You do not need expensive gear to take striking photos. Most of the effects people pay for, such as soft light, creamy background blur, dreamy haze and colour washes, can be faked with household objects: kitchen foil, a plastic bag, a shower curtain, sunglasses, a CD or a bag of lentils. The forty ideas below show how photographers and video creators have done exactly that, each with a short explanation of why it works and where it can go wrong.
Treat them as starting points rather than tested recipes. A trick that looks great in one demonstration may need a lot of trial and error with your own camera, lens and light. The cover image, by photographer Christina Key, shows one of the most useful of all: removing crowds from a landmark (here Delicate Arch in Utah's Arches National Park) by blending several photos taken from a tripod.
What DIY photo hacks can and cannot do
Almost every hack in this list works on one of four things: the light falling on your subject, what sits behind it, what sits in front of the lens, or the angle you shoot from. Professional softboxes, filters and backdrops do the same jobs more consistently and more safely, but the physics is identical. A plastic bag over a flash diffuses light for the same reason a softbox does: it makes the light source bigger and softer.
The limits are just as real. Anything held in front of a lens can scratch it or let in stray light, and anything involving heat, sparks, water or electricity needs proper care. A cheap clear or UV filter screwed onto the lens is a smart buffer for the messier tricks, and it is much cheaper to replace than a lens.
Bokeh and background tricks
Bokeh, from the Japanese word for blur or haze, is the look of out-of-focus areas in a photo. Each blurred point of light takes the shape of the lens aperture, which is why a wide aperture and distant lights produce those glowing circles.
Use Tinfoil To Create A Wall Of Bokeh
Crumpled kitchen foil taped to a wall becomes a backdrop full of tiny reflections. Light it, place a small subject well in front of it and shoot at a wide aperture, and the reflections melt into sparkly bokeh. Credit: COOPH.
Cut Out A Heart Shape In A Cardboard For A Heart-Shaped Bokeh
A disc of black card with a small heart cut in the centre is placed over the front of the lens. Because the blurred highlights take the shape of the opening, a night-time city turns into a field of little hearts. Keep the cut-out smaller than your lens aperture for the effect to show. Credit: globetrotterdiaries.
Cut Out Your Own Bokeh Shapes
This version uses a tube of black card that slides over the lens, with interchangeable caps cut into stars, clouds and flowers. Fairy lights strung on a drying rack provide the highlights. It is a cheap way to experiment with seasonal shapes. Credit: howaboutorange.
Instant Fake Macro Bokeh
A laptop displaying a blurred photo of lights stands behind a Spider-Man action figure. Shot close and slightly out of focus, the screen reads as a real bokeh background. Turn the screen brightness down to match your subject's lighting. Credit: Sheldon Evans.
Lightpainted Background
A tablet running a light-painting or flashlight app is swept behind a toy during a long exposure (the example uses eight seconds at ISO 100 and f/14). The moving screen draws bands of colour, while the stationary subject stays sharp. A tripod is essential. Credit: COOPH.
Use A Piece Of Cloth And A Cardboard To Create A Portable And Inexpensive Seamless Background System
Food photographer Taylor Mathis bends a sheet of card into a curved sweep and covers it with textured fabric, so the surface flows into the background with no visible horizon line. A cupcake shot on it looks like it was made in a studio. Credit: Taylor Mathis.
Get A Black Tile For Product Photography
A glossy black tile from a hardware store makes an instant reflective surface. Small products and toys placed on it pick up a clean mirror image beneath them, a look common in commercial product shots. Keep the tile spotless, since every fingerprint shows. Credit: COOPH.
Light: softboxes, reflectors and shadows
Use A Plastic Bag For A Softbox Effect
A white plastic bag stretched over a flash spreads its light over a wider area, which softens shadows on the face. The before-and-after portraits show the difference clearly. Keep plastic away from hot continuous lights. Credit: Sheldon Evans.
Create A Softbox Using A Shower Curtain
A cheap LED work light, a white shower curtain and a clothes rail make a large diffusion panel. Shine the light through the curtain and you get the soft, even portrait light seen in the black-and-white example. Use LED rather than halogen lights, which get very hot. Credit: COOPH.
Lighting Trick
A white foam board held below a child bounces sunlight back into his face, filling in the shadows under the eyes and chin. The comparison shows how much brighter and friendlier the portrait becomes. Any large white surface works. Credit: Jwalt Photography.
