Nothing is more frustrating to me when someone takes 15 minutes to explain something that could be done in 1 minute.

Recently, I was making some animated GIFs and looked up tutorials online that were very slow, the most-viewed one on YouTube takes over 6 minutes to explain!

So I decided to make one of my own and do it 3x faster than that one! Above is my tutorial on how to make an animated GIF in less than one and a half minutes.

I took the photos with my Canon 7D which can shoot 8 frames a second which is perfect for GIFs, but I use it to catch action shots normally. The other time I’ve used an animated GIF was for a wedding party jumping.

I’ve seen this effect used in some wedding photographer’s images with the heart shaped bokeh (blur) is in the background so I did a little investigating into how this effect is accomplished.

You can watch a video tutorial on how I did this above, or buy a premade kit by clicking HERE.

This little knife is key because the designs have to be very small and (can be) intricate:

Or you can buy a kit from B and H, click the photo above.

Here are the steps to take pictures like this:

1. Watch the video tutorial I made
2. Find a light source(s) that are bright and contrasty to what’s around it: christmas lights, candles, street lights, etc.
3. Put that thing you made on your fast lens and set it to the widest aperture you have (and aperture priority), my Canon 28mm goes to f/1.8
4. If you don’t have a really fast lens, try and get as far away from the light source(s) as possible
5. Experiment with distance to the camera and the focus distance you use on your lens to focus (the light source must be way out of focus)
6. Don’t get discouraged! My first photo, as you can see in my video, sucked, keep experimenting with it to get best results, if you’re still having trouble contact me

The limitation of taking pictures of things with this on your camera is that since your camera is set to it’s closest focus distance, your subjet will have to be very close to the camera, unless the light source is very far away (experiment!).

You can also take images of just these blurry background lights and composite them into other images using Photoshop:

1. Open the two images you want to combine, in this case, one will have just the custom bokeh shapes and the other is your main subject.
2. Put the bokeh layer on top.
3. Change it’s blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Screen’ (this is assuming you’re using a bokeh image with a black background like the ones I provide below – click them to enlarge, then right-click, choose “Save Image As…”)
4. Now all you should see are the custom bokeh shapes
5. Add a layer mask to the bokeh layer and use a black brush to paint away where the bokeh is covering your foreground subject (the other image you opened that is the layer below this one)

DOWNLOAD and try the above directions:

I entered in a contest at Tongal.com where you had to describe the loan process at Kiva.org. I’m proud to be apart of this contest because I really think Kiva.org is an incredible service.

Basically, you get to pick who you give a microfinance loan to, with the minimum you can give being $25. You don’t pick a group of people or an organization that will then give it out. You pick the exact person you want to loan to. If you want to loan to a woman in Africa that is trying to open a grocery store, you can do that. And it’s a loan, not a donation, you get repaid.

While there are risks the average repayment rate across all of Kiva is 98%. See here for the risks associated with lending and Kiva.

To see mine and other videos on the contest website go HERE.

There are two phases to this contest. 1) popularity: videos are ranked and given prizes according to how many times they are viewed (one view per IP address). 2) Judges pick several winners.

Both phases have cash prizes so please pass this blog post around so I can get more views. They announce the judges winners on the 22nd, but the viewing phase goes until Jan 31st.

I’m thinking of posting a tutorial on how I did the 2.5D image effect with the face fading in After Effects. If you’d be interested in seeing that tutorial, make a comment below and if there’s enough interested I’ll record a tutorial on face morphing and creating a 3D scene with photographs in After Effects.