trivia

In 1966, Bob Dylan released his 7th studio album, titled "Blonde on Blonde," which went double-platinum and contained some of Dylan's best-known songs. It's also known for it's unusual cover photo. It's a blurry portrait of Dylan, created by photographer Jerry Schatzberg in New York City's meat-packing district.

The blur was the result of camera shake and, despite what many people think, was unintentional -- the photo is blurry simply because Schatzberg was cold and shivering.

If you grew up watching Looney Tunes cartoons, you probably know Elmer Fudd as the hunter whose life mission is to capture or kill Bugs Bunny. But did you know that Fudd's character originally started out as a wildlife photographer? In the first episode featuring Fudd, he's actually a photographer trying to shoot his bunny nemesis with a camera rather than a hunter trying to shoot him with a gun.

Rich Clarkson’s photo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then named Lew Alcindor, in the 1968 NCAA Men’s National Basketball Final Four semifinal game in Los Angeles is a masterpiece of composition, timing and exposure. The square format is the result of shooting the game action with a Hasselblad – a practice that continued into the early 2000s. But that isn’t what makes this photo historically interesting.

Sony and Zeiss are two brand names that appear together on many of Sony's cameras and lenses. For the past two decades, the Japanese and German companies (respectively) have had a fruitful partnership in designing and manufacturing gear.

To help clear up any confusion regarding dual-branded camera equipment, Zeiss recently published an interesting article that explains some behind-the-scenes details about the partnership.

Did you know that the selfie stick was actually invented back in the 1980s? The concept didn't take off until Bluetooth-enabled smartphone cameras in recent years, but the concept has been around for decades now.

Did you know that certain wide angle lenses offer slots on the rear mount that allow you to insert gel filters? Often this design decision is due to the fact that the bulbous front element prevents the use of a standard filter that screws onto the front, but sometimes it's not.

Of all the millions of historical photographs held by the US National Archives, the photo above is the single most requested. It was captured in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970, and shows Elvis Presley meeting then US President Richard Nixon.

Conspiracy theorists often point to moon landing photos as evidence that the whole thing was faked by the US government. One of the arguments is that since there's only one main light source in the photos -- the sun -- the shadows should have been much darker and less detailed.

That argument has now been debunked thanks to one newly uncovered fact: Neil Armstrong's spacesuit actually served as a great reflector, bouncing light into the shadows and illuminating many scenes.

The breakneck pace of photo technology advancement makes it easy to forget how young our industry really is, but we had a reminder yesterday when, not long after 'modern photography' itself turned 175 years old, the very first Canon camera celebrated its 80th birthday.

Here's a neat piece of photo trivia you can throw out the next time there's a lull in conversation at a party: Instagram wasn't originally called 'Instagram.' In fact, it wasn't even a photo sharing app. Instagram was initially called 'Burbn' (after the Whiskey) and it was a check in app ala Foursquare.

Recognize the photo above? Titled "Jennifer in Paradise," it holds a special place in the history of digital photography: it's the world's first Photoshopped picture.

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.

Ever wonder why people in old paintings and photographs generally don't have smiles on their faces? We explored this subject a little back in November 2012, and found that reasons may have included technical limitations, oral hygiene, and the seriousness of formal occasions.

Over at the Public Domain Review, Nicholas Jeeves has written up an in-depth piece on this subject that comes to some different conclusions.

Have an afternoon to kill at a public library and want to go directly to the photography section? Just remember the magical number 770.

That's the division number for "Photography & computer art" in the Dewey Decimal System, used in hundreds of thousands of public libraries in 135+ countries around the world.

One of the neat features in Google's Glass wearable computer (and camera) is voice commands. Say "okay glass," and the device will start listening for an instruction from you. Here's an interesting (and humorous) piece of trivia: did you know that Google considered using "pew pew pew" as the activation phrase?

How long does it take for a photon from the Sun to reach your camera sensor (or film) and help form a photograph? If you answered "8 minutes," you'd be kind of right, and but also kind of wrong. An answer that's more correct is "at least tens of thousands of years."

Have you ever noticed that the watches and clocks found in product photographs and advertisements usually show the time 10:10? If you haven't, pay attention the next time you're flipping through a publication and come across a watch ad---the rule is almost always true.

If you have noticed this, do you know why 10:10 is the default time for watch photographers?

Here's an interesting photo trivia question: can you name any major world currencies that feature an image of a camera?

Answer: the old five hundred peso bill over in the Philippines. On the back of the original series is an image of a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera!

