In 2011, photographer Giles Duley stepped on a land mine while working in Afghanistan. Originally a celebrity portrait photographer who had been turned off to celebrity culture by the people he was photographing, he had always hoped to return to portraiture.
That's why, during his 46-day fight for his life in intensive care, it was to portraiture that his mind turned, and a project took shape.
It's not uncommon for photography companies to launch strange teaser campaigns that get folks wondering what the company has up its sleeve. In the past, we've seen everything from bags of walnuts to mysteriously worded ads. The latest from Sigma falls into the second category, and has the entire photographic community buzzing with speculation and excitement.
When the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on June 8th, 2011 it marked the end of NASA's Space Shuttle Program. The video above harkens back to that not-so-long-ago era of space shuttles, and gives us an incredible view of a shuttle launch the likes of which we've not had the opportunity to share before.
Sunday Night Football is about to get a lot more fun to watch. Not even two months after we shared the news that the folks over at NHK had put together a robotic bullet time rig that could shoot 360° slow-motion replays, NBC has announced its plan to bring matrix-style replays to the world of pro football.
Photo manipulation is nearly as old, if not as old, as photography itself. It has been used in state propaganda, to unify nations, for aesthetic and creative expression, to generate fear, and the list goes on and on.
As technology advances, altering photographic images has become quite easy. This begs the question: do the images we see convey accurate information?
Warning: This post contains strong images of soldiers who have been injured in battle.
Photographer David Jay has documented lots of conventional beauty in his work for major fashion houses and magazines. He’s also helped the world reconsider what “beauty” means with "The Scar Project", a groundbreaking portrait series that captured young breast cancer survivors going forward with their lives.
Now Jay is tackling perhaps an even greater challenge with "The Unknown Soldier,” a powerful new portrait project that captures the post-combat lives of young soldiers seriously injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We've seen some interesting gimmicky cameras come out of Japan in the past -- from Japanese anime special editions to a donut camera -- but this latest one might come in handy a bit more often. Dubbed the APOLLO2 and created by the company Thanko, it's a compact camera strapped to a whopping 30x telephoto lens.
Photography purists might want to look away on this one. The above video is a 9 minute time-lapse that speeds up 7+ hours worth of Photoshop CC work. That work was spent creating an intense composite that wound up consisting of 284 layers before it was all said and done.
The ability to use your smartphone as a remote for your DSLR can come in handy in a lot of situations. But if you don't have a DSLR with built-in wireless, or you want more control than the typical remote app will offer, the Weye Feye may be the solution for you.
In an attempt to explore "duplicity in two-dimensional surfaces," illustrator, designer and typographer Alex Trochut invented and patented a way to print two images on the same surface. His photography exhibit Binary Prints, puts the newly invented method to work, revealing a different portrait when viewed in the light or dark.
Glenn Naylor is a Park Ranger and photography enthusiast who lives and works in Alberta, CA. As a founding member of Bow Valley WildSmart, you can probably guess that he loves nature. And recently, his twin passions were able to come together to capture something pretty awesome.
An unnamed photographer and the editor of a French celebrity gossip magazine have been charged with privacy violations for publishing topless photos of new royal mom Kate Middleton (now Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge), and more charges are likely to follow.
Apple's Photo Stream can be a useful feature if you use multiple devices to do your photo bidding. Take a photo on your phone, and it shows up on your iPad and computer instantly -- not too shabby.
But Photo Stream has limitations, most notably the ability to sync only your most recent thousand photos. That's why Jan Senderek decided to go out and create the Mac and iOS application Loom: an 'infinite camera roll' in the cloud that allows you to share and sync photos across all your devices easily.
Back in 2009, award-winning editorial art director and artist Mark Michaelson released his book Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots. In it he had compiled more than 10,000 mug shot portraits taken between the 1870s and 1970s. Portraits of the "punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants" he referred to as the "Least Wanted."
For his portrait series Wanted, London-based photographer Nick Dolding decided to recreate some of the most striking of the mug shots found within Michaelson's book.
CyanogenMod, the popular Android firmware replacement installed on over 5.6 million devices, has announced a powerful new camera app to replace the stock camera app that ships with Android. It's called Focal, and is the first leg of a new development project called "Nemesis."
A French court has banned distribution of a photo book and fined the photographer, essentially for including a portrait the subject didn't like.
I got a chance to photograph for Warped Tour this year, and wanted to share about my experiences and takeaways with you. I was actually quite lucky to get the job. It started off with an email to the media director of Warped Tour, followed by having to fill out this media request form. From there, I just had to wait a few days for them to verify everything, check out my portfolio, and get a confirmation email literally 12 hours before the show started.
Ever wonder what resulting photos would look like if you developed film with various liquids found around the house? Photographer Matthew Cetta does too, and he's actually spent quite some time finding out. Cetta has been doing experiments through a project called "Photogenic Alchemy," creating toy camera photos with wild aesthetics by developing the films with all kinds of random things -- everything from lemon juice to Pepto Bismol.
The Cassini space probe is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement. It's been over 15 years since the probe was launched, an about 9 years since it reached Saturn. Since then, it's been snapping scores of images of just about everything it sees.
Vimeo user Fabio di Donato has uploaded a video titled "Around Saturn," which features more than 200,000 images snapped by Cassini from 2004 to 2012. These RAW images were converted to PNG and set to a Waltz.
If you're an active participant in the stock photography industry, you've likely heard of the big rumblings as of late. Earlier this month, bestselling microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs announced both a $1.2 million investment in Scoopshot (a crowdsourced photo app) and a new exclusivity agreement with Getty Images/iStockphoto.
