April 2012

This inspiring time-lapse video of Portland, Oregon was created by Uncage the Soul over the course of 51 days in March and April for the TEDx Portland conference. They captured 308,829 separate photographs at 50 different locations in and around the city. Each second in the video took an average of 3.8 hours of work to create. Their hard work paid off, and the film was given a standing ovation by the sellout crowd when it premiered.

Since late last year the photo sharing site 500px -- which even then was "growing like a weed" -- has continued to expand, grow, add features, and otherwise challenge Flickr for online photography dominance. But Flickr hasn't taken it lying down. In the past this involved a redesign to make the site more visually appealing and the addition of the Aviary photo editor. Now the improvements are beginning to improve functionality.

This "How It's Made" segment provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the manufacturing process for modern Walker Titan SF 4x5 large format cameras.

Everybody has had pictures taken that they can hardly stand to look at. Even professional portraits that eliminate blemishes and show you in attractive poses sometimes look strained, or emotionless. Well, a recent study published in Experimental Brain Research seems to say that the remedy could be as easy as turning the other cheek.

MIT's Media Lab is no stranger to innovation; from super-high-speed cameras to cameras that can see around walls, they always seem to be on the cutting edge of imaging innovation. Their newest project, the EyeRing, is yet another innovative idea that could some day revolutionize the way we take pictures and experience our world.

After collecting old World War 2 photographs taken in major European cities, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov spent a year traveling around Europe to re-photograph the same scenes as they look today. He then carefully combined the old images with the new ones to create photographs that show two views of the same location captured over 60 years apart.

Photographer Jared Krause made this simple camera strap for shooting on the streets of Toronto. The length of nylon rope he used cost just $2.50. Due to cold weather, Krause almost always wears the strap outside a jacket or sweatshirt, but if you're shooting in warmer weather it might be wise to add some padding for comfort.

Over the last year or so, as camera phones and "phoneography" have taken off, many have feared and/or expected the death of the digital camera. In many ways this fear has come to fruition -- point-and-shoot cameras are becoming a thing of the past -- but for another segment of the market, the advent of the camera phone has benefitted companies and consumers alike.

Foto Marvellini, an art workshop based in Milan, came up with the interesting idea of collecting vintage portraits and transforming them into photos showing the ancestors of Marvel superheroes. Eventually the project, began including characters from DC Comics and Japanese anime as well.

Los Angeles-based photographer and photo assistant Shawn Corrigan has spent the past 10 years traveling the world assisting and shooting. Over time, he has developed an “everything but the kitchen sink, plus the kitchen sink” kit that he brings to each set. In addition to the absolutely essential leatherman and light meter that every assistant should carry around, here's a checklist of others things you should consider packing.

Google Maps is great for a many reasons that extend far beyond helping you get from point "A" to point "B" -- and their newest feature is especially interesting. Dubbed "photo tours," the new Google Maps feature allows users to take 3D tours of 15,000 different, well-known landmarks; all of which are highlighted when you follow a special link from Google.

Now that online sharing of images and video has become so commonplace, Sony has decided that they too want a piece of the pie. And their new storage service, dubbed PlayMemories Online, is how they intend to claim that piece. Launched only a couple of days ago, the service is now available in the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Canada and offers 5GB of storage for free.

Here's a gorgeous series of underwater portraits shot by photographer Jacob Sutton, the same guy who did the LED snowboarding shoot that we featured a while back. It's titled "Underwater Girl".

Photographers have already lodged complaints against the security firm that tried to prevent them from taking photos of the Olympic sites from public land, but it seems that even stricter rules will be imposed on ticket holders once the games begin. According to a freelance photographer named Peter Ruck, the Olympic organizing committee Locog intends to prevent attendees from uploading images and videos captured at the games to social networks.

Light Up Your Memories is a concept product by designers Hwang Youn Ha, Kim Min Jeong, Cha Yoon Suk & Kim Yong Ha that features push pins that light up at night, giving light to photographs that you have pinned up on your walls.

Rumors are beginning to fly about of a cheaper, entry-level, full-frame DSLR coming from Nikon later this year. The new camera, which people are speculating will be called the D600, would be the true replacement for the D700. The D800, then, would fulfill promises from Nikon officials that it would be "a whole new category of camera," and not a D700 replacement.

Now there's a headline that's sure to cause some heated debate (click here for another one). It's the question asked by the latest episode of PBS' show Idea Channel: …

As the cliche goes: "a picture is worth a thousand words," and Once Magazine is replacing many of the words that make up a typical magazine with pictures that speak for themselves. The relatively new publication has attracted a lot of attention since its first issue in September of last year -- not because magazines on the iPad are anything new, but because both their business model and their execution are fantastic.

