August 2012

Taxi Snapshot is an App That Turns NYC Taxicabs into Social Photo Booths

Geotagging is one of the big trends in photography these days, as more and more cameras allow GPS coordinates to be baked into the EXIF data of photos to document where they were taken. iOS app developer Reddyset wants to join in on the location tagging fun, but from a very different angle: taxitagging.

They've released a fun new iOS app called Taxi Snapshot that allows people to snap and share anonymous photos based on New York City taxicabs rather than static locations.

Inspiring Photographer Talks @Google

On of the neat things about working at Google is the fact that the company loves letting its employees hear from the world's best minds through the AtGoogleTalks. Through the series of lectures, Google invites well-known individuals to share on their area of expertise for 40-70 minutes. In addition to the thousands of politicians, musicians, and entertainers who have shared so far, there have also been a number of photographers invited for Photographers@Google presentations.

The video above shows a lecture given by HDR landscape photographer Trey Ratcliff last year.

Photos of the Future May Be Stored on Strands of DNA

If you think modern day hard drives store a lot of data, get a load of this: researchers at Harvard have succeeded in storing roughly 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA. The strands of DNA are treated much like other storage devices, except instead of using electric charge or magnetism to store information, DNA's four bases (A,C,G,T) are used.

Normalize is an App for Those Who Can’t Stand Retro Photo Filters

Digital artist and programmer Joe Macirowski is one of the many people bemoaning the spread of Instagram-style filters to every nook and cranny of online photo sharing. Even though he enjoys Instagram itself, the fact that more and more people are using the filters to share their memories outside the app made Macirowski decide that something "had to be done." What he did was write Normalize, a new iOS app that is anti-Instagram... literally.

The app takes any photo treated with retro filters and attempts to revert it back to its pure, original state.

Words of Wisdom by Renowned Portrait Photographer Gregory Heisler

Legendary American portrait photographer Gregory Heisler was recently invited to give a talk to the American Society of Media Photographers in Oregon. Prior to the lecture, Stumptown Visuals caught up with him to ask him for some words of wisdom. What resulted was this 8-minute gem that contains a good deal of advice you can apply to your own portraiture.

Photographers Can Now Use the FBI Anti-Piracy Seal to Scare Away Thieves

You know that FBI anti-piracy seal that appears at the beginning of home movies? The one that's displayed alongside the messsage, "The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. 
Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain
is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment"? Well, you can now use it to remind would-be infringers that your photographs are copyrighted.

Prior to a new policy that was enacted this past week, only certain members of the entertainment and software industries were allow to display the warning. Now, all copyright holders in the US -- including photographers -- can make use of the Anti-Piracy Warning (APW) seal and message.

A 1958 Documentary About the Life and Work of Photographer Ansel Adams

If you have a free 20 minutes, here's a great 1958 documentary on the life and work of iconic landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Created while Adams was living at a house near the Golden Gate Bridge, the film provides a look into his home, interests, attitudes toward art, camera equipment, and photographic techniques.

More Magical Photographs of Henry the Flying Baby

We first shared photographer Rachel Hulin's The Flying Series back in February when it started getting quite a bit of attention online. The series consists of beautifully Photoshopped images of Hulin's baby boy Henry using his magical powers of flight. Since then, Hulin has added more surreal images to the set that capture Henry taking his skills to new locations and new heights.

Future Cameras May Have Lithium-Ion Batteries That Recharge in Minutes

What if the battery in your camera could be charged in the same amount of time it takes to microwave a cup of instant noodles? It sounds crazy, but that's what appears to be headed our way.

Researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have figured out a way to drastically cut down the time it takes to recharge a lithium-ion battery -- the same kind found in most digital cameras.

Zombie Photos No More: Facebook Now Actually Removing Deleted Images

Remember Facebook's "zombie photo" problem? Photos that users deleted on the website actually remained very much alive on Facebook's servers, available to anyone who held on to the images' URLs. Earlier this year Facebook acknowledged the issue and promised changes that would ensure permanent deletion within 45 days.

