I've moved the blog over to Wordpress.com, which gives me more flexibility, such as offering photo galleries along with the blog, as well as providing a platform that can work if I decide to turn this hobby into a side hustle.
The new blog's at macgyverphotography.wordpress.com, and all the old posts, which will continue to be available here, are there as well.
I look forward to seeing you there.
If you find yourself either stuck at home, or stuck in a creative rut, get out your glassware and make some interesting art.
Gavin Hoey, an OM Systems ambassador in England who is one of the regular hosts on Adorama's Youtube channel (Disclaimer: Adorama is not a sponsor of this blog. They just have great video tutorials.) did a video showing how to make abstract photos using water-filled glasses.
Hoey demonstrates with graphic backgrounds how the water in the glass acts as a lens and refracts the image behind it, which leads to interesting effects depending on the background.
A fun thing in the video is we realize that, when talking about having a towel, Hoey's also a Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy fan, and a man to be reckoned with.
You've probably had that time when you were trying to get of the focus, either in a studio setting, or for a video standup.
There's an app for that.
Focus Chart, an Android app, gives you a couple high-contrast focus patterns that will be easy to lock on, either manually or with auto focus. If you're trying to do a self-portrait or a video, put the phone with the chart on a stand where you're going to stand, set focus and then move it away and step in.
The best part is, it's free, and there's also a version for the iPhone as well.
In our last post, we talked about using a monopod to give your camera a view from above.
But sometimes you want to take a camera low, or into a place that's tight. A selfie-stick provides a great opportunity to get unique angles with a cellphone camera.
Selfie sticks are good for this because they are extendable and you don't need to hit the on-screen button to trip the shutter.
If you haven't seen one yet, a selfie stick is a device you can mount a cellphone camera on and, using either a Bluetooth trigger or a plug in the earphone port (sorry iPhone users. Blame Tim Cook), you can take a picture by pressing a button on the handle.
The original idea for this was taking a picture with the front camera on the phone, allowing you to hold the camera farther out than your arm's length, thus getting a better-looking picture (that wide-angle lens on a cellphone's front camera is not your friend) or get more people in the shot.
I bought one at the local dollar store because the mounting clip would also work on a tripod, but I found uses for the stick, such as doing video.
But we discovered you can use it to get a camera either really low without having to crawl around on the grass, or use it to view under things or to look inside small spaces.
We were raising some rabbits who decided they'd rather raise their kittens (yes, that's the correct term for baby rabbits, not bunnies) underground rather than a nesting box in their enclosure. After the litter was raised, we were going to close off the hole to ensure they didn't try to reenact The Great Escape. (They actually gnawed through chicken wire to dig the hole in the first place.)
But before we started, one of my sons had the idea to see what it looked like inside the hole. So, I got my selfie stick out, put my old cellphone in the clip and hooked up the shutter cable, and we lowered it inside, with the "flash" set to automatic.
As you can see, we got a decent look at the inside of the rabbit hole.
No, we didn't find any girls named Alice down there.
If you're going to do something like that, make sure the phone is secure on the end of the stick, even if you have to wrap a rubber band around it.
*Let's be honest. When a cellphone uses its "flash" it's just quickly turning the LED flashlight on and off. It's not a real flash in the sense of a sudden burst of light as a capacitor discharges into a tube.)
Sometimes, the difference between a good photograph and a great photograph is a matter of perspective.
Just getting a higher view can provide a better perspective at times. But sometimes getting that angle is more easily said than done. There may not be a place where you can climb up, or bringing in a ladder would be impractical.
Drones offer one way to get your camera above the crowd, but they can be expensive, sometimes require licensing to use and in some places are illegal.
But there is a way that you can get at least some altitude with your camera even in places where you can't legally deploy a drone.
In a 2013 video, Joe Edelman suggests using a monopod to elevate your camera to get a better perspective. He suggests putting the camera on the monopod, activate the self-timer and then hoist it up and wait until the shutter trips.
There are a few caveats. You have to use a wide-angle lens and a small aperture in order to get the greatest depth of field. And, unless you're working with someone who can monitor the camera through wired or wireless tethering, it might take a few tries to get the shot right.
