2012

The Photo Society has published an interesting article in which Kent Kobersteen, the Director of Photography at National Geographic magazine from 1987 to 2005, shares thoughts on what he looks for in photographers: …

Time-lapse photographer Randy Halverson (whose time-lapse of lightning storms we featured last year) is back again with another epic time-lapse film. This one is packed with shots of some of the most beautiful things you can point your camera at in the night sky: the Milky Way, auroras, and shooting stars. It's composed of thousands of 15-30 second exposures captured with a Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 60D at ISO 1600-6400, f/2.8, and 3 second intervals. Keep your eyes peeled at 53 seconds: you …

Buzzfeed has published a gallery showing every winning photo from the World Press Photo contest from 1955 to the present. It's a powerful set of photos that paints a pretty grim picture of humanity.

If you're relatively new to Photoshop, you might not know that it's possible to highlight and/or remove the various options in dropdown menus. All you need to do is play around with the Edit->Menus screen to make your commonly used options more visible and to reduce clutter by hiding options that you've never touched in your life.

Greek silkscreen printer Manolis Angelakis was recently tasked with designing a new set of business cards for close friend and photographer Alexandra Stamopoulou. Given her profession, he decided to create a stylish card that emulates the viewfinder of an old Zenit camera. The simple but effective design was silkscreened onto sheets of transparent vinyl.

Tech companies often like to create mini-documentaries featuring creatives who use their products -- last year both Intel and Brother made videos about fashion photographer Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist).

Photographer Noel Myles has been working for the past 15 years on "still films" of trees across the countryside of eastern England. He originally created platinum/palladium prints of the trees around the year 2000, and then photographed the trees a decade later using color film. He then combined pieces from the different photos into single mosaics, which he tells us are "the antithesis of the notion of a decisive moment".

Last year MIT grad Justin Jensen raised nearly half a million bucks through Kickstarter to launch CineSkates, a camera slider system that adds wheels to GorillaPod Focus tripods. Now Jensen and his startup Cinetics are back again with a new product called CineSquid, which provides a strong suction cup mount system rather than wheels. This allows cameras to be mounted onto things like cars, boats, and even airplanes.

If you've ever tried shooting in a dark location without using flash or a tripod, you probably know how difficult it can be to remove camera shake from your photos. Alex Jansen -- a photography enthusiast who's an officer in the US Army -- has written up an awesome tutorial on how you can apply some of the tricks used by rifle shooters to shooting with a camera: …

Photographer Thomas Jackson has an ongoing project titled Emergent Behavior that consists of surreal photographs of swarms of various things (e.g. leaves, plastic cups, ping pong balls) in various locations. The images aren't computer generated, but are rather composite images combining a number of photographs -- probably similar to the "flock of phones" tutorial that we featured a while back.

This amazing photograph of sailor Alex Thomson walking on the keel of an 8-ton yacht was created with courage rather than Photoshop. It was an ad for fashion house HUGO BOSS, which has sponsored Alex Thomson Racing since 2003. The conditions for the shot had to be just right, and the skipper had to carefully keep the yacht at a 45-degree angle for up to a minute to avoid crushing Thomson and the jet ski driver.

Flickr is reportedly set to push out a number of major design updates across the photo-sharing service's website. Adrianne Jeffries of Betabeat recently met up with Flickr senior product manager Markus Spiering, who gave her a sneak peek at a number of extensive changes to the interface that will be rolling out at the end this month.

After seeing the LEGO large format camera we featured last year, Norway-based photographer Carl-Frederic Salicath set out to create his own LEGO camera. Rather than go with large format, he decided to build a more complicated Rolleiflex-style twin-lens reflex camera that uses 120 film. Aside from LEGOs, he also used some matte ground glass, a mirror, and lenses taken from a binocular.

Photographer Rachel Hulin has a cute project titled The Flying Series that consists of photos of her infant son Henry flying.

If you're a fan of learning things through Khan Academy, then you might enjoy learning about how ISO works in this similar-styled tutorial by Dylan Bennett. Bennett might not have Salman Khan's soothing voice, but he does his best to break down the magic of digital camera sensors into easy to understand ideas. For a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how things work, check out Cambridge in Colour's excellent tutorials.

Looks like Canon has some serious plans to jump into the mirrorless camera market. The company's G1X camera announced last month has a sensor large enough to compete with existing mirrorless cameras, but lacks an interchangeable lens system. A new patent filed by the company, however, reveals a new 18-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens for an APS-C mirrorless camera. It was filed back in 2010, so it seems that the company has been working on a mirrorless camera for quite some time now.

Atlanta-based photographer Theron Humphrey is currently on a year-long trip through each of America's 50 states, and is using a unique photo project idea to document it: he has his coonhound named Maddie -- his travelling companion -- balance on various things in the different places they visit.

