Photographer Christopher Domakis has photographed both sides of the urban coin in China. Through two unrelated photo series, Hutong and Microcosm, he has managed to juxtapose the quiet closeness of the narrow Hutong alley neighborhoods of Beijing with the hustle and bustle of the rapidly growing urban developments in many of China's biggest cities.
If you've gone to a concert or public event or even certain art openings recently, you'll notice that something is amiss. In the past, people would look, enjoy and try their best to experience the moment when they attended such things. Now, many of them are doing their best to craft the most likeable smartphone photo.
The BBC's Newsnight is troubled by this trend, and so they set out to discover if the smartphone photography movement is doing more harm than good.
I’ve done it. I’ve switched over from a DSLR to a compact camera -- the Fujifilm X100. Well, technically, that’s not true since I didn’t really consider myself a DSLR user to begin with, but regardless of that, my main (and only) digital camera is now an X100. Here are my impressions after three weeks with the camera.
Photographer Rachel Elizabeth Seed never got to meet her mother. Also a photographer, her mother Sheila passed away when Seed was only 18 months old, and now she's on a quest to reconnect with her all these years later by creating the documentary film A Photographic Memory.
Shoot with Nikon DSLR gear and want to give your lens a paint job? Instead of doing it yourself---which, by the way, can produce some neat results---you can send your lens over to the Nikon Repair Center in Taiwan. In addition to fixing up damaged lenses--sometimes by boiling the parts in water---the center can also give your lens a sleek, white paint job.
Life magazine believed that pictures could change the world. And so, during the 40s, 50s and 60s, when the United States was at its most dynamic, Life provided the illustrations for the story of America.
Famed fashion photographer John Rankin Waddell and BBC Four went in search of the people who did this -- the photographers who led the charge and turned Life into a photojournalistic superpower. The documentary America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine (shown in its entirety above) is the result of that search.
AP Photographer David Guttenfelder is a conflict photographer. He's spent much of his photographic career capturing war through the lens of his camera. One thing he certainly never considered himself was a bird photographer.
But when he was sent on an assignment to illustrate a National Geographic piece on the illegal hunting of songbirds, he became one. And it slowly dawned on him that he wasn't just doing a documentary, environmental, or conservation piece -- this was simply another form of conflict photography.
Colonel George Everette "Bud" Day is a retired U.S. Air Force Command Pilot who served his country during the Vietnam war, enduring a stint as a POW and earning the Medal of Honor and the Air Force Cross.
When he was asked to be on the cover of Smithsonian's Air & Space magazine, it was portrait photographer Robert Seale who got the honor of photographing him, and for our sakes, he put together a behind-the-scenes video while he was at it.
Creating a 3D scan of an object can be done several different ways. We've seen everything from long distance laser cameras and hacked Kinects used to great effect. Computer engineer Giancarlo Todone's take on creating a 3D reconstruction takes another approach: using focus stacking.
Mirroring your time-lapse footage can yield a trippy, ethereal quality to an otherwise standard video. Riding on the Japanese monorail, for example, is nothing particularly special. Creating a hyperlapse of the experience, while cool, probably won't stand out.
A few users, however, have come up with some interesting takes on a monorail hyperlapse by mirroring the footage and taking you on a much stranger journey.
Most high-end cameras come with diopters that allow photographers to calibrate the viewfinder to match their eyesight. Adjusting the diopter is easy: simply stare through the camera while turning the little dial or knob found next to your viewfinder (the one with the +/-). Once the scene is sharp (assuming the lens is focused), you're done!
Apparently one of the dangers of diopter adjustment---for some camera owners at least---is accidentally stabbing your eyeball with your finger.
New York City offers a plethora of photographic opportunity. Massive architecture alongside a vibrant and diverse population makes for plenty of work for photographers of all types. But have you ever thought about the myriad signage and typography that New York has to offer?
Matthew Anderson and Daniel Hunninghake did, and so they created NYCType back in 2007 to highlight it. The site brings together photos of New York City's signage under once virtual roof.
