May 2012

Use a Nail and Clothespin to Determine Placement When Hanging Photos

Michele over at The Scrap Shoppe offers this handy trick for hanging picture frames: hammer a nail through a clothespin and use it to determine nail placement. Simply hang the picture on the clothespin nail, figure out where you want to place the frame, and then push the clothespin into the wall to make a small indent. Voila! Target acquired.

Beautiful Photographs of Patterns Seen from a Helicopter

Aerial photographer Stephan Zirwes shoots amazing images of patterns and repetition seen in landscapes while looking straight down from a helicopter. From his perspective, things like cars, shipping containers, and people blend together into abstract designs.

The FlashPipe: A Lightweight, Easy-To-Use Flash Diffuser

Flash diffusers come in all shapes and sizes, from DIY Home Depot versions to more expensive professional grade equipment. None of these solutions seemed adequate for 30 year photography veteran Les Tirmenstein, however, and that's why he designed the FlashPipe.

How Playing Video Games Can Help You Become a Better Street Photographer

People ask me, “Jun Shen, how do you shoot so fast on the streets?!?” I’m like a ninja, whipping out my camera, shooting it, and putting it away so quickly that my subjects don’t know what hit them. They walk away whispering to themselves, “What was that? Did he take our photo?

It’s thanks to video games, folks. Read on to find out why.

How to Take Great Pictures in Space

It might not be very applicable to the vast majority of photographers, but NASA astronaut Captain Alan Pointdexter has written up a fascinating article over on Luminous Landscape in which he shares advice about doing photography in space. Taking photos on the ground is one thing, but imagine using not just the sun, but the earth itself as a source of light.

Adorable Mugshot Portraits of Children

To show off its collection of eyewear for kids, Very French Gangsters shot cute mugshot-style portraits of gangster children who were obviously booked for being too hip for their own good.

Creative 365-Day Self-Portrait Project by a 17-Year-Old Photographer

Last October, Portland-based 17-year-old photographer Brendon Burton began an ambitious project in which he committed to creating one self-portrait every day for a year. Now, half a year later, Burton is still going strong and his Flickr photostream is full of beautiful and creative images that document his development as a photographer.

Genie Offers Cheaper Motion-Controlled Time-Lapse Solution

Time-lapse in motion can be a bit of a nightmare. Not only do you need to have your intervalometer set properly to control when and how your camera takes pictures, you also have to have the camera on a dedicated track, hopefully moving at a consistent speed, and preferably without you being the one moving it.

In the past, people could either choose to go the manual route or buy very expensive equipment. Fortunately, makers of the Genie -- Ben Ryan and Chris Thomson -- decided to make the process easier and, if not cheap, at least cheaper.

Student Wins Copyright Skirmish Over Falling Bear Photo

In case you missed our earlier post, let's get you up to speed: in the internet age, the argument is that you don't own anything anymore. This is relevant because yet another copyright infringement lawsuit has made its way across our computer screens, this time between a student photographer and the Colorado University newspaper The CU Independent that printed and distributed his now famous falling bear image.

Olympus Goes Nuts, Possibly to Promote Its New Uber-Durable Camera

The world of photography is full of "nuts," but these are the first we've seen that you could actually crack open with a nutcracker. For its latest photography marketing stunt, Olympus has been sending out a box complete with two walnuts and a note that simply says "coming soon." TechRadar received one, and PhotographyBlog received another.

JPEGmini Now Available for Mac: Put Your iPhoto Library on a Diet

Back in August we featured a service called JPEGmini, which gives anybody the ability to shrink their photos up to 5-times in size without any visible quality difference -- a substantial claim, but one that the service seemed to live up to quite well (we use it regularly).

Legless Photographer Captures 33,000 Photos in 17 Different Countries

Words certainly won't do Kevin Michael Connolly justice. Born without legs, this part-photographer, part-professional skier, part-writer is, ironically enough, an inspiration to us all (we say ironically because in the Today Show interview above they talk about how much he hates to be called an inspiration).

BlackBerry 10 Camera Features “Timeline Lens” that Captures Moments You Miss

The new BlackBerry 10 operating system was unveiled BlackBerry World 2012 today, and one of the amazing new features that wowed the crowd was the camera app. It features a seemingly-magical "timeline" lens that lets you rewind sections of photographs in order to recover moments that your fingers weren't fast enough to capture. Did your subject blink in the photo? No worries... simply rewind their face and you're good to go! Basically, the camera is constantly capturing frames as soon as the app is loaded, so there's always a small buffer of previous moments stored for you to recover.

The All.Round Camera Concept: A Bendy Take on the DSLR

Concept products aren't a rarity. In the world of cars and computers concepts usually make us ooh and ahh at their beautiful styling and implied functionality, but in the world of cameras things can get a bit, strange. Such is the case with a new SLR concept by industrial designer Arti Patel called the All.Round SLR.

Photographer Captures His Daughter’s Journey from Birth to Womanhood

Ever since she entered the world 30 some-odd years ago, Alison has had her father Jack Radcliffe's camera pointed at her. Radcliffe, a Baltimore, MD-based photographer, started out by documenting her life casually as new parents commonly do, but slowly became more interested in the relationships involved in growing up.

Humans of New York: A Photographic Census of New York City

The United States is a diverse country, but there are few places in the US as diverse as New York City: "the greatest city on earth." In many ways The City's diversity makes it a street photographer's gold-mine, and it's this mine that photographer Brandon Stanton has been meticulously digging through over the last couple of years.

The 10 Most Popular “Photographers” on Instagram

We'll go ahead and start by saying that we're using the term "photographer" lightly; in reality we should probably say "users." But there's a certain irony to calling celebrity Instagramers "photographers" that we quite enjoy. Unlike Flickr where many of the best loved users are well known photogs showcasing their most recent work, Instagram's top users are made up entirely of celebrities.

Starry Night Photographs of Landscapes Covered in Lights

Korean photographer Lee Eunyeol creates beautiful nighttime scenes by installing lights in various landscapes. His artist statement reads,

Starry night expresses private spaces given by night and various emotions that are not able to be defined and described in the space. I’ve chosen analogue type for the expression which attempts to install electric bulbs in an objet to be expressed using back space of night by taking advantage of huge studio. There are two spaces in photographs. One is a space before electric bulbs of familiar landscape are installed and the other is a space after electric bulbs expressed by dispersing personal emotion are installed. Unified light from these two spaces generates a mysterious landscape.

In each of his photos, it almost looks as if the stars have fallen from the sky onto the ground.