fascinating

Researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) have created a machine learning algorithm that can produce images using only text captions as its guide. The results are somewhat terrifying... but if you can look past the nightmare fuel, this creation represents an important step forward in the study of AI and imaging.

The Library of Congress has created something really cool. It's called the Newspaper Navigator, and it's an AI-powered image search that lets you browse through over 1.5 million newspaper photos from over 16 million pages worth of digitized newspapers published between 1900 and 1963.

Photographer, computational biologist, and science presenter Andrew Steele just released a fascinating short video about his favorite optical illusion. By manipulating a function of your visual system, he shows you how you can trick your brain into "adding" color to a black-and-white image.

Most photographers know the basics of lens-based image stabilization (Lens IS) and in-body image stabilization (IBIS), but if you've ever wanted a technical deep-dive that explains exactly how these systems work to generate 4, 5, or even 7 stops of stabilization, this video from Imaging Resource is here to answer that call.

Unmesh Dinda of PIXimperfect has put together a brilliant educational video on the oft-confusing Divide blend mode in Photoshop. In this tutorial he'll show you how to use it to remove any color cast, before diving into the fascinating mathematics behind this useful tool.

Did you know that you can make your own ground glass focusing screen? In his latest video, wet plate photographer Markus Hofstätter shows you exactly how by making a ground glass screen for one of his large format cameras.

The folks at Vox recently put together a fascinating photography history lesson on a subject we've honestly never seen covered: the fisheye lens, and why it's been so widely used in music photography. Specifically, why we've seen it used so often for album covers throughout the decades.

A set of historical photographs of the Amazon captured by German photographer Albert Frisch over 150 years ago have sold at Sotheby's auction house for $81,250. The images offer a rare, fascinating glimpse at what life was like in Brazil's Upper Amazon.

Legendary photographer Edward Weston was one of the most influential photographers in American history, and in this short video, we get to go back in time, visit his home, and watch him process one of his negatives from start to finish.

On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that sparked huge fires, destroying over 80% of the city and killing roughly 3,000 people. Immediately before and after the earthquake, cameras captured dashcam-style footage while traveling down Market Street, and those films now provide an idea of how SF was changed through the quake.

Before you read the rest of the article, and it will be a long read, please allow me to share a few thoughts with you. Visiting the abandoned city of Pripyat and the disaster site of Chernobyl was an experience that I was looking forward to for a very long time.

We first told you about the living work of artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey back in 2012. Their unique brand of portrait 'printing' involves literally growing a photo onto a wall of grass and displaying the result. Now we get to hear from the artists themselves in this revealing video.

The human eye can't possibly see how light washes over a portrait subject when you fire your strobe—the speed of light is simply too fast. But someone actually managed to capture the whole process on camera... nanosecond by nanosecond.

How do you capture a photo of a wild, people-averse, flighty great white shark in the murky green waters off of Cape Cod? If you're NatGeo photographer Brian Skerry, you pull out all the stops.

Eadweard Muybridge is considered one of the fathers—if not THE father—of the moving picture. But his life story is perhaps more sordid than glamorous, as this fascinating short film by filmmaker Drew Christie illustrates.

John Green of vlogbrothers made this interesting 2-minute video in which he talks about his favorite photo: a picture titled "Young Farmers" by German photographer August Sander. Upon first glance, it may look like a simple snapshot of three nicely dressed men walking along a road, but there's so much you can learn about the photo by examining it closely and by looking at the cultural context.

Have you ever noticed how, in every photo of an astronaut using camera gear in the International Space Station, there's pretty much never a tripod or monopod or special mount in sight? They're always just handholding this massive camera with a 400mm lens attached.

So how, then, can they capture incredibly crisp photos of the Earth when they're flying above it at 4.8 miles per second? In the video above, iconic Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield shares the fascinating answer.

So, you think taking your film to the local shop to get developed is a pain? Try being an American spy satellite in the 1960s. Getting your film developed then meant dropping it in a special 'film bucket' capsule from space, which the US Air Force then had to catch in mid-air.

