bts

Shooting an Epic Time Travel Composite Photo on the Cheap

A while ago, we read an article about how gear doesn’t matter on PetaPixel, while at the same time planning a shoot that would involve a Hot Rod. Inspired by the post, we said, "Let’s do it with a Canon 550D and a cheap lens instead of the Nikon D800," because we really believe that all the latest cameras are quite good, and gear doesn't always matter anyway.

BTS: Richard Renaldi Introduces & Poses Complete Strangers on the Streets of NYC

Photographer Richard Renaldi's 6-year-long project Touching Strangers has been an incredible success. From viral Internet fame to a full-fledged photo book that exceeded its Kickstarter goal eight times over, there's something profoundly moving about complete strangers posed together, sometimes quite intimately, on the streets of NYC.

In the video above we get a behind the scenes look at how Renaldi does what he does, and how his subjects, sometimes reticent at first, often wind up feeling at ease and connected to this perfect stranger they didn't know existed 10 minutes ago.

Behind the Scenes with Brandon Stanton and His Humans of New York Project

When we first covered Brandon Stanton and his Humans of New York project almost a year and a half ago, he had accumulated about 3,000 portraits of people from around New York City. Now that number has grown to over 5,000, and the blog that started it all has birthed a book and the kind of viral fame the Internet it known for.

BTS: A Look at How Pelle Cass Creates His Interesting Single-Frame Time-Lapse Shots

Back in early July, we got a chance to share photographer Pelle Cass' intriguing Selected People series with you. For this series, he combines hundreds of exposures to create what amounts to a time-lapse in one frame: showing what a particular location looks like over the course of many hours, but capturing it as a single moment in time.

Expect the Unexpected: Jimmy Fallon Gets Peed on by Baby During Photo Shoot

Update: The footage has been taken down at the request of Jimmy Fallon's publicist.

If you're planning on using a baby in a future photo shoot, take note: you can't really control their emotions, and they can't really control their bladders. Of course, if you know what you're doing, you could end up with some unexpectedly great pictures anyway.

BTS: Making Epic Advertising Composites with Erik Almas

Purists might not take to all of photographer Erik Almas' work, and in particular the work featured here, but if you can get over the fact that these are composites that necessarily need some help in the computer to come to life, Almas' advertising photography will blow your mind.

Shooting Photographs for the New KFC eleven Concept Restaurant

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.

Tutorial: Creating a Surreal, Conceptual Photo Using ‘Zone Lighting’

In this tutorial I’d like to demonstrate that you don’t need expensive studio flashes to create a complex scene with subtle lighting. I haven’t yet seen anyone else do this quite the same way and there doesn’t seem to be a name for it, so I named the process “zone lighting”, a form of exposure blending by dividing the scene in different zones. But let’s start with a little bit of background about the project and its concept.

6 Tips for Effectively Shooting Behind The Scenes

In my experience there seems to be a common misconception that shooting production photography and behind the scenes videos/documentaries are an easy task. While it's true that these sometimes don't require the normal spit and polish, photographers are used to, especially in terms of video work, I can assure you they're no walk in the park.

As is the case any time you're working around high level talent, or even low level talent for that matter, there's still plenty that could go wrong. A lesson I quickly found out as I started shooting behind the scenes videos a few years ago.

Wanted: Recreating Mug Shots Taken in the 1920s and 30s

Back in 2009, award-winning editorial art director and artist Mark Michaelson released his book Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots. In it he had compiled more than 10,000 mug shot portraits taken between the 1870s and 1970s. Portraits of the "punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants" he referred to as the "Least Wanted."

For his portrait series Wanted, London-based photographer Nick Dolding decided to recreate some of the most striking of the mug shots found within Michaelson's book.

What It’s Like to Photograph Concerts at Warped Tour

I got a chance to photograph for Warped Tour this year, and wanted to share about my experiences and takeaways with you. I was actually quite lucky to get the job. It started off with an email to the media director of Warped Tour, followed by having to fill out this media request form. From there, I just had to wait a few days for them to verify everything, check out my portfolio, and get a confirmation email literally 12 hours before the show started.

Photographer Captures Outdoor Scenes Inside His Tiny Indoor Studio

So you want to create stirring nature documentaries. You could go the National Geographic way and risk trench-foot, snakebite and more in pursuit of the scenic wild. Or you could take the Boris Godfroid route: Schlep a few hundred pounds of bricks into a spare room, cover it with moss and other forgiving plant life, and let nature run wild in miniature.