I decided to give it a try with a veterans memorial in Sunnyside, Wash. The memorial consists of tablets on a block-long plaza. As you can see from a straight-on shot, it doesn't look too interesting.
While Edelman suggests tipping the monopod forward to get an angle, I have a tilt-pan head on mine, so I could adjust the angle before raising it.
In the video, Edelman suggests using a painter's pole if you want to get more elevation. Frankly, I wouldn't put a really good camera up on one, for fear of an accident, or make sure it was the best pole ever made.
Electronic flashes are easily one of the great innovations in photography, making it easier to get indoor photos.
But when you're ready to get past the harsh light coming from either on top of the camera or alongside it, there are a variety of ways to modify the light, either commercially or homemade, and go for a more artistic look.
In previous posts, we've talked about softboxes and reflectors take the edge off the flash's harsh light, and an adapter for macrophotography.
Today's installment deals with snoots, which turn the flash into a spotlight, putting a small relatively tight spot of light on a subject.
While a grid, which we talked about building earlier, may seem to do the same thing, there's a difference. The grid's honeycomb pattern not only directs the light into a tighter area, it also feathers the edges so it's not so harsh.
A snoot instead throws a sharply defined beam of light at its target. This can be good for creating a hairlight to separate your subject from a background or to create a shaft of light effect.
My DIY snoot consists of postal box cardboard formed around the flash head, creating a tube that funnels the light forward. While some have used Pringles potato chip cans for this purpose, I found it was too narrow to put my flash head in straight on, and the bouncing in the macro tube was not effective for long distance.
First, a photo with the unmodified flash, to serve as the baseline.
With our DIY grid. See how it's a narrower beam but just fades off on the edges.
The snoot produces a tight, harsh light. If you wanted to create the look of a shaft of light, this would be an effective tool for the job.
When you start using off-camera flashes, usually the first lights you're going to use are your speed lights.
One drawback with they have, compared to their larger, brighter studio cousins, is the lack of a modeling light.
A modeling light is a small lamp, incandescent or now, LED, that shows the photographer where the light from the flash will fall, especially if it's used with a modifier. You likely saw these if you ever went to a photo studio for a portrait, or when you had photos taken at school; it's that glow you see coming from the umbrellas or softboxes before the picture's taken.
Modeling lights are helpful if you're trying to set up a Rembrandt lighting (that's when one side of the face is illuminated more than the other side, but you have that triangle of light on the cheek on the darker side), or trying to adjust a rim light.
You can still work without a modeling light, but that can involve quite a bit of trial and error, which might not go over well with some subjects who might question your competence behind the camera.
But there is a way to at least get a similar effect and get your lighting within the ballpark, and just require a little bit of fine-tuning.
Remember the flashlights I mentioned earlier as a night-photography light? You can use that as a makeshift modeling light.
And it will only set you back 99 cents at Harbor Freight, unless you catch one of their free giveaways.
It won't be as WYSIWYG* as a modeling light, but it will give you the general idea of where your light is going to go, and that should mean fewer adjustments when you start shooting.
*What you see is what you get. It's a term first coined when word processors began to show you how your document would actually look with the chosen fonts and text styles.
In an earlier post, I talked about Vertexshare's Picture Colorizer, which does a reasonably good job of turning black-and-white photos into color pictures.
But the site has some limitation, in that you can only submit a photo that has been resized to no more than 3,000 pixels on the long edge. That can be a pain in the butt.
However, there is a way to get a full-resolution AI-colored photo for no cost, and it will work with any photo editor that uses layers.
Unmesh Dinda, who does some of the best Photoshop tutorials over at Piximperfect on Youtube, unveiled this hack involving Palette.fm, an AI-based photo colorization site that he said is better than Photoshop's neural filter.
Palette gives you several options, and you can edit it by changing the word prompt for the AI.
But it won't let you download the full resolution image that you uploaded, unless you are willing to pay either 65 cents per image or sign up for a subscription plan. The free option gives you essentially a file slightly bigger than a thumbnail.
Dinda, in his video, demonstrates how to take that tiny picture and use it to make a full-resolution colorized photo. The secret is in layers and blending modes.
