July 2012

Portraits of Superheroes Living Ordinary Lives in Hong Kong

Superheroes usually do their world-saving work in big cities, but what if they lived lives that were as mundane as the civilians they're sworn to protect? Photographer Chow Kar Hoo has a creative series of photographs that show well known superheroes living rather ordinary lives in Hong Kong. Batman is seen strolling a night market, Wolverine is found making a living slicing up meat at a butcher shop, and Hellboy is spotted enjoying some late night hot pot.

Five Friends Take the Same Group Photo for 30 Years

Back in 1982, 19-year-old five buddies -- John Wardlaw, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney, John Molony, and John Dickson -- went on vacation to Copco Lake in California and snapped a group photo (seen above). Since then, they've embarked on the same vacation every 5 years, staying at the same cabin, sitting on the same bench, and snapping the same photo (with identical poses and all). They're 48-years-old now, and the tradition is still going strong.

Magic Lantern Releases v2.3, Says It’s No Longer a “Hack”

For those of you who have never heard of Magic Lantern (or know it only as a 17th century image projector) as far as Canon HDSLRs are concerned, Magic Lantern is a firmware add-on that first appeared in 2009 for the 5D Mark II. Since then it has been ported to most Canon HDSLRS and, for years, it has been known as a hack that brave and/or curious Canon owners have added to their cameras in order to squeeze out more functionality -- in some cases a lot more. The risk, of course, was always stability.

Bump’s Flock App Takes All the Hassle Out of Sharing Photos with Friends

If you browse the photos in your iPhone's camera roll, there's a good chance there are some in there that you forgot to upload, email, or otherwise share with your friends. Whenever you're out with a group and photos are being taken, the end of the night always consists of handing out e-mail addresses or promising to upload photos to Facebook, but sadly, more often than not, we forget. Enter Flock, a new "magic" photo sharing app from Bump Technologies.

Portraits of Expecting and Empty Nest Parents

Photographer Dona Schwartz, a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, has an interesting pair of photo projects titled "On the Nest" and "Empty Nesters". The first shows portraits of expecting parents as they prepare to welcome a new member of the family. The second features portraits of parents who are coping with an empty house after their children have grown up and moved out.

The AFP’s Nikon D4 Robotic Arm Rig for the London Olympics

Well, there's no question about it: photography is going to the robots -- or at the very least Olympic photography is. First we saw Getty Images and the robotic rigs it was working on (among other things), then there was the Associated Press and its robots, and now we have a making of video from AFP showing off the D4 wielding rigs its photogs will be using.

Google Dubs Project Glass Pre-Orderers “Explorers,” Promises Secret Updates

It looks like at least one group of people will be in-the-know regarding Google's Project Glass, a group that has been dubbed "Glass Explorers" by the company's co-founder Sergey Brin. The group is made up of all the pre-orderers from Google's I/O event earlier this year who shelled out $1,500 to make sure they get their hands on the first of the wearable camera/computers.

Fortunately for them, that $1,500 also bought them acces to exclusive product updates, invites to events, and access to Google+ hangouts -- a veritable secret club missing only the secret password for access to the secret treehouse clubhouse.

Photos of Flamingos as Numerous as the Sand on the Seashore

Lake Bogoria in Kenya is home to one of the world's largest populations of lesser flamingos. When conditions are right, the lake turns into an eye-dazzling spectacle, with over a million birds congregating to feed on the blue-green algae in the waters. Wildlife photographer Martin Harvey was able to witness, shoot, and film one such gathering, and calls it "truly one of the worlds greatest wildlife experiences left on earth."

RIM Bringing Built-In Photo Editing and Instagram-Like Filters to BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry doesn't get much attention from App developers these days, and as such many of the photo apps iOS and Android users take for granted are expected to be sadly absent when RIM's new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10, makes it onto phones. Still, the upcoming operating system has already made some waves using Scalado rewind technology, and according to CrackBerry, there's a lot more photo goodness on the way from RIM in the form of a full suite of editing options and Instagram-like filters.

A Photographer Shares His Experience Meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson

There are plenty of documentaries out there about famous photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson; in Bresson's case there's even an hour-long interview we've featured. But while documentaries and interviews are informative and educational, there's nothing like a first hand account from a photog who actually had the chance to meet the legend. This video takes you back to May 1975, when Romanian photographer Andrei Pandele was fortunate enough to be Henri Cartier-Bresson's tour guide through Bucharest.

