Photo How To

Do you ever wonder how to take your photography to the next level? The helpful folks at Mango Street Labs are back with another great video that will help you improve your amateur-looking images so they look as good as those from professional photographers.

Photographers went to great depths to capture awe-inspiring images for the 2017 Underwater Photographer of the Year (UPY) Contest, and French shooter Gabriel Barathieu came out on top for the above image of what one judge called a “balletic and malevolent” dancing octopus. Barathieu made the image in shallow water under available light off the Island of Mayotte in South East Africa.

We frequently post great time-lapse videos, and readers often ask about the best way to embark on one of these projects themselves. In the helpful video tutorial below, award-winning photographer/videographer Peter McKinnon reveals everything you need to know to make a great time-lapse.

Here’s something a bit different from Photoshop/Lightroom wizard Jimmy McIntyre whose tutorials typically involve software tips and tricks for enhancing your images. In the video below, McIntyre refutes the myth that you should never shoot directly into the sun, and shows you how to get dramatic images doing just that.

As anyone who has attended college knows, all professors are not created equal. Lucky photography students at the University of Central Oklahoma really hit the jackpot with Mark Zimmerman who turned his classroom into a giant camera obscura.

The late Bruce Mozert was an American photographer who gained acclaim in the late 1930s for photographing pretty pin-ups posing underwater. As you can see, what made his portraits particularly unusual (apart from the fact they were shot underwater) was that his models were often posed as though they were going about their daily lives on land.

DIY projects are a fun way to make your own gear and save major bucks in the process, and the video below shows you how to construct a sturdy light stand for less than $5 worth of PVC pipe. If you really want to go “pro,” you can drop another $2 on a cheap PVC cutter.