As you'll see in his video, Dinda will add the colorized download as a layer over the original photo, and then use the transform tool to stretch it to the same size as the original, lining it up perfectly. You can turn down the opacity to make sure you're getting it straight.
At this point, it's going to look terrible with pixelated artifacts all over the place. But, by using the color blend mode, the color patterns will be transferred to the full-resolution image, giving you a high-quality colorized picture.
I again called the photo of Ulysses S. Grant at Cold Harbor into service to demonstrate this. This is the final result, following Dinda's steps. I did this in Photoshop, but I also tried it in GIMP, a free, open-source photo image editor that is comparable to Photoshop.
This is straight out of Photoshop. I would likely go back and touch up Grant's uniform and maybe his chair. But if you need or want to colorize a photo, this gives you a good starting point that can be tweaked.
Dinda said it can also be used for correcting extreme color casts, as he shows in the video below, where he compares the results with Photoshop and MyHeritage.com.
If one of your New Year's resolutions is to up your flash photography game, a great place to start is the Strobist website.
The website was founded in 2006 by David Hobby, a photojournalist with The Baltimore Sun. It started when he wrote about how he lit up a photo he did of a wind-tunnel turbine.
The site covers the full spectrum of flash photography, from simple speed lights to studio flashes, with free lessons and a gear guide. There are even some tips for DIY modifiers.
One of the virtues of do-it-yourself photo gear is that you can try out a particular lighting modifier or other equipment at little cost.
This is especially true if you use simple materials just for the experiment with a piece of gear or a technique.
For example, when I was making a flash modifier, I chose to use cardstock first as a "proof of concept" to see if it was something that would work for me. I have since made a second one using craft foam.
Daniel Norton, a New York photographer and one of Adorama's regular hosts on its Youtube channel demonstrates a way to make an absolutely cheap beauty dish lighting modifier, which his model and mentee, Marisa Roper, dubbed the "Paniel."
If you're not familiar with a beauty dish, it mounts on a flash, which then discharges into a reflector that is right in front of the flash head, bouncing it into the large dish portion of the reflector and out toward the subject. It produces a not-so-soft light that sculpts the facial features.
It also leaves a distinct halo-like catch light in the eyes.
Commercial dishes can run you $70 or more, depending on where you shop.
There are plenty of Youtube tutorials showing you how to make them from woks, flower pots and other items. But if you want to just try one out to see if its something you want to invest a bit more time and money in, or you forgot to pack one and need it, the Paniel provides a low-cost option,
You get two aluminum foil pans at either your big box store or, if you want to keep the price point really low, go to your local dollar store. One has to be a roasting pan, while the other is a pie pan or smaller.
The first step is measuring a hole in the back for your flash unit and cutting that out of the roasting pan. Depending on how long-lasting you want this to be, you can either use pencils or straws to hold the pie tin in place over that center hole.
In this video, Norton demonstrates live how well this jerry-rigged device works. I like the fact that he does it live with a tethered camera because you see in real time how well it works.
Norton demonstrates that you don't have to spend a lot to make good looking pictures. And if you like the results, you can now build a more lasting version of the light.
One real fun shot is the time lapse.
We've all seen those videos that show people and other things moving at high speed, clock hands moving quickly or or a storm front come through like an express train with no brakes.
Those are done through time-lapse photography, where a picture is taken at intervals and then assembled together into a video. It's one of those things that allows us to see things we usually can't see because they take a long time.
And while there are fancy cameras that can be used to take them, it's also possible to use the kit you've already got to make a decent photo.
First, if you use a cellphone, you might already be set, or at least one visit from the app store away from producing time lapses.
Apple's iPhones, going back to at least iPhone 5, have a time-lapse option on the camera. You just put the phone on a tripod or other secure holder, push the button to start and then let it run until you're ready and it the button again.
The phone will convert the series of pictures it has taken into a video. Depending on the length of time you ran the time lapse, the program will cut out frames in order to keep the video to the length predetermined by Apple.
