Well, if you thought the drawn-out drama of the notorious Olympus accounting scandal was over -- we definitely did -- you were wrong. It seems that white collar criminals not included in the original seven people arrested in the case shouldn't take the yacht out of the marina just yet (or maybe they should), because, as former bank executive Chan Ming Fon learned yesterday, the FBI is still looking for you.
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how I recently created two band photos that feature motion and blur. The premise for this shoot actually started as far back as a couple years ago. I was on the search for a fun and energetic band with which to create a couple of promo images that featured motion. It took 2.5 years to find the right band for the shoots, but when 604 Records recording artists Fighting for Ithaca came calling, the perfect fit had been found!
'Tis the season of mergers, acquisitions, and investments. At around the same time Adobe announced its acquisition of Behance yesterday, Taiwanese gadget manufacturer Foxconn (officially known as Hon Hai Precision) announced that it has snatched up 8.88% of GoPro for $200 million. The deal values the California-based action-camera maker at a whopping $2.25 billion.
American photographer Ray K. Metzker has had a long and distinguished career in photography, and is well known for his cityscape and landscape images. Many of his street photographs exhibit what Henri Cartier-Bresson refers to as the "Decisive Moment" -- that moment in which all the subjects and details in a scene come together just perfectly in your viewfinder.
Instagram has had its share of ups and downs during its 2 short years of life, but we think we can safely say that this past week has been the lowest of lows for the popular-but-beleaguered photo sharing service. After hastily pushing out major edits to its terms of service in preparation for money-making plans, users complained, the media pounced, and Instagram backtracked, saying it would revise the terms to appease its users.
Those revisions happened today. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom has announced that key sections of the service's terms have been rolled back to its original 2010 condition.
Newer weatherproof compact and high-end cameras often feature "freeze-proofing" as one of their attributes, but unless you live in an extremely cold environment (or enjoy sticking your camera inside a freezer), you probably haven't experienced temperatures low enough for even an ordinary camera to break down.
Swiss photographer Alessandro Della Bella has. The photographer above shows what one of his cameras recently looked like during a shoot in extremely low temperatures.
For his project titled Motion, Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Bill Wadman shot portraits of dancers with a slow shutter speed in order to capture their movements through motion blur. The resulting photographs look like a strange fusion of photography and painting.
A major event occurred today in the creative industry landscape: Adobe has acquired Behance, a juggernaut portfolio-sharing service used by many photographers to showcase their work.
Scoopshot is trying to transform the way companies purchase photos and the way freelance photographers find work. In August, we reported that the startup had launched an app that allows smartphone users to easily sell their photos from their phone. Since then, the company has paid out more than $300,000 to participating photographers, and reports that over 60 of its users have earned more than $1,000 by selling their phone photos (one user has earned more than $23,000)
Now, the service is setting its sights on a different group of photographers: professional freelancers. It has launched Scoopshot Pro, a service that connects photo buyers with photo makers for commissioned projects.
After the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L Mark II was announced at the beginning of this year, many photographers were disappointed that it didn't include Image Stabilization. When October rolled around, there were new rumors that Canon had an IS version of the 24-70mm up its sleeve. The company did, but it wasn't what people were expecting. When the new IS lens was unveiled in November, it was an f/4 lens rather than an f/2.8.
If you're one of the many people who wanted both the convenience of having IS and the benefits of having f/2.8, here's some good news: there is indeed a 24-70mm f/2.8 IS on the way.
With Christmas just around the corner, here's a clever DIY craft idea for adding some photographic cheer to your gift giving this year: adorn your presents with gift bows made out of 35mm film strips.
Remote cameras can give photographers perspectives they ordinarily wouldn't be able to capture, and these photographs by photographer Anup Shah show just that. For his project titled Serengeti Spy, Shah traveled to the African savannah in the Serengeti and the Massai Mara and photographed the wild animals using a remote camera.
Wireless adapters for digital cameras can be very pricey accessories, especially when you're dealing with high-end DSLRs. Manufacturers can squeeze more money out of those who pay thousands for a camera by charging hundreds for an adapter, even though a cheaper one could work just fine. What's more, the adapters are often designed specifically for certain cameras, making them useless if you change models or makes.
Freelance filmmaker Colin Mika scored a viral hit last year with his time-lapse video of Los Angeles shot through a snow globe. This past November, Mika created a followup video as a holiday Christmas card on behalf of Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault. He visited six cities across Canada and England: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Québec City, Montréal and London.
The rise of smartphone photography in recent year has been transforming how people think cameras should look and work. Instead of pulling out a single-purpose device that has dedicated controls for picture-making, legions of consumers are now content with pushing a single button (whether physical or digital) in order to preserve a moment in time.
