If you ever find yourself on the cover of the local paper, you may want to stay away from the 'arms crossed' power pose. It may not seem that common, but a new Tumblr blog begs to differ, and it's doing a great job of it.
Visual Supply Co, the people behind the film emulation software VSCO Film and the $1 iOS app VSCO Cam, have taken to the interwebz to tease an upcoming version of the latter that has many smartphone photography junkies excited. The new VSCO Cam will come with an all new interface and, according to them, "represents major advancements in mobile photography image processing." Oh, and by the by, this one'll be free.
Canon recently announced an exciting firmware update for its professional grade cinema camera: the EOS-1D C. But even though the fact that the 1D C can now shoot 25fps 4K is exciting, it's not improvements or bug fixes that have people talking, it's the fact that Canon is requiring that you go to an authorized service center to get the new firmware installed.
The Tokyo Skytree is a massive broadcasting tower in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan that currently holds the title of world's tallest tower and second tallest structure. Measuring in at a completed height of 2,080 feet, the broadcasting tower -- which also doubles as a restaurant and observation tower -- gives visitors a stunning 360-degree view of Tokyo.
But it wasn't enough for the folks behind the project to let people come up, gawk and take their own pictures. They decided that a view like this had to be documented professionally, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week; which is why there are 12 Nikon D3S's equipped with Nikkor AF 35mm f/2D lenses arranged around the tower at all times, keeping tabs on the city below.
The Pantone Color Matching System is a standardized way for printers to make sure that they're all using the same color without having to constantly get in touch with one another. Each color is classified by name and number and given its own swatch for good measure.
In his new photo series The Pantone Project, photographer Paul Octavious is taking that system out of the world of swatches and into the world at large. His self-proclaimed mission is to "match all the Pantone colors to things I find in everyday life."
Hey, recently fired Chicago Sun-Times photographers -- want some insult to go with that injury?
Too bad, because newspaper management revealed today the paper's strategy for replacing the work of the 20 shooters about to hit the pavement: Reporters will squeeze off a few shots with their smartphone to accompany stories.
When it comes to data, redundancy is the best policy; backup, backup and backup again. This is doubly true where photos are involved, which is why professional photographers have gotten in the habit of keeping several external backups or using multiple cards for backup in DSLRs that support twin slots.
And now, Japanese company Amulet is hoping to add yet another layer of safety (and peace of mind) between you and the potential loss of your photos with its upcoming 'Wise CF Card Duo.'
Ben High of Marion, Iowa has two big passions: making jewelry and making photographs. When he's not designing jewelry at Philip's Diamond Shop, High loves tinkering with old cameras and shooting instant film photographs.
The two talents sometimes come together for some pretty fantastic results; a number of rings High has created are inspired by camera lenses.
Science nerds and photographers can join hands today and stare in awe at what a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory managed to do. Entirely by accident, these scientists have managed to take the first ever high-res images of carbon atoms in the process of forming chemical bonds.
In case you thought Instagram was just about faux-antiquing images, au contraire. They're not even a photography company, co-founder Kevin Systrom (shown above) clarified during a recent discussion at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club.
Traditionally, a photographer's post-processing workflow does not include a web browser, but rather, tools like Lightroom and Aperture. Pics.io is hoping to change that, and is working to bring serious RAW picture editing and collaborating to the web browser.
The start-up, founded by three Ukranian entrepreneurs, uses WebGL technology (which, in short, allows web browsers to harness the power of a computer's graphics card) to make the online tools they offer a reality. The mission? Get more people to dabble into RAW photography by offering easy access to editing tools.
The Chicago Sun-Times has raised quite a furor talking after unexpectedly laying off its entire photography staff yesterday. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, with some commentators calling it "a sign of the times," while others are wondering whether the newspaper is trying to pull "a union-busting move."
Los Angeles-based writer and comedian Jason Sereno decided to weigh in a different way: he created a tongue-in-cheek Craigslist job listing in Chicago.