Behind the Scenes with Pro Skateboarder Turned Photographer Arto Saari

Arto Saari is one of professional skateboarding's legends, but Saari has another passion as well: photography. In the video above, Oakley takes us behind the scenes on Saari's first skateboarding trip where he was hired specifically to take photos of people doing gnarly tricks, instead of performing them himself.

Behind the Scenes with Nikon’s Industrial Design Team

Designing a camera from start to finish takes a lot of work by a lot of talented people. What begins as brainstorming and sticky notes must be turned into sketches, 3D renderings, and physical products. Even the UI has to be meticulously planned so that it is intuitive, speedy and responsive.

At Nikon, there is one overall department that handles all of these tasks: The Industrial Design Department. And the company just recently released a great behind the scenes video that walks you through the Nikon design process from sketch to finish.

My Portrait Shoot with Embattled ex-NFL Player Aaron Hernandez

I have sat staring at the computer monitor for the last hour and words refused to appear on the screen. Even in times of stress I can write out a quick blog, but the current situation with Aaron Hernandez has proved tough.

It is important to me to be respectful of the man that was killed and the ongoing investigation, as well as tell about the photoshoot and the side of Aaron that I met on set. With that said, please read this as a story about a shoot and not the lobbying of an opinion over the current investigation.

BTS: Golden Hour Cover Shoot of Medal of Honor Recipient Col. Bud Day

Colonel George Everette "Bud" Day is a retired U.S. Air Force Command Pilot who served his country during the Vietnam war, enduring a stint as a POW and earning the Medal of Honor and the Air Force Cross.

When he was asked to be on the cover of Smithsonian's Air & Space magazine, it was portrait photographer Robert Seale who got the honor of photographing him, and for our sakes, he put together a behind-the-scenes video while he was at it.

BTS: Photographing Breathtaking Vistas in Venezuela with Philip Lee Harvey

On November 18, 1933, aviator Jimmie Angel became the first American to catch a glimpse of the tallest waterfall in the world -- a natural wonder that would eventually be named for him. Four years later, he returned to Venezuela and Angel Falls, crash landing on top of one of the flat-topped mountains in the area and having to hike 11 days with little food or water to the nearest village.

Photographer Philip Lee Harvey wanted to see these places for himself, and so he followed in Angel's footsteps, photographing the breathtaking sights along the way. The behind-the-scenes video above shows you how that adventure went down.

I’m Teri Campbell, and Here’s a Tour of My Food Photography Studio

Younger photographers may not understand it, or even feel the same way, but for photographers of my generation, your studio was not just a place to take photographs -- it was a reflection of you. It told the world who you were. If you didn't have one, then you weren't really a photographer!

Photographing the “Big Three” of the San Antonio Spurs for Sports Illustrated

With the NBA Conference playoffs nearing completion and the Spurs already a lock for the Finals, I got a call from Brad Smith, the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated, asking if I could quickly get to San Antonio.

Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker rarely if ever pose together, but had reluctantly agreed to pose for an SI cover which would come out a couple of days later, to coincide with the beginning of the finals.

BTS: Shooting a Burning Number 13 for the New Black Sabbath Album Cover

For the first time since the mid nineties, the band Black Sabbath has released a new album. With Ozzy Osbourne back at the helm, the album 13 made landfall in Europe on the 7th and in the US on the 11th.

And gracing the cover of that album was a giant burning number thirteen designed by Zip Design and photographed by Jonathan Knowles. In this short video, we get a quick behind the scenes look at how that shoot came together.

Taking Pictures on an Offshore Oil Rig Is Serious Business

Taking pictures on an offshore oil rig is serious business. For starters, due to the risk of flammable gas coming up the oil well, normal electronics are banned outside the living quarters. Smartphones are strictly forbidden and regular cameras require "hot work permits" be opened prior to use.

BTS: Shooting a Portrait of Hans Rosling for a Student Magazine Cover

My friend Gustaf Drevin and I are the Editor and Creative Director (respectively) of Medicor, the student union magazine of the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. Long before we even got involved with the publication, we had dreamed up this ‘fantasy’ issue where we would have a huge cover story featuring Hans Rosling, the founder of Gapminder and one of TIME's 100 most influential people in 2012.

We would have a minimalistic design, and we would have great photos; we even wanted to have a launch party with Bill Gates, but that’s a story for another time. After Gustaf became the editor for Medicor, we finally got the chance to realise our fantasy. This is the story of how we got Hans Rosling on the cover of Medicor.

