August 2013

Google has made sure that the couch potato in all of us has ample opportunity to see the world by adding everything from the world's tallest peaks to an extensive tour of the Grand Canyon to its Street View repertoire. But of course, that's not to say the search giant is anywhere near done.

The company's most recent update, which went live yesterday, added a long list of world-renowned zoos to the list, allowing users to skip the lines and see some lions, giraffes and pandas in their not-so-natural habitats.

If you're going to do self-portraits, it might not be a bad idea to take a leaf out of photographer Alex Wein's book and get creative. Started during a cross-country roadtrip back in 2011, Wein's series Headstands puts a quirky twist on your standard "here's me at the *insert famous landmark here*" photo by quite literally turning it on its head.

Researchers at Cornell University recently developed a new piece of software in conjunction with Adobe that could some day help amateurs and professionals alike exert more control over how exactly certain static scenes are lit.

KFC Restaurants recently opened a new concept store in Louisville, Kentucky called KFC eleven. (The "eleven" being a tribute to the 11 herbs and spices in KFC's original recipe chicken). The new store has a distinctly modern look, and is far from the red and white color palette made popular by Colonel Sanders.

The new concept required a new direction for the photography as well. KFC eleven's creative agency, (Creative Alliance) asked us to help them create the visual feel for this new brand.

In all art forms; music, writing, architecture, photography, whatever; originality and innovation are the things that produce the best works from the best artists. A lot of advice on how to improve your art focusses on technical and technological aspects; often with a cursory “develop your own style” thrown in somewhere. It’s a difficult thing to explain or teach: how do you develop your vision or style? And how do you know if you’ve found it?

Last night was packed full of announcements from Canon, as the Japanese company saw fit to announce four new point-and-shoots (including a new flagship), update the PowerShot N and release a new lens in one fell swoop.

Two new photo booth systems have appeared in a rather unlikely location: the New York Public Library. The library system (which, by the way, is the second largest public library in the US) recently installed the booths to allow visitors to capture moments from their library visits and share them with friends and family.

Earlier this month, Photoshelter did a live webinar with Carolyn E. Wright, AKA The Photo Attorney. Carolyn is a full-time attorney whose practice is aimed squarely at the legal needs of photographers. During the webinar talked extensively about copyright infringement, and what photographers need to know when they think their copyright has been infringed (you can watch a video recording here).

Earlier today, we showed you some of the impressive work the Photoshoppers of Reddit's r/ColorizedHistory community have been putting together. In case you read that post and though "I'd like to try that!" the short tutorial above by 19-year-old r/ColorizedHistory contributor Mads Madsen is a great place to start.

Andrew Nelles is a 26-year-old freelance photojournalist based in Chicago, Ill. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, he began freelancing in Chicago in 2009. Andrew was one of the 28 photojournalists laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times in May 2013 after spending 9 months at the paper.

It seems we're entering into the final chapter of the Kodak Bankruptcy epic. After filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of 2012, the ex-camera company's final plan to exit bankruptcy received court approval on Monday. What emerges from the ashes, however, will be a company that does zero business with consumers directly.

There's an awesome little subreddit that has been getting a lot of press coverage as of late. It's called ColorizedHistory, and is a 20,000+ person strong community of "Amateur Historians" who are interested in the idea of creating high quality colorized versions of historical black-and-white photographs.

After almost ten and a half years of faithful service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) GOES-12 satellite was decommissioned last week. And in order to honor the weather satellite for over a decade of providing quality imagery, the NOAA decided to put together a time-lapse showing just how much data the satellite captured in the 3,788 days it was functional.

One of the downsides to living in an uber-connected digital world is the ease with which intellectual property can be stolen. Whichever bogus excuse they choose to use, many people seem less than concerned when it comes to stealing someone's photography and claiming it as their own these days.

One such person is Instagram user @bogdhan, who recently won Samsung's 'Live in the Moment' Instagram contest (and an NX300) using a photo that he never actually took.

Jürgen Heckel is a photographer and sound artist who's currently living in Munich, Germany after living in Paris, France for 14 years. He spends a great amount of time in the great outdoors, and many of his photo projects are studies of trees and forests.