X-Cap is an Auto-Closing Lens Cap for Mirrorless Cameras

Compact cameras feature lenses that automatically "cap" themselves when retracted and not in use. Interchangeable lenses, on the other hand, usually don't. The X-Cap changes that. It's a Taiwan-designed lens cap that snaps onto the front of certain lenses that feature a retracting front element (the Micro Four Thirds system has lenses like this). When the front element retracts, the cap automatically closes -- great for people who hate dealing with lens caps.

Why You Shouldn’t Leave Your DSLR Unattended on the Ocean Floor

Everyone knows you shouldn't leave DSLRs unattended in public places on land, but did you know that the same is true for when you're shooting on the ocean floor? In the video above, one unlucky diver leaves his DSLR rig sitting on the ocean floor while swimming with sharks, only to have a klepto tiger shark swipe it and swim away.

Cheap DIY Fluorescent Studio Lights for Beauty Photography

Who said that hi-end lighting equipment has to be expensive? And who says the only way to shoot with fluorescent light is to use the flicker-free Kino Flo lights that can cost you thousands of dollars?

I began using my fluorescent lighting technique nearly 10 years ago, long before Kino Flo’s and Peter Hurley became popular. I have been asked to describe it so many times that I decided it was time to put together a few tutorials to show how to build it and how to use it. In this article, I am going to deal with “how-to use” the fluorescent studio lights.

Photos of People in the Act of Running

Photographer Tabitha Soren started shooting a series of photographs titled Running after snapping a picture of her daughter running in front of the headlights of a car. She states,

I started thinking about panic, resilience, and the role of accident in life. Also, when people are running their bodies contort and we get to glimpse emotions that are normally kept hidden.

Stop Motion Uses 7,000 Sticky Notes to Bring Super Mario to Life

Surprisingly enough, this isn't the first time somebody has recreated Super Mario using sticky notes, nor is it the first time we've featured it, but given the improved production value and the fact that this one comes complete with a behind the scenes video... well... we couldn't help ourselves.

So up top you'll find a downright awesome recreation of Super Mario (and a few of his pixelated buddies) using 7,000 sticky notes. While down below you'll find a behind the scenes video showing how Mario went from piles of multi-colored Post-its to stop motion character.

The 7 Levels of Awareness in Becoming a Professional Photographer

I have been taking pictures for almost twenty years now and so much has changed over those years. Back in the beginning gas used to cost $1.00, Bill Clinton was president, and I was picking up a camera for the first time. I started out in high school playing with my father’s Nikon FM2 and taking pictures for the school newspaper. Today, I work with a medium format digital back shooting national ad campaigns, magazine articles, and catalogs. Some aspects of how I photograph have stayed unchanged, but a great deal has changed considerably.

New EF Lens Adapters Offer Electronic Control on MFT and NEX Bodies

If you own a Micro Four Thirds or Sony NEX camera and you've been dying to use your Canon glass on it, thus far your only options have been sadly manual in nature. Because the adapters on the market today don't make the electronic link between the camera and the lens, you're left focusing and (if you can at all) adjusting the aperture by hand. Fortunately, lens adapter company Kipon has a couple of solutions around the corner that it has decided to tease us with.

Replacing Guns with DSLRs in this Epic WWII Video

Here's a cool video from the mind of videographer Devin Graham where he takes the standard, dramatic WWII scene and replaces the guns with cameras. No worries, there are still plenty of explosions -- in fact Camera Warfare is downright epic at times -- but instead of SMGs and massive rockets you get SLRs and massive lenses.

40 Years of Landsat: Time-Lapse Videos Show Changes to Earth’s Face

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Landsat, the longest-running program focused on acquiring satellite photos of Earth. The Landsat satellite snaps one completely photo of the Earth's surface every 16 days, and the petabytes of photos collected over the years have given scientists a view into how our planet's surface has changed over time, whether by natural or human-caused means. Google is currently working to make the photos easily enjoyable by the general public by transforming them into time-lapse videos.

A Ceramic Pinhole Camera That Looks Like an Old School Diving Suit

Potter and pinhole camera enthusiast Steve Irvine created the awesome camera above using fired stoneware, glaze, copper, and found objects. The shape and pressure gauges make it look like an old school diving suit from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yes, the camera actually works: it uses a 4x5 sheet of photo paper as film.