October 2014

To celebrate the return of LeBron James yesterday, the Cleveland Cavaliers decided to do a massive group photo with all the fans in attendance. Today they released the 360-degree, 20-gigapixel photograph online for fans to find themselves in, tag, and share.

The giant group panorama -- and many others like it -- was captured by a company called Fancam, which specializes in shooting some of the largest group shots in history.

Wireless Internet is now commonplace, but one thing that's generally still wired is electricity. One day, however, you might be juicing up your gadgets with wireless energy routers instead of cables and battery chargers.

Energous Corporation is one company trying to make that vision a reality. It has developed a technology called WattUp that aims to change the way you think about how electronic devices are charged and powered.

For his book 13: An American Horror Story, photographer Seph Lawless visited a number of real life "haunted houses" across the United States. The houses are crumbling on the outside, and the insides were the stage for some some of the creepiest crimes and incidents throughout history.

The house above is Milan Mansion found in Ohio. The locals claim that the owner was a practicing witch.

The phrase "megapixel war" has been thrown around for quite some time now, but could we be seeing the beginnings of a "K war"? Sony is rumored to be working on a mirrorless full frame camera that captures footage at a staggering 8K resolution.

In early 2013, we shared a print by Pop Chart Lab that showed 100 landmark cameras from the history of photography. Now, the online shop is one-upping itself by releasing a new poster showing over 200 cameras from between 1839 and 2014.

Drone's aren't allowed within a 5-mile radius of medium-to-large-sized airports in the United States. As a result, the Internet isn't exactly teeming with photographs or videos taken from a drone's perspective above those areas.

The video above offers a look at what you'd be able to capture if you were allowed to fly your camera drone around in a large airport. It was made in Mexico.

Earlier this year, we shared an interactive map showing where you aren't allowed to fly camera drones. The list is generally pretty simple: national parks, military bases, and 5 miles around major airports.

Here's another item to add to that list: major sport stadiums.

Photographer and Nikon Ambassador Joe McNally has released a new video that offers a behind-the-scenes look at a recent shoot. The image is an imaginative fairytale scene that required some tricky lighting and careful attention to detail.

A recent Facebook posting alerted me to this Flickr page, where in 2004 a woman named Lyza Danger uploaded a photograph (shown above) of a local supermarket (a Fred Meyer in Portland).

After posting to Flickr, Danger opened up the image rights to Creative Commons, leading to widespread circulation. The image has been copied and reused many times online, sometimes with permission and sometimes without, often in articles about overconsumption and the food industry. Since 2004 it has received 94,000 page views and hundreds of comments.

British photographer and graphic designer Jake Howe recently began using a mechanical keyboard, and soon afterward he began wondering whether the same sturdy design could be used for a remote shutter release for his camera.

After some tinkering, Howe ended up making a sturdy and functional remote that features a one-of-a-kind design and a super sturdy build.

The movie industry has officially updated its anti-piracy policies to include the need to turn off ‘wearable devices,’ such as Google Glass and other wearable gadgets with cameras in them (e.g. wearable lifelogging cameras).

What if many of iconic photos featured on famous album covers were actually cropped from much stranger images? That's the idea behind "The Bigger Picture," a humorous set of manipulated photographs imagining the "original context" of album cover photos.

VSCO has announced the sixth film emulation pack for its VSCO Film lineup. Called VSCO Film 06, the new set is dubbed the Alternative Process Collection and features a wide range of push, pull, and cross processed looks.

Well known headshot photographer Peter Hurley has teamed up with respected psychologist Anna Rowley to develop a way for people to overcome their fear of being in front of a camera.

The pair call this research and application Psyphotology, a clever wordplay on psychology and photography. Their hope is to impact the world by helping us gain self-acceptance rather than focusing on criticism.

Camera accessory maker Atomos has just announced Power Station, its new piece of equipment that turns your extra batteries into a clever power pack that’s capable of powering up to three devices while out in the field.

Everyone has fears, even the most successful photographers in the business. The key to overcoming those fears is to …

A Canadian judge has ordered Google to pay a Montreal woman for the violation of her privacy after she found an embarrassing photograph of herself on Google Street View. Google's automated cameras had captured the woman sitting on her doorstep, leaning forward with a portion of her cleavage exposed.

Back in mid-September, we reported that luxury gadget company Brikk was planning to release a gold covered Nikon Df camera. The camera is now official with more photos and more details.

Google's Nexus 5 and 6 smartphones have a new Camera app feature called HDR+. This mode uses fancy computational photography tricks to help you capture better photos in situations with uneven lighting or low amounts of light.

In a post published to the Google Research blog this past week, researchers behind the new feature offer a peek at the inner workings.

As more and more cameras make their way into smartcamera territory, there are countless DSLRs that could very easily get left in the dust.

But that won’t be the case if Lumera Labs has its way, thanks to Lumera, a clever little device that connects your DSLR to your phone to give it connectivity and better features.

Hindsight is always 20/20, which is why if you’re a photography student or about to launch your photo business, you should turn to those who have already completed the right of passage for a little first-hand, grade-A advice on how to go about the whole thing.

