February 2012

Michael Zhang

Scalado Remove Helps You Un-bomb Your Photobombed Photos

Last year imaging company Scalado showed off an app called Rewind that lets you create perfect group shots by picking out the best faces from a burst of shots and then combining them into a single image. Now the company is back with another futuristic photo app: it's called Remove, and lets you create images of scenes without the clutter of things passing through (e.g. people, cars, bikes). It works like this: simply snap a photograph, and the app will outline everything that's moving in the scene with a yellow line. Tap that person or object, and it magically disappears from the scene!

Michael Zhang

Turn a Used Candy Box Into a Mirrored Pop-Up Flash Bounce Reflector

Want to improve the quality of the photos captured using your DSLR's popup flash? Tina (AKA synthetic_meat) discovered that the cardboard box that came with a particular brand of chocolate had a nice silver lining on the inside -- perfect for making a mirrored bounce reflector! After some cutting, scoring, and folding, she came up with a DIY Lightscoop clone that lets you bounce your onboard flash off the ceiling or wall for softer and more appealing images. You can download the free template to make your own in both A4 and Letter formats.

Michael Zhang

Beware: Light Painting with Steel Wool Can Be Hazardous to Your Lens’ Health

The beautiful light painting photo you see here was created using steel wool (here's a tutorial on the technique). Basically, you fix some steel wool on the end of a rope, set it on fire by rubbing a 9V battery against it, and then swing it around to fling sparks all over the place. While it's becoming a pretty common photo project, it can also be hazardous to your lens' -- and your body's -- health. Jon Beard, the photographer behind this photo, learned the hard way. See that thick yellow line in the upper right hand corner? That's one of the bits of burning metal striking his $2,000 Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G lens.

Michael Zhang

Meme: What Photographers Actually Do

Photo meme alert: here's a series of humorous images that have been spreading across the Internet like wildfire. They show the differences between what various groups of people think about what photographers do.

Michael Zhang

Epic Action Photos of Porcelain Figurines Shattering Against the Ground

For his project titled "Porcelain Figurines", photographer Martin Klimas dropped various porcelain figurines onto the ground from a height of 3 meters and set up a camera to capture photos triggered by the sound of the crash. The result are razor-sharp images of exploding figurines frozen in time -- "temporary sculptures made visible to the human eye by high-speed photography".

Michael Zhang

Wearable Landscape Photographs as Summer Fashion

It's not uncommon to see photographs printed onto clothing, but Milan-based Marios' new Nowhere summer collection takes it to a whole new level. Many of the pieces in the collection feature landscape photographs printed across the entire garment.

Michael Zhang

How NASA Creates Those Beautiful Blue Marble Photos of Earth

After NASA published its latest jaw-dropping "Blue Marble" photograph of Earth last month, many of you wondered how "real" the image was. Here's NASA's explanation on how their images are created:

The Suomi NPP satellite is in a polar orbit around Earth at an altitude of 512 miles (about 824 kilometers), but the perspective of the new Eastern hemisphere 'Blue Marble' is from 7,918 miles (about 12,743 kilometers). NASA scientist Norman Kuring managed to 'step back' from Earth to get the big picture by combining data from six different orbits of the Suomi NPP satellite. Or putting it a different way, the satellite flew above this area of Earth six times over an eight hour time period. Norman took those six sets of data and combined them into one image.

So rather than being a composite of multiple images captured from the same perspective, they do in fact map images captured by the satellite onto a 3D sphere.

Michael Zhang

Turn a Polaroid Picture into a DIY Scratch-Off Card

Here's a sweet DIY project idea by Brittany Morin that's perfect for that special day that's right around the corner: scratch-off cards made from Polaroid pictures! Basically all you need is some acrylic paint and some dish soap. Mix the two together with a ratio of one part soap for every two parts paint and you'll have yourself some scratch-able paint!

Michael Zhang

Abstract Photos of Faces That Resemble Exploding Fireworks

Photographer and makeup artist Nadia Wicker has a beautiful series of abstract photographs titled Ursides in which she captures self-portraits in which her face looks like exploding fireworks. While her method is secret, Wicker says that she uses her experience with makeup -- rather than Photoshop -- to create the photos.

Michael Zhang

Long Exposure Photos That Capture the Hustle and Bustle of Big Cities

Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.

Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians, who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. Despite the megacity and its mega-commotion, their environment still maintains a human dimension. I present this by photographing busy locations from above. Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image literally focuses on the small story in question. Every megacity is a theatre and every city has a different stage and different actors, but in the end every single one of them is trying to make its way in today’s modern society. [#]

The project was awarded 1st prize in the 2011 World Press Photo competition in the category "Daily Life".

Michael Zhang

Olympus Officially Announces the Retro-styled OM-D E-M5

Today Olympus finally announced its OM-series Micro Four Thirds camera, the OM-D E-M5. In chrome and without a battery grip, the camera actually looks a lot better than the leaked images we saw a couple days ago. Styled like an old school SLR, the E-M5 is a 16-megapixel camera with blazing 9fps continuous shooting, RAW capabilities, weatherproofing, 1080i video recording, the "world's fastest autofocus" on any camera, 5-axis image stabilization, a 3-inch tilting LCD screen, an ISO range of 100-25,600, and a 1.44m dot electronic viewfinder. It'll be available starting in April -- though it's already available for preorder on Amazon -- at a price of $1,000 for the body only, $1100 when bundled with a 14-42mm lens, or $1300 when bundled with a 12-50mm lens.

Michael Zhang

Photographer Captures Photos Showing the Underside of Giant Waves

You've likely seen plenty of images of giant waves from above the surface of the water, but have you ever seen what it's like to pass under a wave? Photographer Mark Tipple has an amazing project called "The Underwater Project" in which he captures epic photographs of swimmers diving deep in order to survive passing waves, which look like ominous storm clouds rolling overhead.