I bought a used Mamiya RZ67 Pro II a month ago, a huge medium format studio SLR with a negative area a full five times larger than the sensor on a Nikon D800 or 5DMKIII “full frame” camera.
A decade ago, the kit I bought would have sold for 5 figures, but thanks to film’s loss in popularity, I was able to get it for less than a tenth of what it cost new.
Read more…
Tensions are running high again on the Korean peninsula. As international observers watch closely for what move the North will play next, I thought it might be a good time to revisit some of my work from photographing in North Korea, undercover on-assignment, for the Globe & Mail in 2009.
This post is an extract from an article I contributed to the Digital Journalist the same year, recounting some of my experiences whilst photographing in this reclusive state. It was an experience I shall never forget…
Read more…
When photographer Callum Cooper moved from Melbourne, Australia to London, England, one of the things that caught his eye was the uniformity (or “conformity”) seen in the city’s residential areas. Along a street, multiple buildings would have exactly the same architecture, and if it weren’t for the minor differences in the facades, some of them can hardly be distinguished from one another.
Cooper then came up with the idea of exploring this phenomenon using photographs — photos that would become a “structuralist film.”
Read more…
Back in 2010, we featured the beautiful macro bug photographs of a Belgian photographer named Frans, who uses a custom laser camera rig to capture insects mid-flight. Inspired by fotoopa’s work, biochemist and photography enthusiast Linden Gledhill decided to pursue the same photographic subject.
Read more…
In this article, I will share a behind-the-scenes look at how I created photos of fried chicken for one of the world’s most iconic brands: KFC.
My studio had already been shooting nearly all of KFC’s print work for more than a year when their in-house creative group first contacted us. Turns out they found us through a Google search, and didn’t even realize we had done work for KFC until they saw some of the images on our website.
Read more…
Red Bull Illume and Snap! Orlando recently came up with an awesome way to put a twist on the concept of light painting. They recruited light-painting photographer Patrick Rochon to photograph a team of wakeboarders who rode around with colorful lights strapped to their wakeboards!
Read more…
As a followup to our post earlier today about former White House photographer Eric Draper’s work, here’s an interesting and relevant 17-minute-long story that aired on NPR in January of this year. It’s an interview with former presidential photographers Eric Draper and Robert McNeely, who photographed the presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton (respectively).
Read more…
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.”
Eisenstaedt was a German-born Jew. Not knowing this at first, Goebbels was initially friendly toward Eisenstaedt, who was able to capture a number of photos showing the Nazi politician in a good and cheerful mood (as in the photograph above).
Read more…
Photographer Benjamin Von Wong likes to push the boundaries of what he does, and lately that pushing has involved playing with fire … literally. It seems he’s taken a liking to working with pyrotechnicians and creating out of this world long exposures doing it, so after a speaking engagement in November of last year, Von Wong put together an open photo shoot with pyrotechnician Andrey DAS and fashion designer Virginie Marcerou.
Anyone and everyone was invited, and in all they were able to get a group of about 50 people to show up as they lit up the freezing night with everything from smoke grenades, to sparklers, to ropes of fire.
Read more…
Russian photographer Vitaliy Raskalov recently visited the Great Pyramid of Giza with two of his adventuring photography buddies: Vadim Mahorov and Marat Dupri. Unlike most camera-toting tourists visiting the famous site (the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the trio was not content with sticking to visitor-approved areas: they decided to risk prison time by sneaking to the top of the pyramid and photographing that rarely-seen view.
Read more…
