After watching the movie "The Last Samurai" at a theater back home in Southern California (where I'm originally from), my curiosity for Japan inspired me to go and discover what it's like. I took a couple of vacation trips out there and met a lot of good people before I found a job that sponsored my working visa to officially let me move out to Japan in 2005.
What if girls were Internet browsers? That's the question that fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta had been dying to answer for a long time before she finally got her chance in Fashion Affair Magazine.
The resulting photographs try to capture the essence of each of the five major Internet browsers -- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari -- in a high-fashion sort of way.
One year ago, in August of 2012, New York Times photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested for allegedly using his camera flash to interfere with police during an arrest. However, after taking a look at the evidence, it's the police officer who is in hot water and may face up to 7 years in prison after being indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors.
No, you didn't read the title wrong. Although it might seem like a bit of a strange concept, there is such a thing as an "underwater river," and Russian underwater photographer Anatoly Beloshchin actually got a chance to photograph this amazing phenomenon.
After weeks of speculation and leaks, Sony has seen fit to officially announce both its Alpha 3000 DSLR-style E-Mount camera as well as the rumored NEX-5T and three new E-Mount lenses. For details on the first of those, click here. As for the NEX-5T and the new lenses, it looks like the rumors were spot on.
In addition to a few rumored specs that have been thrown around, we've actually seen pictures of the new Sony Alpha 3000 camera taken both in the studio and out in the real world. But tonight the rumored camera became an official announcement when Sony unveiled the DSLR-style E-Mount camera to the world.
New York City-based photographer Supranav Dash is interested in India's occupations -- not the rich and glamorous ones, but the ones held by those who are lower in the society's Caste System.
For nearly 200 years, certain groups of people were not allowed to deviate far from their family's prescribed occupations. However, in recent years things have started changing. Many of the common age-old tradesmen jobs are rapidly disappearing, and Dash is using his photography to document them before they vanish completely.
Facebook today announced a new shared photo albums feature that allows multiple users to contribute photographs to a single album. This makes it easy to aggregate memories from events that were captured by different photographers. It also likely dampens the prospects of the countless collaborative album startups that are vying for a piece of the photo sharing pie.
People often comment on how similar sons look to their fathers, but how similar are they, really? Photographer Craig Gibson decided to find out, and created a photo project called "Boys and Their Fathers."
Are ordinary macro lens attachments for your smartphone not enough for you? Want to zoom in closer? 22-year-old mechanical engineer Thomas Larson has just the lens for you. It's called the Micro Phone Lens, and is a tiny little attachment that instantly lets you focus on and capture very small subjects.
Need to send someone some RAW photographs but hate the fact that they weigh tens of megabytes each? You can actually resize the files to smaller sizes quite easily in Lightroom, making sending small copies back and forth a snap.
Last year, Berlin-based photographer Jen Osborne got a chance to photograph some therapy animals who were brought in to help cheer up the patients at the Bellingham Health and Rehabilitation Center in Washington.
That in and of itself would be pretty cool, but what made this assignment all the more interesting was the animals she was asked to photograph: two therapy Llamas that go by the names of Marisco and N.H. Flight of the Eagle.
As Canon has begun focusing more adamantly on making its DSLRs capable video capture machines, the company has had to adjust its glass to match. The new Dual Pixel AF on the 70D is a great improvement (check out these videos if you doubt that) but if you're planning on shooting video using the autofocus, you'll probably get to the point where you have to choose between buying a USM lens and an STM lens.
When that time comes, the video above by YouTube user marconilanna should make that choice a little easier by showing you the differences -- in both noise and speed -- between one of Canon's STM lenses and a few older USMs.
On July 19th, the Cassini spacecraft that has been hovering around Saturn -- and sending back some stunning images we might add -- turned around to take a picture of its home planet as part of a larger mosaic of the Saturn system.
In honor of this occasion, NASA asked people to send in photos of them waving at Cassini as it took their picture from roughly 808 Million miles away (give or take). Over 1,400 photos were submitted, and have been combined into a beautiful collage of Earth.
