21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken]
In our photography forums we’ve got a creative group of photographers – many who set themselves all kinds of photographic projects and then share how they took the shots.
Here’s 21 from our ‘How I took It‘ section. Click pictures to read the story and techniques used behind the shots.
2. Dart Shot
5. Bubble World
6. Digital Unmasking | Ripping one’s face
9. Partial Solar Eclipse on Feb 7 in New Zealand
10. Parabolas
11. Balls
12. Long Exposure While Driving
15. Splash of Color
16. Make Your Own Cadillac Commercial
18. Shaped Bokeh!
64 Responses to “21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken]” - Add Yours
September 9th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Wowww. Amazing shots. Those who created these pictures got talent on them.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Amazing photos
September 9th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Wow! These are really, really fantastic. I personally really love motion shots. Thanks for sharing.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
A bit strange to notice that most of the photos are more on a ‘technical’ side of photography. Good (“Great?”) exposure , long exposures and/or heavy editing. … etc.
Even though such photos do look great and awesome , once you learn to control the technical side of photography, these are pretty easy to achieve.
But what about some Street photos? Capturing good/great shots in an uncontrolled environment?
For example – http://www.ilanbresler.com/2009/06/flower.html – And I don’t mean to say that the photo is great/awesome, but I do think that such situations are harder to see and capture than some of the photos shown above.
Maybe the question should be what is “Great”? Is the photo being very aesthetics is enough?
September 9th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
great list.
i liked shaped bokeh the best.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Very cool Darren. Great uses of light in different situations. Thanks for sharing.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Amazing photos. I like the humour behind Chuck Norris’ eyedrop!
September 10th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Not as great as the 21 described above, but here’s a tutorial I wrote on setting up your own rig to shoot “Bokeh-Motives”..thats toy-trains with beautiful,jittery light trails in the background: http://snapomatic.blogspot.com/2009/09/engineers-guide-to-making-of-bokeh.html
September 10th, 2009 at 2:25 am
These are great photos, and really inspiring, although what I’d really like to see are great photos that don’t require a large amount of post processing.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:43 am
While all great “shots”, the majority of them rely heavily upon post processing.
Perhaps a better title would be “Great shots [and how they were digitally manipulated]“, instead of [how they were taken].
September 10th, 2009 at 5:49 am
These are great, thanks for sharing!
September 10th, 2009 at 7:06 am
cool.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Wow! These photos are amazing! I am only just testing the marco feature of my camera so these types of shots are way out of my league at the moment!
September 10th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I like to see ALL images! Be they artistic, sooc or manipulated. People need to chill. This is a learning site. It’s not all about what YOU want.
Amazing work from our DPS members.
Thank you Darren for sharing. May more learn and create.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
that is truly breath taking indeeed!
RT
http://www.privacy-resources.tk
September 10th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Wow. amazing photos! Thanks Darren for sharing.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
A brilliant post, I went straight home to attempt two of the photos listed. Sadly the results are not as good but hey it was a first attempt. http://www.flixelpix.com/macro/colours/
if anyone had any information on the IR trigger mentioned I would be keen to give one a try. I also attempted the painting with light and used filters, and the outcome was great. 2 down 19 to go
September 10th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
These photos are amazing.. thanks for sharing!
September 10th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Wow, I was wondering why my traffic had jumped up so high. Thanks for posting my shots, and great work from all the other members. Some really inspirational stuff here.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:34 am
I very much enjoy photography, especially masterpieces like the ones above and would like to congratulate all the authors/photographers for their creativity and use of imagination. Terrific job and great post, thank you!!
September 11th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Cool images. Thanks!
September 11th, 2009 at 2:47 am
My apologies to “rolling stone” and anyone else I offended by my comment. These are really great photos and I enjoyed looking at them. The title led me to believe that it was the photo set up that made them great, rather than the post processing. I don’t have the time or the skill to do that kind of post processing yet, so I was hoping for tips on how to “take” a great picture rather than how to “make” a great picture.
However- these photos turned out amazing and my comment wasn’t a complaint. Just a statement of fact that I should have kept to myself. Rolling Stone- you are right. It’s not all about what I want. I apologise and will be much more careful with my comments in the future.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:32 am
This is fantastic!! Great work!!
September 11th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Thanks Darren, awsome pics. Gives me new ideas and inspires me.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Its amazing what you can do with a camera huh. Great examples. I learned how to do the basic photoshopping off youtube. Maybe you can try it! (in response to angie)
September 11th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
This is the best DPS article I’ve ever read. So useful to know how photos like these are achieved and massively inspirational.
September 11th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Great shots. Very inspiring!