On November 18, 1933, aviator Jimmie Angel became the first American to catch a glimpse of the tallest waterfall in the world -- a natural wonder that would eventually be named for him. Four years later, he returned to Venezuela and Angel Falls, crash landing on top of one of the flat-topped mountains in the area and having to hike 11 days with little food or water to the nearest village.
Photographer Philip Lee Harvey wanted to see these places for himself, and so he followed in Angel's footsteps, photographing the breathtaking sights along the way. The behind-the-scenes video above shows you how that adventure went down.
Latte art is something that's often the subject of photographs, but have you ever seen an latte artwork that is a photograph?
A coffee business over in Taiwan recently came up with the idea of providing a unique product to customers by having photographs of their faces printed directly onto the foam of the coffee they're ordering!
Fujifilm's upcoming "entry-level" X-M1 X Series mirrorless camera was outed today after photographs of the camera were leaked onto the Web. We now know what the camera will look like, but many of the camera's specs and features are still unknown. The size and weight of the camera haven't been revealed yet, but it's actually possible to determine the relative size of the camera to other X Series mirrorless cameras using just the leaked photos.
The use of social media has become vital for the news-reporting agencies and outlets of the world. Mix that in with the ubiquity of mobile phones, and it means there are cameras virtually everywhere, and organizations like the Associated Press know this.
When The Impossible Project announced its Impossible Instant Lab back in September 2012, it turned to Kickstarter to raise $250,000 to fund the project. After the Internet got wind of the smartphone-to-instant-photo printing device, the fundraising campaign blew past its goal and ended up with a total of $559,232 from 2,509 supporters.
Today the company announced that the Impossible Instant Lab will be hitting store shelves on August 29th, 2013 for a retail price of $299.
It all started with a photograph she took of her grandmother, Cecil Peterson, then 101 years of age. From that point, California-based Sally Peterson had transformed taking a picture of one centenarian into a full-fledged project after asking a nearby nursing home if there were any centenarians living there.
Why is it that some photographs go viral online while others are left by the digital wayside? Are there certain elements in photos that make them more "sharable" to Internet users?
Curalate, a company that creates social media analytics software, decided to tackle this question by analyzing the photographs published by brands to Pinterest.
Here's an example of photography being used to deliver a powerful message in a creative way: Singapore-based suicide prevention organization Samaritans of Singapore recently ran a series of ads recently that highlight the challenge of spotting depression.
Chances are that in your lifetime, you've seen the iconic "Tank Man" photograph. The year was 1989. A man standing alone before a line of tanks on Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square. It's a picture that's inspired people all over the world. It's also been heavily suppressed in the very country it was taken.
Jeff Widener is the man behind the photograph, which he says was a "lucky shot". What the world doesn't know, however, is that Widener is so much more than the photographer behind one iconic image. He's spent years in Asia chronicling the stories and struggles of people.
In October of 2012, LA-based photographer Sabine Pearlman found herself ensconced in a Swiss WWII bunker photographing 900 different "specimens" of cross sectioned ammunition. Her resulting photo series, AMMO, shows the beauty and craftsmanship that went into creating these destructive little pieces of engineering.
Hey, professional and aspiring photographers! Are you tired of responding to attractive assignment offers only to find later that compensation for the work consists only of "valuable exposure" for your work? And then you have to explain that you can't feed your family on exposure?
Well fret no more. with the new Exposure Helper™, you can feed your family on exposure, allowing you to accept all the free assignments you want!
Rumors emerged last month that Fujifilm would be announcing an entry-level X Series mirrorless camera this summer. Looks like those rumors were spot on.
Photographs of an upcoming Fujifilm X-M1 mirrorless camera leaked today, showing a sleek and minimalist camera that looks like a stripped down version of existing X Series cameras.
VICE Magazine has withdrawn from it Web site a photo series depicting famous female authors committing suicide, after the piece drew widespread criticism for being "breathtakingly tasteless."
Check out this colorful photo mosaic created by photographer Bela Borsodi for the cover of the album "Terrain" by VLP (you can find a larger version here). Would you believe us if we told you that it's actually a single photograph?
Well it is.
