As of yesterday, Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP. And in honor of one of the longest-living operating systems, the above video takes a look at the story behind what is arguably XP's most recognized quality: the 'Bliss' wallpaper that came stock on every machine.
Photographers Sue Bryce and Felix Kunze recently took a unique approach to recreating some of the classic Hollywood portraits of days gone by. Using a group of extremely talented female photographers, Bryce and Kunze had these lovely ladies act as models for the recreations.
While out shooting meerkats in Botswana, photographer Will Burrard-Lucas transformed into the most adorable look-out post in the history of human-animal interactions, and if you don't believe us, just take a look at the pictures and his behind the scenes video we've included below.
Marine biologist turned photographer Thomas Peschak spent some time documenting the remote atolls of Bassas de India and Europa, known to be home of some of the most beautiful seascapes in the world.
While doing so, cameraman Dan Beecham and writer Sunnye Collins created a behind the scenes video showing how Peschak went about capturing the beautiful scenery.
We love seeing and hearing about the process of creating an image. The motivation behind a photo combined with a glimpse at how it was shot can be both inspirational and educational, which is a powerful combo.
But while there are plenty of behind the scenes videos and articles dedicated to studio photography, one of the genres you don't get to hear as much about is photojournalism. That's where The Image, Deconstructed website comes in.
Do you enjoy adventure? I mean, REALLY enjoy adventure, not just taking a walk through your local woods. Well, if you do, you'll enjoy this. Put together by photographer Mike Palmer and cinematographer Jon Simonassi, this video shows their journey to photograph an abandoned prison in Ontario, Canada.
In the latest installment of the SmugMug Films series, the site takes us behind the scenes with underwater photographer Sarah Lee as she does what she does best: dives under the waves to capture powerful, cinematic photography while being tossed around by the currents.
Back in 2007, world-renown visual storyteller Platon took on an assignment to capture a photograph of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In what would end up being one of the scariest assignments of his life (which is saying a lot given some of the stuff he's covered), his portrait session for TIME's person of the year award involved just a few more guns and guards than most.
There is little doubt that auteur Stanley Kubrick looms large as a director able to distinctively bring his films to life through his vision. He has left his mark across the motion picture landscape.
He also happens to be responsible for some very interesting technical results in the realm of photography as well (including owning 3 of the 10 Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 ever made).
Any words I write here about him will pale in comparison to the reams of scholarly works already published. And so, instead, I give you a couple of fascinating pieces of Shining/Kubrick trivia that you can whip out the next time there's a lull in conversation.
Years ago, well-known Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis went through a collection of the gear he takes on his photo and video shoots. But given the great deal of change in technology -- and capital on his side -- since then, he recently created a completely new and updated video showing, again, his must-have gear for photo and video shoots.
Five months after releasing his first tutorial video on shooting and processing time-lapse photography, Dustin Farrell is back at it again. This time he's gone more in depth, featuring some behind the scenes of his nighttime time-lapse workflow, from the gear he uses (and suggests) to the actual creation process of the video.
Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
In a new series of videos put together by Marketplace, You Hate My Job goes around and documents the occupations that often get a bad rap and are overall disliked by most of humanity. The first in the series follows a profession that is, without a doubt, one of the most hated (and possibly misunderstood) by the entire photo community: Paparazzi.
Showing just how productive and intuitive collaboration can be, Montreal-based photographer Eric Paré and Michigan-based digital artist Mike Campau got together to create some incredible work that takes advantage of their individual skill sets.
Online resources for learning about photography are anything but lacking. But every so often a new one comes around that changes things up a bit -- usually because it's created by a well-known, respected pro.
Last week we told you about Zack Arias' new site DEDPXL, and this week we have yet another educational resource to share. Joey Lawrence (affectionately known as Joey L), one of my personal favorite photographers, has put out his own aptly titled resource: Learn From Joey L.
It's always a pleasure to watch a living legend work, and the above BTS video of Annie Leibovitz photographing the Game of Thrones cast for Vanity Fair certainly qualifies.
