[Photography] How to Create Beautiful, Artistic Photos Using a Book

The post How to Create Beautiful, Artistic Photos Using a Book appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ramakant Sharda.

Photography is an art, and every photographer is an artist who uses his or her imagination to create a beautiful work of art. A real artist can take anything and convert it into breathtaking artwork. In this tutorial, we are going to do the same thing. We’ll create beautiful, artistic photos using a book and an LED light.

What you need to create beautiful, artistic photos using a book:

To create beautiful, artistic photos using a book, you need a camera. Any camera, including your mobile camera, will work. A tripod is a “must” to hold the camera. A shutter release cable is also required. You’ll also need an LED torch. Again, the LED light of your mobile will work perfectly for this shoot. You may also use a torch, a bulb, or any other light source – even flash.

Of course, you also need a book. It should be big and have thick, glossy pages so that it will reflect the light well. I used Guinness World Records; if you have this book, you can do the same.

You need a dark room, so it’s better to do this shoot at nighttime.

Setup:

This shoot doesn’t require a complicated setup. Simply open your book from the center and fold over 10 pages, like in the following picture.

To find the center, divide the total number of pages by 2; whatever figure comes up, open to that page number.

Now place the book at the edge of a table. Put a light behind the book at a lower angle so that it won’t show in the photo.

You can put a black glass below the book to show the book’s reflection.

Camera settings:

To create beautiful, artistic photos using a book, set your camera on Aperture Priority mode. Set your ISO to 100 and aperture to f/11 or f/16. With these settings and a mobile LED light, you’ll get a shutter speed of between one and two seconds. Because our subject is still, you won’t have any problems.

Fix your camera on the tripod. Set the frame, focus manually, and leave it. Your aperture is too narrow, so you’ll get a deeper depth of field, and the entire book will be in focus.

Don’t forget to switch your camera to manual focus mode.

Workflow:

Now you need to throw light from the back and take the shot.

Play with different angles of light to get different shots, but remember that the light will always be at a lower angle.

Once you get enough shots, change the camera position. Set it a bit lower or higher to get different results.

Method two

We have created pictures using LED light. Now we are going to create some different kinds of shots.

For this, you need a big monitor or TV and some abstract images. This method is quite simple. Display abstract images on your monitor or TV and place the book in front of it. There should be some distance between the book and the abstract images so that the abstract images become blurred in the picture.

You’ll need to widen the aperture, so set it to f/4 or f/5.6.

Method three – multicolor book

This method is a little hard and requires some post-processing work, but it’ll give you wonderful results. You should have a basic knowledge of Photoshop and an idea about layer masks.

It requires the same LED light setup.

You are going to take a series of pictures with different-colored lights and merge them in post-processing. You’ll need to use gels or colored gelatin paper to get colorful light.

Take five shots with different-colored lights like white, orange, red, blue, and green. Make sure that you don’t move your camera in between the shot.

Now you’ll use these photos to create a multicolor picture.

Putting it together in Photoshop

• Open all five photos in Photoshop and stack them into layers.
• Now select one layer.
• Press ‘Alt’ and add a layer mask. This will add a black layer mask and hide everything. Do the same with all five layers.
• Now take a soft brush and make sure that the foreground color is white. Set both brush opacity and flow to 50%.
• Paint on the layer masks randomly. Change the brush size randomly. Increase and decrease the brush opacity randomly. You can also use special-effect brushes to get different results.

After some time and practice, you’ll get a photo like this.

So, postpone all the programs for tonight and create these artistic photos using a book to get some masterpieces. Then, share them here. If you have any problems, just comment on this post, and I’ll help you solve them.

The post How to Create Beautiful, Artistic Photos Using a Book appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ramakant Sharda.

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