One of the emerging ideas that directly results from this shift is the modular camera. Since smartphones provide all the computing power a camera needs (as well as apps and wireless capabilities), why not simply treat smartphones as a brain, and use lens, sensor, and interface attachments to give the brain a body? That's what Snappgrip is trying to do (the interface thing, at least).
In the world of cloud data storage, Dropbox is one of the 800lb gorillas fighting for your files. In recent days, it has been making big moves to become more of a player in photo storage and sharing. After all, everyone needs a safe place to keep their digital images, right?
The company's latest play came today in the form of an acquisition: Dropbox has acquired fellow cloud-storage company Snapjoy -- a business based around aggregating photos from around the web and from your various devices.
Back in March, a client for whom I’ve done some light consulting work asked me if it was possible to capture a 360-degree-image that can be rotated afterwards. I said of course, but didn’t think that much about the consequences -- it's a project that would wake me up at nights for the next few months.
The words "grandma's cooking" often elicits warm feelings and pangs of nostalgia in people, as they're reminded of delicious meals prepared by their grandmother's loving and experienced hands. Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti wanted to learn what these memories are for people in different cultures and contexts, so he set out to document grandmas and their dishes in countries all across the globe. The result is a project titled "Delicatessen with love."
For a recent National Geographic story on giant sequoia trees, photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols was tasked with capturing a photograph showing the sheer size of one of the largest trees in the world. The video above offers a short but interesting glimpse into how Nichols and his team went about doing so.
For the past three years, San Diego-based photographer Octavio Aburto has had a specific photo idea brewing in his mind. He wanted to photograph the incredible underwater tornado that forms when massive groups of fish congregate to reproduce. This past November, he finally got his photo opportunity while diving with his friend David at Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico. The beautiful 24-second video above shows what Aburto witnessed.
One chapter in the saga of Kodak's escape from bankruptcy has come to an end. The company announced today that it has completed the sale of its valuable imaging patents for $525 million to a group of Silicon Valley companies. The deal involves more than 1,100 patents related to the capturing, manipulating, and sharing of digital photographs.
Want to see whether or not your favorite photographers are following the rule of thirds when composing their shots? Programmer and photography enthusiast Alex Dergachev has created a simple browser bookmarklet that overlays RoT gridlines over any (or almost any) web photograph.
Yesterday marked the 109th anniversary of the first aviation photograph ever snapped. Back on December 17th, 1903, an amateur photographer named John Thomas Daniels Jr. captured the now-iconic photograph above showing the Wright brothers' first flight.
For the past couple of months, Albuquerque, New Mexico-based photographer Wes Naman has been working on a lighthearted personal project called "Scotch Tape," a series that features bizarre portraits of subjects who have their faces wrapped tightly with strips of Scotch tape.
If you had any doubts regarding how much of a part of our culture Instagram has become, just take a peek at the public outcry that erupted after Instagram announced changes to its policies yesterday. The controversial edits were reported in media outlets around the world, and legions of die-hard Instagram fans took to social media channels to protest them.
People mainly focused on a section of the document that appears to give Instagram sweeping permissions to sell photos without consent or compensation to third-parties for advertising purposes.
Wet plate photographer Ian Ruhter has received a good deal of attention over the past year for using a custom camera van to create giant collodion process metal photos. When he's not turning large sheets of metal into photographs, he's sometimes working on the opposite side of the spectrum.
One of his recent interests has been shooting pint-sized photos using a Holga toy camera that he converted into a wet plate camera.
Brooklyn-based photographer Joey L has spent years working on an amazing set of portraits titled "Holy Men," which features religious ascetics from around the world.
Joey traveled to India (for the third time) in March 2011 and spent a month creating more photos of wandering monks in Varanasi, the holiest of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism and one of the oldest cities in the world. The subjects are men who have renounced all earthly possessions in their pursuit of spiritual liberation.
High dynamic range (HDR) mode is becoming a standard feature in newer digital cameras and smartphones. By snapping multiple photographs at different exposure levels, the camera can automatically generate an image that captures a greater range of light and dark areas than a standard photograph. However, the technique does have its weaknesses. Artifacts appear if any changes occur in the scene between the different shots, which limits the scenarios in which the technique can be used.
Apple wants to overcome this issue by implementing an HDR mode that only requires a single exposure. A recently published patent shows that Apple is well on its way to doing so.
Lens-shaped coffee mugs and vacuum flasks (the proper name for the Thermos) have become a hot novelty item in the world of photography over the past couple of years, and Leica wants a piece of the action. Two weeks ago, a Leica-branded coffee mug was spotted on eBay, and now it appears that the strange product will be hitting store shelves at brick-and-mortar Leica retail locations.
Back in July, we shared a series of creative animated GIFs and a music video that show space-lapses over great distances in San Francisco. The creators Kevin Parry and Andrea Nesbitt have just published the video above that teaches how you can do the same thing with your camera.