For Valentine's Day this year, Samsung created this short film that features custom bokeh shapes shot with Samsung NX gear. They come up with some pretty creative ideas for various shapes: pop a balloon filled with glitter to create a firework look, or shoot out of a car window at night to capture spaceships flying through space! If you're interested in learning how to customize your own bokeh, check out this video tutorial or the tutorial Samsung published alongside this video.

So I've been shooting some shows for some of the choral groups on campus at my school, and I've started to notice a trend: people make some stupid faces when they are singing. They can range from an approaching sneeze to a full-on O-face.

Kai Wong over at DigitalRev recently conducted this interesting experiment in which they spent a week training a newbie photographer -- an IT guy without any background -- to go up head-to-head in a studio environment against an actual photographer. The goal was to see whether they could fake it well enough so that one of Hong Kong's top photographers wouldn't be able to tell the difference in quality.

Here's some good news for all you iPhoneographers out there: Apple's upcoming iOS 5.1 update -- the rumored release date is March 9th -- will feature a new unlock screen that's designed to make accessing your iPhone (or iPod) camera as easy as unlocking your phone. They've decided to include a new fixed camera slider button next to the unlock slider -- simply slide this icon up to reveal the camera! Currently, the fastest way to access the camera is to double-tap the home button and then click …

San Francisco-based indie band Wildlife Control made this creative music video for their song "Analog or Digital" using both time-lapes and stop-motion techniques. They spent a day on at Ocean Beach in SF, shooting the entire video in one take as a series of 3,060 individual photographs. The fast playback makes the world around them pass in time-lapse, while their synchronized movements cause them to move around like stop-motion claymation figures. It's definitely not an easy feat -- they had …

In mid-January, Nikon sent an letter out to independent camera repair technicians across the US, informing them that "it will no longer make repair parts available for purchase by repair facilities that have not been authorized by Nikon Inc. to perform camera repairs." After July 13th, 2012, unauthorized repair shops will no longer be able to repair Nikon cameras -- a huge part of their business -- with official manufacturer-approved parts. iFixit writes, …

Do you feel like the quality of your photography falls short of where you want it to be? Don't worry: every creative goes through a period in their growth in which there's a disappointing gap between their "taste" and their work. Here's an inspiring video in which Ira Glass encourages people going through this to push through and to not give up.

A week ago we published a tongue-in-cheek post on how to improve the quality of your Canon kit lens by painting a red ring around it. While that wasn't intended to be taken seriously, we were pointed to a Korean workshop named Park in Style that actually takes custom lens body work quite seriously. What you see above is a Canon 18-55mm kit lens that they disassembled, painted, and then reassembled to look like a Canon L lens!

Samsung has released a new line of SD and microSD memory cards that focus not only on speed and durability but appearance as well. They come with a brushed metal look in silver or black, and are able pretty dang tough as well: …

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton recently had the idea of capturing "a lone character made of light surfing through darkness". He had designer John Spatcher create an LED enveloped suit, and then had pro snowboarder William Hughes wear it while zipping down the slopes of the Rhône-Alpes region in south-east France.

Here's an excellent video tutorial by photographer Peter Hurley on how to improve your portrait photographs by focusing on the jawline of your subject. It's a simple technique that can drastically improve the quality of your images.

Designer Jean-michel Bonnemoy thinks that traditional camera designs are wrong, and that form factors were driven more by technical necessity (e.g. the need to hold film) than by ergonomics and ease of use. Instead, he proposes that modern digital cameras should be cylindrical and resembling a handheld telescope. A lens cap is built into the front, a viewfinder and LCD screen are built into the back, and the controls are in easy-to-access locations on the side of the camera.

Here's a clip from the bodybuilding documentary "Bigger Faster Stronger” in which photographer Rich Schaff spills the beans on some industry secrets for how those unbelievable before-and-after photos promoting bodybuilding products are made. He shows how both shots can be of the same model on the same day, with various tricks and image manipulations used to achieve the drastic differences you see.

Home decor idea: if you're looking for a creative way to display your photographs, you can turn some medium-sized stones and florist wire sticks into photo holders. Use rocks of different sizes and sticks of varying lengths to create your own photo garden in the house! …

Everything is a Remix is a fascinating four-part video series by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson that explores the concept of creativity, and how everything created has some degree of copying, transforming, or combining of old ideas. While the series isn't specifically directed towards photographers, the ideas are quite relevant to the discussion of "original" work.

An Alabama basketball fan named Jack Blankenship has been attracting quite a bit of media attention for his creative method of distracting opposing players when they shoot free throws: Blankenship printed out a giant photograph of himself making a strange face and waves it around while making the same face. His antics quickly caught the attention of sports writers, television cameras, and the Internet -- one screen grab from a recent game has been viewed over half a million times already online.