Now, it appears that Facebook has honored its word. The company tells Ars Technica that deleted photographs are now vaporized from the web within 30 days -- a claim that Ars has confirmed through tests.

Slick Quick Release Camera Mount for Your Bike Lets You Shoot as Your Ride

Love bikes as much as you love cameras? Cycling company Minoura has a beautiful accessory called the Quick Release Camera Mount. It's a simple product that turns your bike into a tripod biwheel without sacrificing any aesthetics. It holds your camera securely to your handlebar using a standard quarter-inch threaded bolt, and features a front-wheel-style quick release clamp that allows you to quickly mount and unmount it.

Camera Found at Bottom of Plunge Pool, Last Video Shows How It Got There

Waterproof digital cameras are a great way to document adventures in and around water, but one thing you should be wary about is the fact that cameras sink. Despite being waterproof, shockproof, and a variety of other -proofs, the cameras require a separate floater strap that keep them at the surface of the water if they ever get separated from your wrist.

The video above shows why this extra strap is a good idea. Uploaded by YouTube user BackyardJim, it's the last video on the memory card of a camera found at the bottom of a plunge pool.

Photobucket Unveils First Major Redesign in 10 Years in Order to Stay Hip

Photobucket is quietly one of the 800-pound gorillas of photo sharing. First launched back in 2003, the nearly-10-year-old service boasts a staggering 100 million users, putting it in second place behind the picture sharing juggernaut, Facebook. As the demise of MySpace showed, however, the mantra for online services needs to constantly be "innovate or die".

In an effort to stay hip in the crowded market of online photo sites, Photobucket has begun rolling out the first major redesign in its 10-year history.

Great Scott! Corneal Imaging is Actually a Real Thing!

Earlier today, we poked fun at a clip from the TV show CSI showing some pseudo-scientific photo enhancing. Many of the comments on YouTube also poked fun at the mention of "corneal imaging", in which the investigators used to obtain imagery from the reflections seen in an eyeball. Turns out corneal imaging is a real thing...

The Entire Alphabet Created with Long-Exposure Photos of Hand Waving

Shooting photos of the letters of the alphabet isn't anything new, but London-based photographer Amandine Alessandra's method of creating her letters is. Armed with only her arms and a camera, Alessandra shoots long exposure photographs of herself waving her hands in the shape of each letter. The project is titled Dance With Me.

Sony Rumored to be Working on a Full Frame Mirrorless NEX Camera

Mirrorless cameras are designed to offer DSLR-esque sensors inside smaller form-factor bodies, but so far the only company offering full frame mirrorless cameras has been Leica with its M line of rangefinders. That may soon change. sonyalpharumors is reporting with certainty that Sony is working on putting a full frame sensor in a NEX mirrorless camera.

Ridiculous Photo Enhancement Scene from the TV Show CSI

Magically enhancing photographs to solve crimes is a staple of crime and detective dramas. To ordinary folk who have never touched a program like Photoshop, the enhancement technology might sometimes seem believable -- after all, government technology is always decades ahead of civilian tech, right? However, to anyone who has any experience in photo editing, it's pretty obvious that certain things just aren't possible. Completely changing the camera angle in a photo, for example.

The short clip above is one ridiculous example of the "enhance!" cliché. It aired in an episode of CSI a few years back, and the YouTube uploader shared it with the title, "Why I Don't Watch CSI".

The Basics of Flash Photography Taught Using a Garden Hose

Photography instructor Mike Browne of PhotographyCourses.Biz has a clever way of teaching the basic principles of flash photography. He uses water from an ordinary garden hose as an analogy for light, showing different ways you can go about soaking your portrait subject.

“The War on Terrorism Has Somehow Morphed into an Assault on Photography”

The New York Times has published a great interview with Michael H. Osterreicher, the general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association and the editor of the organization's advocacy blog. In it, NYT Lens Blog co-editor James Estrin asks Osterreicher about photographers' rights and the trend of people being stopped while shooting public locations.