If you use an Android, you're out of luck with your camera fresh out of the box, but there are multiple apps on the Google Play store that will allow you to do a time lapse. Just read the reader reviews carefully to see which one will work best for you. Some may produce choppy video as it assembles a string of still photos together into a video.
If you are using a digital camera, there are still ways to do it.
Some cameras, such as Pentax, will give you the option to do a QuickTime movie, but I've found that it was a bit too jerky for my tastes.
It should go without saying, but to cover myself, mount the camera on a tripod. There's no way you're doing this hand-held.
Another way to do it is to take a series of photographs and use them as frames in a video.
To do this, you might need an intervalometer, which allows you to have your camera take photos in a particular interval. Pentax actually has one built into its camera, but there are apps where you can use your phone as the trigger, or you can invest in a dedicated device.
Another way to get a series of photos is to use a cable release and, if your camera permits, put it into a drive mode and just lock down the shutter button and let the drive do its work.
In these situations, you need to figure out how long you want your video to be and the frame rate, which will tell you how many pictures to take.
You also want to set your aperture and shutter speed to slightly blur moving objects, which will better sell the high-speed effect.
A few years back, I did a time lapse to highlight a busy intersection the local police identified as a traffic hazard. Working with our paper's chief photographer, we figured out how many shots were going to be needed for the video (I was contributing to a larger video) and the best time to do it.
After figuring out the right shutter/aperture combination to get the motion, I locked those settings in while setting ISO to automatic. That would allow us to maintain a constant exposure as the sun set.
While I'm a strong proponent of shooting RAW whenever possible, in this case jpgs were the the better option as they take up less space on the card and would not be as hard to combine for the final video.
I shot 600 shots, one picture every three seconds for a half hour. I just dialed the time between frames and the total amount of pictures into the intervalometer and sat back with a cup of hot chocolate while the camera did its thing.
The resulting pictures were then converted into a video, with each shot becoming a frame in the video.
There are a couple ways to combine them. You can use a video editor or software designed specifically for assembling still images into a video. I used to use Time Lapse Assembler until the software became incompatible with my Mac's OS, but I found QuickTime offers a free way to do it.
Open up QuickTime Player, select "Open Image Sequence" from the File menu, specify your resolution, frame rate and final video format, and the software does the rest.
Here's that traffic sequence I did, processed through QuickTime.
Colorizing black-and-white photos is almost as old as photography itself, with people striving to make pictures look more lifelike.
In the past, it usually involved meticulous hand painting of photos, a task that got relatively easier with digital photo editing software.
Now, one of the new features in Photoshop is colorizing photos using artificial intelligence algorithms to do the heavy lifting. The results are fairly impressive, although there are naturally a few goofs that are relatively easier to fix compared to trying to colorize an entire picture.
But suppose you don't have Photoshop, or the "Jack Sparrow" version you're using disables Adobe's Neural Filters?
Vertexshare's Picture Colorizer offers a free AI-based colorization service that produces acceptable results. I played around with it for an evening and got some decent results.
Here is a photo of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant taken from the Civil War. First, the original:
And here's the colorized version (the only thing I did with the photo was just colorize it):
The main caveat with the service is that it only works with jpgs and pngs, and they can't be larger than 5 mb and 3,000 x 3,000 pixels. You might have to resize the image you want to colorize, as well as finish off any other edits you want to do, before uploading it.
Caleb Pike, over at the DSLR Shooter on Youtube offers a way to set up backgrounds or even animated sets for shooting product photos, models or action figures.
Pike recommends using a flat-screen television. In his case, he uses a 55-inch 4k TV screen that has built-in Roku, allowing him to cast photos or animations on to the screen.
He uses it as both a tabletop, where he projected heads-up display-style graphics around his subjects, or created animations that helped light it up. The TV he used was durable enough to put a mirrorless camera body on, but he suggested getting a plexiglass sheet to protect more delicate screens.
The other way is to use it as a backdrop, putting up an image to serve as the background, which can be adjusted for perspective and lighting through a linked phone.
Pike also offers a few things to look for when picking a TV, or a monitor, and how to get the best photo possible in the process.
Photo by Skyler Sawyer on Unsplash
Halloween is fast approaching, and one of the traditional decorations is the jack-o-lantern.
