Despite what you might think, this isn't some random snapshot we found online -- it's actually the world's most expensive photograph. Titled "Rhein II", it's a 1999 photograph by Andreas Gursky showing the Rhine river. Last night it sold for a whopping $4,338,500 at Christie's.
If you liked the Battle at F-Stop Ridge video that went viral earlier this year, then you'll probably enjoy this humorous video showing a major battle in the war between photographers and videographers. It was created by Switzerfilm at After Dark, a photography education "un-conference" in Tucson, Arizona.
Last week the U.S. Department of Energy gave a green light to a project that aims to build the largest digital camera this planet has ever seen. The camera, built by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will cost around $170 million, be roughly the size of a small car, and be able to capture 3.2-gigapixel photographs using a giant sensor composed of 189 CCD sensors.
In 1974, Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama had an exhibition in Tokyo called "Printing Show" that featured a Xerox machine in the center of the room manned by Moriyama himself. Visitors were encouraged to select photos from the show, which were then reproduced and assembled into custom photo books. This past weekend, Moriyama repeated the show in New York, once again using a photocopier to provide attendees with custom signed editions of the DIY book. The book was titled "TKY" and bound in a …
Mirrorless cameras are designed to be compact, but how big are they compared to DSLRs? How big are popular DSLRs compared to one another? Camera Size is a website that helps answer these types of questions. It's a simple web app that shows you exactly how big digital cameras are compared to one another and compared to reference objects (e.g. a battery).
Writer Emily Cleaver takes adorable photographs of her infant son Arthur that recreate famous scenes of classic films. Can you guess the movies these photos are referencing?
Back in September we shared the story of Teresa Berg, a photographer who volunteers her time to take professional quality adoption photos for dogs in shelters. Sadly, similar efforts to save dogs through photography aren't always encouraged. A woman named Emily Tanen was fired from Animal Care and Control of New York City back in May for her photos of dogs scheduled to be euthanized. Her crime? Violating the group's strict photo policy, which includes a rule prohibiting showing humans in …
Mayuko Kanazawa of Tama Art University in Japan was recently given the assignment of creating a typeface without the aid of a computer. She decided to use a camera, but instead of doing a more ordinary alphabet photo project, she decided to photograph leg hair manipulated into different characters.
Developer Conrad Kramer was poking around in iOS 5 when he stumbled upon a hidden panorama feature built into the operating system. It allows you to create panoramic photos by simply sweeping your camera across a scene. If you're familiar with iOS, unlocking the feature involves changing a single line in a preference file (set EnableFirebreak to "YES" in com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist). People with jailbroken iPhones and iPods can also download the new Firebreak app in Cydia.
If you've never done film photography before, then you've never experienced the excitement that comes from seeing your images for the first time after your film has been processed. After photographing his way around the Great Lakes, photographer Ed Wargin sent his medium format film to the lab for processing: …
If you need to print some photos taken by someone else using print services at places like Walmart, be careful: if the photographs look "too professional" some places will require a written copyright release before allowing you to pick up the prints -- even after you've paid for them. The Consumerist has a story of a woman named Jessica who ran into problems at Walmart after collecting photos from a couple pro photographer friends for a friend's funeral: …
Regulatory paperwork published by the FCC recently has revealed details about an upcoming Belkin-made remote shutter release for the iPhone. In addition to allowing iPhoneographers to take pictures (or video) from a distance, the Bluetooth device also houses a detachable stand for propping your phone upright. No word yet on pricing or availability.
If you're looking for a photo idea, try this: grab a friend, find some sloped ground, and have them lean for a photo. Photographer Paul Octavious snapped these beautiful photographs of two of his buddies using this idea.
Olympus admitted today that its top executives used dubious acquisitions to sweep 20 years of massive losses under the carpet. At a press conference in Tokyo, new President Shuichi Takayama revealed that the 2008 acquisitions at the center of the company's ongoing scandal were used to cover-up failed securities investments dating back to the early 1990s. Michael Woodford, the ex-CEO who brought the acquisitions to light, says that further inquiry is needed and that the company leadership needs …
How's this for a unique pet photograph? Angelo DeSantis of Berkeley, CA was photographing his cat Dexter with a Canon 5D Mark II when he snapped this once-in-a-lifetime shot that appears to show Dexter throwing a mouse. It pays to have a fast shutter finger.