If you've ever shot with a Leica M rangefinder camera, you probably know how effective the camera can be for stealthy shooting. After all, there's no mirror that needs to swing out of the way like there is in a DSLR, so the main sound you'll hear is the soft click of the shutter curtain flapping open to expose the film or sensor.

It's not just Leica aficionados that appreciate the silent shutter: did you know that the Leica M is held as the standard for silent photography in courtrooms across the United States?

"How's the image quality on the TriPod 5?" That's a question you would perhaps be hearing these days if certain decisions had been made differently years ago over in Apple HQ. When the Cupertino-based company was brainstorming names for the smartphone that would eventually be called the "iPhone," one of the names that was being considered was "TriPod."

In in 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what's known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world's first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.

When people test cameras and lenses for resolution, they commonly use special resolution test charts that are filled with black bars of varying lengths and thicknesses. They're kind of like eye charts, except for cameras instead of eyeballs, and with lines instead of letters.

Well, did you know that in dozens of locations around the United States, there are gigantic resolution test charts on the ground?

Here's an interesting bit of photography/movie trivia that surfaced recently. Remember the infamous HAL 9000? HAL 9000 was the AI villain from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, and the main bad guy in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The term "bokeh" is often used in the world of photography to describe the quality of the out-of-focus blur in photographs. Do you know how it's pronounced?

There are well over 100 million users on Instagram (assuming a quarter of them didn't just up and leave), and even though the typical Instagram photo stream consists of food and the family pet, there are certain places that show up more often than others. Times Square, The Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, the Bangkok Airport... wait... that last one seems out of place doesn't it?

As it turns out, no. Not only is Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport the number one most Instagrammed location of 2012, but Bangkok's massive shopping mall, Siam Paragon, took second. Only then does the list become populated by the locations you might expect to see.

We’ve written a number of posts regarding the NASA Curiosity rover’s photography on Mars, but have you …

Did you know that some of the most famous master painters from centuries past may have actually used camera "technology" to aid them in creating their masterpieces? According to the hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis, some well-known artists likely used rudimentary camera obscura rooms as a tool -- essentially "tracing" parts of their work.

Just in case this question ever comes up while you’re playing the world’s hardest game of photography trivia, what …

Barack Obama broke online photo-sharing records this week after winning Tuesday's presidential election. When his victory became evident, Obama shared the above photograph on his Facebook timeline with the simple caption, "Four more years." That photograph quickly attracted "likes" faster than any other image shared through the social networking service. When it hit more than 2.1 million likes shortly after midnight Wednesday morning, Facebook announced that it had become the most-liked Facebook photo of all time.

"Say cheese." It's an expression that has become so much a part of our culture that everyone understands it to simply mean, "Smile," rather than a command to actually utter the word "cheese." For many people, smiling and posing for casual snapshots go hand-in-hand, but why do people smile for pictures, and when did this practice begin? After all, if you browse portrait photos created in the early days of photography -- or even half a century ago -- you'll find the subjects wearing stoic, humorless expressions on their faces.

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.

This is probably a "duh" fact for many of you, but one that some of you have perhaps never heard or realized before: Did you know that the flashes in the Canon Speedlite lineup are named after their maximum guide numbers? To figure out the power of your Speedlite, just take the model name and hack off the zero at the end to get the GN (e.g. 430EX has GN 43, 580EX has GN 58).

Did you know that LCD screens and live view didn’t arrive until a number of years after digital cameras …

If you've visited the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada anytime during the past five years at night, you've likely enjoyed the dazzling light show that appears on the side of the tower. The 1,330 uber-bright LED lights (which cost a cool $2.5 million) were installed in the elevator shafts back in 2007, and are turned on from dusk every day until 2 the next morning. What you might not have known, however, is that the seemingly random colors that appear are really not so random after all: they're actually pieces of photographs!

Recognize this photograph? It shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screaming and kneeling over the body of 20-year-old Jeffrey Miller, shot during the Kent State Massacre. Kent State photojournalism student John Paul Filo -- just 22-years-old at the time -- captured the image, and was later awarded the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

"Photography" was featured as a category on last night's episode of Jeopardy. Here are the 5 questions that were asked. If you consider yourself a photography buff, see if you can answer all of them (answers at the end).

Check out this blast from the past: it’s a 1986 commercial for the Minolta Maxxum 7000. The Minolta 7000 …

Here’s a random but interesting piece of photo-related trivia: did you know that Kodak used a calendar that had …

Ever wonder what the f-number of your eyes are? It can easily be calculated using …

Take a look at your camera, and there’s a good chance it’ll have this symbol: Φ — a small …