Instagram announced the ability to shoot video earlier today, but before they did, two friends embarked on a project to make the best video they could while adhering to Instagram's previous photo-only limitations. The result was a 1,600 photo stop motion video dubbed Instagrammimation that has gotten a lot of praise from viewers.
It's common knowledge that JPEG compression leads to a loss of data, but it's difficult to really visualize the extent of that loss in a photo. A keen eye will be able to tell a difference, but it's still hard to quantify it.
Tom Scott wanted to bring the reality home to those who don't already understand it. So he took the pitfalls of JPEG compression and transferred them from the world of photos, to the world of Shakespeare.
Younger photographers may not understand it, or even feel the same way, but for photographers of my generation, your studio was not just a place to take photographs -- it was a reflection of you. It told the world who you were. If you didn't have one, then you weren't really a photographer!
To imitate photographer Nick Albertson's work, you'll need a camera, household items purchased in bulk, and an eye for the beautiful and abstract. Take a look at Albertson's project titled "Work in Progress," and you'll find photographs of things such as rubber bands, straws, and napkins. They don't look like your everyday objects, though: Albertson turns them into works of art by carefully arranging them into repeating patterns.
Earlier this week, we reported on rumors that Facebook was planning to unveil Vine-like video for Instagram on June 20th. Well, if you take a quick look at your calendars, you'll see that the fateful day has arrived, and the expected announcement along with it: Instagram video is now a reality.
Samsung today officially announced its new Galaxy NX mirrorless camera, the Android-powered mirrorless camera that leaked onto the web one week ago. The Galaxy NX is the world's first interchangeable lens camera that features 3G and 4G wireless connectivity.
Call it female empowerment; call it friendship; call it bonding... Whatever you call it, the newest trend in boudoir photography involves “getting your boudoir on” with your friends. Yes, according to the Today Show, groups of women are now stripping down to next to nothing with their besties for professional group boudoir photos.
Some estimates suggest that there are somewhere in the vicinity of 208,300 photos uploaded to Facebook every day. Of those, exactly zero are uploaded as part of comment threads. Up until now, Facebook users fond of replying to their friends statuses with photos were forced to insert a link. The newest update out of the Facebook camp suggests that this will no longer be an issue.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how best to succeed as a professional photographer, now that "everybody is a photographer." A recent post here by Alex Ignacio emphasized how important it is to “specialize and focus” -- Ignacio believes that if we don’t, we’ll “perish”.
As someone who trains aspiring commercial photographers, I agree that some doors may shut if you don’t specialize, but many more will open if you’re versatile.
Photographer Paul Nelson spends the majority of his time shooting commercial work for big name clients like MAC Cosmetics or Target. But when the flow of work began to slow to a trickle over the past couple of years, he embarked on a personal project that he hoped would remind him why he loved photography.
Thus was born Aviary. Shot in partnership with Springbook Nature Center, the photo series captures beautiful studio-style portraits of birds taking flight as they're released back into the wild.
Remember that amazing 360-degree panorama captured from the top of the Burj Khalifa that we shared back in January? Photographer Gerald Donovan created that stitched panorama to show what Earth looks like from the world's tallest manmade point.
If you want to see what an actual "tiny world" photo looks like when captured from that same spot, look no further than the photograph above.
It truly is a cat and mouse game between software developers and software pirates. It's been that way for years. So when a company like Adobe decides to change up their entire business model to subscription-based to curb the piracy of their professional-grade product suite, you would expect it to take a fair amount of time before the pirates managed to find a workaround.
Perhaps not the case, at least according to a torrent link uploaded today to The Pirate Bay (one of the largest torrent-tracking sites on the Internet). Just one day following the official launch of Photoshop CC, the software has apparently been cracked and available for downloading illegally.
A young woman was fatally stabbed last night after photographing homeless men holding offensive signs while begging in Hollywood.
Up until now, the use of multibillion-dollar orbiting satellites has been extremely limited to space agencies and companies that, well, require satellites. But here's a radical idea that could change the future of man-made satellites as we know them.
It's a Kickstarter project called ARKYD, and it's intended to be the first publicly accessible space telescope ever.