2012

A few hours ago, the official Facebook page of the First Army Division East posted the above photograph with the caption: …

Apple may have launched a neat panorama feature with iOS 6, but Google is one-upping the Cupertino-based company today with its new Jelly Bean flavor: Android 4.2. The OS now comes with an official 360-degree panorama app called Photo Sphere.

Remember the remote Instagram printer called Instaprint? Although the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the product raised nearly a quarter of a million bucks from 800+ backers, it failed to reach its goal of $500K, and we haven't heard much about the device since then.

Mecca in Saudi Arabia is considered to be the holiest city of Islam, and is only accessible to Muslims. 38-year-old London photographer Toufic Beyhum wanted to document what a pilgrimage is like for a Muslim and to "portray the peaceful and spiritual side of Islam", so he brought along a Hasselblad 500 medium-format camera when he visited the city. His images -- a few of which were snapped in locations where photography was prohibited -- offer an intimate look at locations that most people will …

Here's an interesting video in which renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry shares some thoughts on documentary portraiture. Titled Close Up: Photographers at Work, the video takes us behind-the-scenes with McCurry as he shoots some candid portraits on the street and then reviews some of his most prized shots captured over the course of his career. (There's a brief glimpse of the original film slides of his iconic Afghan Girl photo.)

Yesterday we reported that Nikon Photo Contest is no longer accepting film photos starting this year. Turns out it's not the only prestigious photo contest with rules that are causing some discussion.

Earlier this month, we featured an upcoming license plate frame that uses bright flashes of light to prevent traffic enforcement photographs. In the article, we mentioned that the concept could potentially be used by the rich and famous to avoid the constant gaze of paparazzi cameras. Turns out the rich and famous are already one step ahead of us.

Shooting portraits of strangers in cars isn't uncommon, but have you ever tried using off-camera lighting to illuminate their faces? That's what photographer Jonathan Castillo is doing for his ongoing series called Car Culture.

Over the past couple of years, German photographer Markus Reugels has attracted quite a bit of attention for his high-speed photographs of water drop splashes. His project, titled "Liquid Splashes", consists of split-second photos that make colorful splashes look like tiny glass sculptures hovering in the air above a mirror. In the video above, Reugels introduces himself and his work, and takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour showing how he goes about creating his beautiful photographs.

Underwater housings for DSLR cameras usually aren't the cheapest accessory. Professional ones often cost as much as the cameras they house. If you'd like to add a simple layer of waterproofing to your DSLR without shelling out big bucks, check out this camera case dry bag. It's a thick, durable, and watertight plastic case that comes with transparent sections on both sides for your lens and LCD screen.

Another sign of the times (and bad news for film-photography enthusiasts): one of the most prestigious photo competitions in the world no longer accepts film photographs. Earlier this week Nikon published a "call for entries" for its 34th Nikon Photo Contest.

There's a trend in the camera world these days that involves stuffing large sensors into small cameras. The goal is to squeeze professional-grade image-making ability into a pint-sized package. Sigma's new horse in this race is the DP1 Merrill, a fixed-lens compact with an APS-C sensor at its core; not just any ol' APS-C sensor, mind you, but a 46-megapixel Foveon sensor.

A few years ago, I came up with a theory. Every person has some balance of two incredibly valuable assets: Time and Money. If you have an excess of one of them, there’s a good chance that you don’t have much of the other. I’d like to take some time and reflect on how being aware of how you spend your time can potentially improve your business... and maybe even your life.

If you regularly shoot in dusty or sandy environments, here's a handy tip for keeping your camera clean: create a simple cleaning brush that attaches to your camera bag. Digital Camera World writes, …

Looking for a photo project to play around with this weekend? Try exploring a technique known as the Harris Shutter. Invented in the days of film photography by Robert Harris of Kodak, it involves capturing three sequential exposures of a scene through red, green, and blue filters, and then stacking the images into a single frame. This causes all the static elements within the scene to appear as they ordinarily would in a color photo, while all the moving elements in the shot show up in one of …

New York City is undoubtedly one of the most photographed cities on Earth, but photographer Richard Silver doesn't let that fact faze him. He's on a personal mission to capture facets of The Big Apple in ways people have never seen before. A month ago, we shared his New York Sliced series, which consists of spliced photos of buildings that show day turning into night.