One of his series is titled "Lumen," and contains nighttime long-exposure photos captured amidst trees, with the horizon line illuminated by a line of light -- the light of passing cars.

There's a new compact camera on the block, only this one isn't made by Sony or Samsung or Nikon or any of the other brands you might expect to see scrawled across the front of the device. No, this one is made by a little-known Swedish lifestyle company called theQ, and its all-new theQ Camera comes touting the self-assigned title of "world's first social camera."

Instagram can be a force for good. For example, the hashtag and Instagram account #litterati has encouraged thousands to pick up trash they find on the street. But as with most tools, it can also do harm, and a couple of day care workers in Virginia recently used the service to those ends, losing their jobs in the process.

A month ago, we heard some rumors that Fujifilm was working on an entry-level X-Series camera for those of us who didn't want to spend on the X-M1 but wanted something better than the X100. Details were (and to some degree still are) a bit thin, but now we have what seems to be the first leaked photo of the upcoming mirrorless camera.

Back when Instagram first came on the scene -- you know, before Facebook paid 735 Million dollars to snatch the company up before Twitter could get its hands on it -- the photo sharing app actually encouraged connected apps to use the terms "insta" and "gram" in their names. Thus were born services like Statigram, Webstagram, Luxogram and more.

But a recent change to the company's brand guidelines has Instagram taking a step back and banning any app that would like to use its API from using either of the terms if they would like to enjoy continued access.

Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, often referred to these days as Royal Baby George, had his first photo shoot recently. But if you expected the future British king to get his pick of professional photographers when it comes to his first official family portraits, you'd be wrong.

The photos -- which have been called everything from "intimate" and "cozy" to "not really what you want" and "just bad" -- were actually taken by the Duchess of Cambridge's father, Michael Middleton.

There's nothing like a friendly competition among peers to make a road trip that much more enjoyable, and when you can get a few thousand people to join in and judge the outcome, that's even better. That's what photojournalists and friends Eric Thayer and Joshua Lott did recently when they found themselves in a midst of an impromptu Instagram battle.

If you have any photo books with glued bindings lying around the house, you'll probably understand how annoying the crease in the middle can be. If a photo is printed across both pages, you inevitably lose part of the image as it curves down in the middle, taking some of your sanity with it.

But where other photographers are opting for sewn bindings (the kind that lay flat) more and more, photographer I-Hsuen Chen went the other direction. His project In Between takes advantage of the dreaded crease by hiding the most important parts of photos in there on purpose.

Back in 1948, The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers defined high-speed photography as any 3 frames or more captured at a rate at or above 128 frames per second, but even back then high-speed cameras performed well past that mark.

The public domain video above gives us a short peek at how far high-speed photography tech had advanced by the mid-1960s, when Wollensak's Fastax models were some of the foremost high-speed cameras on the market, capturing action at speeds of up to 18,000fps.

Photographs like the one above by photographer Shikhei Goh go viral on a fairly regular basis. If the stories are to be believed, given enough patience and a little (or a lot) bit of luck, animals can be captured doing all sorts of amazing things.

According to an analysis published on Weibo, however, the stories can't (or rather shouldn't) be believed. Photos like these, the article claims, are staged by photographers who force pet store animals into awkward and unnatural poses.

It's the newly released Olympus E-P5 PEN. A 16.1MP Micro Four Thirds retro-styled pocket shooter capable of 9FPS. But will it raise your heartbeat to 100BPM? Let's find out.

Vermont senator Patrick Leahy is a lot of things: an expert marksman, the most senior senator on Capitol Hill, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and third line for the presidency, just to name a few. But even though he's had as successful of a political career as a Senator might ever hope to have, if you ask him what he would like to do full-time, he'll tell you photography.

For years now, the aging senator has made a name for himself as the senator who you never see without his camera. And although we've shown you his work in the past, in the video above, Leahy himself weighs in on his work and photography in general.