Here's a fascinating little photography history lesson for you, and it'll only take up two minutes and fifty seconds of your time. Put together by Engineer Guy Bill Hammack, the video above tells the remarkable story of George Eastman, and how he revolutionized photography.

So much of the world today is invisible to cameras. Technology operates in a light-less world of zeroes and ones, electromagnetic waves that fly over our heads in ever-increasing abundance.

For his fascinating project Digital Ethereal, designer Luis Hernan set out to capture one of these invisible signals, WiFi, using a creative combination of long exposure photography and an Android app.

As much information as we’re able to pull in through the Internet, there is one thing that can never be obtained through words or pictures on a screen: experience. Through time and experience, information turns to knowledge, and we begin to wrap our heads around the complicated concepts that baffled us in the beginning.

One phenomenal example of a man who has accrued more experience than most is renowned portrait photographer Gregory Heisler, and in the interview above with Maine Media Workshops + College, he shares valuable insight and advice for photographers both young and old.

Four years (and one day) ago, Kevin Systrom posted the first ever photo to Instagram, then a new social network with an uncertain future and exactly one photo of a cute dog in its archives.

If you enjoy strange and experimental photography, Nathaniel Stern's work should delight you.

For the past ten years, Stern has been creating experimental image-capturing devices using a conglomeration of hacked-together desktop scanners, battery packs and other various computer components. Once created, he straps these machines to his body and takes them from location to location capturing images unlike any other camera out there.

Three million, four hundred and sixty four thousand, eighty four. That's how many times what might be considered the most mundane GoPro video ever shot has been watched.

So, you might ask, what does this obviously captivating video show? What has enticed almost 3.5 million clicks of that play button over the course of a month and a half? It was a peek inside your standard dishwasher.

At the ripe old age of 103, New Englander Conrad Heyer, a veteran of the American Revolution, sat down to have his portrait taken. Maybe he knew this at the time, or maybe he didn't, but the gruff, stern man staring defiantly out of the portrait above is believed to be the earliest born human ever photographed.

In 1939, British Pathé -- whose fascinating photography-related old videos we've shared before -- covered something truly amazing: 100 years of photography. It had been 100 years since the camera was invented and so, they took a look back at how those years had changed and refined the art of capturing images using a light-tight box and whatever light-sensitive material you happen to have at hand.

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.

Even if you've never heard of Peter and David Turnley, you've likely seen at least one of their photographs at some point in your life. The identical twins are two of the most renowned photojournalists to have covered world events over the past few decades. The video above is a fascinating 13-minute-long feature titled "Double Exposure," which aired on 60 Minutes back in 1996 (warning: there are some strong images of violence).

Bellamy Hunt over at Japan Camera Hunter has a fascinating account of what …

Unless you only shoot in monochrome, color likely plays a huge part in the experience of viewing your photographs. You may be aware of how you use them, but do you know how the colors in your images affect the people that look at them? PBS Off Book put out this fascinating video today that explores just how powerful colors are.

Steward Magazine has published a fascinating interview with photographer Anton Kusters, who spent two years documenting a yakuza gang in Tokyo, capturing highly intimate glimpses into what life is like in the criminal underworld. When asked what he felt like when the project was just starting out, Kusters states,

I was extremely nervous. Since they are gangsters, I thought I should be very careful, in case I shot something I wasn’t supposed to see. But this actually upset the gang. They saw my nervousness as disrespectful. I remember one time early on this guy pulled me aside and said, “You are here to take pictures. Act like a professional.” It turned out they respected me if I was really aggressive about getting a certain shot. To not take photos was a sign of weakness.

As his surname suggests, Kusters is not from Japan (he's from Belgium). It took 10 months of negotiations before he and his brother were given an unprecedented access into the closed world of Japanese organized crime.

Earlier this month, when we were exploring why the NASA Curiosity rover’s cameras are so lame, we …

Vince Devlin over at the University of Montana has the fascinating story of …

Here's an oldie but goodie: back in September 2009, photographer Chris Weeks released this documentary about street photography titled Documenting the Human Condition. It's occasionally preachy and at times feels like a stealthy Leica advertisement, but should be interesting to you if you're at all interested in the practice of street photography.