The tech world has been buzzing over the past couple of days about Vine, Twitter’s new app that lets you share 6-second video loops through an Instagram-style service. If you’ve been out of the loop and need a primer on what the difference between Facebook’s Instagram and Twitter’s Vine is, the above web comic by Willa’s World will bring you up to speed.

Instagram Vs. Vine [Willa's World via Laughing Squid]

P.S. Another big story surrounding Vine today is that the service is dealing with the problem of being flooded with inappropriate content. This comes less than one week after 500px’s mobile app was yanked from the Apple App Store for making nudity available to users.

Here’s a bit of lighthearted humor as we heat up the bloggin’ machine today: at the second inauguration of Barack Obama this past Monday, a number of humorous photobombs were spotted in the live television coverage and in the press photos that emerged afterward. A few of them have the web talking (and laughing).

In the photograph above by Jim Bourg of Reuters, we see New York Senator Chuck Schumer photobombing during the oath of office.
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For several years now, my occupation has been to basically read everything written about new equipment. In order to help everyone save time, and to save the Internet millions of electrons, I have developed a concise method to summarize all such discussions for all newly introduced imaging equipment.

I modestly call this Roger’s Law of New Product Introduction and have summarized it in the graph above. You will notice there are two possible paths a new product may follow. To date, these two paths accurately describe every introduced product.
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“The Ugly Truth” is a bizarre series of portraits by photographer Rut Mackel. Each photo features a not-very-pleasing photo of a face that looks flatted and disfigured. No, the subjects don’t actually look like that, and no, Mackel didn’t use any kind of digital manipulation for the photos. She simply asked her subjects to hold a pane of glass and then press their faces against it.
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Here’s Shoebox’s humorous take on the difference between film and digital photography.

Taking Pictures: Film vs Digital [Shoebox via Laughing Squid]

Photographer Maciej Pietuszynski has posted a (hopefully tongue-in-cheek) step-by-step tutorial over on his blog on how he was able to give his Canon 40D a square aspect ratio viewfinder by applying some tape to his focusing screen.

It could be a funny prank for convincing people that you have some kind of special, limited-edition DSLR, but be warned: focusing screens are extremely susceptible to dust and scratches. Unless you want to risk messing up the viewfinder of your camera, you might want to refrain from doing this mod yourself.

Change The View [maciekpp via DIYPhotography]

After the Instagram Terms of Service controversy erupted this past week, Randall Munroe of XKCD published the comic above that offers his take on what’s going on (pardon the language). Here’s the explain xkcd explanation:

In December 2012, Instagram changed their terms of service (ToS), allowing the network to sell user-uploaded images, without profit to the content generators. This infuriated many users, who closed their accounts or stopped uploading images. Craigslist is a website for the US and Canada where individuals can contact others interested in buying or selling goods.

The title text notes two flaws in the logic of disgruntled Instagram users. You cannot accuse Instagram of stealing because it was you who gave them the images in the first place. And it is irresponsible to assume that this will not happen if you give your photos to another social networking company.

The title text, which appears if you hover your mouse over the comic, reads: “I’m gonna call the cops and get Chad arrested for theft, then move all my stuff to the house across the street. Hopefully the owners there are more responsible.”

Dear Santa,

I don’t really need anything for Christmas this year. But I would appreciate if you would bring some gifts to my favorite photography manufacturers.
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Russian wildlife photographer Igor Shpilenok captured this perfect Kodak moment of another shooter at a reserve in Kabardino-Balkaria. It humorously illustrates the dangers of chimping too much — stare too much at the back of your camera and you might miss a great photo opportunity!

In Kabardino-Balkaria Reserve [Shpilenok via Reddit]

P.S. In case you’re wondering, that photobomber is a Caucasian tur, a type of mountain-dwelling goat-antelope. Here’s an Animal Planet clip about it.

When Quebec-based photographer Patrice Laroche and Sandra Denis found out they were to become parents, Larouche came up with a funny and clever way of documenting the 9-month journey of pregnancy. The photo project involved paying a visit to a local gas station at various points throughout the process, snapping photos to show exactly how their daughter Justine came into the world.
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