Articles written by Wouter du Toit

I've been focussing on my video transitions lately. I've noticed the big guys like Peter Mckinnon and Casey Neistat use transitions to create interest and make the videos a pleasure to watch. Now I already shoot for the edit, but I've never really focused on what else I can do to give my videos more punch, until this video. Zach Ramelan shows how you can use audio swells to achieve it. TV Shows have been using it for years, and you don't really notice it until you're told what it is.

Have you ever been so immersed in your shoot, directing, getting the model to do what you intended and more, and forgetting about time and matter and anything other than what you are doing right now? If not, this video will tell you more about flow and give you some indication of how you can achieve it. Evan Puschak, who is the guy behind The Nerdwriter Youtube channel, really get’s into how you too can benefit from it, create great work and get over a creative block should you ever be experiencing one.

There's a trend with our social networks these days. All the networks and apps call it "stories." It's on Facebook now, just like it is on Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Snapchat. It's a way of showing others your day, or, documenting it with video and photos and making it a story. This media that has been added to our daily feeds of consumption is obviously difficult for people who haven't learnt to filter out information that they don't need. I follow over 400 people on Instagram, so if each one has a story for me to watch my day will be filled up watching stories which is a lot of time to spend on things that might not have a positive effect on our daily productivity or work.

When flying from a distance, DJI's Goggles stream the drone's capture at 720dpi, and when you're closer, you can get up to 1080dpi with DJI's new OcuSync Wireless Technology. It's a different take on what goggles can be. It boasts two screens, one for each eye, each with a higher resolution (1280 x 1440) than the Oculus Rift (1080 x 1200), but what is most impressive is how it can be controlled by the tilting of your head with Head Tracking.

If you want to be a photographer or filmmaker you need to know your art form's history, and how it came about. You need to know what has been done in the past that gives you the opportunity to hold these devices our hands today. What makes it so incredibly special is that within just over a hundred years we have seen the invention of the first motion picture camera and the progression in technology to what we have today. This video is a quick summary of how the technology came about. Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson developed the way to display still images consecutively, creating the illusion of motion, a technology still used today.

Most of us use Instagram to display our work. It has a great social aspect to it where people can follow your growth and see what you provide as a style. It's where clients go to see if you have what they want with regards to their brand image or way of portraying themselves. It plays an important role in a photographer's working life. As a social platform, they have copied from Snapchat with their stories and now they've copied Pinterest too. Although I don't like copying, let's see what it will offer.

The video has some great points with practical tips on how to get your creative juices flowing and basically setting yourself up with some barriers to challenge yourself and making the best of the situation. Peter McKinnon goes through a list of things he does to challenge himself to keep being creative and to get out of the comfort zone and push your creative being to another level.

You can have your images judged by AI. Just don't blame me if you don't score as high as you thought you would. These developments are supposed to help people decide what images work best for the message you are trying to convey, so it's good to know it's there and to try it out. It's in the beta phase now, and the website is similar to that of EyeEm, the stock image library built in Berlin, where the images are analyzed and tagged automatically depending what is featured in the photograph.

This video describes the relevance and importance of black n white films. And all the points can be said for black and white photography. We mostly shoot in color, because we can. Our cameras give a very sharp photograph and the raw file gives us the ability to change it to make sure everything is evenly exposed. But when we think about the images that we hold dear, it's often printed photos of our parents, grandparents and family members.