January 2010

Protect Your Gear by Flying with a Gun

A few days ago we came across this brilliant trick for protecting your valuable camera gear while flying. Most airlines don't allow you to fly with your luggage locked, but there's a clever way around the rule -- bring a gun.

The Million Dollar Homepage of Photography

Back in 2005, a student in England named Alex Tew launched The Million Dollar Homepage, through which he sold the pixels of a 1000x1000 grid for $1 each. Although it was an extremely simple idea, the unique project attracted enormous amounts of press coverage, and eventually earned $1,037,100 in a matter of months. It also spawned countless copycat websites that virtually all failed, since the idea was no longer novel.

Light Painting Animation by Freezelight

Freezelight is a Russian group that creates light painting photographs and animations. They have a pretty interesting blog showcasing their work, and opened up a Vimeo account a few days ago to showcase their films.

2 Years of Hard Work for a 60 Second Shot

Photographers often go through hours, days, or weeks of work to achieve certain photographs, and the dedication is usually reflected in the end result. That might seem like a lot of work to you if you typically only spend a few seconds framing and snapping a photograph, but what if I told you that a crew from BBC spent two years working on a 60 second clip?

Study Finds Photography Undesirable as a Job

Job portal careercast recently released a ranking of 200 jobs from best to worst for 2010. The Wall Street Journal republished the data in a nice, sortable chart as its Best and Worst Jobs 2010 list. Since you're reading this, you probably want to know how jobs involving photography rank on the list. The answer: pretty low.

Neat Hand and Paper Parkour Animation

Here's a dose of creative inspiration: a hand animated video of parkour. Created by Serene Teh and Noel Lee, parkour motion reel is a pretty unique take on the flip book style of animation.

Photography School Launches Camera Phone Course

Camera phone photography has been exploding in popularity in recent times -- pretty much every new phone is equipped with a camera nowadays, the iPhone is the most popular "camera" on Flickr, photographer Chase Jarvis has launched a mini-empire around the slogan "The Best Camera Is The One That's With You", the sensors for mobile phones are approaching absurd numbers of megapixels, etc... -- so it's not surprising that a UK-based photography school has launched a course dedicated to cell phone photography.

Neat Photomosaic iPhone App by LEGO

LEGO recently released a free iPhone app that turns your photographs into photomosaics made with 1x1 LEGO pieces. The app obviously isn't limited to faces, but can turn anything into a LEGO mosaic.

Obama Photo Used Illegally on Billboard

We're on a roll with controversial advertisements today. New York garment company Weatherproof has gotten the attention of the White House after illegally using a photograph of President Obama's visit to the Great Wall of China on a billboard in New York City (41st St. and 7th Ave.)

CES 2010: Day 1 Photo News – New Polaroid Instant Cameras and More

Polaroid has been getting some viral attention today, partially from its addition of Lady Gaga to its staff, but also because it's new nostalgic line of instant cameras. That's right, folks, Polaroid's back in the instant business -- it couldn't let such a good cash cow run away, after all. Several models of the PIC-1000 were displayed today at CES in Las Vegas, including this nifty wooden body camera:

Breathtaking Photorealistic CG Animation

Computer-generated animation has come a long way in recent years and has made films more and more realistic, from the photographic-technique effects in Pixar's WALL-E, to the stunning landscapes in Avatar. The Third & The Seventh by Alex Roman is a great example of just how beautiful and realistic CG animations can be. It's an artistic piece dealing with architecture and photography, and you'll notice many camera techniques throughout the film.

Aerial Photography with iPhone-Controlled Quadricopter

This is one of the coolest gadgets we've seen in quite some time. The Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter that you control visually through wifi using your iPhone or iPod touch. The quadricopter has a built in camera that displays the real time view of the drone on your screen while you control it. We're not sure if still photography or video capabilities are built in, but this could open the door to making simple aerial photography accessible to the general public.

CES 2010 Pre-Game News Roundup

The Consumer Electronics Show hasn’t even officially begun, but product announcements and press releases are already flying around. There are …

Ginormous 5200mm Canon Lens on eBay

If you have an extra $45,000 lying around, you might still be able to purchase the Canon 5200mm f/14 lens that was listed on eBay last month. It ended on December 14th with 0 bids (I wonder why...).

A Polaroid Camera LEGO Needs to Offer

If you're a fan of Polaroid instant film, then 2010 might soon become a great year for you. The classic instant film format is making a comeback through the Impossible Project, so it might be time to dust off your old Polaroid cameras (if the redesigned format is compatible, that is).

Get Ready for 14-Megapixel Camera Phones

Camera phones may soon offer more megapixels than some DSLR cameras. Imaging company OmniVision announced today that they have developed a 14.6-megapixel image sensor that will fit in cell phones. These sensors are capable of both high-resolution still photography and 1080p high-definition video recording.