Europe's largest annual photo expo, Focus on Imaging, has been terminated, according to organizer Mary Walker Exhibitions. Focus on Imaging's last show was in March of this year, following years of exhibitions.
"Do you like selling?"
I saw this question in a recent video for a Photo Cloud system and thought it was a brilliantly clever line. The company asking the question uses a communal Woodstock approach in the hopes of obtaining new clients. (And by Woodstock, I mean the 1969 Free Love Fest in Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, NY, filled with sex, drugs and rock and roll, not the little yellow best friend of Snoopy. Although that could probably work, too.)
For some filmmakers, the arrival of the Magic Lantern RAW video recording ability has become a godsend. With increased sharpness and a remarkable improvement in dynamic range, it's quickly become a much talked about topic.
But how does the RAW footage fare when it comes to bumping up ISO in those low-light situations?
The first fruits of Kodak's partnership with JK Imaging are starting to emerge. Chinese camera site DCFever has published some photographs of the Kodak S1, a new Micro Four Thirds camera that was announced at the beginning of the year.
There's something to be said about lens manufacturing. You could even go so far as to say it, in itself, is an art form, with the hands of skilled and methodical workers ever-so-delicately assembling the glass we use to take photos.
Speaking of lens manufacturing, Carl Zeiss Lenses has just posted an short, yet interesting, video behind the manufacturing process of their Touit lens line (for what it's worth, the video is also available in 3D, if you need an added dimension to your viewing experience). These lenses come as 12mm f/2.8 or 32mm f/1.8, and are available for both E-mount and X-mount cameras starting in June.
When Wellington, New Zealand-based photographer Brady Dyer proposed to his then-girlfriend Emma in …
Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a graphene image sensor one thousand times more sensitive to anything available on the market today. The sensor is capable of detecting broad spectrum light, making it a great solution for all types of cameras. Its uses could include traffic cameras, infrared cameras, and so forth.
It's no secret that wild animals can be immensely difficult to photograph. Now imagine taking photographers of large wild animals in a studio-like setting. It's just what photographer Joel Sartore has managed to capture in his work for The Photo Ark project. The project aims to document endangered species (with over 2650 photographed to date), in order to raise awareness of the fact these creatures may soon be gone.
The modern web was made for photographers; it's such a visual medium where beautiful images have an incredible impact. Text, or copy, is still important for SEO considerations and for those visitors that want to spend more time on your content. Video is fantastic, and many photographers have the capability to produce great videos with their current equipment.
But unlike still images, by its nature video demands time -- you need 30 seconds to watch a 30 second video versus a quick glance at a photo that usually communicates the entire message.
The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.
The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photography staff today (including Pulitzer Prize Winner John White) as a part of what is being described as a shift in consumption towards video content. I suppose there could be a kernel of truth in this statement, but it doesn’t really speak to the whole truth about how photojournalism has suffered because of the Internet.
When I first began looking at the new Sigma 35mm f/1.4, I made judgements about its quality. "It's plastic, yuck." "I bet that focus control feels like a rusty zipper." "The AF selector switch will tick me off." "It won't match the speed of my Nikon's and my focusing tendencies." My preconceived notions were that I was set for a so-so experience.
If you find that the flash on your mobile phone simply isn't cutting it anymore, take a look at The Kick Light? Described as "a super customizable light studio that fits in your pocket" the Kick Light is a panel of LED lights that can attach to your iPhone (or be used separately), and can apparently display any color in a brightness of a user's choice.
Jeff Lombardo is the personal photographer and videographer for Ne-Yo. Visit his website here, his Facebook page here, and his Instagram account here.
PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Jeff Lombardo: For the past 16 years I've been working as an independent contractor in the entertainment industry as a digital artist. During those 16 years I've worked at many of the top ad agencies, motion picture studios and television studios in Hollywood such as, NBC, Universal Studios, MGM, FOX, Disney, and Warner Brothers.