With experience comes great wisdom, so we asked seven professional photographers what advice they would give to the graduating class of 2015 photographers, and what they would have done differently if they had known what they know now. From business and gear advice to staying true to your inner artist, and just simply being nice - take notes, cause these nuggets of wisdom are pure gold.

A UK-based amateur photographer named Bob Riach was stopped outside a shopping center in East Yorkshire last week by a security guard. Riach was attempting to take some nighttime shots of the complex when the guard confronted him and told him that his photography wasn't allowed due to the complex, citing concerns of an attack by ISIS.

This week a group of photographers decided to stage a protest in support of Riach and photographers' rights.

HP has announced a futuristic new personal computer called Sprout that hopes to transform the way we interact with our computers. The system consists of an all-in-one Windows 8 computer, a system of 3D scanning cameras, a large tactile touchpad, and a projector that beams a display onto the touchpad.

It's a computer that may make working with photos as easy as moving your hands around on your desk.

Digital picture frames seemed like a brilliant idea about six or seven years ago. But the low-res screens, clunky interfaces and lack of any sort of standard operational platform left them to be a fairly niche market floundered when it arrived into the world.

Fireside is a small start-up that's looking to breathe new life and ideas into this market. After two years of development, they’ve created a "smart" picture frame called SmartFrame that rethinks how photos are curated and displayed on the walls of your home.

Cameras have many different methods of guiding photographers toward capturing quality shots, but physical feedback isn't really one of them... yet. In addition to providing useful visual and auditory information, DSLRs in the future might actually guide photographers through their sense of touch.

A recently published Nikon patent shows a DSLR that helps photographers capture moving objects without having to look through their viewfinder. Instead, the camera uses vibrations to guide the shooter.

Rap mogul Suge Knight could be facing some serious jail time after stealing a photographer's camera. By "serious," we mean up to 30 years.

Taiwanese illustrator nagee drew this comic showing …

The Canon 1D C is a cinema DSLR that's geared towards video recording. But just because it was built for filmmaking doesn’t mean its value to still photographers is diminished. In fact, it can be the complete opposite, as photographer Michele Celentano demonstrates in a two-part video series recently put out by Canon.

Back in August 2014, we reported on the legal battle between photographer Peter Wolf and a company called Capstone. Wolf had received three patents on a method of distributing sports photos online. The problem was, the patents described common workflows that countless photographers use around the world.

The latest development today will have those photographers resting a bit easier: the courts have ruled that the patents are invalid because they aren't inventive enough and because they simply describe convention steps that many people use.

To celebrate Halloween, Adobe has been running an interactive murder mystery event this week. The company has released complex PSD files of photos that hold clues to the fictional mystery. Only those with Photoshop and sleuthing skills will be able to solve the case.

Competition in the smartphone instant film printer industry is heating up. Companies like LifePrint and Fuji are tackling wireless mobile photo printers, and The Impossible Project has its analog Instant Lab.

Next month, a company called SnapJet is entering the ring. It's the "world's first slim, portable, open-source instant film printer" that helps you print your smartphone photos instantly on the go.

How much weight loss can Photoshop do? As you’ll see in the video above, the answer is “a whole …

Just over a month ago we shared with you Vizzywig 4K, an app that gives your iPhone 5S 4K video recording abilities… at a price. A price of $1000 to be exact.

However, it looks as though i4software, the company behind Vizzywig has had a change of heart: you can now pick up the app for only $50, or 95% off the original price.

Autumn is well underway here in the United States, so what better way to honor the colorful season than to share with you a post-production walkthrough by Serge Ramelli that will show you how to make your seasonal snapshots ‘pop’ with color.

Digital download store Caravan Shoppe has a new product called the Click Click Camera Pack. It's a set of printable camera designs that are designed for kids crafts and decor.

Having worked on many bridal shoots as a model and involved in several real weddings before, I’ve picked up some things that I hope might help a few others. If you’re part of the wedding industry then please feel free to share this tongue in cheek guide with your clients, whilst understanding that although it’s a bit brazen, it might actually be what they need to know!

One of the most exciting things about capturing high resolution video with the Panasonic LX100 is the ability to extract high resolution still photos from it. Video grabbing is not a new thing, but in standard definition you were looking at stills measuring a third of a Megapixel, and even in Full HD you'd only enjoy 2 Megapixels. But with 4k video you can make 8 Megapixel grabs which is much more useful.

Oppo, the Chinese company behind some of the most unusual smartphones we've ever reported on, is back at it again with the N3. The successor to the N1 smartphone they released last September, the new N3 takes the lineup’s instantly recognizable swivel camera to the next level by giving it a motor.

Here's both a neat picture and a mind-blowing fact for you. What you see above is the IBM Model 350 Disk File from 1956. It weighed over a ton, contained fifty 24-inch disks, and was leased to companies for $3,200 per month. It could hold... 3.75 Megabytes.

That means that it would take 21 of these puppies to hold the largest 14-bit RAW file the Nikon D800 spits out.

A new year has gone by, which means a new World Beard and Mustache Championship has been completed. And in keeping with his annual tradition, portrait photographer Greg Anderson was there to document some of the most outrageous facial accoutrement you will ever come across.