The Photography Tips And Tricks Topic

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When sharing MOCs online, good presentation is absolutely critical. brickset.com recently published an article on how to make a simple lightbox that can dramatically help improve photo quality.

light box.jpg768Ă—788 158 KB

Does anyone else have any tips on how to photograph MOCs with professional-looking results? Share them here!

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When taking photos, I try to cover as much of the background with as much white as possible. That’s smart talk for “I used the back of a Minecraft poster with some printer paper on the floor.”

Of course, one could always crop out the object in question when taking the picture with the poster and white paper and fill it in with white.

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Natural lighting always helps, and if it’s too bright move into the shade.

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If you’re using a paper background, bend the paper at a curve so that it gives the illusion of there being no horizon. It helps draw the attention toward the subject.

Use a tripod. Like really, use a tripod.

Edit the photos! My photos look like crap whenever I download them raw to my computer. Even a little bit of editing helps them to be higher quality. On my computer I use PhotoDirector and it helps a lot, be even before then I used the default Windows Photo Editor and it worked wonders.

Just use the settings to bring up the brightness and exposure, lower the ugly yellow colors that may be in the background, and then brighten up the MOC’s colors with the color intensity and contrast settings. Then crop the pictures and sharpen them up (not too much, then it becomes noticeable and ugly).

With these simple things you can go from something like this:

101_0040.JPG3968Ă—2976 1.25 MB

To this:

tmuMain1.JPG2647Ă—2976 2.19 MB

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not the same picture, I call hacks

I use a blanket to cover the floor and the side of a conveniently placed chest for my pictures.

The blanket isn’t even white. It’s a tan wrinkly old thing, but it looks like a smooth cream colored snowscape.

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I have some tips and tricks.

  1. DO NOT use HDR if you do not know how to make a proper HDR photo (I learned this the hard way).
  2. Do not use a Cell phone if you have access to a proper digital camera.
  3. White balance on your digital camera is your friend. Learn what settings work for your photography setup.
  4. If your camera has an auto HDR function, use it (this is different from taking seperate photos and dumping them into photoshop or whatever you would use to make an HDR photo).
  5. Know your photography setup.
  6. If you are taking a photography class at whatever school you go to, don’t be afraid to apply skills you learn there to your MOC photos.
  7. A tripod is ideal. If you do not have one, try to stay still as much as possible.
  8. Know how to work your lighting and light sources to your advantage.
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Haha, I was simply showing how the quality can go up! :smile:

I don’t save my before and afters, and that was the closest I could come!

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I do all of my pictures outside, edit the lighting in gimp, and edit in a background. I don’t even bother with a lightbox since the background is all digital.

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oh geez I needed this, even though most of my moc photos now adays are taken ouside

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Taking amazing photos is easy, all you have to do is be @Ghosty.

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Pretty much, yeah.

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That’s funny, that’s also all you need to do to make good MOCs too! :smile:

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Necropost…

Almost never use flash… use natural lighting, lamps, flashlights, etc.
Off-camera flash works for a nice metallic look.