September 11th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
i love every article here.. very inspiring…
September 11th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Wow pretty shocked to see my little shot up there (#11 Balls). Would have come up with a better title if I had known
It’s always great to get some recognition for something that was done using orange balls and a dinner plate
Thanks
September 12th, 2009 at 7:40 am
great work! should keep me busy for a while trying thses out !
September 12th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
omg these are fabulous shots! The tutorials are very useful too, gonna try some of them soon
September 15th, 2009 at 6:38 am
These are some really amazing works. My favorites are face ripping, the moon, light sugar cube, splash of color and parabolas. I will definitely try these in the next 2 months and if I get some good results, I’ll upload to my flickr page which has some light and HDR photography as wellhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/80789985@N00/with/3209260450/
September 18th, 2009 at 1:57 am
It might be in Tv mode
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Great shots and ideas for some long Winter day fun. Thanks everyone.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Really wonderful work
You’ve created a fun and instructional resource for any photographer from level A to Z.
Kudos and thanks
wonderful work!
September 25th, 2009 at 12:31 am
This is a great resource. I think one of the best ways for photographers to learn new techniques and how to use photographic tools is:
1. Seeing – great images that they can take inspiration from
2. Reading/Studying – the techniques to understand how they were created
3. Doing – this is about putting knowledge into practice
This post has provided the first two and the third is up to the initiative of the photographer, if you don’t get out and practice, you are limiting yourself and what you are capable of!
To read more, visit this blog
PEG Photo Expert Guy – photoexpert.typepad.com
Its new and in development, but have loads of free content lined up on photography techniques, tools, and training.
You can download a free guide called ‘ 3 Ways to improve your photography’
PEG Photo Expert Guy – photoexpert.typepad.com
All the best
September 27th, 2009 at 7:49 am
wonderful stuff, great inspiration
September 28th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Awesome, Darren. Thanks!
September 30th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
wow.. very amazing photo shots! especially love the Splash of Colot.. awesome!!
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:46 am
very useful information! Thank you!
October 4th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Great thoughts… thanks for sharing. Love deconstructing images to determine how they were made.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:08 am
This is a nice post. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
October 16th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Simply amazing and thanks a lot for the tips…
October 20th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Very amazing photo shots! especially love the Splash of Colot.. awesome!!
October 21st, 2009 at 8:38 pm
this is indeed a very informative article. keep this series on.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
My favorite would be hard to say but the one that I would like to see how it was done would b e #5 and all the long exposure. I see how the Cadillac was shot but the others with no motion blur… very impress.
November 18th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Great shots…. The more I search this forum the more inspired I get !!
November 29th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
thanks to Digital photography school and the photographer.
all the picture was simply awesome and thanks to give such a advice and tips ..
January 28th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
This is amazing collections
January 30th, 2010 at 2:28 am
These are some great images! I’ve tried the whole light painting thing, and I’m not very good at it yet. The dart image and the skateboard image get my vote for creativity.
February 24th, 2010 at 1:32 am
All the photo’s/pictures entail a lot of skill, some with software, Photoshop for example, and do not deserve unfair comments. They are simply using a digital camera in a different way to ‘normal’. I say keep up the good work and forget the sceptics.
February 24th, 2010 at 2:28 am
Great photos! I will definitely have to try it!!!
June 17th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I do not think all pictures are not great..some great..but most are magic..
July 3rd, 2010 at 2:14 am
I like the beauty of the splash of colour, the fun of the Chuck Norris Eyedrops and the look of Light Painting “Love”.
Thanks for sharing these quite good shots.
August 5th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Great pictures. I think I am in love with these pictures.
August 28th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
This is totally inspiring. Now I have some ideas of what to do on the boring rainy weekends when we I just want to shoot at home.
September 8th, 2010 at 8:27 am
the ” bubble world’ shot is pure class, what a shot
October 8th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
All the shots give any & everyone food for thought, we are all trying to acheive “that shot” like no other, the one that “you can hang your hat on”. Take a look at your photo’s, is there one thing that stands out that you could say was your signature? Some poeple like landscapes, some like portraits and the list goes on. I personnally like to try everything, if it does not work I try again. We are all different and looking at other’s work inspires me to improve, I’m only in it for the “thrill” of acheivment, I’m not in the position to make it my livlihood.
Well done to all concerned, we can all learn from this in a small way.
November 5th, 2010 at 3:03 am
These are really great photos and I enjoyed looking at them. The title led me to believe that it was the photo set up that made them great, rather than the post processing.
November 24th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Really cool shots and it’s great to get some insight about the process.
I will try more of them when I get the time to do it.
Cheers Allan Rye
December 4th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Some really awesome photos and pics.
July 21st, 2011 at 3:46 am
Great pics, I’m still learning and this is a great site to help me. Thanks
August 5th, 2011 at 6:49 am
Great shots, lots of time and effort is truly worth it!
April 11th, 2012 at 1:13 am
Great shots really good background
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