I first heard about 5 Pointz in a Wall Street Journal article in the summer of 2011. The article detailed the recent attempts by the owner to knock what had become an internationally-reknown street art mecca down, and build high-rise condominiums.
This story is not going to be a technical how to. It's not about lighting gear, cameras or lenses. It's not about technique in camera or post production. It's about the unexpected things that can happen, the people you can meet and the work you can make when you travel.
It’s always interesting to hear how photographers ended up with the career they did. Photography is interesting because, unlike most jobs, it’s something that can be completely self-taught. This leads to a photo community made up of incredibly varied backgrounds and fascinating cross-over stories, and headshot master Peter Hurley has just such a story.
In the short video above Senior National Geographic Editor Pamela Chen gives us …
It seems CNN is planning to do a whole series with famed portraitist Platon, because only a couple of weeks after they released his BTS account of the portrait he took of Vladimir Putin, they've put out another, much more powerful video.
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.
Krystle Wright has documented her expeditions a little differently from some of her fellow adventure photographers. Using her breadth of knowledge of photojournalism from her Agence France-Presse and Sunday Telegraph newspaper days, Krystle’s images weave together, depicting the full experience of what it’s like to be exploring different lands, from Pakistan to Antarctica.
Here, we talk with Krystle about how she edits down her images for an essay, what kind of gear she takes with her on a journey, and how keeping close tabs on World Press Photo, POYi, NPPA winners helped shape her critical eye.
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.
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.
I took this picture with one of five remote-controlled cameras I’d set up by the side of the track to capture the race winner from various angles and perspectives. Of course, I didn’t know for sure who’d win, but when I was setting up the gear it seemed like a fair bet to focus on Usain Bolt’s lane!
Yep, it happened. It really did...
I just recently finished a whirlwind Euro-trip traveling with my sisters. The itinerary was Germany (where I am currently living as a soldier with the incredible fortune to be stationed there) to London to Dublin to Paris to Barcelona and back to Germany.
Like many great photographers of the past, Domenic Quartuccio is not a household name. Although some of his photographs appear in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York City, and he was at one point working at some of the most successful studios in the world, his successful career played out quietly within the city of New York.
In the short video interview above, Vimeo user and photographer Haiwei Ruan sat down with Quartuccio and simply let him tell his story.
During a recent engagement shoot at Wissahickon Creek in Pennsylvania, photographer Ken Beerger had the genre of his images unexpectedly change from love and romance to danger and documentary. In the end, Beerger captured some intense photographs, a young boy's life was saved, and one of his subjects is now being called a hero.
About a year ago, I was sitting around narcissistically Google-ing myself when I came across the photo above of "Robert C. Paetz + Mother". It was dated 1923 and was being sold for $12 by a man named Paul in Northern California.
I quickly did the math and figured it was my 93-year-old grandfather and my great-grandmother, Matilda (who eventually lived until 102 when I was 16).
Rochester, New York — The cold hits me as soon as I leave the Amtrak station, stepping into a swirl of snow eddies that etch the low streets in black and white.
The terminal sits just outside the city center. In the short car ride into town, one building stands out to me from all the others. It is an impressive beaux arts landmark with five large letters, glowing in red, resting at the top
(Today is National Doughnut Day. I am of the opinion it should be a National Holiday, but other people in my studio don't share the belief. They would be wrong.)
(The DH stands for "darling husband," although in light of the following conversation that took place upon entering the studio this morning, I am doing away with that adjective.)
DH: "Hey, last minute change this afternoon. Got a shoot for two bodybuilders, so I need your help."
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.
Hey everyone! I’m really excited to share a personal story with you all. This past weekend I asked my partner to marry me. After weeks of planning, the time had come to decide how I was going to capture the moment.
Unfortunately some of my colleague photographers were unavailable and so the thought of doing it myself crossed my mind. I felt ready for the challenge: photographing my own proposal! (As if it wasn’t enough to plan for the actual proposal, I now had to plan on how to capture it.)
If you make your money unscrupulously as an identity thief, you might want to refrain from sharing about your life through photographs online. Two identity thieves in South Florida found that out the hard way earlier this year after they were busted thanks to an Instagram photograph of food.
Patriots Day. This Massachusetts holiday celebrates the battles of Lexington and Concord, which were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. The day always begins with battle re-enactments. Then the Red Sox play an 11AM game, and during and after the game there is the running of the Boston Marathon, a race that first ran in 1897.
Professional photographers using their smartphones is just a fad, I thought, but it all came to me sooner than I expected. Some 3 weeks ago I was diagnosed with central serous retinopathy in my left eye and was hospitalised for 3 days. In the process, I finally discovered smartphone photography!
I focus on a relatively obscure (though rapidly becoming more popular) area of photography called gigapixel-resolution photography. I use a robotic panoramic mount to capture tens if not hundreds of images of the same location and then stitch the images together to create a single massive photograph. I've combined this technique with High Dynamic Range imaging to create HDR photographs that are anywhere from 200 megapixels to 4 gigapixels in resolution size.
