2013

After watching the movie "The Last Samurai" at a theater back home in Southern California (where I'm originally from), my curiosity for Japan inspired me to go and discover what it's like. I took a couple of vacation trips out there and met a lot of good people before I found a job that sponsored my working visa to officially let me move out to Japan in 2005.

What if girls were Internet browsers? That's the question that fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta had been dying to answer for a long time before she finally got her chance in Fashion Affair Magazine.

One year ago, in August of 2012, New York Times photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested for allegedly using his camera flash to interfere with police during an arrest. However, after taking a look at the evidence, it's the police officer who is in hot water and may face up to 7 years in prison after being indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors.

No, you didn't read the title wrong. Although it might seem like a bit of a strange concept, there is such a thing as an "underwater river," and Russian underwater photographer Anatoly Beloshchin actually got a chance to photograph this amazing phenomenon.

After weeks of speculation and leaks, Sony has seen fit to officially announce both its Alpha 3000 DSLR-style E-Mount camera as well as the rumored NEX-5T and three new E-Mount lenses. For details on the first of those, click here. As for the NEX-5T and the new lenses, it looks like the rumors were spot on.

In addition to a few rumored specs that have been thrown around, we've actually seen pictures of the new Sony Alpha 3000 camera taken both in the studio and out in the real world. But tonight the rumored camera became an official announcement when Sony unveiled the DSLR-style E-Mount camera to the world.

New York City-based photographer Supranav Dash is interested in India's occupations -- not the rich and glamorous ones, but the ones held by those who are lower in the society's Caste System.

Facebook today announced a new shared photo albums feature that allows multiple users to contribute photographs to a single album. This makes it easy to aggregate memories from events that were captured by different photographers. It also likely dampens the prospects of the countless collaborative album startups that are vying for a piece of the photo sharing pie.

People often comment on how similar sons look to their fathers, but how similar are they, really? Photographer Craig Gibson decided to find out, and created a photo project called "Boys and Their Fathers."

Are ordinary macro lens attachments for your smartphone not enough for you? Want to zoom in closer? 22-year-old mechanical engineer Thomas Larson has just the lens for you. It's called the Micro Phone Lens, and is a tiny little attachment that instantly lets you focus on and capture very small subjects.

Need to send someone some RAW photographs but hate the fact that they weigh tens of megabytes each? You can actually resize the files to smaller sizes quite easily in Lightroom, making sending small copies back and forth a snap.

Last year, Berlin-based photographer Jen Osborne got a chance to photograph some therapy animals who were brought in to help cheer up the patients at the Bellingham Health and Rehabilitation Center in Washington.

As Canon has begun focusing more adamantly on making its DSLRs capable video capture machines, the company has had to adjust its glass to match. The new Dual Pixel AF on the 70D is a great improvement (check out these videos if you doubt that) but if you're planning on shooting video using the autofocus, you'll probably get to the point where you have to choose between buying a USM lens and an STM lens.

On July 19th, the Cassini spacecraft that has been hovering around Saturn -- and sending back some stunning images we might add -- turned around to take a picture of its home planet as part of a larger mosaic of the Saturn system.

Taiwanese company Ystudio is in the business of keeping the craftsmanship behind old, often discarded products alive. And in the case of the lamps and light fixtures you see here, that meant breathing new life into old film cameras and strobes.

Yahoo! certainly doesn't shy away from acquiring companies it believes will help its cause. In some cases those acquisitions turn into long-term investments ala Flickr, in others the acquired company just sort of disappears.

I’ve seen lots of used film canisters repurposed as dangling bag accessories for sale in trendy parts of Hong Kong. The idea is to drill or burn a small hole in the top of the plastic spool and fit a keychain to that. I figured it would be a lot more useful to use the can to give a return contact address in case the bag is lost and found. What better way could there be than to use film?

Data is embedded in our environment, in our behavior, and in our genes. Over the past two years, the world has generated 90% of all the data we have today. The information has always been there, but now we can extract and collect massive amounts of it.

It's Sunday, which might mean doing your best to keep your mind off of the workweek to come, or already setting about planning next weekend. If you happen to be doing the latter, and there's room in your schedule for an interesting photography DIY project, we've got something for you: a do-it-yourself concrete pinhole camera.

Photography can be a wonderful source of growth, healing and hope. Programs like this one at the VA in Palo Alto have helped PTSD-afflicted veterans cope with their condition, while the EYE AM program was trying to have children tell their stories on an international level.

Well, if you had any doubts that Sony is on the cusp of releasing a new DSLR-style E-Mount camera, they should be long gone by now. Yesterday we shared a leaked product photo of the Alpha 3000 (or ILC-3000), and today we have a couple of photos of one being used in the wild.

Freelance sports photographers who have been on contract with Reuters in North America have been receiving some unpleasant calls over the past couple of days. Apparently, due to a new deal between Thomson Reuters and USA Today Sports Images, they are being systematically informed that their photographic services are no longer needed.

Here's a quirky product in case you're spending your Saturday online shopping for things you don't exactly need but might not mind owning. It's called the MeCam, and it's a wearable clip camera that can shoot 720p video and take 5MP photos during the day and night.

