Whether you love taking pictures with a DSLR, your smartphone, or something in between, now's a great time to get that perfect shot. If you need accessories, some lighting, a studio, or other tools to help you get it, here are some great projects that take a little time, energy and some DIY spirit.

When I take a photo these days, I don’t think much about it. I know it will be automatically saved to the cloud; I know it will have a timestamp automatically saved with it. It’s not like the old days when the point of taking a photo was to get it printed and then slip the prints into sleeves in albums.

“Become a better photographer” has been on my New Year’s resolution list every year for probably a decade. I guess it’s more of a goal than a resolution. I have made strides toward that dream, but have never really started the year with a “plan” on how to make it happen. Now I have one.

There are various reasons you might want to record an Australian police officer. Maybe you've been detained by the law and want to prove what was said in court. Maybe you're a video blogger attempting to capture "life on the street". Or maybe you're bearing witness to some good ol' fashioned police brutality.

Whatever the reason, it's important to know your legal rights in these situations. Can a police officer legally stop you from filming? Let's find out.

A brand-new Instagram update has finally added a much-requested feature to the app: Users can upload a collage of multiple photos in a single Instagram story and use a new “Layout” mode to create more engaging story posts.

God I love content-aware fill. At Lifehacker I frequently want to illustrate a post with an image that’s not wide enough (like above). So I throw it into Photoshop, I expand the canvas size, I select the new blank parts on the sides, and I hit cmd+option+F.

Didn't you think Mark Zuckerberg is tall? According to a 2010 New Yorker profile, he's "only around five feet eight, but he seems taller, because he stands with his chest out and his back straight, as if held up by a string." Wired writer Graham Starr thinks Zuck seems tall for another reason: He stages his photos to exaggerate his height.

As smartphone cameras get more sophisticated, they make it easier for the average user to create effects that would normally require high-end equipment and technical skill to achieve. The Pixel 4's astrophotography mode, for instance, is capable of taking photos of the night sky with minimal effort, but it has also been used to create the iconic light-trail effect that defines nighttime city photography and the “light writing” trend.

If your iPhone’s burst mode automatically selects a blurry or overexposed image, don’t assume the rest of the photos in the burst must be worse. Instead, check the burst to see if you can find something better.

The Pixel 4 and 4 XL’s have some of the best camera hardware available on any smartphone, but “best” doesn’t necessarily mean “perfect.” As Android Police, Reddit posters, and Google support users have reported, the Pixel 4's white balance algorithm seems to cause a strange colour-correction error. A similar issue cropped up for Pixel 3 users in the past, but that was a much rarer bug and seemingly only affected photos taken in Night mode. The Pixel 4 white balance errors, on the other hand, happen when shooting in any of the Google camera app’s various camera modes, and even when using alternative apps.

When you're on holidays with your friends or family, the last thing you want to do is lug around a DSLR. But that doesn't mean you should be uploading pics directly from your smartphone either. This infographic provides a range of editing tips for travellers who really want to make their photos 'pop'.

For much of Generation Z, the trendy meme of the summer was the VSCO girl, an aesthetic consisting of scrunchies, pastel clothing, and Hydroflask water bottles. Whether you love her or hate her, there's not a lot of the internet that hasn't been touched by the VSCO girl this year.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the iPhone is its powerful camera. That's more true than ever with the recently announced iPhone 11 Pro, which features not just two, but three camera lenses. But for those of us still living with our older iPhones, there are camera settings that can help us take great shots, too.

One of the most useful is "HDR," or "High dynamic range." Enabling this setting can elevate an average photo to an extraordinary shot.

The U.S. Library of Congress has published over 11,000 high-resolution shots of U.S. roadside attractions, and released the images (to which it had purchased the rights) into the public domain. The photos were taken by architectural critic and photographer John Margolies, who spent forty years documenting his travels along U.S. highways, photographing billboards, drive-ins, diners, car washes, mini-golf, novelty buildings and other roadside constructions.

I have tried and failed to get into photography several times in my life. I like the idea of taking beautiful photos, but all the rules, settings and tricks seemed impenetrable. Within the last year, some of those basics finally clicked in my head, and I "got" it. Here's what did it for me, so you don't have to search for them yourself.

Smartphone cameras perform so much better than they used to, but they’re still a bit limited when it comes to nighttime photography. Whether you’re snapping photos in a bar or outside under the moonlight, your phone’s camera sensor is probably still too small to perform on par with a full-size camera.

We’re going old-school with this week’s Ask Lifehacker, where we solve your quirky technological issues. While plenty of people now use their smartphones as their default camera of choice, some still enjoy a trusty point-and-shoot. And the elite among you might even pull out something called film from time to time, or have found a potentially valuable roll of old film while cleaning out your (or your parents’) house.

The next time you attend a wedding, I want you to do something. I want you to get all dressed up, fix that hair just right, locate the seat with the best view and then watch the ceremony with love in your heart and your phone in your damn pocket.

So you sent nudes. We live in a digital age, and now more than ever, the nude pic has become something of a dating currency in itself.