Graveyard Girls: A Photo Shoot with a DIY Dam, Water, Milk, and Flour-Covered Girls

I've been living out of my car and driving all over the country to create new work. This past Sunday, I stopped near Nashville, Tennessee to see my friend and fellow photographer Marissa Bolen. While there, we collaborated to put together a photo shoot -- a shoot that involved a homemade dam, water, milk, and girls covered with flour.

The Story Behind the Iconic “Tank Man” Tiananmen Square Photo

When the Chinese military moved into Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989 to forcibly remove pro-democracy protestors, an anonymous man famously decided to place himself in front of the long column of Chinese tanks that were rumbling into the area. Photos and videos of the incident were immediately published and broadcast around the world. AP photographer Jeff Widener's "Tank Man" photo, shown above, is widely considered to be one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century.

Irina Werning on How Her Viral ‘Back to the Future’ Project Came to Be

A couple of years ago, Irina Werning burst into the public eye when her series Back to the Future went viral. What started as a project were she would have relatives in Buenos Aires reenact old photos of themselves, has since expanded to a photographic phenomenon that has taken her all over the world.

The short documentary above gives us a chance to hear Werning's thoughts on the project: why she does it, how she puts the shots together, and whether or not she ever feels the project will truly be over.

BTS: Shooting James Cameron in a Water Tank for the Cover of National Geographic

The June cover of National Geographic features a photo of explorer and director James Cameron comfortably posing underwater in front of what looks to be his submarine. Obviously a composite (and a bit of a deviation from Nat Geo's typical style) photographer Marco Grob uses the above behind the scenes video to explain both the how and the why behind this awesome photo shoot.

New Series Gets Big Time Photographers Talking About Their Most Iconic Shots

Think Tank Photo is putting together a brand new video series in which producers and Think Tank Photo co-founders Kurt Rogers and Deanne Fitzmaurice catch up with some of the world's top photographers and photojournalists.

The series is dubbed "About a Photograph," and in it some of the best photographers of our time tell the stories behind their best known and most influential photographs.

Video: How Carl Zeiss’ New Touit Lenses Are Manufactured

There's something to be said about lens manufacturing. You could even go so far as to say it, in itself, is an art form, with the hands of skilled and methodical workers ever-so-delicately assembling the glass we use to take photos.

Speaking of lens manufacturing, Carl Zeiss Lenses has just posted an short, yet interesting, video behind the manufacturing process of their Touit lens line (for what it's worth, the video is also available in 3D, if you need an added dimension to your viewing experience). These lenses come as 12mm f/2.8 or 32mm f/1.8, and are available for both E-mount and X-mount cameras starting in June.

A Look at How Eric Paré Creates His 360º Bullet Time Stop Motion Light Paintings

We've featured the work of Eric Paré, Patrick Rochon and Timecode Lab before. Using a 24 DSLR fully circular bullet time rig developed by Rochon, Paré and Timecode put together some really cool light-painting projects. One of these was LightSpin: an art project that captured dancers using an awe-inspiring combination of light painting, bullet time and stop motion.

In the past we had only a few behind the scenes details to share with you. Fortunately, Paré recently decided to release the 8 minute "documentary" above in order to explain exactly what all goes into shooting his creations.

BTS: Making Photographs of Sony’s New Xperia ZR Waterproof Phones

Earlier this week, Sony announced its new Xperia ZR waterproof smartphone that can double as an everyday underwater camera. After we reported on the story, we were contacted by reader Jeffery Richt, who shot the marketing photographs for Sony. The video above is a behind-the-scenes video showing how the underwater shoot went down.

BTS: Chase Jarvis Literally Gets to Make His Dream a Reality for a Samsung Ad

Photographer Chase Jarvis has a recurring dream in which he is floating in a sea of vividly colored clouds (don't we all?). So when Samsung came to him with a bunch of money and instructions to do whatever he wanted just as long as it highlighted the color capabilities of the company's Series 9 monitors, he decided to make his dreams come true -- literally.

His only demand from Samsung was that the company let him create an epic behind the scenes video that showed how his team brought the whole thing together.

Peter Belanger: The Man Behind Many of Apple’s Iconic Product Images

You know those iconic minimalist product photos for Apple gadgets? Have you ever wondered about how they're shot and who shoots them?

One of the people behind the photos is San Francisco-based photographer Peter Belanger. The video above is a behind-the-scenes look into how Belanger photographed the iPhone 3GS for a 2009 issue of Macworld magazine.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the 10 Best National Geographic Photos of 2009

National Geographic photographers snapped over 1 million images over the course of 2009. Only about 1000 of those photos were selected and published by the famous yellow-bordered journal.

Of these 1000 published photos, National Geographic selected the 10 best images and created a 50-minute film that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how they were made.