Taiwanese company Ystudio is in the business of keeping the craftsmanship behind old, often discarded products alive. And in the case of the lamps and light fixtures you see here, that meant breathing new life into old film cameras and strobes.
Yahoo! certainly doesn't shy away from acquiring companies it believes will help its cause. In some cases those acquisitions turn into long-term investments ala Flickr, in others the acquired company just sort of disappears.
The latest acquisition news out of the Yahoo! camp is that image-recognition startup IQ Engines is joining the Flickr team in order to help improve the organization and search features of the photo sharing site.
I’ve seen lots of used film canisters repurposed as dangling bag accessories for sale in trendy parts of Hong Kong. The idea is to drill or burn a small hole in the top of the plastic spool and fit a keychain to that. I figured it would be a lot more useful to use the can to give a return contact address in case the bag is lost and found. What better way could there be than to use film?
Data is embedded in our environment, in our behavior, and in our genes. Over the past two years, the world has generated 90% of all the data we have today. The information has always been there, but now we can extract and collect massive amounts of it.
Given the explosion of mobile photography, social media based photo sharing, and video streaming, it’s likely that a large portion of the data we collect and create comes in the form of digital images.
It's Sunday, which might mean doing your best to keep your mind off of the workweek to come, or already setting about planning next weekend. If you happen to be doing the latter, and there's room in your schedule for an interesting photography DIY project, we've got something for you: a do-it-yourself concrete pinhole camera.
Photography can be a wonderful source of growth, healing and hope. Programs like this one at the VA in Palo Alto have helped PTSD-afflicted veterans cope with their condition, while the EYE AM program was trying to have children tell their stories on an international level.
EYE AM never raised the funding it needed, but another program devoted to helping children through photography has been going strong for a couple of years now, making a difference for children in need all over the United States. This program is called Pictures of Hope.
Well, if you had any doubts that Sony is on the cusp of releasing a new DSLR-style E-Mount camera, they should be long gone by now. Yesterday we shared a leaked product photo of the Alpha 3000 (or ILC-3000), and today we have a couple of photos of one being used in the wild.
Freelance sports photographers who have been on contract with Reuters in North America have been receiving some unpleasant calls over the past couple of days. Apparently, due to a new deal between Thomson Reuters and USA Today Sports Images, they are being systematically informed that their photographic services are no longer needed.
Here's a quirky product in case you're spending your Saturday online shopping for things you don't exactly need but might not mind owning. It's called the MeCam, and it's a wearable clip camera that can shoot 720p video and take 5MP photos during the day and night.
It wasn't so long ago that Instagram was in the business of being bought, but now that the app has the power of Facebook behind it, as Bob Dylan would say: The Times They Are a-Changin'. In addition to the recent update to the company's brand guidelines that banned the use of "Insta" and "Gram" by connected apps (among other things), the company just made an acquisition of its own.
Technology often borrows ideas from nature, and camera technology is no exception. For example, you might remember the bug-inspired compound eye camera we shared just a few months back. Engineers at Swiss company iniLabs don't want to mimic bug eyes, however, they'd rather create something that mimics the human eye. And that's exactly what they did with the new Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) 128 camera.
It's become a pattern with musicians lately. In an attempt to force people to actually experience the concert they're attending, many musicians are banning photography at their shows outright. In the past, we shared messages put up by the bands She & Him, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Savages, all of whom are kindly asking concert goers to put away their darn cell phones.
"Impossible" stories don't seem to be all that impossible where cameras are concerned. For example, you might remember the Canon compact that found its way back to its owner after drifting 6,200 miles across the ocean to Taiwan.
Today's impossible story isn't quite so international, but no less amazing. After losing $1,300 worth of camera equipment to an alligator at the Everglades Alligator Farm eight months ago, another alligator was kind enough to return amateur wildlife photographer Mario Aldecoa's gear to him last week.
For travel shooters and those looking to keep their kit light, new Interchangeable Lens Compacts (ILC) have been a major boon. But the real beneficiaries of the rise of this new system -- still less than five years old -- are the companies that make them. However, in order to maximize those benefits, manufacturers of ILCs need to establish the format as viable and resilient. For some, that means working together rather than against one another.
