2012

A Cadet Face-Down in a Forest of Legs

Reuters photographer Jose Miguel Gomez was recently covering the 121st anniversary of the National Police in Colombia when he spotted a cadet lying face down amidst her peers. He photographed the apparently unconscious policewoman with his 400mm lens for five minutes before she was finally carried away, and wondered why it took so long for help to arrive.

Cold and Dark Landscapes Illuminated by the Red Glow of Emergency Flares

For his project titled Take Refuge, Los Angeles-based photographer Kevin Cooley shot nighttime landscape photographs with an interesting choice of lighting: military-grade flares -- the kind you find in emergency kits. Each image in the series features the same red glow, whether the flare is held in a subject's hand or hidden behind a feature in the landscape.

Oops: Calumet Accidentally Sells $600 Lens on eBay for $1 — Three Times

Photographers often scour eBay listings in hopes of snagging a good deal on camera equipment, but usually they're not expecting to find gear worth hundreds of dollars sold for the same price as McDonald's Dollar Menu items. Well, that's exactly what one lucky eBayer discovered a couple of weeks ago. The person stumbled upon a strange listing: reputable camera retailer Calumet Photo was selling a brand new Sigma EX 10-20mm f/3.5 lens for Canon DSLRs -- worth about $590 -- for just $0.99! And not just one lens, but three!

Facebook Rolls Out Photo Sync Feature for Android and iOS

Today Facebook finally launched the photo sync feature that it has been privately testing for smartphones over the past couple of months. The feature is built into the social network's official mobile app for Android and iOS, and makes it easier to automatically sync your phone photos to the Facebook cloud.

Time-Lapse of Central Park in NYC Shows the Seasons Changing Over 6 Months

The amount of dedication required for the time-lapse video above is astounding. Titled "Fall," it shows the colors of New York City's Central Park changing with the seasons over a period of half a year. Here's what its creator, photographer Jamie Scott, says about it:

One of the most striking things about New York City is the fall colors and there's no better place to view this then Central Park. I chose 15 locations in the park and revisited them 2 days a week for six months, recording all camera positions and lens information to create consistency in the images. All shots were taken just after sunrise.

Review: Fujifilm X-E1 is Both a Beauty and a Beast

During the earlier days of 35mm film photography, many of the popular cameras had distinct design elements that defined the look of that period -- the things that come to mind when people hear the words "vintage 35mm camera": a shiny body seemingly crafted out of a single chunk of metal; a textured covering that gives the camera style and grip; all the manual controls you need, placed in well-thought-out locations at your fingertips.

René Burri’s Contact Sheet That Led to an Iconic Photo of Che Guevara

Imagine you were a newspaper photo editor back in 1963, and Swiss Magnum photographer René Burri handed you the contact sheet above filled with portraits of revolutionary Che Guevara. Which photograph would you select for publication?

You might recognize one of the photographs, since it has become one of the most iconic portraits created of Che.

Sports Illustrated Magazine Accused of Manipulating College Football Photo

Last week, Sports Illustrated magazine published the above photograph by US Presswire photographer Matthew Emmons. Found in the "Leading Off" section, the photo shows the Baylor Bears football team celebrating after their upset victory over the #2 ranked Kansas State Wildcats.

The image has many people talking, not because of the unlikely event that it captures, but because it appears to be heavily manipulated. And it's not just the fact that the picture looks like it passed through an HDR program, but that the Baylor football players didn't wear green jerseys during that game. They wore black.

Photo of NYPD Police Officer’s Random Act of Kindness Goes Viral

Candid snapshots that go viral online are often spread because they show people doing something embarrassing or stupid, so it's refreshing to see a photo of a different sort taking the web by storm. The photo in question is of a police officer's random act of kindness, snapped by an Arizona woman named Jennifer Foster when she was visting New York City back on November 14th.

A Supercut of Hollywood Movies About Photographers

Supercuts of movies are all the rage these days; here's one that'll be of interest to photography and camera enthusiasts. Simply titled "Photographers," the video was created by English artists Mishka Henner and David Oates, who spent hours upon hours watching more than 100 movies. The duo extracted short snippets from each one and spent months turning them into the giant whirlwind tour seen in the video above (warning: there's a dash of language, violence, and risqué business).

A Neat Look at How the World’s First 3D Photo Booth Works

Earlier this month, we wrote that the world's first 3D photo booth had popped up in Japan. The studio looks like it's designed for ordinary portraits, except the "photographers" capture you with fancy handheld scanners and then turn your into miniature sculptures instead of photographs. Since then, more information has emerged that provides a better look at how the whole thing works.