After taking a macro photograph of his own eye using a Samsung WB500 compact camera, Jarroseph was startled to find that the photograph showed his own face reflected in his eyeball. His face had reflected off the front of the lens, off his eyeball, and then into the camera! …

Over the past 4 years the New York City Department of Records has been compiling an online database made up of rare photographs of "the greatest city on earth," and now that database is available to the public. The compilation consists of over 870,000 photos ranging in subject matter from landmarks to crime scenes put together from a Municipal Archives collection of over 2.2 million photos.

Washington DC-based photographer Sam Hurd has a series titled "Epic Portraits" that consists of portraits of famous individuals captured using techniques such as the Brenizer method, freelensing, and compositing. What's neat is that each photograph has its own behind-the-scenes page detailing how it was created (the gear, goal, vision, story, and lesson learned).

On Monday Adobe officially announced its upcoming Creative Cloud subscription service, which will allow users to "rent" CS6 for $50 a month or Photoshop by itself for $20 a month. Whitson Gordon over at Lifehacker did some calculations on whether subscribing is actually worth it. Here's his conclusion: …

If you're afraid of heights you may want to look away, and you should certainly never make friends with these daredevil photographers from Russia. We here in the U.S. have memes, young Russian photographers, it seems, have "skywalking": the newest extremely dangerous photography fad to hit the Internet.

One year ago today I took a photograph that would change my life. A single frame turned my whole world upside down, and brought on a storm of media attention, praise, criticism, confusion, wonder, and doubt. After one hell of a ride this past year, I think today is a good day to finally tell this photo's story...

Many photographers enjoy receiving feedback about their created images. Services such as Flickr and even Instagram are built at least partially around sharing your images and, hopefully, receiving some comments and praise in return. There's something fascinating about having your work interpreted though someone else's lens, and when Matt Richardson invented his "Descriptive Camera" he kept this in mind.

Two days ago we shared Frans Hofmeester's wonderful time-lapse video of his daughter aging from birth to 12 in three minutes. That video has gone viral on the Internet, receiving a whopping four million views in less than a week. Hofmeester is actually doing the same project for his son Vince: the video above shows the boy aging from birth to age 9 in two minutes.

Buried inside photographer Jon Duenas' extensive portfolio are a set of double exposures that seem to focus on the theme of nature blooming through portraits of young women. Sometimes the technique itself is novel; such was the case with the mix of light paining and bullet time we posted yesterday. But that doesn't mean that a photography technique that has been used time and again can't still produce fresh, unique, and inspirational results.

The folks over at NoFilmSchool recently did a low light comparison of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 5D Mark III, and Nikon D800. The cameras were used to film the same dark candlelit scene with the same settings, and the ISO was slowly pushed up to the cameras' respective limits.

Two years ago, we reported that an extremely rare Nikkor 6mm f/2.8 fisheye lens had been put up for sale on eBay for a cool $34,020. If you balked at that price, get this: another copy of the lens has turned up in London, and this time the price tag is a staggering £100,000, or roughly $160,000. The lens became the world's most extreme wide angle 35mm lens when it was released in 1970, and boasts a field of view of 220º -- it can literally see behind itself! If Grays of Westminster does …

In the past year -- and especially with the growth of the "occupy" movement -- police interfering with photographers or pedestrians trying to snap a photo of them has been in the news quite a lot. Just yesterday we reported on the Olympics' security guards who landed in hot water after harassing photogs shooting from public land. In the past, this was no problem, as police officers had little to fear in way of personal liability when they interfered; however, a new Connecticut bill -- the first …

Created by Chris Bell, Liangjie Xia, and Mike Kelberman, Rotobooth is a novel new photo booth with a twist -- literally. It's powered by a hacked rotary phone and shoots a photo after the user dials their cell phone number. The image is then automatically uploaded to Flickr and a link to the photo is sent as a text message to the phone number provided. Check out this interview with Kelberman to learn more about the project and this Flickr set to see some behind-the-scenes photos.

