How-To

Desperate housewives are never more desperate than the ones in David LaChapelle's photographs. The image at right, part of a recent fashion story shot for Italian Vogue, has all the essential LaChapellian motifs: sex, chaos, humor, and a healthy disrespect for visual logic. When he looks at a suburban street, he sees a surreal landscape in which the quaint lives of soccer moms can be disrupted by sudden disaster, from a violent storm (in this case a hurricane) to the violent sexual yearnings caused by the sighting of a rock star.

Mounting your camera on a tripod can be a great way to get sharper pictures. But what if your camera lacks a tripod socket? Fear not. This work-around will have you shooting sharp in no time. Beware: This works only on small, lightweight, inexpensive cameras that have relatively flat bases.
You will need: a 1 to 2-inch 1/4-20 bolt (i.e., a bolt that's 1/4-inch wide, with 20 threads per inch); two flat-sided 1/4-20 nuts; a toothpick; a sheet of disposable cardboard; and 5-minute dry, general-purpose epoxy. (Check the epoxy label to ensure it will adhere metal to metal.)

Click to download the May 2006 Digital Toolbox Podcast
Miss the test strips of your darkroom days? Sick of making piles of prints just to get the right skin tone or contrast? Use one of Adobe Photoshop's automated features to quickly create a layout that lets you test various changes, print them all on one page, pick your best, and then quickly apply your favorite fix to your final image.
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After

When New York photographer Kipp Wettstein couldn't find a camera suited to his needs - one that would provide large format resolution with the mobility of a 35mm - he decide to take matters into his own hands, literally.
Starting with solid blocks of aerospace-grade aluminum and a Schneider 72mm XL lens, Wettstein hand-machined a lightweight 4x5 view camera that allowed him to ditch the tripod and go mobile with fantastic detail and color fidelity.