of my photo shoots take place in a local music venue. I have great fun shooting various metal bands, using two camera bodies, 4 fast lenses and a remote flash gun, with a replacement value of around €3500 nowadays. Carrying all that stuff into a place with no real safe place to put it is a considerable risk. And I'm not even talking about taking everything to the stage; I usually put my stuff in an area that's off limits to visitors, and take only what I need to the stage. Still, putting it in bags, however sturdy they are, might not be safe enough to prevent someone stepping on it when I'm not around - Shrug....!
I used to be a performing musician for twelve years, and I kept my equipment and bass guitar in flightcases I built myself. Those cases have been around the country - even beyond, and held up extremely well. So it's only logical to put my photo equipment in a flightcase as well. Luckily DSLRs, lenses and flashes aren't as big and heavy as bass guitars, amplifiers and speaker cabinets smiley.
This article is just a showcase. Head over to Fuzzcratfs for a considerably more in-depth article on how to build a flightcase. You'll see this case as an example project with much more technical details about the tools and materials used.

Taking Multiplicity Photograph

In this Tutorial Steve McDermott is going to show you how to take Multiplicity photographs.
Not really sure this is the right name for them, but I like it as it explains exactly what this technique does.
The setup is very simple. It uses the same principle as the computer screen project - transparent objects break light.
As simple as is is, it can give you amazing results. Definitely a fun weekend project.

Nothing Can Stand In Your Way, Not Even Gravity

Sometimes it seems that everything is against us. Nothing is working. It's as if the rules of the universe themselves were built to set us back. Well, not for Andy Price.
If the image above looks weird, it is because Andy found the perfect way to defy gravity.
With a little fairy dust, a Whiskey bottle and some tubing, Andy DIYed his gravity defying device. Oh, yea, did we say this was not a composite?

How To Catch a Lightning Every Single Frame

Lighting photography is not trivial. You have to wait in the rain, all drenched, setting one long exposure after the other, with the hope that one of open shutter intervals will catch a lighting strike. Well, there is an easier way.
Andras Schaeffer and Viktor Takacs came up with a clever way to capture lighting.
It does take a bit of electronics know how, and a bit of code (all available from Victor's site), but the result is a very intelligent lighting capturer. Think Ghost Busters and that pedal-box thingy.