Last month, a number of my photos showing a flipped iceberg went viral online and in the media. The video above is a 15-minute overview of what it was like shooting in Antarctica, the gear used to capture the images, and a little bit on the release process and how I manage outreach. I’ll elaborate below, but do watch the video as it includes some video of the iceberg which I haven’t shared previously.
My name is Michael Pistono, and I'm a 28-year-old photo enthusiast living in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was recently playing around with a reflection photo when I had the idea of creating another one out of a puddle -- one that featured both tall buildings and an airplane.
The photo I ended up creating in Photoshop (shown above) went viral online. Here's a look at how it was made.
There's a rule of thumb when it comes to viral dog photography: what's cute with dogs is going to be twice as cute when you shrink your subjects down to puppies.
Photographer Seth Casteel did it with Underwater Dogs and the sequel Underwater Puppies, and we are very happy to inform you that animal photographer Carli Davidson recently decided to take her viral SHAKE photos of dogs and create the photo series and book SHAKE Puppies.
If you're gonna do an anniversary picture, THIS is the way to do it. After hundreds of Redditors last year pointed out his resemblance to Sean Connery -- thanks in large part to his penchant for fedoras and his grizzled look -- 'Hillbilly at Large' and photographer Ken Thomas and his wife decided to capitalize on the look with a fun 21st anniversary photo.
Dressed up as Indy and Professor Jones, the two hopped in Thomas's Ural motorcycle and sidecar and snapped what has to be one of the most creative anniversary pics we've ever seen -- a photo that has since taken off like crazy on both Facebook and Reddit.
The general consensus is that photography as a business is competing in a 'race to the bottom.' Photographs are regularly devalued by people who steal them, agencies that sell them for a pittance, and photographers who are willing to work for free.
Given this rapidly worsening status-quo, wedding and commercial photographer Greg Lumley's latest venture is either incredibly ballsy, or incredibly naïve: he's trying to sell a single print of his viral aerial photograph of Cape Town for $35,000... no we didn't add a zero by mistake.
When his wife Meghan refused to have maternity pictures taken, Justin (who goes by DruishPrincess69 on Reddit) decided to take matters into his own hands. And by matters we mean his belly. Since his wife wouldn't take the photos, he hired a photographer and posed for all the stereotypical maternity shots himself.
Last night, I posted a photo I took (shown above) in 2012 to Reddit's /r/pics subreddit.
After I posted it, the upvotes slowly began to trickle in. Within the hour it had amassed around 4000 upvotes, peaking at around 6500 and holding the top spot for a long while. Recognition! Sweet, sweet recognition! It felt great.
As clashes between Hamas and the Israeli armed forces escalate and the death toll climbs with heartbreaking consistency, a photograph of an Arab-American journalist and her Israeli-American boyfriend kissing has gone viral, sparked a Twitter movement, and become a symbol of peace.
Montreal-based photographer Benjamin Von Wong's underwater fantasy fashion shoot in a Bali shipwreck has quickly become the most popular project he has ever released. And even though he shared some behind the scenes details when the series first debuted, he's back today with a much more detailed look at how exactly these now-viral photos came to be.
Mugshots aren't exactly known as the height of beautiful portrait photography, but 30-year-old felon Jeremy Meeks' mugshot is something else entirely. Within 24 hours of the photo being posted on the Stockton Police Department's Facebook, Meeks' glamour shot had received over 23,000 likes and nearly 6,000 comments... as of this writing those numbers are up to over 87,000 likes and over 11,300 comments.
It's safe to say this image has gone well and truly viral, turning Meeks into a meme and sparking everything from Photoshop spoofs to a 'Free Jeremy' Twitter campaign.
When the term decisive moment gets thrown around, it's usually used to describe a photographic moment that is fleeting -- the kind of street photograph that's there one instant and gone the next.
But the moments captured in these stunning landscape images by photographer Guy Tal are also decisive, not for their fleeting nature, but their rarity.
Photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale has been to Guinea-Bissau three times -- in 1993, 2000 and 2011 -- for the Alexia Foundation, bringing back powerful photographs that show a different, more hopeful side of Africa.
And yet, somehow, three of those images have this week become the viral face of a Twitter campaign meant to raise awareness about a group of Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their school by a terrorist organization called Boko Haram in mid-April.
Who knew a dipperful of seawater contained so much life? Well, photographer David Liittschwager, that's who, because in 2006 he captured this eye-opening photograph for National Geographic.
After having a close friend lose a one-year-old to cancer years ago, and watching her stepfather battle this all-too-prevalent beast today, Oklahoma–based photographer Lora Scantling was inspired.
Inspired to create an image, or a series of images, that show the strength of and give encouragement to those who are battling the disease, as well as those who are watching someone go through it.
A Colorado mother learned an important lesson of her own last week when her plan to teach her daughter just how quickly a photograph can spread online through social media worked far too well.
Can you imagine photography saving a life? Or forget life, lives? Hundreds, thousands of lives saved... and the catalyst for it all a photo community dedicated to proving they can make a difference.
Over the next couple of weeks, the photographic community has the chance to work a bonafide miracle. A little girl in South Carolina is dying of a degenerative disease, and it’s in all of our power to help cure her. Together with Benjamin Von Wong, we’re going to embark on a journey to tell this little girl’s story to the world, and write in the happy ending ourselves...
In a world where viral photo sharing accounts (such as HistoryInPics) are popping up at an insane pace, it's a necessity that there be counterparts that do their best to verify, fact-check, and credit the images these accounts share.
This increasingly necessary job has recently been taken over by a small group of accounts dedicated to doing exactly that: verifying the legitimacy of the images being shared, and making sure the original creator of the images is being properly credited.