The MōVI freefly systems are very expensive, there's no denying that. But when you see this behind the scenes video and the footage that the Red Bull Media House was able to capture with it while the camera man launched off massive jumps and flew through the air on skis, you'll never wonder whether or not it's worth it again.
We've featured plenty of Pro Photographer Cheap Camera Challenges over the years, all of them informative, educational and entertaining to varying degrees. What we've never had before is the photographer's perspective. What's it like to be on the program? How does it go down? How much planning goes into it?
Thanks to Benjamin Von Wong and Silistudio we now have an answer to all of those questions and more.
What happens when you pit Nikon's $3,000 D800E up against a $30,000 Hasselblad H5D? Well, photographer Benjamin Von Wong -- whose work we've featured quite a bit here on PetaPixel -- got to do just that in a friendly comparison.
It was in the early part of 2013 when Trent Bell, a commercial photographer known for his architectural photos, received the shocking news that a friend of his had been sentenced to thirty-six years in prison for some trouble he got himself into.
The saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. I certainly agree with this sentiment, but there's more to it. For every thousand words the photograph is worth, there's three thousand explaining how the image came to be.
We've all had that moment when we're browsing through some photographs online and the questions hit us. How did someone capture this photo? What gear did they use for this? What was their inspiration? How did they plan it?
Well, for moments like this, there's now a beautifully designed resource called The Image Story.
Simeon Quarrie of Vivida is back at it again, giving us a behind the scenes look at yet another of his equal parts intricate and subtle pre-wedding (read: engagement) shoots, Released by Love.
If you walk into the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center right now, you'll very quickly find your jaw on the floor alongside the reason for its gaping state. Stretched across the entire promenade of the theatre is a large-scale photo installation that has well-dressed ballet-goers so enthralled they're laying down on the floor, striking poses and climbing up several flights of stairs to get a better view of the massive photograph.
Controversy over the World Press Photo organization and the way they handle their judging aside, most people were in agreement that photographer John Stanmeyer deserved the award he received this year. In the above video, the World Press Photo winner shares some insight as to how his widely-praised photograph came to be.
Editor's Note: This video is a tiny bit NSFW. All nudity has been censored, but the models are at times very scantily clad so you may want to wait until you're at home to watch it.
While The Body Issue of ESPN Magazine usually keeps the focus on bodies in a sporty sense, Fiat wanted to make an impression in its advertising pages as well.
And so, taking the Fiat 500C's motto "Made of Pure Muscle" to its most literal sense, Fiat used 15 circus performers, acrobats and artists to turn human bodies into a car without the help of Photoshop.
Not all of the women in this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue are made of plastic, and yet the unique Barbie swimsuit shots we told you about a few days back will STILL play second fiddle to a much cooler photo shoot of model and actress Kate Upton... scantily clad... floating around in actual zero gravity.
Guys, you may want to be extra careful about where you read your copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue this year. It will contain a double-helping of grist for feminist outrage this time around, as Barbie, that icon of feminine pulchritude and academic rigor ("Math class is tough. Let's go shopping!") struts her stuff alongside the human models.
At Photokina 2012, Sigma released a beautiful video that offered an artsy behind the scenes look inside the company's lens factory in Aizu, Japan. Since then, Sigma's popularity has only increased, and so they've created a sequel to further draw you in to the wonderful world of Sigma.
The first time that I had worked with Disney ABC TV as their official stills photographer was a couple years back when they came to Japan to film for the reality show I Survived a Japanese Game Show. It was a super big production and I'm grateful I got to be a part of that. Although the working hours were somewhere between 12-14+ moving around on foot each day, I couldn’t complain because the entire crew were all fun to work with.
As with lots of the non-news related picture work that I do, it’s typical that I can’t post any pictures up due to contract reasons (or until the story runs) even though the Internet makes it so tempting with just four clicks of a button. One of the assignments that I’m allowed to finally take out of the bag (now that the show is broadcasted) and share with all of you is when Disney ABC TV put me on the plane bound for Seoul, South Korea to shoot all the stills for the filming of The Bachelor Season 18 Episode 4. Although I couldn’t fly first class, they did put me up in a nice little room towards the top at the Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel, which I was more than fine with. Thanks again Disney and ABC.
