Ten years ago we ran an article extolling the virtues of soft focus lenses and explaining how to make a pretty sophisticated one yourself. And now, in the DIY video below, you’ll learn a less expensive method for making a basic version.

I’ve worked with all the popular film emulators and black-and-white conversion plug-ins, looking for the one that met my workflow and esthetic requirements. After countless hours, I’m still not fully convinced of their efficacy as such. Still, they are fun to use and do fill a niche. So far, I’ve found Alien Skin’s Exposure X2 does the most convincing job so that I feel comfortable enough within my own alien skin—see what I did there?—that I’ll continue to use it, so to speak.

Andrew Miller is an acclaimed adventure photographer who has traveled the world with his snowboard, looking for spectacular mountains to climb, photograph and descend on his board. The stunning images you see here are from his recent trip to Alaska.

For those of us who don’t have our own photo studios, tabletop photography often involves waiting for a bright overcast day and shooting outdoors with the sky as a giant softbox. While this approach works quite well, sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate.