2015

The dangerous practice of rooftopping photography has claimed yet another victim, this time in New York City. 24-year-old Conner Cummings was killed yesterday after climbing the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan and then falling from the 52-story building.

Microsoft has launched a new camera app for iPhones that's designed to help you take the perfect selfie. It's called Microsoft Selfie, and it uses some of Microsoft's latest technology to auto-tweak snapshots of your face.

Back in 2013, we shared the work of photographer Richard Gottardo, who spent months in the Rocky Mountains hunting and photographing northern lights. Now, 2 years and 6,500+ photos later, Gottardo has combined his beautiful images into this dazzling new 3-minute time-lapse short film, aptly titled "Alberta's Northern Lights."

The first time I sketched a photo was in 2011. It had never crossed my mind before that. Up until then I had never really needed it. I was five years into a business and new ideas had always come pretty easily.

Guess who's getting into the world of photography workshops? Apple.

Here's a humorous video by DigitalRev that pokes fun at some common struggles that photographers go through in their lives and in their minds. Sometimes it's not easy being obsessed with photography.

If you're looking to get better at photography in 2016, one great option is to do a 52-week photography challenge that forces you to complete regular assignments throughout the whole year. And we've found a great one you can take on as your new year's resolution.

Amazon had another record-breaking holiday season this year, with huge gains in product sales, Prime membership subscriptions, and digital streaming. You may, however, be surprised to hear what came out on top on the list of best-selling photography products over the holidays.

In a recent post about "How Camera Gear was stolen in 2015," it was reported that 31% of gear theft victims had their gear stolen from their car. The good news is that a $30 dollar fix can leave you feeling a little less worried to leave your equipment in the trunk.

Steven (mild_gingervitis on Reddit) shared this little tongue-in-cheek illustration showing how the battery life indicator on his digital camera works -- or how it often feels like it works, at least.

Kansas-based hair colorist Ursula Goff recently shared these two selfies side-by-side to show the same things can be presented in drastically different ways with a carefully planned photo.

Want to see which of your Instagram photos made the biggest splash in 2015? 2015bestnine is a new website designed for just that. There's no login or registration required: simply enter the account username you'd like to see, and the site will spit out the 9 most liked photos of the year.

Street photographer Willem Jonkers often hits the streets of Rotterdam in the Netherlands with an ultra-wide-angle 8mm fisheye lens. He then approaches strangers and gets not only close, but low -- really low.

Here's a short 3-minute comedy video by Mashable that offers a "behind the scenes" look at how Facebook autotags the photos you share with the names of your friends and family. No, it's not a sophisticated facial recognition algorithm, the video says. Instead, it's a brilliant, dedicated, and real live human named Paul Zuckerberg.

When my children were little they would collect things in their pockets. They were little pack rats; the kid version of hoarders. Anything that caught their eye would go into their pocket for safe keeping: a colorful leaf; a Skittle, a Happy Meal toy. And, like most moms, I would have to carefully search their pockets before putting their dirty clothes into the wash.

Photographer David Hobby is best known for his popular blog Strobist, which has introduced countless photographers around the world to the art of shooting with off-camera flashes. Today, Hobby just officially announced a new endeavor called The Photographer's Oil Collective (POC): it's a service that turns photos into one-of-a-kind, hand-painted oil reproductions -- a tangible product that pro photographers can be proud to present to clients.

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National Geographic just announced the 2015 winners for its prestigious photo contest. Over 13,000 entries were received from around the world, and just 13 photos were chosen from that number for special recognition.

Want to see what you get when you combine a ninja with a cameraman? Just look at Florian Hatwagner, a Vienna, Austria-based camera operator who goes by the name "gimbalninja" online.

New Zealand-based photographer Chris Cameron has a nice little kit he put together to mount his off-camera flash to any tree or pole. The setup centers around a plastic "dog bone" that you can make for yourself with a 3D printer.

Photojournalist Ron Haviv documented international conflicts for years before co-founding the VII photo agency in 2001. While shooting for assignments or personal projects, Haviv would often carry a 2nd or 3rd camera with him, and oftentimes those secondary photos would stay undeveloped.

The manager of the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, is apologizing today for a request that the hotel not be included in photos of Emanuel AME Church, the site of a mass shooting that killed 9 back on June 17th, 2015.

Dickey Chapelle was a pioneering female American war photographer who brought her camera to combat fields from World War II through the Vietnam War. The 3-minute video above by PBS NewsHour is a look at the life and work of the legendary photojournalist.

GoPro published this 5-minute-long "year in review" compilation video that shows off all the crazy and heartwarming things that people used the company's action camera for over the course of 2015.

CNN Style published this short feature on 35-year-old photographer Chen Man of Beijing, China, an artist who's considered to be the "Annie Leibovitz" of the Chinese fashion photography world.

