April 2012

This inspiring time-lapse video of Portland, Oregon was created by Uncage the Soul …

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 4×5 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Rumors are beginning to fly about of a cheaper, entry-level, full-frame DSLR coming from Nikon later this year. The …

Now there’s a headline that’s sure to cause some heated debate (click here …

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, …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 of its kind -- may soon change that.

Created by Chris Bell, Liangjie Xia, and …

Bad news if you’re a film shooter and Fujifilm is your brand of choice: the company has announced that …

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.”

The basic premise of that dictum is as follows: making great pictures is about the photographer, not the camera or the lens or any other piece of gear. A good photographer can make a great image with a point-and-shoot that an amateur armed with a Nikon D4 and an 85mm f/1.4 lens can’t match.

Photographer Cynthia Chung got engaged in October of last year and recently decided …

If you’re a Nikon D7000, D800, D800E, or V1 owner listen up, because Nikon has issued a voluntary recall …

A couple weeks ago we shared an interesting video in which a speaker and Canon 5D Mark …

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 …

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 …

Here’s a unique invention that could make many a photog’s life easier — especially if they’re shooting tethered. The …

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,

The camera sometimes spills out 2 pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling the images in unpredictable ways.

Over time I’ve figured out how to control and accentuate aspects of the camera’s flaws but the images themselves are always a surprise. Each one is determined by the idiosyncrasies of the film and the camera.

The images look like landscapes taken on strange alien planets. He has titled the project Ruined Polaroids.

Here’s a brief glimpse showing Nikon’s new $59 WU-1a wireless adapter in action, being used to control …

Photographer Isaac Gutiérrez Pascual of Spain shot this beautiful photograph of the sky …

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 …

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.