We never get sick of going behind the scenes with Brandon Stanton and Humans of New York, probably because we never tire of hearing Stanton's story. An amateur photographer who moved to New York in 2010 with two suitcases and a goal has somehow managed to start a movement that has attracted millions of followers, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, and spawned many a Humans of _____ copycat.
At 2.8 million followers, HONY is one of the most successful pages on Facebook's massive network, and so Facebook chose it as one of the 10 'stories' they would tell for the site's 10th Anniversary.
Take that, girl! Celebrity mess Miley Cyrus is at the butt end of an insider fashion industry snub after noted fashion photographer Juergen Teller refused to work with her on a campaign for longtime client Marc Jacobs.
In our State of the Blog Address, we asked you what you want to see more of on PetaPixel, and one of the suggestions that came up most often was Tutorials, Behind the Scenes videos and other helpful educational content like that.
Well, we were listening. And so, we invite you to spend 15 minutes this lovely Friday watching professional photographer Karl Taylor at work in his studio.
There's no doubt the ubiquity of fake and mis-reported content on the Internet has turned many of us into big-time skeptics. Whenever we see something that seems incredible or outlandish, our knee-jerk reaction is to call it fake and begin searching for evidence of that fact, using our confirmation bias as a guide.
One video that elicited such a response from many of the people that saw it was this recent Sony ad that showed an a7R lens change happening in mid-air during a skydive.
"Don't be afraid to be different." That is the moral of this video. Usually you save the moral for the end, but it is stated, restated and demonstrated so well with this shoot that it's worth starting the post with. Don't be afraid to let your creativity break the barriers of the proverbial box and try something different, because you might just stumble onto an idea as unique and creative as "Love Sick" by Simeon Quarrie of Vivida.
Carli Davidson's photos and slow motion video of dogs shaking off water and spittle have been a huge hit with people all over the world. In October, the photos were even immortalized in a book by the same name, and while she was working on that book, Nikon caught up with her at her Portland, OR studio.
For a recent project, Montreal-based photographer Benjamin Von Wong wanted to do something interesting: he wanted to create 'world within a world' style photographs WITHOUT using any Photoshop to achieve the final effect. It took some creativity and help from some very talented set designers, but in the end they pulled it off!
Michael Shainblum is a name that has come up a few times on PetaPixel, and it's always associated with a spectacular time-lapse that earns many a "beautifully done" and even the occasional "hot damn." And now, thanks to The Creators Project, we get to go behind the scenes with Shainblum as he creates one of his masterpieces.
There's something inspirational about watching a seasoned photographer work at his craft -- whether it's a studio photog who molds light to his will or a street photographer whose demeanor and results both scream professionalism.
Jack Simon falls under the latter of those categories, and in the video above, fellow street photographer Eric Kim takes us behind the scenes with Simon as he walks the streets of San Francisco.
We first shared the jaw-dropping fairytale photographs that make up Kirsty Mitchell's Wonderland series in May of 2012, some three years after she began her journey and just as her work was going so viral online that her reply to our request to feature her work was a "yes" followed by a "thank goodness I upgraded my servers!"
Now, four and a half years after she began Wonderland as a tribute to her mother who had recently passed away, she has officially embarked on what she is calling the final chapter in her Wonderland series.
One of the things big time photographers are phenomenal at is getting their subjects to trust their judgement implicitly. Of course, how far does that trust really go? Well, in the case of celebrity photog Tyler Shields and actor Zachary Quinto, that trust meant Quinto being willing to be dragged behind a car at 40mph.
I'm a very accomplished photographer. My photos have been in magazines, newspapers, textbooks, blogs, online videos, television and any other medium that you can think of. My work has been seen by millions and will be one of the most important resources for the history of video games. The only catch is that I'm almost never credited and don't get paid for it.