Bad news if you're a film shooter and Fujifilm is your brand of choice: the company has announced that it will be increasing the worldwide price of its entire line of photographic films starting in May 2012. In the announcement, the company blames demand and economics for the decision: …

If you follow any part of the photographic blogosphere, you’ve heard folks repeat this mantra over and over and over again: “Gear doesn’t matter.” …

Photographer Cynthia Chung got engaged in October of last year and recently decided to try her hand at shooting her own engagement photographs. After traveling around with her fiancé to various places with her fiancé cameras, lenses, a tripod, and a remote, the couple spontaneously decided to try something slightly crazy: …

If you're a Nikon D7000, D800, D800E, or V1 owner listen up, because Nikon has issued a voluntary recall on the rechargeable Li-ion EN-EL15 battery that's used to power those cameras. Nikon discovered an overheating issue that can deform the outside casing of the cameras (at this point there have been only 7 confirmed cases worldwide) and is offering anybody with a battery whose 9th serial number digit is either "E" or "F" a free replacement. More details on both the problem and how to get your …

A couple weeks ago we shared an interesting video in which a speaker and Canon 5D Mark II's frame rate were used to make water appear to be frozen in mid-air. This new video by YouTube user Brusspup takes the idea to the next level by making the water appear to travel upwards. He explains: …

In the 1970s and 80s the Czechoslovak secret police, among other things, were charged with surveying the population without their consent or, for that matter, knowledge. Taking pictures from under coats or inside suitcases, the secret police kept tabs on the goings on of the general public. And while the act itself is voyeuristic and creepy, the pictures turned out surprisingly well.

Check out this strange looking digital camera made by IKEA out of cardboard. It was included as part of a press kit at an event in Europe recently, and apparently the "disposable" camera might go on sale sometime soon in IKEA stores. It uses two AA batteries and stores up to 40 photographs in the built-in memory. Images can be downloaded to your computer using the USB connection that swings out from one of the corners of the camera.

After amassing 626 friends on Facebook two years ago, Tanja Hollander began to wonder how many of them were actually friends in the conventional sense. She then set out to answer the question by meeting each one of them and photographing them in their homes. The portraits are published on a website set up for the project, titled The Facebook Portrait Project, and each photo includes some information about the subject and their relationship to Hollander.

Over the last couple of weeks we've covered every aspect of the Canon 5D Mark III "light leak" issue. Starting initially as a rumor, Canon eventually confirmed that the camera's top LCD did, in fact, alter the exposure reading by 1/3 of a stop in dark environments. A week ago the company even put shipments on hold while they investigated the issue more extensively.

Kanaal van Djsanderdj created this stunning time-lapse video using photographs shot by probes sent out by NASA through the Cassini and Voyager missions. It offers a close-up look at the other planets in our solar system in motion. Here's a similar video we shared a year ago.

Here's a unique invention that could make many a photog's life easier -- especially if they're shooting tethered. The Tripad, which is available on the company's website for $100, is a laptop stand for your tripod. The unique design allows you to hang the Tripad over your tripod, and use the platform to hold your laptop, notebook, or other photography gear.

While many photographers aim for technical perfection, photographer William Miller goes the opposite route. After "rescuing" an old and barely functional Polaroid SX-70 instant camera from a yard sale, he began taking advantage of its glitches by viewing the resulting photographs as abstract art. He states, …

Here's a brief glimpse showing Nikon's new $59 WU-1a wireless adapter in action, being used to control a D3200 DSLR (the only camera supported at the moment) using an Android (the only mobile OS supported) smartphone. The video is in Chinese since it was created by Taiwanese website Mobile01, but it clearly shows the two main features of the adapter: transferring photos from cameras to phones and shooting remotely using the phone as a live view.

Photographer Isaac Gutiérrez Pascual of Spain shot this beautiful photograph of the sky that contains four different subjects: birds, clouds, the Moon, and Venus. It was shot using a Canon 5D and a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. NASA writes, …

Camera bags can get pricy, and when it comes to camera bags that travel well (i.e. on wheels) prices can really skyrocket. In fact, if you type "Rolling Camera Bag" into Amazon your first three options will run you $262.54, $171.07, and $249.00.

Here's amazing concept: use a seemingly random display of dots (like the static you see on a signal-less television set) to share photographs that only a camera can see. The International Federation of Photographic Art created this clever interactive video that asks you to grab your camera and follow the instructions. Set your aperture to f/5.6 and your shutter speed at 1s. Snap a photo of the screen filled with static, and prepare to be amazed!

The Olympics are a big deal, and an even bigger opportunity for the country's photographers. From the moment the next Olympic city is announced, preparations begin and an endless number of photo ops present themselves. That is, if the security guards don't start harassing you.

Sick of staring at giant darkroom timer while waiting for chemicals to do their work? Try replacing the timer with carefully selected music. Photographer Lauren E. Simonutti writes over at Lens Culture, …

When Thomas and Anneka Geary paid professional -- and we use the term lightly -- photographers Ian McCloskey and Nikki Carter of Westgate Photography £750 to capture the happiest day of their lives, they were probably expecting something a little bit better than what turned out: blurry and poorly framed shots captured from terrible positions that are being called "the worst wedding pictures ever". Not one of the photos showed the groom's parents.