Photographer Richard Esposito has written an interesting article over at Tiffinbox on how weddings are becoming a "too many cooks in the kitchen" kind of environment, where everyone and their mother is a photographer now: …

Here's a fun photo idea you might want to try out this Halloween: shoot epic portraits showing beams of light streaming in from the background. All you need are a perforated hardboard, a couple of flashes, and a fog/smoke machine (or some method of generating smoke).

Now here's a creative idea that we've never seen before... For this short film titled New York: Night and Day, New York City-based filmmaker and animator Philip Stockton blended daytime and nighttime images of his city into single shots. He explains, …

The photograph seen here was shot using a tablet computer -- one that doesn't officially exist yet. Google engineering SVP Vic Gundotra posted the image to Google+ at 4:57 this morning with the caption, "Early morning walk on the beach." A quick peek at the EXIF data reveals that it was captured with the "Google Nexus 10," a tablet that'll reportedly be unveiled at a press event next Monday.

Notice anything cringeworthy in the photo above? Yup, that's a Canon 5D Mark III (with a battery grip attached) and 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens flying through the air.

Canon released its quarterly financial results yesterday, and things aren't looking so rosy based on Q3 2012. Revenue has fallen 13% to $10.3 billion from the same period last year, and profit dropped 42% to $908 million.

A 16-year-old aspiring journalist named Jakub Markiewicz was arrested last month at the shopping mall Metropolis at Metrotown, the 2nd largest mall in Canada. After photographing security guards arresting a man, he was unable to comply with multiple demands to delete the photographs he had taken... from a film camera.

Clemson University is apparently ditching film photography and going digital. The public South Carolina-based school has just turned to government surplus auctions to unload its analog gear, and the equipment is being snatched up for ridiculously low prices. The lot of 9 "excellent condition" Hasselblad 500 EL/M medium format camera bodies seen above was just sold for $1,200, which comes out to about $133 for each camera (granted, there are some taxes and processing fees tacked on).

Check out this geeky Instagram-inspired Halloween costume created by photographer Eric Micotto. What's neat is that it actually "works" as a camera: it's powered by a Nikon D800 snapping photos through the "lens", and has an iPad on the back that acts as the camera's giant LCD screen. Subjects who have their photo taken by the costume can run around to the back to take a peek at how it turned out.

After almost two years of shooting film nonstop and more than $1,000 worth of expenses on processing and prints, I needed to reconsider my budget and find a way of being able to shoot more and pay less. I thus began to process my C-41 rolls at home. It's extremely easy to do and I‘ll show you today how to do it, step by step.

You've probably seen macro photographs of everything from bugs to blooms, but have you seen any of ocean waves? That's the niche that Australian photographer Deb Morris has carved out for herself, and it's working out quite nicely.

Want to see how studio lighting equipment is made? David Selby of Lighting Rumors was recently invited to tour the Shenzhen factory of a Chinese lighting company called NiceFoto, which sells gear both under its own brand name and to various international distributors under different marques. He snapped a number of photographs showing various workspaces where equipment is assembled.

In addition to analyzing the use of Sony sensors in Nikon DSLRs, Chipworks has also published an article that explores Canon's full frame sensors. It's quite technical, but the main points can be grasped without understanding the terms being thrown around: …

In the Star Wars universe, Lightsabers are hand-built as part of their wielders' training, and each one is as unique as the person who made it. Photographer Matt Abelson seems to have the same idea about cameras: he builds high-quality one-of-a-kind pinhole cameras based on his own designs.

Back in June, a National Geographic crew was given the task of filming and photographing a cheetah running at full speed. While there are plenty of videos and photos out there showing this, the magazine wanted to track alongside the cheetah as it ran (rather than simply capture it from a fixed location). The short behind-the-scenes video above shows how they went about doing this.

For those of you who are desperate for Olympus to release a focus peaking feature for the OM-D EM-5, did you know that there's a trick you can use for "ghetto focus peaking"? …

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile have released a breathtaking new photograph showing the central area of our Milky Way galaxy. The photograph shows a whopping 84 million stars in an image measuring 108500x81500, which contains nearly 9 billion pixels.

