June 2012

The Image Language is a simple web app that lets you “write with images”. Feed it a chunk of …

In his series of overhead photographs title Car Poolers, Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena takes a different kind of look at the impact cultural issues like overgrowth are having on his beloved country. The series shows more and more workers who are catching rides into town in the backs of pickup trucks, and even though for them this is simply a means to save money, Cartagena sees them as "silent contributor[s] to the preservation of our city and planet."

Here’s a talk Photoshop guru Scott Kelby gave at the recent …

Hand-in-hand with the much-anticipated EOS Rebel T4i -- mentioned in the same press release in fact -- come two new lenses from Canon, both of which boast equally new "Stepping Motor" (STM) technology. The EF 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens in particular has been anticipated for some time because it marks Canon's first foray into pancake lenses. But the new STM technology found in both lenses, especially when paired with the T4i's Movie Servo AF, has everybody curious if not excited.

Every year I meet with lots of students, assistants, young photographers, and photography educators and discuss the business of photography. Over the years I have complied a list of the biggest mistakes that most young photographers make when trying to become full-time money-making commercial photographers. I want to share those with you in the hope that people stop making the same mistakes.

After weeks of speculation and a big picture and spec leak yesterday, the wait is finally over -- the Canon EOS Rebel T4i/650D has finally arrived. Since the T3i release last year wasn't anything to write home about, Canon have really tried to make the new rebel worth an upgrade, and they've done this mainly by introducing an upgraded AF system, capacitive touchscreen LCD and Movie Servo AF that works with the new STM lenses, which also debuted today.

While celebrating its second birthday yesterday, the extremely popular camera app Camera+ revealed that it has sold over 8 million copies since its inception. The question that followed this announcement, naturally, is why hasn't the app gone the way of Instagram and been bought out for massive amounts of money yet. After all, unlike Instagram, Camera+ is a paid app that has made a profit; wouldn't that make it even more appealing to the big guys? Well it has, but Camera+'s determination to remain "fiercely independent" has had the higher-ups shutting down even those companies with deep enough pockets to make a tempting offer.

Last month we shared a long exposure photograph by NASA astronaut Don Pettit that showed star trails and city trails in the same frame. Turns out the photo was just one of many long exposure images shot by Pettit so far during Expedition 31. The photograph above shows star trails, an aurora, and flashes of lightning splattered all across the surface of the Earth.

It seems like every few weeks another long-lost photo archive is discovered and digitized, and the newest of these archives is a set of one thousand historical images taken as part of a Farm Security Administration project in the early 20th century. The photos -- some of which were taken by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee -- were originally put together to combat poverty, but have instead become an important glimpse into what was then simply everyday American life.

For his project Flying Houses, photographer Laurent Chehere photographed various buildings and then Photoshopped them to transform them into surreal UP-style floating houses.

Light painting photography is going more and more mainstream. A light painting photography team from San Francisco …

Here’s a cool little trick courtesy of Justin Leyba from ImagineNow Entertainment. If …

Those of you lucky enough to already have Photoshop CS6 already know about all the popular, highly-advertised features like …

Here's an interesting project that photographer Gabriel Verdugo Soto put together this last weekend by slapping together an old polaroid lens/aperture mechanism and a micro four thirds camera. In order to keep the lens in focus, he measured the distance from the lens to the polaroid paper in the orignal camera and used macro tubes to ensure the same distance was maintained between the lens and the sensor. The whole thing was then attached to a 52mm ring, and held together using that white epoxy clay you see in the pictures.

Besides sharing some impressive specs at that Google Maps presentation we mentioned yesterday, Google also unveiled a new street view tool that should go a long way in further mapping out our world. The Street View Trekker, as they call it, is a backpack-mounted street view camera that allows the wearer to photograph and document places that can only be reached using the good ol' shoelace express. According to Engadget, the 40lbd Android powered backpack packs 15-megapixel cameras, an on-board hard drive, and enough battery to run for an entire day.

Alongside picture and spec leaks for Canon's soon-to-be-announced T4i, details on their up and coming 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens have also surfaced. Besides pictures and schematics, which you can see above and below, we now know that the new EF lens will also be an "STM" lens -- meaning it will be sporting a silent AF motor. Weighing in at only 130 grams and with a speculated price under $200, this has the potential to be come a portable amateur favorite pretty quick.

Here’s another behind the scenes video showing fashion street photographer Scott Schuman (AKA …

Just one short day away from the official release, massive leaks have sprung regarding Canon's new Rebel T4i. Courtesy of Canon Rumors, we now have a full list of specs for the T4i/650D. As previously rumored, the camera will indeed sport an 18-megapixel APS-C sensor, articulating touchscreen LCD, 9 cross-type AF points and a better "hybrid" AF system for live view and video recording. But the specs we hadn't yet heard of include: ~5fps continuous shooting, ISO 100-12,800 (expandable to 25,600), and the same viewfinder and metering system found in the previous Rebel T3i.

