Want to photograph or film a humpback whale underwater? Try listening for its "song." The video above, uploaded by YouTube user westh2o, shows a surprise underwater encounter he and a group of divers had with a large humpback whale back in October 2011 (the actual encounter is at 3m20s).
Born in 1922, photographer and writer Art Shay has had a career that most creatives only dream of. Between Life, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Business Week, Parade, The New York Times Magazine and many more, Shay has shot about 1,100 magazine covers.
This video -- shot and produced by Bradley Rochford of Hanson Dodge Creative -- gives you a quick overview of the amazing life and work of this still-active 91-year-old photographer.
The Peregrine Falcon, also known as the Duck Hawk (a fact you won't soon forget after watching this video), is a spectacular bird of prey. Claiming the title of fastest member of the animal kingdom, a Peregrine Falcon can reach speeds in excess of 200mph during its characteristic high-speed hunting dives -- take that cheetah.
In the video above, YouTube user drhodie's falcon Dora happens to have a camera on her back as she performs one of these dives and takes an unsuspecting duck in mid-air.
A couple of weeks ago, we shared a sneak peek of Adobe's upcoming Shake Reduction Tool for Photoshop that has been dropping jaws ever since an advanced preview was debuted all the way back in October of 2011. The tool selects a section of the image, uses some complicated calculations to determine how the camera was moving when the photo was taken, and then remove the blur -- pretty incredible stuff.
But it looks like Adobe has been beaten to this magical release by the small startup Intelligent Imaging Solutions and their newly announced Photoshop plugin Piccure.
Photographer Ole C. Salomonsen loves shooting the northern lights or, as he calls them, the polar spirits. And for his most recent film he went all out by putting together time-lapse photography of the aurora above cities, in front of starry backgrounds and above gorgeous fjords with a couple of mind-blowing video captures thrown in for good measure.
Edith Widder is one of the three scientists that managed to capture the first high-resolution video footage of an actual giant squid. And about a month ago, her TED talk describing how she and her team did it (embedded above) was finally posted online.
Almost 2 stories tall, you would think that something that massive would have already been photographed or video taped. But it was Widder's common-sense approach that would yield the groundbreaking footage. So, how did scientists manage to finally catch a giant squid on camera? One word: quietly.
Tim Kemple is a well-respected action-sports photographer who we had the pleasure of interviewing in November of last year. In that interview, he told us about his passion for extreme photography while we did the easy part and shared his photos/asked the obvious questions.
Now, almost half a year later, Kemple is getting some well-deserved attention for the above video he did with Phase One documenting one of his trips to Mexico where he photographed some of the most talented kayakers in the world.
Polish photographer Marcin Ryczek captured this gorgeous black-and-white photograph of a man feeding ducks and swans in Kraków, Poland (here's a high-res version of the photo).
When your grandfather was Dr. Erhard Glatzel, one of the great lens designers of the twentieth century, it won't come as too much of a shock to find out that you've inherited two lenses that, by all accounts, don't officially exist. Other people? Well, they might be a little bit surprised... and a lot bit jealous.
Some photographers have made names for themselves by creating and photographing extremely detailed dioramas: miniature tabletop scenes that are so realistic that viewers often mistake them for the real world. Belgian photographers Maxime Delvaux and Kevin Laloux of 354 Photographers have put an interesting spin on the diorama photo concept by Photoshopping real people into their miniature scenes. The series is titled "Box".
People often laugh and poke fun at the cliche of impossible image enhancements seen in TV shows and movies, but you won't be laughing when you see what SmartDeblur can do -- you'll be gawking in amazement. Created by programmer and image processing expert Vladimir Yuzhikov, the program can magically reveal details in photographs that are blurry due to poor focusing and/or shaky hands.
Frank Said What? is an amazing new iOS camera app that can accurately describe any photo you show it. It's not just smart, it's witty too: "Frank" will usually give your photographs humorous captions. Some will make you smile, while others will make you laugh out loud.
Beauty retouching on still photographs of faces is both ubiquitous and controversial in some industries. You've likely seen your fair share of tutorials and demonstrations that show amazing feats of Photoshop, but did you know that the same 'shops can be done on video? And not just any video, mind you: 4K video.