Use White Sheet As A Reflector Reflector
The same idea for phone portraits: a sheet of white paper held at chest height reflects daylight up into the face. In the example, the second photo looks noticeably more even. Credit: 5-Minute Crafts.
Don't Be Afraid To Add Lights With Regular Bulbs
Photographer Brandon Woelfel became known for portraits filled with glowing fairy lights. Holding a string of battery lights close to the lens turns them into large, warm bokeh around the subject. Battery-powered LED strings are the safest option for this. Credit: Brandon Woelfel.
Cut Different Shapes In A Cardboard For A Window Shadow
A large piece of card with slits and rectangles cut into it is held in front of a strong light. The shapes cast stripes and window-like patterns across the model and the wall, adding drama to a simple studio set-up. Credit: Learn photo editing.
Use Windows For A Softening Effect
Shooting through a glass door or window adds reflections and gentle haze that soften a portrait. The examples, taken at f/1.2, use smudges and reflections on the glass as a natural foreground layer. Clean or dirty glass gives very different results, so try both. Credit: Jessica Kobeissi.
Filters and in-camera effects
Use Your Sunglasses As A Filter
Holding one lens of a pair of sunglasses in front of the camera adds a warm tint and darkens bright skies, similar to a graduated or colour filter. The example shows the old town of Salzburg, Austria, with its glasses frame visible at the edge. Polarised sunglasses can also cut glare from water and glass. Credit: COOPH.
Use A Plastic Bag Smeared With Vaseline For A Soft-Focus Lens Effect
A clear plastic bag with a hole cut for the centre is stretched over the lens, and petroleum jelly is smeared around the edges. The middle stays sharp while the outside blurs into a dreamy glow, as in the flower photo. Never put the jelly directly on the lens. Credit: freepeople.
Use Cloth To Achieve The Soft-Focus Lens Effect
Loosely woven cloth such as gauze or cheesecloth, pulled apart in the middle and held over the lens, softens the edges of the frame. Stretched nylon stockings have long been used for the same purpose. Credit: freepeople.
Use A Sandwich Bag To Create Hazy Photos
A clear sandwich bag held over the lens adds a soft, washed-out haze reminiscent of film. Crumple it for more texture or pull it tight for a subtler look. Credit: Jesse David McGrady.
Create An Arty Filter With Colored Plastic Bags
Coloured cellophane or plastic wrapped partly around the lens tints one side of the frame. In the example, red and blue plastic give a portrait pink and purple flares, a cheap imitation of the coloured gels used on film sets. Credit: COOPH.
Colorful Filter
Clear tape stretched over the front of the lens and coloured with markers creates rainbow-tinted flares around the subject. To be safe, apply tape only to a cheap screw-on filter, never directly to the glass of a lens. Credit: Olivier Schmitt.
Create A Camera Filter For Funky And Colorful Photos
An embroidery hoop, coloured wool and a hot glue gun make a ring filter with fuzzy coloured edges. Held in front of the lens, the fibres blur into pastel frames around couples and beach scenes. Credit: elyanaivette.com.
Use Glasses To Add 'Filters'
Shooting through a glass jar bends and blurs part of the image, adding soft streaks and distortion. Moving the jar changes where the effect falls. Credit: Wolfeye.
Create Your Own Color Lens Filters
Clear plastic discs coloured with permanent markers can be held in front of the lens, with a tab for easy handling. The result is a tinted wash of colour across the portrait. Credit: my23skidoo.
Use A CD To Create Lens Flares
Holding the shiny side of an old CD near the edge of the lens throws rainbow reflections into the frame. It is a quick way to add colour flares to moody portraits. Credit: Sheldon Evans.
Use A Short Triangular Prism To Reflect Background
A small glass prism held just in front of the lens reflects part of the surroundings into the shot, creating a double-exposure effect in camera. Photographer Mathieu Stern is known for experiments like this. Credit: Mathieu Stern.
Create A Different Self Portrait Using Lace
A lace curtain draped over the head in strong sunlight throws patterned shadows across the face. Shot with a phone or camera on a timer, it turns a plain self-portrait into something textured and dreamlike. Credit: Maddie Lullaby.
Perspective, macro and special shots
Manipulate Visual Perception Using Forced Perspectives
A small toy placed close to the camera on a pier appears giant next to a person kicking at it in the distance. Forced perspective works because a single lens cannot show depth; keep both subjects in focus with a small aperture. Credit: COOPH.