In many Asian cultures it's common for families to gather together for formal portraits on special occasions, but this tradition is becoming much harder to coordinate as more and more young people are moving abroad for work. Photographer John Clang has a new series of photographs that features an interesting solution to this problem: Skype webcam projections. Clang visited various individuals around the world and had them video chat with family members in Singapore. By projecting the feed onto a wall and having the entire family pose, Clang shot traditional-style family portraits with the subjects separated by thousands of miles.

Fresh off the press: Canon Price Watch just put up the first images …

Mike Warren has written up an in-depth tutorial on how you can build a 360° camera hat using 6-8 disposable cameras. The cameras are worn around the head like a crown, and are simultaneously trigger using a single shutter release with the help of servo motors that depress the shutter when triggered. Warren writes,

With the camera array sitting on your head, you're able to capture a 360° panorama view of your surroundings. This project requires no special electronics knowledge and can be assembled in about an hour.

I designed this camera array off something I saw on the "Radar Detector" music video by Darwin Deez. But, after making the camera hat, everyone kept asking if it was a low-fi version of Google Street View. It's more the former than the latter, but people can draw their own interpretations.

Earlier today Google gave a sort of “state of Google Maps” address to many of the biggest names in …

Peter West Carey of DPS has a neat trick for always having a …

Here's a neat idea for a photo shoot: tarp surfing. This involves faking the look of surfing photographs using a giant blue tarp and a skateboarder riding across it. Have someone pull the tarp over the skateboarder and photograph him riding through the tube.

Photographer Christian Lobo came up with this thrifty macro setup that uses his Canon Rebel T3/1100D and a 50mm f/1.8. It might look ghetto, but it actually functions pretty well for casual macro photography.

Sony's new Cybershot -- specs and pictures of which were leaked just a couple of days ago -- was just made official this morning, accompanied by quite a few nods of approval from tech and photo nerds everywhere. PC World are even calling it the "Best Pocket Camera of All Time," and they may not be far off. That's because the new Cybershot DSC-RX100 is a fixed lens point-and-shoot compact that packs a wallop.

There was a much-hyped transit of Venus yesterday in which Venus appeared as a small black circle moving across the face of the sun. This rare phenomenon occurs in pairs of eight years separated by more than a century: the previous transit was in 2004, but the next one won't occur until 2117. If you missed out, don't worry -- there's a boatload of beautiful photos and videos out there that can give you an even better view than what your eyes would have seen. The amazing high-definition video above was created using images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Due in large part to the massive accounting scandal that Olympus found itself in at the end …

Photographer Joseph O. Holmes spent four years between 2007 and 2011 documenting the place where a person's personal and professional lives meet: their desk. He traveled around to various companies and businesses making photographs of workspaces exactly as he found them.

After rolling out a similar mobile update a few weeks ago, Facebook is now bringing the “bigger …

If you’re looking for a thrifty way to have gigantic (monochrome) prints made of your photographs, look no further …

This video points to a pretty horrific, disturbing future if the scourge known as Vertical Video Syndrome — VVS …

In early May, Adobe had CS5 users in a tizzy when they announced …

Contrary to popular belief, Google can't be everywhere at once (they're working on it), and one of the most obvious examples of this limitation is the extent of Street View functionality in Google Maps. Of course, tons of roads and even some obscure neighborhoods have been mapped out with street view, but all too often your own front yard is left un-street-viewable. And while that may not be much of a tragedy for most people, those that would rather change that now have the option to with DIY Street View's new Street View Camera System.

If you didn’t quite get your Disney fix with the creative splash mountain video we featured earlier, …

You Are Not Banksy is a project by Los Angeles-based photographer Nick Stern in which he recreates popular Banksy graffiti artworks through photography.

One tip that instructors often pass onto the beginning photographers is to use their …

If you keep up with interesting photography projects you might have heard about the Disposable Memory Project -- a disposable camera endeavor in which people take a photo and the leave the camera sitting somewhere for someone else to pick up, the person who takes the last photo sends it in. Well, from the minds behind that comes another disposable camera project, this one with a bit of an age-y twist. Instead of sending out cameras and the leaving them lying around (only 30 of the 410 DMP cameras have returned so far) they're sending a camera to 100 people ages 1 to 100 and they're calling it The 100 Project.

A while back I was too cheap (lazy?) to get around to purchasing some speedlights and in typical DIY fashion for me, I figured I could replicate most results using nothing more than a flashlight. So one evening with my friend Sean and his wife, we decided to try out some long exposure light painting ideas.

A month ago, quite a bit of controversy was stirred up when Amateur Photographer pointed out some stringent and seemingly unenforceable restrictions included in the London 2012 Ticker Holder Agreement. Initially it seemed that attendees might have been prevented from posting images to social networks (an assumption which was later refuted). But even though attendees will be allowed to post images to Facebook to their heart's content, amateurs and non-media who wanted to get some commercial-grade pictures of the Olympic events are still out of luck.