Hipstamatic Hands Pink Slip to All but 5 of Its Core Employees

Before Instagram, there was Hipstamatic. Hipstamatic was one of the pioneers and heavyweights in the retro filter photo app space, but when Instagram came along, the price advantage (free vs. $2), ease of use, filter selection, and built-in social network allowed Instagram to turn into the new 800 lb. gorilla of mobile photo sharing.

The story is strangely similar to the history of Myspace and Facebook, and yesterday the narrative became even more identical. On the same day that Instagram rolled out version 3.0 to its 80+ million members, Hipstamatic laid off all but 5 of its core staff.

Yahoo Reportedly Looking for a New Flickr Head via Acqui-Hire

Remember that new Flickr account we reported on yesterday that appeared to be owned by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer? Turns out it actually wasn't her, and was quickly taken down after becoming a big story in the blogosphere.

TechCrunch reports that Mayer actually does have a Flickr account -- one that's set to private.

The Three Winning Apps From This Year’s Photo Hack Day

Last month, nearly three hundred programmers descended on Dropbox's headquarters in San Francisco for the third annual Photo Hack Day. In the span of 24 hours, they threw together 70 new apps using the APIs of different photo services. $10,000 in prize money was distributed to the top three apps. Here's a look at the three best hacks that popped out of the competition.

Amazing Photos of Large-Scale Snow Art Created by One Man’s Feet

Artist Simon Beck needed a way to get exercise without aggravating his problematic feet, and discovered that walking around in the snow with rigid boots and snowshoes resulted in the least amount of pain. He then came up with the amazing idea of doing crop circle-style designs in large expanses of untracked snow.

Beck spends the good part of a day -- between five to nine hours -- plodding along according to a pre-planned design. Once each piece is finished, he photographs them from a higher vantage point to preserve them before sunlight, wind, or snow erases them from the face of the Earth. The art is so large that some of the pieces cover entire valleys.

Behind-the-Scenes Videos for Annie Leibovitz’s Disney Dream Portraits

Starting in 2007, Disney and portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz have collaborated on a series of advertisements called the Disney Dream Portrait Series. Each ad features a portrait of one or more celebrities dressed up as famous Disney movie characters. Along with the advertisements, Disney has also been releasing some behind-the-scenes glimpses showing how the photographs came together. The video above shows actress and model Olivia Wilde posing for Leibovitz as the Evil Queen from Snow White.

The Vital Link Between Emotions and Creativity in Photography

I love photography. I love the idea of capturing a moment in time, an event, an abstract scene or just a snippet of life that would otherwise go unrecorded, only to be forgotten over time. I have no formal training, no gallery exhibitions, no commissions and not even a particularly large following on Flickr or any other social media.

However, this does not deter me. Like the vast majority of other amateur photographers, my efforts will never be recognised, but that does not stop me from trying to improve my work, to add meaning to my pictures and to get that long awaited recognition.

35mm Russian Spy Camera Masquerades as a Harmless 8mm Video Camera

Soviet photo equipment collector Vladislav Kern recently purchased this crazy camera contraption. Upon first glance, it might look like a 8mm motion picture camera that an ordinary tourist might use, but take a closer look (or open it up) and you'll see that the design is simply a façade. The device is actually a still camera that exposes 35mm film using a smaller lens on the right side of the body!

Instagram 3.0 Focuses on Geotagging and Browsing Experience

Instagram has rolled out version 3.0 of its photo sharing app, which now boasts over 80 million users around the world. The new release focuses on improving the browsing experience for photos, with geotagging being one of the core ideas. There's a new Photo Maps view that's similar to what you can find on services like Flickr. The page overlays photos onto a map, allowing you to browse images based on where they were shot.

A Creative Photographer Promo in the Form of a Pop-Up Card

Remember Danny Cohen? He's the photographer who plastered a 43-foot banner onto a bridge in an effort to become David LaChapelle's photo assistant. He recently came up with another creative photographer promo, this time in the form of a pop-up card.

When opened, the card shows Cohen shooting a portrait of a polar bear-riding general in a makeshift studio in the arctic... That's pretty win, if you ask us.

