Who says there are no paying photography jobs anymore? Just shift your attention to Liberal, Kansas, where the organizers of International Pancake Day are now accepting bids for an official event photographer.
Living in Alabama, one of the more frequent pieces of trivia I hear mentioned at social gatherings has to do with ridiculous state and city laws that are so ludicrous as to be unbelievable. The thing is, these laws exist, and not just in the great state of Alabama.
In her creative and humorous photo series I Fought the Law, photographer Olivia Locher exposes some of the most ridiculous ones you'll find across the US.
Sure, Instagram has provided some folks with a ready-made market for selling illegal items or doing unsavory things, but the photo sharing services has also expanded the boundaries of how incompetent a crook can be.
One of the more controversial forms of government photography involves traffic cameras, which wind up in privacy-related news so often we've actually never written an article about them. This Chinese intersection, however, warrants some attention if for no other reason than to give you a good chuckle.
Nikon has spared no amount of hype getting ready for the release of the rumored Nikon DF full-frame retro-styled camera. But all of this throwing around of high-brow terms like "pure photography" and five full teasers worth of mechanical whirrs and clicks and peeks at the camera's design has also opened the company up to a little bit of mockery.
One of the joys of photography is the interesting cast of characters you meet along the way. I'm not talking about the subject's you're shooting here, I'm talking about the other photographers you'll run in to.
No matter how many different personalities you come across though, you'll eventually start to notice recurring themes. A cast of familiar characters if you will. Today, in order to lighten things up a little, we'll explore a few of those different characters. Here are 8 different types of photographers you'll run into in your life:
One of the oft-mentioned pitfalls of the smartphone photography movement is that we end up with a ton of photos that just stay on our phones indefinitely, never to see the light of day. This humorous video points out some of the photos that you and I both probably have sitting somewhere on our phone and that, for one reason or another, we haven't or won't ever delete.
Optical image stabilization is all about keeping the camera still even as the housing shakes or otherwise moves around. And when it comes to stabilization in nature, few creatures are as good at keeping their camera (read: head) perfectly still as the chicken.
So why not strap a camera onto a chicken's head and turn the guy (or gal) into a fowl-stabilized action cam!? Why, no reason at all!
If you've been to a play or other event put on by your child's elementary school recently, you might have experienced something similar to what the Nokia ad above depicts. Meant to tout the prowess of the Lumia 1020, it does a better job at showing just how close we've gotten to ridiculous when it comes to smartphone photography.
Update: Unfortunately, the video has been taken down since we put this post up. We'll keep an eye out and get it back up if and when it is re-uploaded.
Wedding photographers have complained before (and for good reason) of people getting in their way while they try to do their job. In the video above, however, the tables have turned. It's not a guest getting up and standing in the middle of the aisle, blocking every shot. The one in the way is actually the photographer.
While living in their studio -- which also happened to be located in an old bank with joint bathrooms at the time -- photographers Gerban Grotenhuis and Marc Marselje had an interesting idea. Just how many creative and funny scenes could they create using those joint toilets?
The result is a humorous and creative photo series called Toilet Diaries that transformed joint toilet rooms into everything from a WWII battleground to the inside of a claw crane machine.
I admit that I am an Instagram Junkie. To paraphrase that classic SNL line: "I got a fever and the only prescription is MORE INSTAGRAM." It's not that I really enjoy sharing images of my dog and what I had for dinner, it's more that I love looking at the uploads of those I follow. Following celebrities is a lot of fun, as you get to see a glimpse inside their world. What are they thinking? Where are they going? What are they doing?
BforBel.com knows this and took it a step further...all the way to Disney.
Most of us can agree that having a toddler is a lot less fun than being one, but photographing one... well that can fall closer to the latter given the right circumstances. For photographers April Maciborka and David Wile, the right circumstances were just a lemon slice and a cute reaction away.
Here's a humorous 14-second video that might make that last bit of your Friday workday go by that much faster. In an attempt to prove how important the right angle is when taking a selfie (or any portrait for that matter) a kind girl decided to demonstrate how drastic a difference she could make by simply moving her face and changing the angle of the photo.
Professional food photography is a legitimate pursuit that takes some serious skill. It's done in a studio, with professional lighting and often enlists the help of a professional food stylist to get the shot just right.
Food pics are a different matter, often taken in a restaurant with a cell phone while the other people at the table wait impatiently to dig in. The humorous clip above pokes fun at the latter.
"Please film in landscape mode, turn your phone please turn your phone..." sings musician Jonathan Mann in his most recent video extolling the virtues of shooting videos in landscape. It's a humorous short PSA music video in which Mann takes on the dreaded problem of Vertical Video Syndrome (or VVS) by taking to the streets.
Photographer Karl Baden (a part time faculty member in Boston College's Fine Arts Department) tells us of a brief and humorous encounter he recently had while shooting on the street.
When it comes to cameras, is bigger always better? Samsung didn't try to answer that question, but the company did shoot a funny video that shows pretty clearly that the general public seems to think the answer is "yes," even if there's no difference at all.
Hey, professional and aspiring photographers! Are you tired of responding to attractive assignment offers only to find later that compensation for the work consists only of "valuable exposure" for your work? And then you have to explain that you can't feed your family on exposure?
Well fret no more. with the new Exposure Helper™, you can feed your family on exposure, allowing you to accept all the free assignments you want!
