November 2011

If you have an unwanted silk scarf lying around, you can combine it with some key rings to turn …

Social Lights is a project by photographer Seymour Templar that's like a nighttime version of Joe Holmes' Texting series that we featured earlier this year. Templar documented social life in NYC by snapping portraits of people interacting with others through their cell phones. Each individual unwittingly helps out by lighting their own faces with their phone displays.

CNN created quite a stir yesterday after laying off a dozen photojournalists due to the rise of …

Want to made giant prints of your tiny phone photos? Instead of doing the enlargement purely with Photoshop, …

Nikon has announced the new SB-910, a top-of-the-line flash unit to succeed the …

Wondering whether or not the shutter speeds on your camera are accurate? Instead of taking it to …

Photographer James Loveday has a portrait project …

Roughly 50 staffers at CNN were given pink slips today, including nearly a …

What if all advertising photos came with a number that revealed the degree to which they were Photoshopped? We …

The first known light painting photographs were made way back in 1914, when Frank and Lillian Moller Gilbreth used small lights and long exposure photos to capture the motion of workers. Subjects ranged from handkerchief folders to bricklayers. The photos weren't meant as art, but were instead made to help develop ways to increase employee output and simplify job tasks.

Olympus has been in the photography game since introducing its first camera back in 1936, but its future as …

Always looking to upcycle her old things, entrepreneur Heidi Lehto came up with …

During a 2001 launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, NASA photographer Pat McCracken captured this amazing photograph of the …

With the introduction of iOS 5, Apple finally turned the iPhone’s volume up button into a shutter …

If you have a potato chip tube lying around, you can convert the tube into a super simple DIY snoot. All you need to do is cut an opening in the closed end that's the size of your flash head (tip: use some duct tape to prevent it from scratching your flash).

Here’s another beautiful example of why you don’t need to shell out $100,000 for a pro-grade high speed camera …

For a fine arts project at his university, art student Joel Brochu spent a whopping 8 months meticulously recreating a photograph using tiny nonpareils (the tiny sprinkles used on cakes and donuts). 221,184 individual sprinkles were placed on the 4-foot-wide board, which was covered with double-sided tape and a thin layer of glue. Each sprinkle was placed by hand using jewelry tweezers.

The Apple iCam is a concept camera by Italian designer Antonio DeRosa that imagines a future where cameras are modular and powered by smartphones. Smartphones have already invaded the compact camera market in recent years, but their small lenses and sensors keep them from being seen as suitable alternatives to more advanced cameras. The iCam camera changes that by adding a large sensor and interchangeable lens system to the mix. Simply attach your iPhone 5 to the case and you'll have yourself a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera with a huge LCD screen, fast processor, internet connectivity, and countless photo apps!

Shape is a series by French photographer Quentin Arnaud that consists of minimalistic portraits shot with low-key lighting. The stark lighting highlights the shape of the head but completely leaves the face void of any details, giving a creepy and ominous look to each of the photos.

“The Beauty of a Second” is a short film competition asking people to …

Check out this awesome picture frame: it’s an old french door that was cut in half, stripped, painted, distressed.

Wildlife photographer Markus Thompson was scuba diving in Deep Bay outside Vancouver recently …

This video shows a social experiment in which disposable cameras were left unattended in various public locations …

Did you know that Pablo Picasso was a light painter? His most famous light painting image shows …

Here’s a Photoshop tutorial by Twin Cities Photography Group teaching how you can …

In this short video, photographer Allen Mowery shows how you can create a …

Here’s an hour-long program from 1981 that featured Joel Meyerowitz and his street …

Canon's 50mm f/1.8 Mark II is a terrific lens for its price, but its build quality definitely leaves something to be desired. Do a quick search, and you'll find legions of broken-hearted Canonites who had their 'Nifty Fifty' split into two pieces after accidentally bumping or dropping it. Flickr user tastygiant is one such Canonite, but he subsequently discovered an awesome use for the broken lens:

Being a geek, I figured I could use the broken pieces in the future, so I shelved it and bought a new 50mm 1.8 Canon lens. One day, while taking shots around my apartment, I stumbled across the broken lens again and decided to reverse the "barrel assembly" onto the front of my intact 50mm. Everything was blurry of course, but I noticed if I got very close to an object the detail came into view. After adjusting the aperture to around f5.6, I had a clear image.
It's important to note that you should switch to Manual focusing and rotate the focusing ring to "infinity".