If you ever need some encouragement for sticking with photography when times get tough, you should read about the adventures of Frank Hurley. Born in Australia in 1885, he took up photography as a young man and eventually became skilled enough to be selected as the official photographer for multiple expeditions to Antarctica and for the Australian military in both world wars. Among his many photographic escapades, one stands out from among the rest: being stranded in the Antarctic for nearly two years.
Photographing a lightning strike from close-up is a difficult and dangerous task, but Toronto-based wedding photographer and weather buff Richard Gottardo managed to capture something even crazier: a double-exposure photograph caused by the bolt of lightning itself.
3D light painting can be done by using a 2D image rather than a single point of light. In the past, we've shared creative examples of iPads being used in this way to light paint everything from ghostly figures to creative animations.
People sometimes use the expression "slow as a glacier" to describe something so stagnant that even the speeds of snails and molasses would feel inadequately fast in comparison. The fastest glaciers ever measured move at tens of meters per day, while the slowest ones may budge only have a meter over the course of a year. Most of the time, the movement is too slow for the human eye to see.
Luckily for us, there's something called time-lapse photography. Back in 2004, PBS aired a NOVA episode titled Descent into the Ice, which followed photographers and adventurers as they ventured deep into the heart of a glacier found on Mont Blanc. One of the things they did was set up cameras to capture the movement of glaciers over extremely long periods of time. The video above shows 5 months of movement seen under a glacier moving 2 feet per day.
Last year, we shared an interesting video showing a blank white room that could be completely transformed in an …
Check out this vintage photo of a halloween party group portrait. It might be hard to believe, but it's not actually a photograph, but a pencil drawing by 28-year-old Scottish artist Paul Chiappe. He creates insanely detailed artworks that look just like old, fading, blurry, black-and-white photographs from decades ago. The "photos" show family pictures, elementary school class pictures, and even standard yearbook pictures.
If you've visited the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada anytime during the past five years at night, you've likely enjoyed the dazzling light show that appears on the side of the tower. The 1,330 uber-bright LED lights (which cost a cool $2.5 million) were installed in the elevator shafts back in 2007, and are turned on from dusk every day until 2 the next morning. What you might not have known, however, is that the seemingly random colors that appear are really not so random after all: they're actually pieces of photographs!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That's the quote by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke that you'll find on Cardiio's homepage. It's a quote that is quite appropriate, given what the app can do.
The app is a touch-free heart rate monitor that can accurately tell you your pulse by simply looking at your face through your phone's camera.
While working as a fishing guide in Tofino, British Columbia, Matthew Thornton captured this wild photograph of a humpback whale calf leaping out of the water an extremely short distance away (estimated at 10-30 feet). In his submission to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest, Thornton writes,
On our way in from fishing for halibut we noticed a few humpback whales playing in the distance and we stopped part way in to watch. It was quite an experience to see something completely airborne so close to the boat. The lucky thing was I got the photo I submitted. A fellow boat also got a picture of the whale close to mid air and it was also all caught on video. Was an amazing day.
Filmmakers Derek Kwok and Henri Wong of Parabucks created this ridiculously awesome stop-motion short film titled "Batman: Dark Knightfall" using highly-realistic 1/6-scale collectible action figures by Hong Kong toy company Hot Toys. Be sure to turn on HD when you watch it.
The cinematic lighting and sound effects give this film a realism that you'll be hard pressed to find in a stop-motion video -- at times you won't believe that what you're seeing isn't showing real actors.
On Monday, a group of four friends went on a fishing trip in the Pacific Ocean. Taking their boat "A Salt Weapon" 20 miles west of Santa Cruz, Mark Peters, Jeremy, Dave, and William were expecting a fun-filled day of albacore tuna hunting. What they ended up capturing was so much more.
Wanting to save some memories of their trip and film their battles with tuna from underwater, Peters decided to bring along a GoPro Hero 2 camera fitted inside a $50 custom-made torpedo.
This fascinating TED talk was given last month by MIT researcher Ramesh Raskar …
Photographer Tom Warner shot this slow motion incredible video of lightning at 7,207 …
Here’s a video overview of some interesting research that’s being done in the area of video processing. By taking …
Photographer Jack Long has an absolutely amazing series of photographs titled Vessels and Blooms that features liquid flowers captured by shooting high speed photographs of splashes. The images are not faked with Photoshop, but are instead single exposures that result from months of planning and testing.
Feast your eyes on this amazing stop motion music video idea for the song “Rivers and Homes” by electronic …
From Love to Bingo in 873 Images is an amazing short film created by …