Medium format retail and rental company Capture Integration just posted this short and simple 1.5-minute side-by-side comparison between the Live View displays of Hasselblad and Phase One 50 megapixel digital backs.

Camera gear retailers almost always have legal disclaimers that protect them from major pricing mistakes -- if a $10,000 item is accidentally priced at $10, the order can be cancelled and there's no obligation to honor the order and take a huge financial hit.

School portraits aren't usually the result of creative photo concepts, but photographer Krijn Westerburgen was recently able to flex his creative muscles for an elementary school class photo in the Netherlands. He photographed the students in the style of a Rembrandt painting.

Fujifilm helped kick off the mirrorless camera revolution back in 2012 by announcing the powerful retro-styled X-Pro1 camera. Now it appears that a follow-up will soon be upon us: the first official photos of the new Fujifilm X-Pro2 have leaked.

Germany is known to have some of the strictest privacy laws in Europe, and sometimes the policies trump photography rights and copyright. The country's highest court just ruled that a photographer must delete "intimate" photos of his ex-lover -- pictures that were consented to when they were created and which the man had no intention of sharing.

If you have a lens of one mount and a camera with another, there's a good chance that there's an adapter out there that can help you pair the two. This is called shooting with an adapted lens (versus shooting with a native one). Photographer Mark Ryan Sallee of Michromatic released this helpful 12-minute primer on the subject.

You may not recognize the name, face, and photos of Douglas Miller, but many people living in Laguna Beach, California, do. He's a street photographer who has been shooting a roll of film per day for 44 years, creating a remarkable photo archive of 350,000+ spontaneous snapshots that tell the story of his town.

Here's a sweet and simple photo organization tip for those of you using iPhones and iPads: in the Photos app in iOS, you can create a new folder by long pressing the plus button (+). Albums can help you group collections of photos, but folders can help you group sets of albums for increased organization.

Every year, millions of tourists flock to Banff National Park in Canada to see and photograph the gorgeous landscapes. Photographer Meghan Krauss was fascinated by the crowds of tourists shooting selfies and other photos in these pristine locations, so in 2013, she began to shoot panoramic photos of those spots and then composite large numbers of tourists into a single frame.

44-year-old South Korean photographer Ahn Se Hong has won his lawsuit against Nikon over the cancellation of his 'comfort women' exhibition. The Tokyo District Court ruled last Friday that Nikon must pay Ahn ¥1.1 million (~$9,150) in damages.

Photographer and programmer Saulius Lukse made this clever 22-second-long time-lapse video in which the windows of a large apartment building are used as a ticker to wish viewers a happy new year -- all while the time-lapse continues to run in the rest of the scene.

To show the extensive work that can go into retouching a beauty portrait, editing guru Pratik Naik of Solstice Retouch created this 7-minute timelapse video showing how he spend 1.5 hours cleaning up a photo by photographer Jonas Jensen.

Holiday deal alert: one of Amazon's Deals of the Day today is on Pelican's hard cases that are popular with photographers for hauling gear from place to place. 7 of the cases are currently discounted at over 60% off their MSRPs.

As 2015 winds to an end, here's a look back at the 10 posts that received the most views.

Lenticular prints use an array of lenses to cause an image to change before your eyes as you view them from different angles. Scientists have now figured out how to do a "changing photo" trick without lenses using an inkjet printer and metallic sheets.

If you're ever shooting around emus, be sure to keep your camera bag at a safe distance. Photographer Arnhem Peterson put his camera backpack on the ground while photographing goats recently, and an emu wandered over and mistook the camera bag for a suitable mate.

Here's a new video review by Thomas Shahan, the "Bob Ross of bug shots," of the new Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 wide angle macro lens.

Photographer Vincent Laforet dazzled the world's eyes this past year with his project titled AIR, which shows dazzling views of world cities, as seen from the open door of a helicopter thousands of feet above ground. We've featured sets from New York, Las Vegas, and Paris, and now there's a new photo book that puts the photos on 228 giant pages.

I recently shot a series of snowy portraits... inside my studio. This shoot was originally just intended to be for my own Christmas card, The idea was to do something fun, dreamy, and Christmas-related (with a Santa hat and fun poses) that I could send to friends, family and clients. As the year was coming to an end, a fun photo shoot was very welcomed. And, ironically, we didn't have snow at this point in Brussels, which is very unusual.

The federal drone registration system officially opened this week, and the FAA says that over 45,000 owners have already registered their drones. At the same time, there have been reports of glitches that may have exposed customer information to strangers.

Of the 6 existing Polaroid 20x24-inch cameras, one has long been in the possession of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman. After more than 3 decades of shooting portraits of some of the world's best-known faces, Dorfman has decided to retire from photography.

Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki has done quite a good job at boosting his brand's reputation in the world of photography over the past few years, as the company's Art series of lenses has drawn rave reviews for their optical quality, solid build, and relative affordability.