A Picture-Perfect Full Rainbow Captured by Accident in a Time-Lapse Video

Programmer and photography enthusiast Roderick Lee Mann snagged quite the time-lapse video earlier this week. He had originally set up his camera to snap photos of a beautiful Hawaiian sunset, but afterward he discovered that he had captured something that you can't really plan for: the perfectly-framed formation of an end-to-end rainbow.

Stunning Slow-Motion Shots Created Using Only Still Photographs

It may be hard to believe, but all the amazing slow-motion clips you see in the video above were created using individual still photographs. Joe Fellows of London-based film production company Make Productions gathered photographs of wildlife and people from the WWF archives, and then Photoshopped and animated the images using parallax.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC, Photographed From High Above

This past Thanksgiving, Brooklyn-based photographer Navid Baraty attended and photographed the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. However, he didn't shoot the festivities in the way that most people do (from the ground). Instead, he went high overhead to the roof of a tall building to capture everything from a birds-eye-view.

Portable Vacuum Cleaner in the Shape of a Nikon 70-200mm Lens

Of all the photography-related novelty products we've seen so far, this one has to be one of the most bizarre. It's a hand-held vacuum cleaner designed to look just like a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR lens. The device can draw its power from either the cigarette lighter socker in your car or the USB port on your computer.

Canon 6D Sample Footage Emerges, Shot Using a Pre-Production Model

If you've been dying to take a gander at the video recording quality of the new Canon 6D, today's your lucky day. BBC freelance cameraman Johnnie Behiri got his hands on one of the cameras to test out, and created the above sample video that profiles a small Austrian chocolate shop called Xocolat.

Shooting with a Polaroid 600 and an Off-Camera Flash

It has been a long time since I have asked for something photo related for my birthday. I usually don’t ask, just because I’m very particular about what equipment I use, and my friends and family know it. But this year, it was different. I thought about dabbling in some old school photography, so I asked for a Polaroid 600 camera. My fiancée stepped up to the plate and delivered, gifting me an awesome 1983 Polaroid Sun 600 LMS. I had some fun with my first pack of film, but then it was time to start pushing the envelope.

An idea hit me one day, and I knew I had to try something that I’ve never seen done before: shooting off camera flash with an older Polaroid 600 instant camera.

Six Years of Daily Self Portraits… With the Lens Cap On

Here's a photo project so profound that it might make you weep (you might also cry for other reasons). Artist Will Vincent has a project titled "Two Thousand, One Hundred and Ninety One." His artist statement is a single sentence: "Every day for six years I took a photo of myself with the lense cap on."

Canon EOS M Hacked by Magic Lantern, Firmware Boosts on the Way

Back in October, Roger Cicala shared some first impressions of the Canon EOS M with us, and stated that he believes the camera is "a firmware update and a price drop away from being a great camera." While we haven't seen any major price cuts to the camera so far, a firmware update may be on the near horizon.

By "update," we mean "third-party firmware enhancement." Magic Lantern has announced that its firmware add-on will indeed work with Canon's mirrorless camera, and that they've begun the process of porting it.

Photographs of Real People Living Inside Tiny Cardboard Box Dioramas

Some photographers have made names for themselves by creating and photographing extremely detailed dioramas: miniature tabletop scenes that are so realistic that viewers often mistake them for the real world. Belgian photographers Maxime Delvaux and Kevin Laloux of 354 Photographers have put an interesting spin on the diorama photo concept by Photoshopping real people into their miniature scenes. The series is titled "Box".

Olympus Apparently Working on a FT-to-MFT Adapter with Built-In AF and IS

Olympus currently offers a $144 adapter called the MMF-2 for photographers who want to use an existing collection of Four Thirds-mount lenses on a Micro Four Thirds camera. The accessory makes the lenses mountable and acts as a middleman between the lenses and the cameras, but its features pretty much end there. It appears that Olympus is working on a much fancier adapter: one that actually contains lens elements and contains focusing/stabilization features as well.

Anamorphic Illusions Created Using High-Res Prints of Photos

YouTube illusion and science channel Brusspup recently did an anamorphic illusion project in which he photographed a few random objects resting on a piece of paper (e.g. a Rubik's cube, a roll of tape, and a shoe), skewed them, printed them out as high-resolution prints, and then photographed them at an angle to make the prints look just like the original objects.