Photographer Lisa Kristine Talks About Her Photos of Modern Day Slavery

San Francisco-based photographer Lisa Kristine has spent the past 28 years documenting indigenous cultures in 70 countries on 6 continents around the world. More recently, she has been working with the organization Free the Slaves, using her photography to document the monstrosity that is modern day slavery.

The video above is a powerfully moving talk Kristine recently gave at TEDxMaui about the subject and her photography that is meant to make a difference.

This Photo Won the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012

The photo above is the winning photograph in this year's National Geographic 2012 Traveler Photo Contest. It's a photo by Brooklyn-based photographer Cédric Houin titled "Butterfly", which shows a Kyrgyz mother and daughter using a sewing machine in their dwelling. His caption reads,

This image was shot in the Kyrgyz lands of the Wakhan Corridor. The intimacy of this everyday life moment, shot inside of a family yurt, is in total contrast with the harsh environment these nomadic tribes live in. On the right we notice a television and a sound console. These tribes live weeks away from any village by foot. In spite of being located at an altitude of 4,300 meters in one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan they are equipped with solar panels, satellite dishes and cellphones. Ancestral ways of living, with touches of modernity.

The image was submitted into the category Sense of Place (the other categories were: Travel Portraits, Outdoor Scenes, and Spontaneous Moments).

Beware Craigslist Scammers Hunting for Gullible Wedding Photographers

If you're a photographer looking for a gig on Craigslist, be careful. As with virtually all the types of "help wanted" listings found on the site, requests for photography services are often used by scammers as a way of luring the naive. Scammers also regularly send out emails to photographers advertising their services.

Build a DIY Bluetooth GPS Unit for Your Nikon DSLR

Israeli photographer Ido Nassimi wanted to geotag the photographs shot using his Nikon D90, but didn't want to shell out $200 bucks for Nikon's official GP-1 GPS receiver. Since he had a GPS Bluetooth receiver lying around, he decided to do some research and make it compatible with his DSLR. He ended up successfully building one for around $50.

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Now on Flickr, Reportedly Doubles Team

Update: The account has mysteriously vanished from Flickr. This suggests that it was either fake, or something that wasn't meant to be as big of a news story as it was.

If you're a fan of Flickr, then you'll be happy to know that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has apparently created an account on the photo sharing service. Granted, the page only features a single portrait of Mayer from her days as a Google exec, but it's an important first step. Neither of Mayer's two predecessors (Scott Thompson or Carol Bartz) bothered to join the service.

This is What You Get When You Stack Photos of a Meteor Shower

Capturing a single shooting star can make for a brilliant photograph, but what does it look like if you composite multiple meteors into a single image? Fort Collins, Colorado-based nature photographer David Kingham decided to find out recently during the ongoing Perseid meteor shower. The amazing photo seen above is what resulted.

Twitter Founders Launch Medium, a New Site that Democratizes Online Publishing

Obvious Corp, the company that spawned Twitter, has unveiled a new project called Medium. It's a site that attempts to revolutionize how online publishing is done.

Instead of content being centralized around individual people, it features photographs and text grouped into themed collections. Content within collections can be sorted by how "interesting" viewers rated it to be.

Spectacular Wedding Photo Showing the Milky Way Floating Overhead

Melbourne, Australia-based wedding photographer Lakshal Perera shot this stunning wedding photograph a few days ago showing the newlywed couple in the foreground and the Milky Way floating in the night sky. The scene was extremely dim, allowing for a clear view of the sky. Perera captured it in a single exposure using a Canon 5D Mark III and 16-35 f/2.8L lens at 17mm, 71 seconds of exposure, f/5.6, and ISO boosted up to 4000 (wow). The couple is relatively sharp given that they had to stand still for 71 seconds!

Getty Images Acquired for $3.3 Billion by Private Equity Firm

American private equity firm Carlyle Group announced today that it has agreed to drop $3.3 billion to acquire Getty Images from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. H&F purchased Getty Images just four years ago for $2.4 billion, so it seems that the stock photo company is doing decently well.