Photographer Edouard Janssens recently sent a weather balloon equipped with a Sony NEX-5 and a GoPro HD to the edges of space. While this isn't exactly a novel idea, the GoPro camera managed to capture footage of a jet airliner whizzing by at roughly the same altitude! …
After arriving late to the digital photography party, Kodak took another step away from the market yesterday by selling off its sensor business to CA-based firm Platinum Equity. The sale of Kodak Image Sensor Solutions (KISS) -- which includes the company's 263,000 square foot facility in Rochester -- will hopefully give Kodak the boost of cash it needs to avoid bankruptcy and turn into a healthy business. Kodak sensors are found in a number of popular cameras, including the Leica M9 and S2.
Maurice Ribble of Tech Photo Blog recently found the ingredients list for flash powder, which was used for state-of-the-art photographic lighting 150 years ago. After making some of the powder, he began to test it to see how it compares to modern day flashes (more specifically, a Canon 580EX II).
Claus Thiim captured this beautiful image of fireworks showing both in-focus and out-of-focus burst of light. The trick is to capture most of the photograph while focused on the fireworks, and then throw the lens out of focus shortly before the shutter closes.
If you've never shot with a large format camera before, you might find this video illuminating. In it, photographer Simon Roberts walks us through the process of making prints using a 4x5 plate camera, from setting the camera up to watching the giant prints roll out of the machine.
Photographer Anne-Laure House photographs illuminated windows at night in cities around the world, and arranges them into beautiful collages. She writes, …
USBCELL batteries might look like ordinary AA rechargeable batteries upon first glance. That is, until you see how they're charged. Rather than use a battery charger, the batteries are charged using the standard USB ports on your computer or laptop. They could come in handy on trips where you need power for your camera or flash, but want to avoid the hassle of a separate battery charger.
Surf gear company Rip Curl recently teamed up with Time-Slice Films to make a video showing surfers in "bullet time". Rather than use a giant DSLR rig, they decided to make a portable rig composed of 30 GoPro cameras.
You've probably heard before that focal lengths between 85mm and 135mm produce the best head shots because they provide a desirable perspective in head shots, but how much of a different does the focal length actually make? Photographer Stephen Eastwood decided to find out, shooting 10 portraits of the same subject with focal lengths ranging from 19mm to 350mm.
Sorry if you've had trouble accessing this site so far today. Our hosting provider, Rackspace, is having issues. Hopefully they can get things together soon. If you haven't already, subscribing to our RSS feed and/or daily email is another way to receive our posts! …
After photos of the camera were leaked a week ago, Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GX1. The camera should satisfy GF1 shooters who loved the camera but were unhappy about the consumer-oriented GF2 and GF3 followup cameras. The 16MP Micro Four Thirds camera features a max ISO of 12,800, a solid build, .09 second autofocus (with iPhone-esque touch to focus), a 3-inch touchscreen, RAW mode, and 1080/60i HD video. The camera ships for $700 (body-only) starting in December 2011.
Photographer Tyler Card's uber-creative Nikon DSLR costume was the talk of the photo world this past Halloween. If you've been wondering how he managed to make a fully functional giant DSLR, you're in luck: Card has written up an extensive tutorial explaining how it was done: …
Eric Fossum, the man who invented the CMOS image sensor, recently gave an hour-long lecture at Yale that provides an educational overview of the technology. He covers a wide range of topics, ranging from digital imaging history to the latest state-of-the-art technologies in the sensor field. If you're at all interested in learning how your camera works, this'll be an interesting lecture to take in.
Photographer Lincoln Harrison captures jaw-dropping photographs of star trails. Shooting from the Australian outback, he spends up to 15 hours creating each image of the night sky. Shooting with a Nikon D7000, Nikon D3100, and a wide assortment of lenses, Harrison captures a large number of exposures of the foreground and stars separately. He then combines the images (sometimes hundreds of them) into amazing photographs showing the sky dominated by colorful star trails.
Here's a helpful tutorial on how to adjust the angle of your light sources to avoid the nasty reflections that show up in eyeglasses. It has to do with understanding and harnessing the "angle of incidence" and "angle of reflection" of your light.
Photographer Peter Wirén came up with a super cheap and easy way to record sliding shots using his DSLR. Instead of buying an expensive slider or dolly system, he simply cut the fingers off an old glove and used them as "socks" on his GorillaPod.
Here's a helpful video that attempts to demystify the concept of DSLR sensor sizes. If you've never been able to understand how sensor size (and its crop factor) affects resulting photographs, this video will help.
The International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers did a study a couple years ago on how photographers spend their time, and published these two charts showing the difference between what the general public thinks and what is actually the case. Here's a larger version.
Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
A few weeks ago, Brooklyn resident Katie O'Beirne did a weekend project in which she left a disposable camera on a Prospect Park bench with a note asking passer-bys to snap a photograph. After getting the film developed and finding some cool photos, O'Beirne decided to continue with the project, leaving disposable cameras in a number of other spots around NYC. The resulting photographs can be seen on a Tumblr page she set up called "new york shots".
Update: For some reason the video is now showing as "expired". Not sure why.
Kodak's fall from grace is an interesting case study that modern day companies can learn from. Even though the world's first digital camera was invented by one of its engineers, the company was unwilling to cannibalize its film business that, at the time, was making money hand over fist. By the time digital cameras started catching on, Kodak had missed the boat.
Ever wonder why most DSLR cameras capture images with a 3:2 aspect ratio, while most other cameras use 4:3? It's because they were designed to match different things: …
This photograph by Jimmay Bones, titled "Eye of the City", shows a mirrored cityscape of New York City. It's neat how the Empire State Building is connected to itself, transformed into a giant pillar holding up the "sky". The photo reminds us of Simon Gardiner's vortograph of the Champs-Élysées that we shared recently.
When husband and wife photography duo Jodi and Kurt got married last year, they were determined to do something photography-related for the guys' boutonnières. Luckily for them, Kurt's sister Lynn is a brilliant wedding stylist who helped make these one-of-a-kind designs. Kurt's featured an old camera lens, while the best man's was a flower made from film negatives.
This short film, titled "Mobius", is one of the short films Canon screened at last night's Hollywood announcement for the EOS C300 and concept cinema DSLR. It was made by Vincent Laforet, who was also selected to test the Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 1D Mark IV.
Many digital cameras are battery-only, and can't be directly connected to an outlet for an infinite source of power. That's ordinarily not a problem, but can become an issue if you attempt to do things like time-lapse imagery, for which the camera needs to stay powered and perfectly stationary for extended periods of time. That was the problem faced by Instructables member txoof with his Olympus E520. Handy with electronics and woodworking, he decided to build his own AC/DC interface for the …
The new "EOS Movies" C300 digital video camera wasn't the only thing Canon had up its sleeve today. The company has also announced that it's working on a new EOS DSLR that's geared more towards filmmakers than photographers. Not much was revealed about the camera, but it'll be a 35mm full frame DSLR that can capture 4K video at 24fps. While recent EOS DSLRs have been still cameras that happen to have video capabilities, this new one seems to be much more geared towards having video being its …
Canon's historic announcement is here, and as most people predicted, it's geared towards filmmaking rather than photography. The company just unveiled its new C300 cinema camera in an effort to break into a Hollywood digital filmmaking scene that's dominated by the Arri Alexa and the RED EPIC. While it's not particularly powerful in any specific category, the new camera comes in EOS or PL lens mounts, shoots 1080p video with a 4K sensor, has dual CF card slots, and offers high quality footage …
Dutch artist Purr Anders transforms old photographs into beautiful jewelry. After printing the images onto fabric, Anders crafts them into leaf and flower-shaped brooches. You can visit her Etsy store to order a custom one for $37.
Sophie Windsor Clive was canoeing on the River Shannon in Ireland when she came across one of nature's most beautiful phenomenon: a murmuration of starlings. This is when vast numbers of starlings fly together in giant, cloud-like formations. Luckily for Sophie, she had her camera handy.
Here's something you've probably never seen before: a white "L" version of the cheap Canon 50mm f/1.8 (AKA the "nifty fifty"). No, it's not an uber-rare and expensive special edition. It's a custom paint job by Clubsnap forum member nntenzo.
This amazing photograph by Ricardo Mohr shows the volcano Puyehue-Cordón Caulle in southern Chile erupting this past June. After being submitted to National Geographic's My Shot photo community, the photograph was selected as one of the magazine's "Pictures We Love: Best of October." You can download a high-res version to use as a wallpaper here.
Want to see what pure dedication looks like? This music video for the song "In Your Arms" by Kina Grannis is a stop-motion animation done with a background composed of jelly beans. It's a crazy project that required 22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people, and 288,000 jelly beans. They could have used CGI, of course, but each frame was carefully created by hand and photographed with a still camera. It's even more mind-blowing given this fact: none of it was done with a green screen.
It's not uncommon to hear stories of wedding photographers getting sued by unsatisfied clients, but one lawsuit currently underway in New York is causing quite a stir. Todd Remis (pictured on right) of Manhattan is suing 65-year-old studio H & H Photographers (on left), claiming that the photographers had missed the final 15 minutes of the wedding that included the last dance and bouquet toss.
