Freelensing

If you like the look of photographs that use tilt-shift and macro lenses, but have no budget for expensive gear, here's a little trick you can try on your DSLR. It's called "freelensing", which sounds vaguely dirty and/or drug related, and does risk getting dust and moisture into your camera body so be careful!

Basically you detach your lens from the camera body and tilt/move it away. It gives you lots of control over how your shot is focused, but also brings into play uncontrollable factors like light leaks. It's a bit of fun anyway, here are a couple of shots I've been playing around with this afternoon....

Definitely need some more practice! There's a good visual tutorial and some explanations here on Luke Roberts' site. And you can see some examples of incredible shots people have created using this technique on Gizmodo, here.