Tube Frame Photography

During these tutorials you will learn how to take amazingly framed photographs using nothing more than a toilet roll tube and your mobile phone! These can then be edited using Photopea (free web based alternative to Photoshop).

This lesson is in three parts:

  • Part 1 - What is 'Tube Frame' Photography?

  • Part 2 - How to take a 'Tube Frame' photograph using only the objects you can find around your home.

  • Part 3 - How to edit your photographs using adjustment layers in Photopea.

WAGOLL:

Below are some of the tube frame photographs you will be able to create following these tutorials. Click on the 'student examples' link to see real student's creations.

Hoover pipe

Book rolled up

Kitchen roll tube

Toilet roll tube

Part 1: What is 'Tube frame' Photography?

Many of the best photograph have been taken by a photographer paying particular attention to how they will 'frame' the main point of focus. This can be achieved in a million different ways! Below are some examples of how the main subject of the photograph are being framed:

Images below are copyright free from pixabay.com

Baby framed by the heads of his parents.

Walking couple framed by the lamps.

Boy framed by both the light box, umbrella and wooden slatted walls.

'Tube Frame' photography takes this idea of 'framing' the subject to the absolute extreme. The idea is to use a tube of some sort to take your photograph through. Blocking out everything except for the main subject. This can be achieved quite easily using a toilet roll tube, kitchen roll tube, hoover pipe or even a rolled up book!

Part 2: How to take a 'Tube Frame' photograph

  1. Now you have more of an idea as to what 'Tube Frame' photography is and how it can be used you are now going to learn how to actually take the photograph. Watch the following YouTube video carefully to see how everyday tubes that you can find around your home can be used with your digital camera/smart phone: https://youtu.be/ZT90DzAQ5Xc

  2. Walk around your home and collect up as many different types of tubes that you can find. Different sizes and materials all give different effects.

  3. Find at least 5 different 'subjects' that you want to take a photograph of through the tubes. Experiment with the types of of tubes and take lots of shots. Try to focus on making sure you are in a well lit area AND you have made sure that the subject is in focus before taking the shot.

Part 3: How to edit your photographs using adjustment layers in Photopea

In part 2, you took a variety of photographs of tube frame photographs. In this lesson you will learn how to edit the photograph using a free online image editing software called Photopea.

  1. look through your photographs and choose a few that are the most in focus. Don't worry too much if it is slightly dark or if the angle of the shot isn't exactly perfect. We will fix that with editing in this lesson.

  2. Watch the following YouTube video in full. It will teach you a variety of ways that you can edit your photograph. You will learn how to use a variety of adjustment layers. https://youtu.be/m_95rmOtatM . If you are using a mobile phone, you can watch this Youtube video created for my abstract photograph tutorials that shows you how to use your Photopea on your mobile phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR6sDAjKpmE&t=3s

  3. You can access and edit your photographs using your phone, but it is slightly easier to do this using a laptop/desktop computer. One easy way of transferring your photographs is to email it to yourself from your phone as an attachment. Then log onto your email using your laptop/desktop computer and save the photograph to your device. Then go to https://www.photopea.com/ and follow my YouTube tutorial above.

Lesson Resources

Right click on the unedited images below to save them to your device. The images are the ones I used in my YouTube video above and you are free to use them to practice with. You can use these to practice your editing skills on or you could start with your own tube frame photographs to edit. It is entirely up to you. Remember to play around with the different adjustment layers; black and white, photo filter, vibrance etc. Remember also to crop the image to a more pleasant composition.