You know that moment when you agree to do a favor for a friend, and it turns into something a bit... well... more? This past weekend I ended up taking headshots of 80 people during six non-stop hours of shooting. Here is the story of what happened, things I learned from it, and some random thoughts on the experience.
Here's the story of how I was in the right-place at the right-time for a special series of eagle photographs.
I was driving down a dirt road near my house when I spotted a red-tailed hawk sitting on the ground. I pulled over for a shot, thinking it may be feeding on something, but it took off and flew across the road in front of me.
Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn't a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.
This is the story of how I fell in love with photography and how I acquired and defeated gear-acquisition-syndrome.
The folks at 522 Productions have been slowly putting out videos that capture the essence of what inspires each of them. The charge was led a few weeks ago by 522's art director Chris Jurchak, but it was editor Eli Sinkus' What Inspires You? video, uploaded on April 1st, that caught our eyes and ears.
His video tells the tale of his love affair with photography and Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous "Decisive Moment" through the magic of (mostly) black and white film. A fictional tale of a boy discovering the world through photography, the entire video is then "narrated" by an interview Cartier-Bresson gave Cornell Capa in 1973.
In September 1933, LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt traveled to Geneva to document a meeting of the League of Nations. One of the political figures at the gathering was Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitlers most devout underlings and a man who became known for his "homicidal anti-Semitism."
Sunday morning: time to survey the damage from last night's party. As I walked around the apartment picking up empty beer bottles and cups, wiping up spills, and putting the furniture back, I remember having a distinct feeling that something was amiss. A quick survey of the apartment, and it hits me. My DSLR was missing.
Even as I frantically searched every nook and cranny of the apartment I knew the answer: someone had stolen my camera.
26-year-old freelance photojournalist Daniel Rodrigues landed the biggest 'win' of his photographic career this year when it was announced that his photo Football in Guinea-bissau (shown above) had won 1st prize in the prestigious World Press Photo competition's Daily Life category.
The win was more than a fancy new line on his resume: you see, just two years ago Rodrigues was flat broke, and this award will allow him to resume the career that he almost had to abandon to survive.
This is a photo of Winston Churchill by Yousuf Karsh, captured in 1941 during the early years of World War II. It is said to be one of the most widely reproduced photos of all time.
It's a legendary portrait of a legendary man by a legendary photographer. There's also a legendary story about how it was shot.
A couple were visiting a vista point near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco this past Valentine's Day when they came across a black camera bag that had apparently been misplaced. After the owner didn't turn up to recover it, they looked inside and found a wallet with Chinese currency, credit cards, an "expensive-looking" camera and lens... and $11,000 in cash.
Online dating websites are a multi-billion dollar business nowadays, and more and more single-and-looking people turn to the Interwebs to find their soul mates. Photographers Patrick Eggert and Sophie Ellis met through the Web as well, but not through a matchmaking site: their relationship started through a Flickr comment.
Belgian photographer Francois Lenoir has written an interesting account of how he managed to snap an extremely rare photo of serial killer Marc Dutroux through prison windows with some good ol' fashioned patience (and a dash of good fortune).
Walkthroughs of photographs that aren't easily reproducible (or are impossible to reproduce) might not be very useful to many, but it's still interesting to learn how rare shots come about. An example would be the photograph above, captured by photographer Bryan Hanna last week. Hanna was aiming to capture a long-exposure nighttime photograph of a landscape in the foreground and the night sky in the background, but he accidentally snagged something even better: a fireball zipping across the sky in just the right area in the frame!
You might recognize this iconic photograph of Michael Jordan flying through the air during the 1988 NBA Dunk Contest in Chicago. It was captured by renowned Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss Jr., a man who has created some of the most memorable photographs of athletes over the past fifty years (another of his iconic photographs is "The Catch").
Perth-based photographer James Fabri sees things a little differently when he looks through the viewfinder of a DSLR. While most photographers can only use half of their regular vision to frame shots, Fabri has the advantage of seeing things the way he normally experiences the world. You see, he only has one eye.
National Geographic photographer and filmmakers do some pretty crazy stuff and use some pretty crazy gear in order to capture the perfect shot. They're the type of people who see a large shark and, instead of fleeing the scene, think to themselves, "we should attach a camera to that thing." And then they actually do it.
Mounting cameras on sharks is risky business, though, and the video above shows just how dangerous it can be. In it, marine biologist Greg Marshall tells of his first attempt at deploying his camera onto the back of a large shark back in 1992. It didn't go according to plan.
Once upon a time there was an industry largely dominated by two companies. Their domination, over some 30 years, was so nearly complete that they became understandably a bit arrogant. After all, their products were the biggest, the best, and by far the most popular.
Reuters photographer Jose Miguel Gomez was recently covering the 121st anniversary of the National Police in Colombia when he spotted a cadet lying face down amidst her peers. He photographed the apparently unconscious policewoman with his 400mm lens for five minutes before she was finally carried away, and wondered why it took so long for help to arrive.