2012

Jump to articles by year, month, or day.

Year
Month
Day

Year alone opens that year’s archive. Add a month or day to narrow it.

A Photographic Study of One Tree Over Many Years and Seasons

Last week we shared a project by photographer Tyler Casson that featured four photos of an island across four seasons of a year. Photographer Kevin Day has been doing a similar project -- one that he has been working on for over five years now. The Berkshire, UK-based photographer has been visiting and documenting one particular tree in a field, snapping photos showing different seasons and different lighting conditions.

Lo-Fi Surf Photography with Expired and Cross-Processed Film

San Francisco resident Ryan Tatar is passionate about two things when he's not sitting at his desk at a Silicon Valley tech company: surfing and photography... and usually a combination of the two. He has attracted a good deal of attention in both worlds with his lo-fi photographs of surfers, captured with old analog cameras and expired and/or cross-processed films.

Canon’s Official Solution for Stuck Lens Filters: Use a Hammer and Hacksaw

When travel photographer Craig Pulsifer accidentally smashed the front of his lens recently and found his lens filter fused firmly to the metal threads, he went to Canon for help. The removal process explained to him by a Canon Professional services technician is probably something most people wouldn't think to try: use a hammer and hacksaw to surgically remove the stuck filter. Pulsifer followed the advice, and found that it works quite well (though he does warn that it's "not recommended for …

Use Science to Become More Productive as a Photographer

Want to learn how to be more productive with your photography? Instead of simply "trying harder" and relying on your willpower, a better way may be to take simple steps that have been shown to be effective by science. The above 3-minute video, created by artists/educators Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, offers some tips that science has taught us about being more efficient at working and spending less time getting our work accomplished.

‘Say Cheese’ Camera Tattoo Turns Girl’s Forearm into an Optical Illusion

We've shared a number of photography-inspired tattoos in the past, but here's a concept we've never seen before. Brunssum, Netherlands-based tattoo artist Helma van der Weide created this optical illusion tattoo for her daughter Lotte van den Acker's forearm. All Lotte needs to do to show off her passion for photography is cover up her eyes with her arm and voila! Instant photography!

App To Let You Preserve Your Life with a One-Second Video of Each Day

First, there was a competition, which suggested that one second of video could capture a unique, meaningful moment. Then a young woman from LA used roughly one second of footage per day to document a year in her life. And then finally, Cesar Kuriyama's similar video documenting his frivolous year off work following his 30th birthday went viral.

Photographers Find Success Selling Rolls of Handmade “Distressed” Film

Film photography has been taking a lot of hits in the business world, but while major manufacturers continue to discontinue film production, one small company is doing the exact opposite. Revolog -- a small online shop founded by photography school graduates Hanna Pribitzer and Michael Krebs in 2010 -- has been finding success by selling handmade specialty film.

Holga’s New Rotary Filter Lens Brings the Lo-Fi Craze into the World of DSLRs

It was about this time last year that the world was introduced to the Holga iPhone case: a strange-looking gizmo complete with a rotary wheel packing 9 separate lo-fi filters for the toy-camera, retro lover in you. Well, much like the Swivl we reported on yesterday, Holga has decided that bigger is better, and is attempting to break into the DSLR market with a new rotary wheel lens for DSLRs.

Nikon D600 Kits Plummet to Ridiculously Low Prices Around the Web

If you've recently purchased a Nikon D600 at its standard body-only retail price of $2,000, you might want to stop reading this post lest you suddenly find yourself filled with manufacturer-induced buyers remorse. If you're a budget-conscious photographer in the market for a new full-frame DSLR, today might be your lucky day.

How Fake Photos Are Messing With Our Perception of Reality

When Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast back in October, the photograph above was widely circulated by people who believed that it showed the storm bearing down NYC. It doesn't. The image is actually a composite photograph that combines an ordinary photo of the Statue of Liberty with a well-known image by weather photographer Mike Hollingshead.

Photographs of Post-War Churches and Their Non-Traditional Designs

French photographer Fabrice Fouillet is interested in churches built after World War II. Specifically, he's fascinated with how many of the buildings created in the 50s, 60s, and 70s deviated from architectural traditions built up over the centuries, and instead took on fresh new looks and radically different styles. Fouillet has traveled across Europe and the world in search of these churches, which were looked down upon when they were built but praised for their looks now. His project is …

How to Create a Surreal Self-Portrait That Shows You Holding Yourself

Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a photograph of you holding yourself up. I hope it will give you a good idea of how I create this type of image so that you can create a similar image yourself! Obviously, this is not the only way to create this type of image, but it is the way I have found most believable, as the connection between the two subjects actually occurs in real life. Enjoy!