There has been no lack of controversy surrounding the announcement of Adobe's new Creative Cloud product line, and the California-based company is well aware. So much so, in fact, they've come out with an update to address some of the major concerns in moving from their traditional boxed-copy to subscription-based model.
When New York City-based photographer Jerrit Pruyn recently asked his girlfriend of 2 years to marry him, he did so in quite a photo-tastic way. Pruyn popped the question through the viewfinder of his old vintage SLR!
Here's an interesting photo trivia question: can you name any major world currencies that feature an image of a camera?
Answer: the old five hundred peso bill over in the Philippines. On the back of the original series is an image of a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera!
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune. Twenty full-time staffers received the grave news at a meeting on Thursday morning, leaving them jobless.
Moving forward, the newspaper will be strictly working with freelance photographers, a move that is expected to further cut down on costs in this already financially troubled industry.
How old were you when you first started working with Photoshop? 14-year-old Natick, Massachusetts-based photographer and retoucher Zev has been at it for 6 years now, which means he first picked up his camera and laid his mouse cursor on Photoshop's Toolbox when he was just eight years old!
Here's a fun wedding photo idea we've never seen before: dinosaur photobombing. Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based wedding photographer Quinn Miller created the photograph above this past weekend showing a hungry (and massive) T-Rex chasing after a bridal party that's running for its life.
If you're ever photographing a group of people on a dock or pier, be sure the structure can support the full weight of your subjects. The video above shows what happened to newlyweds Frank and Tricia Fearon and their 29-member wedding party a couple of weekends ago after they decided to pose on a dock for a photo.
In partnership with Historypin and the Central Park Conservancy, Google has decided to expand its Street View repertoire once again, this time letting out-of-towners experience three of The Big Apple's most historically significant locations: Central Park, The 9/11 Memorial and places affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Olympus is slated to begin developing and supplying Sony with lens parts and lens units in the near future as part of what has been called a "mutual parts supply". The news comes months following a formed alliance between the two companies in September 2012.
"The imaging sensor has already started to source from Sony to Olympus. And the lens [parts] and lens units will start to source from Olympus to Sony," said an Olympus Japan spokesperson in a recent statement.
Perhaps best described as mesmerizing, Turkish photographer and artist Erdal Inci has created an interesting set of animated loops in GIF form that has the web abuzz.
The effects, which are done by cloning sections of footage of a moving subject within a static setting, provide for hypnotic never-ending animations in rather banal locations.
We've featured the work of Eric Paré, Patrick Rochon and Timecode Lab before. Using a 24 DSLR fully circular bullet time rig developed by Rochon, Paré and Timecode put together some really cool light-painting projects. One of these was LightSpin: an art project that captured dancers using an awe-inspiring combination of light painting, bullet time and stop motion.
In the past we had only a few behind the scenes details to share with you. Fortunately, Paré recently decided to release the 8 minute "documentary" above in order to explain exactly what all goes into shooting his creations.
When Toronto-based photo enthusiast Alexander Kolomietz had a birthday party recently, he asked …
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years shooting personal projects as a way to get hired by the companies with whom I really want to work. When I began this process, my images were fairly tame. I assumed that mainstream and technically-correct images were better than free-form zaniness.
But then I started attending portfolio reviews, where I had the opportunity to sit down with industry buyers to find out what it is they really wanted to see. It was surprising to discover that my loopier ideas resonated more, even if they weren’t necessarily in the style of the company to whom I was pitching.
The Rogers Photo Archive is the largest privately held collection of still photos in the world. Having spent years on a buying-spree, offering cash and digitization services to once-dominant newspapers in exchange for their prints, the Rogers Photo Archive has amassed tens of millions of photographs, pulling in a healthy profit by putting a couple million of those images up for sale via various eBay stores.
Between a recent post here on PetaPixel about the Beauty of Space Photography, and my own experiments on blending series of images using averaging techniques, I noticed some rather interesting alignments in technique.