Last Thursday, we told you about the newest anti-paparazzi bill to hit the California State Assembly. Focused on expanding the definition of harassment, SB 606 was drafted for the specific purpose of protecting the children of celebrities -- some hollywood actresses have already spoken out in support of the bill.

As with many a legal mater, however, not everyone is in favor of the bill. While most would agree that protecting children from being harassed by paparazzi is a worthy goal, the NPPA is now officially speaking out against SB 606, warning the public that this bill's vague wording "threatens first amendment rights."

It's a day of awesome astronomical phenomenon on PetaPixel. We started off the day by sharing a stunning time-lapse by photographer Maciej Winiarczyk in which he captured noctilucent clouds and the aurora borealis at the same time.

And now, as you get ready to hit the home stretch and finish Monday on a good note, we have yet another amazing (and accidental) time-lapse capture: While photographing the 2013 Perseids Meteor Shower last week, photographer and designer Michael K. Chung was fortunate enough to capture an actual meteor explosion.

In July of last year, we introduced you to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), an effort by the NASA Ames Research Center to digitize some 48,000 pounds of 70mm tape shot by the five lunar orbiters that were sent up to photograph the surface of the moon in preparation for the Apollo missions.

Companies and researchers are always coming up with interesting new camera concepts and prototypes that approach snapping photos in some unique way. The most recent creation to make its way across our desks is the FlexCam, a panoramic camera array that does away with sweeping or stitching to create panoramas. Instead, you simply bend the camera itself.

The crowd surfing blow up ball at a concert isn't a new idea, but late last year HP and Almap BBDO took it in a new direction. As part of HPs "Making Memories Last" campaign, the company fit one of the massive concert beach balls with a high-definition camera and WiFi antenna.

Last week, we reported on a rumor that Canon has been investing heavily in a major European medium format camera manufacturer. Some believe the company to be Phase One.

Now, murmurings of Canon's involvement in the medium format space are heating up. The latest word is that Canon may be planning to launch a digital medium format system of its own by the end of 2014.

The world of photography is awash with gear and accessories for an eager public. But not every invention is worthy of merit as seen by this glorious collection of “WTF were they thinking?”.

On your own mental list of "most perilous jobs," chances are Google Street View driver doesn't make it very close to the top. But one of Google's own wound up in a strange situation recently when a group of villagers in Thailand put him under citizen's arrest, believing him to be a spy for a government dam project they oppose.

Earlier this month, photographer Maciej Winiarczyk captured a rare and beautiful celestial light show. While shooting a time-lapse in Caithness, Scotland, he was treated to not one but two stunning natural phenomena when his camera captured noctilucent clouds and the aurora borealis at the same time.

Want to experience what it feels like to be a photojournalist in the midst of the violent protests and clashes that have been occurring throughout the country of Egypt? Check out the video above.

It was created by photographer Amanda Mustard, a self-taught freelance photojournalist who's currently based in Cairo, Egypt. When an anti-Islamic video went viral online in September 2012, Mustard went onto the streets with a GoPro mounted to her DSLR to document the resulting turmoil.

French smartphone device startup SmartMobilAccessoire is working on a new product called the Biiwatch. It's a watch-like device that's worn around the wrist, but instead telling you the time, it's designed to let you tell your smartphone when to snap a photo.

One of our popular posts back in 2011 was a quick video tutorial on how you can use Mod Podge to transfer photographs onto blocks of wood (we also shared a text-based tutorial earlier this year).

If you thought that was cool, get this: you can also do the same type of photo transfer onto pieces of beach glass!

There will soon be one more road in the United States named after a famous photographer. The city council in Tulsa, Oklahoma has voted to change the namesake of its "Brady street" from Wyatt Tate Brady to Mathew B. Brady.

Wyatt Tate was the founder of Tulsa, but also a racist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Matthew B. was one of the best known 19th century American photographers who documented the American Civil War.

"Fast Food" is a series of food photos by photographer Jon Feinstein. The images have a rather unusual look to them -- each food item is captured in front of a purely black backdrop, and is squashed on the surface as though it's being pressed against a pane of glass.

Well, actually they were: Feinstein created the images by scanning the foods with a flatbed scanner.