Double Exposure: A Clever Photo Prank From Half a Century Ago

When the engineering students and staff of King's College in London gathered together to take a faculty portrait, the photographer used an old camera that panned from left to right in order to capture an extremely long panorama of the entire group in one frame. It worked a bit like the panorama features on modern smartphones: start the exposure on one side of the frame, and then gradually sweep the camera across the scene while everyone in the frame stays as still as possible.

Canon 6D and 5DMk3 Noise Comparison for High-ISO Long Exposures

Astrophotography enthusiast Don Marcotte wanted to find out whether the Canon 6D or Canon 5D Mark III was more suitable for his area of photography, so he pitted the two cameras against one another in a few noise tests at his local camera store. He simply shot long exposures without any light (the cap was on) in order to see how much noise would show up in the frame.

The New York Times on Why It Published New Impending Death Photo

The New York Post sparked a firestorm of controversy last week after publishing a photo of a man about to be struck by a subway train. People around the world were outraged that a photographer decided to photograph what had occurred, that he had sold (or, in the photographer's words, licensed) the photo to a newspaper, and that the paper decided to publish it with a sensationalist front page story.

New Swivl Dock Brings Motion-Tracking to DSLRs and Tablets

About this time last year, a startup named Satarii released the original Swivl: a nifty little motion tracking dock for your smartphone. Meant for shooting video and video conferencing, the dock would follow your every move by keeping a remote tracking marker in frame.

Strange Portraits Created by Combining Multiple Shots of the Same Person

If the book Frankenstein were written about the subject of photography, then French photographer Grégoire Cheneau would be Victor Frankenstein and his Altered States portraits would be Frankenstein's monster(s). Upon first glance, many of the portraits seem to be harshly-lit shots of ordinary -- albeit strange looking -- people. Upon closer inspection, however, you start noticing that there's something off about them.

‘Want More Megapixels? Be Careful What You Wish For’

The megapixel war is heating up again in the high-end DSLR market, with the 36MP Nikon D800 leading the charge and rumored high-MP Canon and Sony competitors on the way. If you've been drooling over massive megapixels, be warned: with great megapixels comes great responsibility storage costs. Photoshop guru Scott Kelby writes: …

The Largest Iceberg Breakup Ever Caught on Camera

We've written about photographer James Balog's documentary film Chasing Ice a couple of times in the past. His team spent years shooting time-lapse photographs of glaciers around the world using solar-powered Nikon DSLRs, which allows changes over a long period of time to be seen in just seconds or minutes.

Portraits of People Who Look Alike But Aren’t Related At All

Canadian photographer François Brunelle is fascinated with the human face and the question of whether everyone has a doppelganger somewhere on Earth that looks exactly like them. For years now, he has been working on a project called I'm Not a Look-Alike!, which features portraits of people who look like identical twins but aren't actually related at all. Brunelle looks for subjects whose faces are so similar that their close friends might have trouble telling them apart.

A Collection of Free Sample Legal Forms for Photographers

If you're looking to make money from your photography, it's important to have the correct legal forms signed by the correct people, whether it's releases by models that pose for you or contracts with gallery owners who will sell your work. To get you started in figuring out what your contract needs to say, legal contract service Docracy offers samples of some of the most common and important legal forms that photographers use.

Photos of an Island Across Four Seasons

Photo enthusiast Tyler Casson shot the above photographs by visiting the same spot on the edge of Lake Springfield in Illinois over the course of one year and snapping a photograph using his iPhone. The project is titled "The Four Seasons of the Bush."

Tip: Be Careful When Mounting Cameras to the Backs of Sharks

National Geographic photographer and filmmakers do some pretty crazy stuff and use some pretty crazy gear in order to capture the perfect shot. They're the type of people who see a large shark and, instead of fleeing the scene, think to themselves, "we should attach a camera to that thing." And then they actually do it.

Canon to Target Chinese Market Amidst Lingering Anti-Japanese Sentiment

Over the last couple of months, a political skirmish between Japan and China over the ownership of a set of islands has caused anti-Japanese protests all across China, affecting many of the Japanese manufacturing facilities. Some companies -- most notably Panasonic and Canon -- were forced to shut down operations and evacuate their premises as a result of the violent protests. Things got so bad that Chinese photographers had to camouflage their Japanese-brand cameras with red tape and Chinese …

Camera Obscura and the Paintings of Old Masters

Did you know that some of the most famous master painters from centuries past may have actually used camera "technology" to aid them in creating their masterpieces? According to the hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis, some well-known artists likely used rudimentary camera obscura rooms as a tool -- essentially "tracing" parts of their work.

Photogs Find Paintings That Look Just Like Their Photos Hanging in a Gallery

Getting your work copied, ripped off and/or stolen is a sad reality in the digital age. In fact, earlier this year we shared a website dedicated to ousting copycats and were shocked at how much copyright infringement was really out there. But where finding your work on another "photographer's" website would be startling enough, how would you feel if you found it while browsing a major art show?