Over the last couple of weeks we've mentioned more than once that Sony has a lot of releases coming up, and as those releases draw near, inevitable photo and spec leaks also spring up. Yesterday it was the upcoming NEX-5T and a few new E-Mount lenses, and today it's the first photo of the upcoming Alpha 3000 (sometimes referred to as the ILC-3000).
While working on a feature film called The Grind, filmmaker Vashi Nedomansky had to come up with a way to shoot a flashback scene, complete with Humvee, in the desert of Iraq. The only problem? He had neither Iraq, nor a Humvee to work with.
Fortunately, he did have the sand dunes outside of Los Angeles and a 1:18 scale model of a Humvee purchased at Walmart for $23. Combine those things with a bit of creativity and you get some low-budget, professional-looking visual effects.
Sony is primed to announce quite a few new products in the coming months. Some of the more exciting rumored products include the groundbreaking Lens Cameras and the NEX full frame mirrorless camera everyone has been salivating over.
The photos that leaked earlier today, however, don't show either of those. Instead we get a peek at three upcoming lenses and an updated NEX-5 series camera.
Hopefully, you know me for my level-headed and impartial analysis of the photography business. Forget that. Today I’m going to go off on someone who is not only doing a disservice to the industry that he purports to serve, he’s actively working to destroy it. In the words of The Dude (from The Big Lebowski): “This aggression will not stand!”
Here's a photo series whose subject we hope nobody ever runs across in real life. Called Point Blank, photographers Peter Andrew, Simon Duffy and Derek Blais have put together a set of photographs that give you a down-the-barrel view of several well-known guns.
Sports games and medals are often won and lost at the hands of the referees. Be it an offside call that might have turned into a goal or the line judge that just doesn't want to give those last 6-inches your team needs for the first down, there's good reason cameras are becoming standard backup for refs who might have missed something.
German shot putter David Storl has a particularly good reason to be thankful for cameras these days, since a photo that was almost deleted managed to overturn an erroneous foul call and win him the gold in the IAAF World Championship Men's Shot Put Finals last week.
When it comes to visible light photos of the night sky, Hubble has been king. That's because Earth-bound telescopes -- even those with much higher-quality optical systems than Hubble -- must deal with the blurring effects of our planet's atmosphere.
A newly developed camera called VisAO, however, has done away with that problem, and in the process enabled astronomers to take the highest-resolution visible light photos ever captured of the night sky.
While living in their studio -- which also happened to be located in an old bank with joint bathrooms at the time -- photographers Gerban Grotenhuis and Marc Marselje had an interesting idea. Just how many creative and funny scenes could they create using those joint toilets?
The result is a humorous and creative photo series called Toilet Diaries that transformed joint toilet rooms into everything from a WWII battleground to the inside of a claw crane machine.
Here's a video that should help you transition out of work mode and into TGIF mode with more than a few chuckles along the way. It was put together by Minnesota-based photojournalist Ben Garvin using a stop-motion iPhone app, and has been making the rounds on the Internet as beard and stop-motion lovers unite to praise his efforts.
The Tadaa app for iOS is a neat camera and effects app that has managed to win itself some 3 million users since it first hit digital shelves. It's done this by offering interesting effects and features that competitors like Instagram don't -- such as a Twitter-like re-share feature and the recently added ability to blur the background.
The newest feature out of the Tadaa camp, however, comes as its own stand-alone app rather than an in-app ability. Dubbed Tadaa 3D, it'll allow you to "create breathtaking 3D illusions" using standard photos.
It seems the retro design movement has finally begun to infiltrate something other than the mirrorless market. In a move that makes its Instax line of instant cameras look a lot more like the X-Series line, Fujifilm has just announced the retro-styled Instax Mini 90 seen above.
Earlier this year, Swiss photographer Philipp Schmidli attracted a good deal of attention for a series of photos showing the silhouette of a biker in front of a gigantic moonrise.
The photographer received many comments about how the photos resembled the cover of the movie ET. Although that was never Schmidli's intention, he decided to follow up the original series with an actual ET-inspired shoot!