Surreal self-portraits from young photographers are nothing new. In fact, one could say there are almost too many of them out there. But that makes it that much more impressive when a young photog breaks out of the pack and catches the attention of the masses.
That's exactly what 18-year-old photographer and college student Laura Williams did with her viral self-portrait series 'Invisible.'
Reddit user Nasdaf created this moving composite photograph using images of Kiev's Independence Square captured before and after the havoc wreaked by violent clashes between the government and protesters.
Human photographers aren't the only ones dragging their cameras to every corner of the globe in search of the decisive moment. As it turns out, a little LEGO man spent a year doing the same thing as part of life-sized human photographer Andrew Whyte's fun 'The Legographer' series.
A couple of days ago we shared a video/story that has since gone viral across the Internet. The video showed photographer James York getting into a bit of a headbutting match with a young bull elk who took an interest in his gear before getting aggressive.
Today we've found out that the elk in question has since been put down by Rangers at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, leaving much of the internet and York himself saddened and speechless.
Hey, sometimes you're just in the right place at the right, sexylicious time. That's about the extent of the explanation Notre Dame running back Cam McDaniel gave for a ridiculously attractive viral shot of him from last week's USC game that looks more like an Old Spice ad than a candid sports moment.
Benny Winfield Jr, perhaps better known as mrpimpgoodgame, has almost 36,000 followers on Instagram and plans to put his face on a T-Shirt that will likely sell pretty well if he does. What did the Huston, TX resident do to earn this kind of Internet fame and recognition? Why, he took selfies of course.
Reuters photographer Yves Herman captured this peculiar photograph at a match between the Belgian and French national soccer teams yesterday. The photograph has attracted the Internet's attention due to the fact that it makes 28-year-old soccer player Mathieu Valbuena look like a child playing among men.
A year and a half ago, 23-year-old Seattle, Washington-based photographer Jeremy Veach adopted an eight-week-old pug named Norm. Since then, Veach has faithfully documented his pup's life by publishing daily photographs to Instagram.
The images have been a hit: his account @jermzlee has already attracted nearly 40,000 followers, and the cute "pug shots" are being featured on sites all across the Web.
The fine for rushing the field at the College World Series final is $1,500, but who can put a price on becoming an overnight viral Vine sensation? Well, whatever price Kayleigh, Emily, and Torrie Hill assigned to viral fame, it was more than $1,500, because they rushed the field and captured some expensive selfie footage in the process.
Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square -- an event that has been immortalized in history by AP photographer Jeff Widener’s famous “Tank Man” photo we shared earlier today. What you may not know is that, in China, the government still does everything it can to keep the event shrouded in mystery, pretending it never happened.
The Internet, however, is having none of it, as memes depicting the tank man photo in ways that might avoid censorship nets spring up all over the place. One of the most viral is the photo you see above.
A couple of years ago, Irina Werning burst into the public eye when her series Back to the Future went viral. What started as a project were she would have relatives in Buenos Aires reenact old photos of themselves, has since expanded to a photographic phenomenon that has taken her all over the world.
The short documentary above gives us a chance to hear Werning's thoughts on the project: why she does it, how she puts the shots together, and whether or not she ever feels the project will truly be over.
Professional birth photography is a growing niche, as more and more expectant mothers are hiring photographers to document the first first few moments of their new child's life. Miami, Florida-based photographer Emily Robinson offers birth photography services, and is accustomed to photographing deliveries as they happen in hospitals and homes.
The web is abuzz over newly released photographs of Miss Korea 2013 beauty pageant contestants, and not in a way the photographer or the pageant were expecting. The photographs have sparked heated discussion on the topics of plastic surgery and racism.
Over the last week or so, my series 'Amazon Unpacked' has gone viral. The photographs were made to accompany an article researched and written for the Financial Times Weekend Magazine by Sarah O’Connor. The magazine came out at the start of February, and I put the gallery up on my website a week later.
Photographer Jeff Cremer has figured out a winning formula for masking a splash on the Internet: travel to exotic jungles and take pictures of things that are rare, interesting, and bizarre.
The New York Daily News reports that an anonymous commuter has decided to improve his boring ride to work everyday in a very unique way: newspaper photobombs. The paper won't reveal who the photographer behind the pics is, but he or she has made quite a splash using forced perspective photography to make fellow commuters look downright hilarious.
Russian photographer Murad Osmann has been attracting quite a bit of attention this past week on the Internet for his images. No, it's not his professional photos of people and places, but rather a clever project he has been putting together on his Instagram account.
It's titled "Follow Me," and features a unique perpective: each shot is from Osmann's point of view, and shows the back of his girlfriend Nataly Zakharova's body as she leads him by the hand through various locations around the world.
A couple of weeks ago, Florida-based photographer Kelli Higgins shared the newborn photos above on her Facebook page.
Chrysler hit a home run this past Super Bowl with its photographic "God Made a Farmer" commercial... so let the spoofs begin. Photo backup service Mosaic create the parody above titled "God Made a Photographer."
Want a perfect example of the Streisand effect in action? Look no further than what happened this week involving Beyonce's publicist, some unflattering Super Bowl performance photos, and a single email requesting that photos be taken offline.
The video above is only 44 seconds long, but we'll bet it'll take up at least a minute and a half of your time -- you'll just have to watch it twice. It was created by British psychological professor Richard Wiseman, and demonstrates the power of perspective. It's titled, "Assumptions."
Here's a photo that's currently going viral on the web. As with many other viral photos, it's being shared with all kinds of different descriptions, and people are simply passing it on to family and friends without bothering to verify whether or not the captions are real.
Custom photo frame maker Alphabet Photography has scored one of the first big viral marketing wins of this holiday season by releasing the creative video above a couple of weeks ago. In it, they play the popular Christmas tune Carol of the Bells using various objects inside the warehouse in which the company's photo frames are made.