Some range from the minimalist designs with a mouth, nose and eyes cut away from the gourd, while others are more elaborate pictures. The best way to photograph them is with the primary light source being the one that is inside the pumpkin. And that means adjusting your camera to only capture that light.
Over on Instructables, user jenleigh offers some basic tips for doing it. She suggested making sure there is a fairly strong light inside the pumpkin, either a pumpkin light or a bright flashlight. I think you might get a good effect with a remotely fired flash inside the pumpkin. The best way do that would be to have the flash on the bottom and pointed at the top, illuminating the inside.
In a recent post, we discussed ways to do macrophotography if you don't have a dedicated macro lens.
Now, lets talk about lighting those extreme close-ups.
While you can use continuous light, such as a desk lamp, you might not have that option if you are shooting outdoors, or if the lights you have won't permit a fast-enough shutter speed to avoid blurring.
One of the best ways to do that is through camera flashes, but you are going to need to diffuse the light to make it flattering, as well as work well up close.
One low-budget way to do it is to use a Pringles potato-chip can as a snoot/diffuser for the pictures.
A Pringles can is particularly suited for this task because the inside of the canister is silver colored, making it more reflective. It also has a clear cap, into which you can put diffusing material to soften the light.
Plus, Pringles don't leave the same greasy residue behind like traditional potato chips.
There are multiple tutorials online for how to make this rig, but here's how I made mine.
First, I picked up some Pringles at the local Walmart for just under $2, and had a nice snack at work for a couple days.
Then, after sweeping all the chip crumbs out of the tube, I cut out a hole in the side about a quarter-inch from the bottom that was the same dimension as the flash head. While some people cut away the cardboard completely, I chose to leave it as two flaps to better grip the flash head.
While some people will mount the flash in the back, I found the side mount is better, as the head is straight up, and you can angle it to light the subject in front of the lens. The other way requires sculpting the tube into a particular shape, which only works if you are going to use one particular lens for your macro shoots. I personally prefer to keep my options open.
For my diffusion panel, I put a circle of copy paper in the cap. After making sure it worked, I then put black duct tape on the outside to give it a relatively professional look.
This is how the rig looks when on the flash and camera, before being covered in duct tape.
Panoramas are probably one of the oldest types of photos, dating back to daguerreotypes with sweeping views of cities.
It is a format that's especially good for landscapes or if you're capturing something really large. Photographer David Bergman has done "gigapans" where he captures ultrahigh resolution panoramic shots where you can zoom in on individual details in the photos.
There have been special cameras made for panoramas, including some that had rotating lenses that would cover multiple frames of film to capture the image. But a more common way to do it is to put multiple pictures together, which is how the originals were made.
In this day, it is fairly easy to make panoramas regardless of what camera you use, especially with computers doing the stitching seamlessly.
If you have a cellphone camera, you most likely have a pano feature built into the camera. All you have to do is press the shutter button and move the camera in the direction shown on screen to capture a panorama.
The key to a successful one is to keep the camera steady, not jerking it around up or down, which will ruin the photo.
If you have another type of camera, be it a point-and-shoot, bridge, mirrorless or DSLR, there are ways to create panoramas. It involves taking a series of pictures and then stitching them together in a computer.
To get the best results, you want to shoot in portrait (vertical) orientation, as this will make assembling the panorama easier, as there will be fewer awkward edges that will have to be cropped out.
You also want to lock your exposure to ensure the pictures have a uniform look, or the finished picture is going to look awkward, unless you spend extra time balancing out exposures in post. You should have some overlap, about 10-20 percent, to make it easier to join them and avoid any gaps.
There are a few options for stitching them together.
One way is a bit more artisanal. Basically open the pictures in your photo editor and line them up, doing some cropping and masking to eliminate seams.
Some photo editors, such as Adobe Lightroom Classic, will automatically stitch the pictures together into a seamless panorama.
There are also free software options that will stitch your photos together. One of the best is Hugin, which runs on both Windows and Mac, that lets you stitch traditional 180-degree and 360-degree panoramas.
I've always said that photography can show you things that you can't see, as well as record the things that you can see.
