Photo How To

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.

Great photographers come in all nationalities, shooting styles, and ages, as you can see from these amazing images entered in the 2016 National Geographic International Photography Contest for Kids. The images you see here are among the just-announced winners and runners up.

White balance sounds like one of those concerns that vaporized with the advent of digital photography. In the days when film was king, you had to think about the color quality of light at the drugstore photo counter, long before you made any pics. You could either plan on shooting in the Sun, using a so-called “daylight” emulsion, or snapping your photos indoors, with a “T” or “tungsten” film stock.

Great photographs are not the result of great cameras. Superb cameras help, but the real secret to making great images is the ability to see photographs in your mind’s eye before you take them. Once this ability to “pre-visualize” an image is learned, it quickly becomes second nature. Here are five simple tips to jump-start your thinking outside the camera.