It appears that "wedding party running from _____" is at risk of becoming a meme among wedding photographers. After seeing that photo of a wedding party running from a T-Rex that went viral last month, photographers Danielle and Tony Lombardo of Little Blue Lemon decided to do their own remix.
Here's a little bit of photographic humor to help get you through to hump day. Have you ever been asked to take someone's picture in public? Most of us have had this experience: a tourist or a family comes over and hands you their smartphone so they can get a complete family pic.
But after you've taken their photo -- a photo, mind you, that you with your photographic expertise deem to be the most beautiful photo they've ever had taken -- have you ever seen them go up to someone else just minutes later and ask them to take the same photo? What the!?
Living in a tourist town like San Francisco, I have frequent opportunities to observe how people use their cameras. Inevitably, these lead to "Why, oh why?" moments in which advanced technology collides with general cluelessness.
Here's a little dose of humor to brighten your Saturday. Back in the 90s, in a jab at both MTV and "avant-garde" photography, a young Louis CK put this funny little clip together. In it, his name is David Cross (perhaps another jab at his fellow comedian by the same name) and his specialty? Toilet photography.
In a short segment titled "Photojournalists vs. iPhones" on The Colbert Report yesterday, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the Chicago Sun-Times' decision to lay off its entire photography department.
Here’s a dose of humor and creativity to put a smile on your face as we’re rounding the corner …
When Emil Nyström's daughter Signhild grows up, she'll have a number of baby photos showing how adventurous she was as an infant. Since Signhild was less than 1, Nyström has been creating whimsical conceptual photos of the girl in strange situations.
The Chicago Sun-Times has raised quite a furor talking after unexpectedly laying off its entire photography staff yesterday. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, with some commentators calling it "a sign of the times," while others are wondering whether the newspaper is trying to pull "a union-busting move."
Los Angeles-based writer and comedian Jason Sereno decided to weigh in a different way: he created a tongue-in-cheek Craigslist job listing in Chicago.
Here's a fun wedding photo idea we've never seen before: dinosaur photobombing. Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based wedding photographer Quinn Miller created the photograph above this past weekend showing a hungry (and massive) T-Rex chasing after a bridal party that's running for its life.
Want to have some fun as you're learning how to use Photoshop for image editing? Try creating a "Photoshop Chimera." In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous creature composed of three different animals: the lion, snake, and goat. The term "chimera" has since come to describe any imaginary creature that's the mashup of two or more real animals.
Reddit user Arne Olav has attracted some attention as of late for his humorous chimeras created by compositing two different photographs of animals.
Google Glass is set to arrive in the hands of the general public later this year. There are already apps that can trigger the shutter by detecting winks, and some people are already thinking of how the wearable camera can be useful for various photographic applications.
Having always-ready glasses strapped to your face may be convenient, but how will photography look? The video above by Grovo offers a humorous look at what photographers would look like if Google Glass becomes widely used as a camera and camcorder.
Having photographs sell for more than $100,000 at a world famous auction house is no small feat, and it's one that will likely soon be accomplished by a photographer who gives new meaning to the term "chimping" every time he snaps a frame. The photographer is Mikki, a chimpanzee.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based camera store The Camera Store just released this review in which Chris Niccolls takes a look at the new Canon Rebel T5i (also known as the 700D and Kiss X7i). The 1-minute-long video may be the most honest review of the camera yet.
Do you ever have those times when you look up or around you and you see something like the scene above?
Hungarian photographer and retoucher Flóra Borsi created a popular series of photos last year titled "Photoshop in Real Life." The images imagined what various Photoshop Tools might be used for if they had physical powers in our world, and were quickly shared across the web.
Now Borsi is back with a new set of images that show off her Photoshopping prowess. Titled "Time Travel," the photos show Borsi inserted into various historical photographs of famous individuals.
When the presidential election was looming on the horizon last year, photographer Ashley Pizzuti decided to shoot a project that had been brewing in her mind for some time. Titled "Vote for Chase," the series imagines what political campaign photographs would look like if innocent young children ran for president rather than weathered adult politicians.
One of the stereotypes that has become associated with Instagram users (and smartphone shooters in general) is that they're obsessed with snapping photos of their food. YouTube channel Hungry decided to see how people would react when this obsession is taken too far. They sent a Instagram photographer to random strangers and had him ask if he could photograph their food. Cameras were placed nearby to document their reactions to the strange request.
For recent Whiskas advertising campaign based around the slogan "Feeding your cat's instincts," photographer George Logan and retoucher Tony Swinney teamed up to create a series of clever photographs showing tiny, domestic house cats engaging in "big cat" activities out in the wild. "Big Cat, Small Cat" is the name of the series.
Here's a bit of silly humor as we're winding down the workweek: if you're a photography enthusiast who has fond memories of playing Pokemon Snap during the days of the Nintendo 64, then you might enjoy this humorous fake trailer by Gritty Reboots, which takes popular movies, TV shows, video games and turns them into cinematic trailers.
This one imagines what a live-action Pokemon Snap movie would be like.
There's a humorous new photography meme emerging from Japan. Students in the country are shooting photos that look like they're 'Kamehameha' scenes from the popular manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball.
In each shot, one participant poses as a character exploding with energy, while one or more other subjects pretends to be blown away by the force of the blast. As with all of the popular memes that have emerged in recent years, participants are jumping onboard by shooting their own photos and then sharing them on the web.
Here's something that might give you a chuckle: it's the invisible friend prank. The video above shows magician Rahat Hussein and prankster Jack Vale teaming up to pull this prank on unsuspecting passersby in Hollywood.