Newspapers are fading. News media is in a limbo of redefinition. Now we can add photojournalism to that list of defunct media, said Neil Burgess, head of London-based photo agency NB Pictures. Burgess is also the former head of Network Photographers and Magnum Photos, and twice Chairman of World Press Photo, and has spent much of his life working on social documentary photography and 25 years as a photojournalist.
Freddy Wong's YouTube channel is a must-subscribe if you're interested in video editing and home-brewed CGI. A couple months ago we featured an amazing video they made where an entire action scene was done using light-painting techniques. What's neat about their channel is that they also create behind-the-scenes clips explaining how each one was made.
Here's a funny example of a photo-based security feature gone wrong: starting in May, Facebook started doing user verification checks when logging in from an unfamiliar computer in order to make sure it's actually the account owner logging in. The verification checks are photo-based, and involve correctly naming people you have listed as friends. Unfortunately, the feature will sometimes ask users to correctly name unfamiliar things: people they don't know very well, dogs, cats, objects, gummy …
Contact sheets are ordinarily used to select photographs to print, but UK-based photographer Martin Wilson's contact sheets are masterpieces in themselves. His sheets are created by carefully capturing images on
If you're a digital photography buff, here's some required trivia knowledge: what you see above is a photograph of the first digital camera ever built. It was created in December 1975 by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson, now regarded as the inventor of the digital camera.
UK-based filmmaker Philip Bloom created this beautiful video of Monument Valley, Utah. Blending regular video and timelapse footage, Bloom builds a serene and powerful portrait of the place. Bloom used a plethora of gear to capture the footage, including five cameras - one Canon 5D Mark II to capture video, another 5D Mark II, two Canon 7D, Canon 1D Mark IV, and a Nikon D3s for timelapse. Whew!
Adobe is running a unique contest right now in search of the "next Photoshop evangelist". Sadly, the winner isn't given a special "evangelist" position in Adobe's marketing department, but rather the prize package is pretty typical: a copy of CS5 Design Standard and a trip to Photoshop World in 2011 (which includes airfare, lodging, meals, and a chance to demo the winning tutorial).
The Flip Video camcorder has had a convenient built-in USB connector for quite some time, so why not compact cameras? Today Samsung announced the PL90, a 12.2 megapixel compact shooter that offers a convenient USB plug built into the body of the camera. Gone are the days of carrying around a separate cable or card reader, or having to have a computer with built-in card slots.
This crazy self-portrait was taken using the tiny reflection in the tip of a ballpoint pen. Russian photographer Alexey Arkhipov modified a Canon PowerShot S1 IS, adding a custom (and cheap) lens setup to achieve this super-macro shot. Head on over to his blog post if you'd like to learn how it was done and how to do this yourself (you might have to use Google Translate).
The above is a promotional video for the Summadayze 2011 music festival done in stop-motion. It was created by Tom Blachford, a 22-year-old self-taught photographer based in Melbourne, Australia.
Yesterday Citigroup released a research report on Hoya for investors. What was interesting about the report (from a photographer's standpoint) was a section on page 2 regarding the company's digital camera business.
"Devil in the Detail" is a neat stop-motion music video directed by Souljacker for the band The Ambience Affair. Rather than use video cameras, a Canon 400D was used to shoot over 15,000 still photographs, which were later combined using Final Cut Pro.
Haje Jan Kamps is the blogger behind Photocritic.org …
Another Nikon patent discovered recently provides yet another sneak peek at their yet-to-be-announced mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera.
Here's a fun video that compiles quite a few clips from movies where "experts" look for clues to mysteries in videos and photographs, often "enhancing" them in ridiculous ways before suddenly discovering something earth-shattering.
The above photograph was recently posted to Korean forum Samsung SLR Club, and was supposedly captured during a commercial shoot for the Samsung NX100.
If you're a fan of the Polaroid SX-70, this promotional video from the 1970s should stir up warm fuzzy feelings. If you've never used one, watching this might give you a better idea of why so many are obsessed with it.
At SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles last month, Microsoft researchers showed off some new technology that improves existing digital blur reduction techniques by outfitting a camera with motion detecting sensors.
Many of Sony's new digicams have a nifty "Sweep Panorama" feature that allows you to create panoramas of up to 224 degrees by sweeping your camera across a scene. The camera then takes the numerous frames it captured during the sweep and combines them together into a panorama for you.
British musician Robbie Williams was recently featured in Nikon's "I AM NIKON" advertising campaign, with a commercial showing a fun experiment he did at a concert in 2003. He asked his audience to pull out their cameras and, on his cue, fire off the flash. The resulting scene was pretty awesome to behold. The full clip of the experiment is above.
In 2009, Kingston University students Samantha Harvey and Anna Brooks were trying to photograph children at a school when they were told by the headteacher that they could only photograph single child and only show the back of their head.