After seeing a video on YouTube of an Indonesian toddler who smokes 40 cigarettes a day, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens decided to respond to a general smoking ban introduced in her country recently with a series of photos showing children smoking.

Did you know that you can use Photoshop’s Match Color feature to turn old paintings into “filters” for your …

Here’s a geeky shirt that’s relevant to photography: today’s Woot shirt of the day is titled “ …

Here’s a helpful tutorial by Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens on …

Here’s an amazing time-lapse created using NASA’s Earth Observatory photographs of our planet.

Here’s some interesting color footage showing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1939.

Just launched this week, Lighting Diagram is another simple web-based tool …

Fujifilm officially unveiled the XS-1 today after details and photos of the camera first appeared last month. Unlike the X100 and X10, the XS-1 isn't a rangefinger-esque mirrorless camera but is instead a beastly bridge camera. The camera packs the same 12-megapixel 2/3-inch sensor as the X10, and features a 26x zoom lens that's the 35mm equivalent of a 24-624mm lens. As if that range wasn't enough, they also decided to include a macro mode that allows the camera to focus from just 1cm away.

For her 3rd year dissertation project Katy Beveridge set out to find a …

Want a super simple macro lens for your phone without shelling out big bucks? You can use 3D printing …

Here’s an amazing clip from the BBC series Frozen Planet. The film crew …

The George Eastman House in Rochester, NY is the world’s oldest museum dedicated …

You know you’re addicted to analog photography if your fridge has more film than food. Image credit: …

Jasna Hodzic, the photo editor of the student run newspaper at UC Davis, has been covering the Occupy UC Davis movement since its inception -- before the pepper spraying incident became international news.

Here’s a quick tip for if you ever have a hard time removing a lens filter from …

Picture Post is an interesting (and NASA-funded) citizen science project that turns photographers into citizen scientists, crowdsourcing the task of environmental monitoring. Anyone around the world can install a Picture Post:

A Picture Post is a 4”x4” post made of wood or recycled plastic with enough of the post buried in the ground so it extends below the frost line and stays secure throughout the year. Atop the post is a small octagonal-shaped platform or cap on which you can rest your camera to take a series of nine photographs.

People who walk by can then use the guide on the post to capture 9 photos in all directions, and upload them to the Picture Post website. The resulting panoramas can then be browsed by date, giving a cool look at how a particular location changes over time.

In the past week, two different lens dial camera cases have been announced for iPhoneographers: a Holga …

Last week we reported that starting with Adobe CS6, only people who own the previous major release …

Photographer Radu Dumitrescu was shooting in an abandoned house in Bucharest, Romania when …

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

We have a fun giveaway for y'all this week: three lucky winners will each receive 15 sheets StickyGram magnets made from Instagram photos. Each sheet contains 9 magnets and costs $15, so you'll be receiving 135 magnets worth $225!

Xerox is showing off a new tool called Aesthetic Image Search over on …

Fine art photographer Mitch Dobrowner wanted to photograph storm systems, so he partnered up with Roger Hill -- regarded as one of the top storm-chasers in the world -- and was introduced to Tornado Alley. Dobrowner writes,

Words are inadequate to describe the experience of photographing this immense power and beauty. And the most exciting part is with each trip I really don’t know what to expect. But now I see these storms as living, breathing things. They are born when the conditions are right, they gain strength as they grow, they fight against their environment to stay alive, they change form as they age… and eventually they die. They take on so many different aspects, personalities and faces; I'm in awe watching them. These storms are amazing sights to witness.... and I’m just happy to be there—shot or no shot; it's watching Mother Nature at her finest. My only hope my images can do justice to these amazing phenomenona of nature.

His images certainly do them justice -- the stormy landscape photographs Dobrowner has made through these trips are jaw-dropping.