One of those ways is macrophotography, where you can go in for extreme close-ups of various objects. This allows you see details that may not be readily apparent to the naked eye, as well as create a new perspective on an otherwise mundane object.
There are dedicated lenses for macrophotograpy, as well as filter-like diopters you can use to magnify the image in your lens. There are also extension tubes and even bellows that can put the lens farther out to create a close-up image.
But if you don't want to invest in that gear, especially if you're trying out macrophotography for the first time, there are a couple easy solutions.
If you're using a cellphone camera, you can use a simple magnifying glass to get a closer look. Just put the glass in front of your lens and you might have to move your camera back and forth to bring it into focus.
That's how I got this photo of a coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of the B-17 "Memphis Belle" completing 25 missions over Europe in World War II.
If you are lucky enough to have a camera with a removable lens, there's a way to get a great macro shot. It's a tip I first learned in high school back when we were still shooting film.
Take off your lens and hold it up backwards against the camera's lens mount. You'll have to hold it tight to prevent a light leak and then move back and forth to get the image in focus. If you're using a lens where the camera sets the aperture instead, you'll have to hold your finger on the lever that adjusts the aperture to get it to stay wide open.
I took this shot using a 50mm f-2 Rikenor lens that I reversed.
For perspective, here's a shot of the same coin, taken with the 50mm properly mounted on my camera.
This post is a bit of a two-for-one deal. Two DIY projects in one post.
The first one is a DIY reflector to bounce light on to your subject. You can use these indoors or out.
There are expensive models, but a couple of photographers, including Joe Edelman and Daniel Norton, recommend using white poster boards. Norton calls the ones he uses "Brooklyn Reflectors." The boards are inexpensive — you can get them for $1.25 a piece at the so-called dollar stores, or your usual big-box store.
With it being back-to-school, you may be able to get them on sale.
Here's Edelman's demonstration with one.
You can use the reflector with a voice-activated lightstand — also known as an assistant — but if you're shooting alone, it could get tricky trying to take the picture and hold the reflector yourself.
Edelman proposes building a PVC holder for the reflector that lets you adjust it and put it on a lightstand. This allows you to use it hands free, and the rig can also hold flags (the light-blocking variety, not the state or national emblems) and Gobos, which go between a light source and a subject to create a pattern of light, say simulating light coming through a Venetian blind.
Edleman's plans are in this video, although I would probably also use a joint to mount it to a PVC lightstand.
Light, obviously, is an essential part of photography, which means "light writing" in Greek.
While we spend a lot of time and energy on putting light into a photo, there are times when you want to keep light out, or remove it.
For example, when you want to keep light from your light source, be it a flash or continuous light, from spilling over onto the background or into your lens.
(Unless you're J.J. Abrams, then knock yourself out with that lens flare.)
One way to do that is with a flag, basically a black device that you can put on or next to a light to keep it from spilling onto a background or a wall and scattering back into the photo.
You can buy flags in a variety of sizes, some requiring stands to use. But you can make your own for a fraction of the price, using velcro and craft foam.
Youtuber Spyros Heniadis demonstrates how much of a difference a 6-inch-by-9-inch piece of foam attached to a flash head can make. His method allows you to vary the size of the flag and its shape to best sculpt your light.
With the low cost, you can make flags for all your flashes. You could also use it for continuous lights, but I would recommend doing that directly on the light only if you're using LED or CFL bulbs, as incandescent or halogen bulbs would get too hot.
While some of the newer quick-release plates on tripods have a little handle for turning the bolt, some still rely on a slotted screwhead.
In these cases, a multi-tool or Swiss Army Knife can help you get the plate securely attached to your camera.
But what if you are somewhere that bars your pocket tool, or you may have forgotten to pack it. (I go to courtrooms so often it's too easy for me to leave my pocket knife and Leatherman at home.)
But Scott Eggleston, The Frugal Filmmaker, has a suggestion for keeping a tool on you, even in place where you might be restricted in what you carry.
In the video below, Eggleston suggests putting a small metal washer on your keychain to use as a makeshift screwdriver. Not only can it help with tripod bolts, it can also tighten other similar sized screws.