British advertising photographer Tim MacPherson has a wonderful series of photographs showing children having fun in imaginary worlds created out of ordinary objects. Kids are seen couch surfing, skiing down stairs, and horseback riding on shelves. The project is titled, "Kids at Home and Play."

Apple has released a new OS X update that provides system-level compatibility with the RAW photos of a number of newer cameras that were launched over the past year, including the Nikon D600 and Canon EOS M. It's called the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 4.01, and allows newer RAW files to be viewed and edited in programs like Preview, Aperture, and iPhoto.

Recently, a friend and photographer Ben Jacobsen of Ben Jacobsen Photo got his work into a third gallery. One of the gallery owners asked him “Is your work Photoshopped?” This is also a popular question often asked at Art Fairs and Photography exhibits. Why is this question relevant to some viewers? If you are asking this, do you know what Photoshopping means? Better yet, What does that word mean to you, and what is it that you are asking?

Businessweek writes that Canon has lowered its sales estimates across all its camera lines, saying that smartphones are drinking its milkshake -- and it's not just Canon: …

Santa Fe, New Mexico-based photographer Brad Wilson decided last year that he wanted to photograph something "a little less predictable," so he decided to shoot fine art studio portraits of wild animals using all the things he has learned through years of shooting human portraiture.

Google has already photographed quite a bit of our world using a fleet of cars, submarine-style cameras, tricycles, and snowmobiles, so what else is there to include in Street View? Places where vehicles can't go, of course. The company has begun capturing 360-degree imagery using the Trekker -- a special backpack with a Street View camera rig sticking up from the top.

Want to enjoy some of the world's latest and greatest news photographs on your iPad? Reuters has a new app designed just for you. Called The Wider Image, it's a photo experience that's designed to bring beautiful photojournalism to life in your hands.

One year ago, the haunted house called Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada scored a major marketing win after its candid photographs of horrified guests went viral online. With Halloween 2012 only a week away, Jakob Schiller over at Wired caught up with the house's marketing director Vee Popat for the inside scoop of how the images are shot: …

GorillaPod maker Joby announced a new product today designed for people who regularly use their smartphones for photography or videography. Called the GripTight, it's a universal tripod mount that'll work with most popular smartphones. It's basically a compact spring-loaded clamp with a tripod mount built into the bottom. Stretch the rubbery clamp over your phone, and it'll grip it tightly in place.

Earlier this year we received a call from across the Atlantic Ocean. The editors at Wired UK magazine had an incredibly ambitious project ahead of them that they asked us to be a part of: one week, four photographers, over thirty photo-shoots, and a triple gate-fold cover featuring sixteen of the brightest and most inspiring minds in the world at the MIT Media Lab. How could we say no?

The National Press Photographers Association announced this week that it will be joining a major lawsuit filed against NYC and the NYPD for civil rights violations during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The photograph above may look like it shows a photo of apples mounted to a wall, but it actually shows real apples that were packed into a neat little square. Turkish artist and photographer Sakir Gökçebag has an entire series of photographs showing various fruits and vegetables carefully sliced up and placed into neat arrangements.

If you've been using Dropbox as a photo backup solution and the official iOS app for accessing your images in the cloud, you may have noticed that downloading photos to your device didn't give you the exact files that you wanted. Instead of beaming the full-resolution images to your Camera Roll, the app would shrink photos to a much smaller size to speed up downloading times. A 14MP 4592x3056 photo would only be saved at 960x638, for example.

Jonathon Keats of Forbes has a great piece discussing truth in photography and Joel Sternfeld's 1978 photo of a fireman shopping for pumpkins as a house burns in the background: …

Electronics reverse-engineering company Chipworks has published an article that discusses and reviews Nikon's use of Sony CMOS sensors in certain DSLRs: …

Wedding photographers always try to prepare themselves for unexpected events and unplanned photo ops, but there's no way photographer Laura Kelly was expecting what happened this past weekend. While photographing couple Jocelyne Potvin and Patrick Sullivan on their wedding day, an unexpected guest came in to the frame: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Mikko Lagerstedt is a self-taught photographer based-in Finland who only started shooting back in December 2008. Since then, he has captured a number of hauntingly beautiful landscape photographs showing both stars and self-portrait silhouettes hovering over the horizon line. His latest project is simply titled "Edge", and features "atmospheric photography" of the Finnish landscape.