Use A Fishtank To Get That Underwater Shot
An empty glass aquarium, lowered halfway into a lake with the camera inside, produces a split "over-under" shot of birds on the surface and below it. Make sure the tank is watertight and keep a firm grip on both tank and camera. Credit: COOPH.
Easy Macro Lens Hack
A 50mm lens turned backwards and held in front of the camera with a cardboard tube and tape acts as a close-up lens. Reversing a lens is a well-known macro technique; proper reversing rings are cheap and safer. The example shows the detail of a human iris. Credit: COOPH.
You Only Need A Few Simple Items To Capture Highspeed Drops
Milk in a bowl, food colouring, a straw and an external flash triggered by the camera's own flash freeze a coloured drop as it splashes into a crown. The very short flash burst, not the shutter, freezes the motion. Credit: COOPH.
Create A Sparkling Ring Of Fire
Sparklers taped around a wire ring are lit and held around a model's face for a glowing frame of sparks. It looks spectacular but is a genuine fire risk: shoot outdoors, keep hair and clothing well away, and have water nearby. Credit: COOPH.
Add Steam With Regular Appliances
A clothes steamer held just out of frame behind a forkful of shrimp adds the wisps of steam that real food loses within seconds. Food photographers use similar tricks because a plate rarely looks hot by the time the shot is set up. Credit: nicolesyblog.
Use Plastic Props To Create 'Wildlife Photography' At Home
Photographer Satyajit Sardar places a toy frog and snake on a large leaf and shoots upward from underneath against the light. The result is a convincing silhouette of a snake hunting a frog. Credit: Satyajit Sardar.
Use A Hair Dryer To Get A Stand Out Selfie
A hair dryer aimed at the hair from the side adds movement and energy to a portrait, imitating a studio wind machine. Use the cool setting. Credit: Clicknetwork.
Protecting and steadying your gear
Blank CD Case Is The Perfect Rain Guard For Your Lens
The clear lid of a CD spindle, with a hole cut to fit the lens, is taped to the lens hood and then covered with a plastic bag. It keeps rain off the front element and the body. It is a stopgap, not a waterproof housing. Credit: techradar.com.
Use A Coffee Hood As Lens Cap
A cardboard coffee-cup sleeve slipped over the lens works as an improvised lens hood, blocking stray light that would otherwise wash out contrast. The before-and-after shots of a coffee maker show a slightly cleaner image. Credit: Peter McKinnon.
Reduce Camera Shake With A Bag Of Lentils
An old pair of jeans shorts sewn shut and filled with dried lentils becomes a beanbag support. Resting a long lens on it over a car window keeps the camera steady when a tripod will not fit. Credit: techradar.com.
Use A Towel As Video Slider
Placing the camera on a towel and gently pulling it across a smooth table produces a gliding shot, imitating a camera slider. Pull slowly and steadily for the smoothest result. Credit: Sheldon Evans.
Phone and editing tricks
Get That Perfect Top-Down Photo For Your Instagram
A phone fixed into a small cardboard holder and taped above the scene captures a straight overhead shot of a bed, a breakfast or a flat lay. Set a timer or use a remote, and check the tape before hanging anything over people. Credit: happygreylucky.
Remove Tourists From Your Pictures Using These Simple Steps
Take a series of photos from a tripod every ten to twenty seconds, then load them into Photoshop as a stack and use the "Median" stack mode. Because each spot is clear of people in most frames, moving visitors disappear and only the landscape remains. Credit: windsywinds, toomanyadapters.
How to get started without wasting time
Pick one effect at a time rather than trying ten tricks in an afternoon. If you want softer portraits, start with a reflector or window light; if you want dreamy images, try a sandwich bag or cloth filter. Change one thing, take a test shot and compare. You will learn more from three careful experiments than from a camera roll full of random attempts.
Three safety rules cover most of the risks in this list: keep tape, jelly and markers off the lens itself, keep plastic and fabric away from hot lights, and treat sparklers, water and steam with respect. Beyond that, these hacks are a reminder that good photography is mostly about seeing light, and that a bag of lentils can sometimes do the job of a tripod.
Sources: Christina Key: low-budget photo tips (cover); COOPH (YouTube); Sheldon Evans (YouTube); Taylor Mathis (Fstoppers); Brandon Woelfel; Wikipedia: Bokeh; Wikipedia: Macro photography (reversed lenses); Wikipedia: Soft focus; Satyajit Sardar (Bored Panda).
Explore a related story: Behind the Perfect Picture: Photographers' Awkward and Inventive Moments.
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