Articles from Wouter du Toit

Have you ever wondered why the back of your DSLR has a wide screen on it, or why your monitor at home has a landscape-orientated format? I always thought this was scientifically proven to be the best and most powerful way to watch motion on a screen, but this video shows us how wide screens became the standard.

If you want to have Flickr host more than 1,000 of your photos, you'll need to upgrade to a pro account. It's quite a change from the free TB they've been giving users and photographers since 2013. 

Have you ever wondered how photography, especially flash photography, came about and how it was first used as a means to further our understanding of the world in scientific studies? This video gives a short history of how flash came about and how grateful we can be for the persistence of Harold “Doc” Edgerton.

I love getting that blurred background where a bike or a person running past is in focus and you literally see the motion in a still image. Mango Street made a video to show how to do it with some great tips I had never even thought of. 

I like this time of year. I enjoy the smiles, the reds and green, and the lights. I live in Paris, and won't be traveling to South Africa this Christmas, so we'll spend the day with new friends here. What to give as a gift?

If we could slow light down and see what it does in those trillionths of a second, we could answer more questions with regards to our existence itself. What exactly happens with photosynthesis and how do lasers go through glass? This video shows the answers.

I received the new Moment 58 mm Tele lens a week ago to test, to test so I set up a home studio and got some shots. I also received some other Moment gear, which is also reviewed. 

I spent a Sunday in Paris with a friend, Jason Boone, who's made a video about Adobe Rush and what makes it such a good video editing tool. It has been presented as being easy, syncs over Adobe Creative Cloud and has a lot built in to make you a more productive editor. This video shows whether that's true. 

This video shares an overview of what you need to shoot when you are planning to shoot a travel video. If you're going to a new destination soon, these tips will surely come in handy once you get there. 

Sam Kolder is one of the prolific YouTube creators who has gained viewership because of his editing skills, the transitions he is able to make, and style of narration and cutting footage to fit the story. In this video, he tells a story about animal conservation, and for any photographer or video producer, it should be inspiring and motivation to use your skills to do good. 

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Hasselblad is how expensive the gear is, and secondly, the amazing quality of the images, and what you get with the medium format sensor regarding dynamic range and the great colors images taken with the cameras they contain. But when they partnered with DJI with the Mavic Pro 2, image quality seems to be a problem.

Premiere Pro 2019 is upon us and if you’re a video producer or looking into getting into video, there are some significant changes that that you’ll find speed up your workflow.

One of the best parts of owning a GoPro is the size and versatility. Now, they've added stabilization, and by the looks of it, you won't need a gimbal to shoot great footage. Casey Neistat goes mountain-biking to show us what's possible with the new GoPro Hero 7.

Moment is a company who makes lenses for iPhones. They recently introduced their Anamorphic lens, and started a festival where some videographers got the opportunity to shoot whatever they wanted to. JR Alli made Disconnected on his iPhone, and this video shows how he did it. 

Vimeo is trying to disrupt the video stock library market. And the contributors get to keep 60-70 percent of the revenue generated from their clips, which is nearly double the average industry cut of 35 percent. 

Mission Impossible III was recently launched, and what makes it a special movie to go watch is the fact that most of the stunts were done by Tom Cruise himself and that they were done in real time and space, on location, and without much CGI. His movies are revered as some of the best action movies, and it's because of this reason it's worth noticing that the real thing is often better than the simulation. 

Shooting video is a collaborative process. To get it ready for your client takes many steps depending on what type of video you are working on. Thanks to Frame.io the post production is as enjoyable as it was when you first picked up the camera to shoot.  

Sony has become one of the camera brands that have given the industry something new. Are they creating conflict in our industry, as well as in ourselves and our decision-making processes?

Bloomberg reports that Twitch is offering YouTube creators large sums of money to stream their videos on its platform instead. As a response, YouTube is offering to pay creators for not sharing their videos on other platforms.

Printing isn't something most of us do when we're first starting out, but as our careers develop it becomes more and more important to deliver the highest quality images to clients for them to print and use for advertising in magazines, posters, and maybe even billboards. But does size really matter?

Whether you use Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Resolve, video editing is most likely the most intensive use of your machine's graphics card, CPU, and RAM. This video gives a comparison between the machines when benchmarked and tested in various situations. 

In this tutorial video, Caleb Pike shows us how to make a double exposure video. It's as simple as it is to do it with digital photography, and it can be used for wedding videos, documentaries, road trip vlogs, or just for fun as a profile GIF. 

There are some ways to give your footage more life when shooting and editing vertical videos. Justin Odisho shows us how in this video, focussing on IGTV and Instagram Stories. 

Editing in Premiere Pro has become more and more intuitive over the last couple of years since the launch of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Justin Odisho takes us through his preferences and workflow setup, which is a great way to get started. 

The team producing tutorial videos at Shutterstock are well experienced in movie and ad production. In this video they run through how to shoot three different ads without a budget.

In this video, Brandon Li shows us how he gets the various shots he takes when documenting an area in a city as a travel photographer. He's in Seoul, Korea, and shoots the market.

Mark Wallace from Adorama has produced another great video regarding light in photography. The capture of light is the most important part of photography, and in essence, the light you use will define the look of the photo and define your photographic style. 

Adobe has realized the need to make video editing easier than it is with Premiere, After Effects, and the like. And they've now created Project Rush, a way to edit in the cloud using your desktop computer, phone, or tablet. 

We're sure to find videos on YouTube that will show you how to accomplish certain transitions or edit better, but what we rarely get, is the pre-production know-how, or the critical thinking about what you want to achieve when shooting a video. Chris Hau and JR Alli show us how they do it. 

The thrill of traveling to a new place and striking out to document it on our is the reason why many of us travel. But travel can include more than the rush of capturing images, it can have a payout. 

Natural light photography is sought-after in lifestyle, fashion, lingerie, and many other photography genres. Anita Sadowska takes us through how she uses natural light in her small apartment and what decisions you need to make when you plan on using natural light. 

It’s often thought that if you want to get into portraiture or fashion photography, you need to know models and get permission from their agencies to be part of your idea and shoot. In this video from Mango Street, they show how to shoot friends and how to get great shots doing so. 

The new RED Hydrogen One phone has some new and unique display features that got a lot of interest nine months ago. Now RED has taken their new mobile phone to the media to showcase what it can do. Although we aren't allowed to see the screen (it doesn't display well on videos) we can get an idea of what RED is envisioning for the future of capturing video. 

Do you know what the "c" is for in the name, c-stand? As a photographer or filmmaker who uses these daily, you should. This video gives information you must know about c-stands, how to use them on set, and what to do and what not to do when using them. 

Apple has released a few videos on YouTube for their French market. The editing and use of only black and white certainly gives a different feeling than what you do when you think of Paris, and that's because they're talking to their French market, and not the rest of the world.