An update to the financial scandal over at Olympus, which has quieted down quite a bit in recent days: former Chairman and President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa has been arrested with six other people (including three former executives) for "suspected violation of Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act". As you might remember, Kikukawa replaced ex-CEO Michael Woodford after Woodford's abrupt dismissal and stated that the move was because Woodford -- who's from the UK -- didn't fit into the …

Mark Rober -- the guy behind the gaping-hole-in-torso costume -- recently came up with a creative way of getting up close and personal with gorillas at his local zoo. It turns out that apes can't resist looking at themselves in mirrors, so Rober drilled a hole in a mirror and pointed his iPhone's camera through it. He was then able to snag some awesome footage that most visitors would never be able to capture. This trick may also work for other animals that are known to pass the mirror test of …

A security van transporting roughly £100,000 (~$156,000) in Nikon camera gear was targeted by robbers this past Saturday after the Dublin NPS Roadshow. The thieves made off with the entire truckload of equipment, including demo versions of the Nikon D4 and Nikon D800 -- cameras that aren't available yet to the general public. You can find an list of what was stolen (and their individual serial numbers) here. Camera gear thieves have been pretty active so far in 2012 -- just last month someone …

For his project titled 141 Boxers, photographer Nicolai Howalt shot portraits of boxers before and after boxing matches. The images side-by-side tell the stories of what happened in between when they were captured.

It wasn't too long ago that Kodak filed multiple patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in a scramble for life-giving cash, but now the tables have turned. Less than a month after Kodak filed for bankruptcy and announced the end of its camera business, Apple is reportedly in the process of asking the court for permission to sue bankrupt Kodak for infringing on Apple's patents in its printers, digital cameras, and digital picture frames. This back and forth IP fight is one that Kodak might …

Most photographers would be happy to capture a photo showing just the northern lights or lava leaping out of a volcano crater. Photographer James Appleton managed to capture a series of beautiful photographs that show both in the same frame. The images were made at Fimmvörðuháls in Iceland.

Last week we reported on a dispute between photographer Jonathan Kent and The Telegraph over the newspaper's "use first and ask/pay later" policy. After contacting the paper over an image of his that was used without permission, Kent received a response from picture editor Matthew Fearn, who informed him stating that their policy is standard and due to the "ever-shifting nature of news". In response, Kent wrote up a tongue-in-cheek letter likening the paper's actions to borrowing a car for a …

Photography enthusiast Maciej Pietuszynski jumped into tilt-shift photography recently by building a do-it-yourself tilt-shift lens out of an old 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, a shower head, and a rubber glove. The process isn't for the faint of heart -- it involves disassembling the lens. You can see some of the resulting photographs in this Flickr set.

Here's an awesome TED lecture in which digital artist Erik Johansson discusses creating realistic "photographs" of impossible scenes.

For her project titled Learning to Love the State I Am In, photographer Sam Schubert takes planking to a new level by putting her body in bizarre positions and locations in order to "integrate" herself into the materials and environments found in Baltimore.

Adorama had a Valentine's Day discount on Adobe Lightroom 3 yesterday, pricing it at just $80. It's back to $135 now, but if you missed out, you now have another chance: B&H has decided to one-up Adorama by selling the program for just $70. The sale will last until the end of today, so you might want to act fast this time if you've been on the fence.

Photographer Martin Klimas, whose porcelain figurine photos we shared yesterday, has a series of photographs that look like 3D Jackson Pollock paintings. He spent six months photographing portraits of sound by playing music through a speaker that's crowned with paint. Klimas dials up the volume and then photographs the paint coming alive from vibrations caused by the sound waves.

Street photographer Eric Kim created this video showing what it's like to photograph passers-by on the sidewalks of Beverly Hills, CA. He attached a GoPro camera to his Leica M6 (loaded with Kodak Portra 400 film) to record his adventure, and then edited in the final photographs after getting the film developed. Kim ruffled a lot of feathers with some of his old behind-the-scenes videos due to his in-your-face style, but has since toned it down quite a bit -- not using a large handheld flash …

Last year imaging company Scalado showed off an app called Rewind that lets you create perfect group shots by picking out the best faces from a burst of shots and then combining them into a single image. Now the company is back with another futuristic photo app: it's called Remove, and lets you create images of scenes without the clutter of things passing through (e.g. people, cars, bikes). It works like this: simply snap a photograph, and the app will outline everything that's moving in the …

For his project titled Time, photographer John Clang shoots various locations multiple times from the same perspective, and then rips and weaves the photographs together to show multiple points in time in each image.

We're unclear on whether this is a permanent price drop or a temporary sale, but Adorama is current selling Lightroom 3 for just $80. That's $59 cheaper than Amazon's price and cheaper than the student and teacher edition.

If you think Content Aware Fill is an amazing Photoshop feature, wait till you play around with the new content aware tools found in Photoshop CS6. In addition to a new Patch Tool for selecting where you want to Content Aware Fill from, the program will also introduce new a Content Aware Move tool that lets you easily move portions of your photographs around and extend them intelligently.