If you dismissed the news the first time around, you might want to take a second look -- it may be bigger than you thought.
Disappointed in the power of your smartphone's built-in flash when shooting at night? The iblazr wants to help you. It's the world's first "fully synchronized" external flash unit for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
Want to see some beautiful street photographs that make use of light and shadows? Look no further than the project "Man on Earth" by London-based photographer Rupert Vandervell. Each image in the series shows a single person's figure framed by the shadows and features of a big city.
About a week ago, the first images of Hasselblad's upcoming compact camera, the Stellar, leaked onto the Internet amongst rumors that it would essentially be a Sony RX100 with some very exotic housing materials and a much steeper price tag. Basically, people were thinking the RX100 would be to the Stellar what the NEX-7 was to the Lunar.
Even though a common problem these days is taking pictures we never end up printing or looking at ever again, a lot of photographers (and non-photographers for that matter) still have boxes of old prints sitting around the house or attic collecting dust.
If you're wanting to put some of those old prints to use in a creative way and put a smile on a friend or family member's face at the same time, the creators of Stampede are here to help.
Certainly there's ample artistic precedent for including a dead animal or two in a still-life. Old Master paintings are rife with images of freshly killed ducks, bunnies and fish awaiting a trip to the dinner table.
Photographer (and certified taxidermist) Kimberly Witham slyly subverts that tradition with "Domestic Arrangements," a series of still-life photographs that combine modern kitchenware and other items of domestic life with birds, squirrels and other animals retrieved from the roadside. All items come from within a short radius around Witham's New Jersey home.
Earlier this month, we told you that Panasonic was planning to jump onto the retro-style bandwagon sometime in August with the release of its GX7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera.
At the time we only had a few illustrations and some preliminary specs, but now that we're about a month out from the announcement, some official photos and a more comprehensive spec list have both surfaced.
Pony Lott and Brett Seamans are a fashion and editorial photography duo currently stationed in New York City. Their edgy style captures the imagination with a vulgar elegance and hard sexual attitude. Often inspired by historical figures, classic art, and vintage cinema, they play on classical forms while adding their own lavish vision.
In the world of firefighting, a "hotshot" is a firefighter who specializes in containing forest fires before they reach inhabited areas. Gregg Boydston is one such "hotshot." Part of a 20-person crew that is available to travel all over the nation, he does one thing that most firefighters don't: he brings his iPhone along and uploads photos to Instagram.
You can spot-meter and bounce strobes all you want, but on-location portrait photography can still be a pain the butt. Unless you take your studio lighting rig with you.
Mark Kaplan has devised a novel way to do just that with the StrobePack, a professional-level lighting setup rigged to be worn on the photographer's back.
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner has been randomly selected and is announced below.
The dust is still settling from the DSLR giveaway we did last week, but we're giving away another juicy piece of gear this week. This time you can win your choice of a Canon 50mm f/1.4 or a Nikon 50mm f/1.4, worth $399 and $469 (respectively).
Having to ask someone to take your or your group's picture can be an awkward experience for everyone involved (including the photographer). And although there are apps that will re-insert the photographer digitally, an ingenious little addition to the tourist island of Enoshima takes a significantly more "analog" approach at fixing the problem.
If you follow the world of light-painting, you might recall photographer Patrick Rochon from the work he did with Red Bull Illume or his 24x360 collaboration with Eric Paré. His latest project is another solo act, this one a mix between light painting, dancing and martial arts.
In 2003, my first "Mastering Digital Printing" book came out. My goal was to create an in-depth reference to the new world of digital printing for photography and fine art. I had a sense that there was a need, especially by photographers, for good information about "this new way to print" images (digitally). I guess I was right because the book was an instant success; it was actually in the Top 5 on Amazon Books jockeying with John Grisham and Michael Crichton in sales ranks for a short while. It was the right book at the right time. And I went on to write a second edition and a couple of related books before moving on to other things, all relating to photography.
Firmware updates only become news in one of two situations: either they bring a feature so anticipated to the table that it garners headlines, or there's a problem. Unfortunately for Fuji's latest X-Pro1 firmware update, this time it's the latter.
Warning: This post contains somewhat inappropriate viral images of a well-known American talk show host. Reader discretion is advised. Also, please, please look the other way if you're only interested in reading serious articles.
To: Mr. Geraldo Rivera
From: Cheri Frost speaking on behalf of Everyone
Re: Bathroom Selfies
Want to shoot with the oldest looking lens on the block? Lomography today announced that it has brought an old school lens back from the dead. It's the Petzval lens, originally introduced by optic inventor Joseph Petzval back in 1840. Lomo has reinvented and reengineered the lens for modern day Canon and Nikon SLR cameras.
How do you take the next step after rising from humble newspaper shooter to chief official photographer for the White House? You start sharing pictures of your lunch, of course.
At least that's the strategy for Oval Office documentarian Pete Souza, who opened his new Instagram account Wednesday with an image of healthy snacks aboard Air Force One.
Chinese photographer Liu Bolin has made a name for himself by creating photos showing his body blended into various environments with the help of carefully applied paint. Italian artist Johannes Stötter has been creating similar works, except he's more focused on the painting than the photos.
Hey aspiring storm chasers -- want to dramatically improve your lightning shots? Try getting an elevated view. Like about 400 miles up. That's the approximate orbital height above Earth of the International Space Station, which is producing an impressive library of images showing what lightning looks like from way above.
3D modeling for movies and video games is often done using lasers. The modeler scans whatever it is they are trying to reconstruct using a laser and then ends up spending a good bit of time cleaning up the results in post. In contrast, a new method developed by the folks at Disney Zurich promises to generate much more accurate results by replacing the lasers with photos.