January 2012

Michael Zhang

Planets Created by Combining Photos Captured From High Locations

Creating tiny planets by projecting panoramic photographs onto a sphere is something you've probably seen before, but Dutch photographer Wouter van Buuren creates his planets a bit differently. rather than shoot panoramas from the ground, van Buuren climbs to the top of towers, cranes, skyscrapers, and bridges and points his camera in every direction below. He then takes the resulting photographs and arranges them into compact worlds.

Michael Zhang

Giving Away Two Copies of VSCO Film for Giving Digital the Look of Film

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

VSCO Film has been getting a good amount of attention recently, with professional photographers saying that the software indeed makes digital photographs look like they were shot with a film camera. Today we're going to be giving away two copies of VSCO Film Studio 01 worth $199 each! This package has ACR and Lightroom presets designed specifically for Canon and Nikon cameras, in addition to the universal ones. You can watch a video intro of the software here.

Michael Zhang

Steve Jobs Was Considering Lytro In His Quest to Reinvent Photography

In November of last year, Steve Jobs' official biographer Walter Isaacson revealed that Jobs had wanted to reinvent three things: television, textbooks, and photography. Last week Apple announced that it was reinventing textbooks with iBooks 2, which is intended to start a digital textbook revolution. The company is also rumored to be working on a Siri-enabled TV. Now, hints about what Steve Jobs wanted to do with photography are starting to emerge, and the murmuring is centered around one company: Lytro.

Michael Zhang

Canon 5D Mark III Spotted in Kenya?

Photographer Stephen Oachs over at Aperture Academy caused quite a stir yesterday after sharing some photographs he took of a Japanese photographer he spotted in Kenya. The photographer revealed that he was field testing a new Canon 200-400mm with a built-in teleconverter, but what caught Oachs attention was the camera body the man was using -- a Canon DSLR that he didn't recognize. He writes,

You can see it in the photos I took... I see the "Q" button located by the big wheel on the right, which on the 7D is currently located on the top left. The battery grip seems to have a joystick. I also noticed a "Rate" button...hrm, any ideas?

Is this the new 5D Mark III, or maybe the 7D Mark II? This info I was not able to determine.

Michael Zhang

Haunting Portraits of the Homeless

Photographer Lee Jeffries worked as a sports photographer before having a chance encounter one day with a young homeless girl on a London street. After stealthily photographing the girl huddled in her sleeping bag, Jeffries decided to approach and talk with her rather than disappear with the photograph. That day changed his perception about the homeless, and he then decided to make them the subject of his photography. Jeffries makes portraits of homeless people he meets in Europe and in the US, and makes it a point to get to know them before asking to create the portraits. His photographs are gritty, honest, and haunting.

Michael Zhang

Famous Photographers Holding Their Iconic Photographs

San Diego-based photographer Tim Mantoani has an awesome project and book titled "Behind Photographs" that consists of 20x24-inch Polaroid portraits of famous photographers posing with their most iconic photographs. The film costs $200 per shot, and Mantoani has created over 150 of the portraits already since starting the project five years ago.