It wasn't so long ago that Instagram was in the business of being bought, but now that the app has the power of Facebook behind it, as Bob Dylan would say: The Times They Are a-Changin'. In addition to the recent update to the company's brand guidelines that banned the use of "Insta" and "Gram" by connected apps (among other things), the company just made an acquisition of its own.

Technology often borrows ideas from nature, and camera technology is no exception. For example, you might remember the bug-inspired compound eye camera we shared just a few months back. Engineers at Swiss company iniLabs don't want to mimic bug eyes, however, they'd rather create something that mimics the human eye. And that's exactly what they did with the new Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) 128 camera.

It's become a pattern with musicians lately. In an attempt to force people to actually experience the concert they're attending, many musicians are banning photography at their shows outright. In the past, we shared messages put up by the bands She & Him, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Savages, all of whom are kindly asking concert goers to put away their darn cell phones.

"Impossible" stories don't seem to be all that impossible where cameras are concerned. For example, you might remember the Canon compact that found its way back to its owner after drifting 6,200 miles across the ocean to Taiwan.

For travel shooters and those looking to keep their kit light, new Interchangeable Lens Compacts (ILC) have been a major boon. But the real beneficiaries of the rise of this new system -- still less than five years old -- are the companies that make them. However, in order to maximize those benefits, manufacturers of ILCs need to establish the format as viable and resilient. For some, that means working together rather than against one another.

Over the last couple of weeks we've mentioned more than once that Sony has a lot of releases coming up, and as those releases draw near, inevitable photo and spec leaks also spring up. Yesterday it was the upcoming NEX-5T and a few new E-Mount lenses, and today it's the first photo of the upcoming Alpha 3000 (sometimes referred to as the ILC-3000).

While working on a feature film called The Grind, filmmaker Vashi Nedomansky had to come up with a way to shoot a flashback scene, complete with Humvee, in the desert of Iraq. The only problem? He had neither Iraq, nor a Humvee to work with.

Sony is primed to announce quite a few new products in the coming months. Some of the more exciting rumored products include the groundbreaking Lens Cameras and the NEX full frame mirrorless camera everyone has been salivating over.

Hopefully, you know me for my level-headed and impartial analysis of the photography business. Forget that. Today I’m going to go off on someone who is not only doing a disservice to the industry that he purports to serve, he’s actively working to destroy it. In the words of The Dude (from The Big Lebowski): “This aggression will not stand!”

Here's a photo series whose subject we hope nobody ever runs across in real life. Called Point Blank, photographers Peter Andrew, Simon Duffy and Derek Blais have put together a set of photographs that give you a down-the-barrel view of several well-known guns.

Sports games and medals are often won and lost at the hands of the referees. Be it an offside call that might have turned into a goal or the line judge that just doesn't want to give those last 6-inches your team needs for the first down, there's good reason cameras are becoming standard backup for refs who might have missed something.

When it comes to visible light photos of the night sky, Hubble has been king. That's because Earth-bound telescopes -- even those with much higher-quality optical systems than Hubble -- must deal with the blurring effects of our planet's atmosphere.

While living in their studio -- which also happened to be located in an old bank with joint bathrooms at the time -- photographers Gerban Grotenhuis and Marc Marselje had an interesting idea. Just how many creative and funny scenes could they create using those joint toilets? …

Here's a video that should help you transition out of work mode and into TGIF mode with more than a few chuckles along the way. It was put together by Minnesota-based photojournalist Ben Garvin using a stop-motion iPhone app, and has been making the rounds on the Internet as beard and stop-motion lovers unite to praise his efforts.

The Tadaa app for iOS is a neat camera and effects app that has managed to win itself some 3 million users since it first hit digital shelves. It's done this by offering interesting effects and features that competitors like Instagram don't -- such as a Twitter-like re-share feature and the recently added ability to blur the background.

It seems the retro design movement has finally begun to infiltrate something other than the mirrorless market. In a move that makes its Instax line of instant cameras look a lot more like the X-Series line, Fujifilm has just announced the retro-styled Instax Mini 90 seen above.

Earlier this year, Swiss photographer Philipp Schmidli attracted a good deal of attention for a series of photos showing the silhouette of a biker in front of a gigantic moonrise.

Google has made sure that the couch potato in all of us has ample opportunity to see the world by adding everything from the world's tallest peaks to an extensive tour of the Grand Canyon to its Street View repertoire. But of course, that's not to say the search giant is anywhere near done.

If you're going to do self-portraits, it might not be a bad idea to take a leaf out of photographer Alex Wein's book and get creative. Started during a cross-country roadtrip back in 2011, Wein's series Headstands puts a quirky twist on your standard "here's me at the *insert famous landmark here*" photo by quite literally turning it on its head.

Researchers at Cornell University recently developed a new piece of software in conjunction with Adobe that could some day help amateurs and professionals alike exert more control over how exactly certain static scenes are lit.

KFC Restaurants recently opened a new concept store in Louisville, Kentucky called KFC eleven. (The "eleven" being a tribute to the 11 herbs and spices in KFC's original recipe chicken). The new store has a distinctly modern look, and is far from the red and white color palette made popular by Colonel Sanders.

In all art forms; music, writing, architecture, photography, whatever; originality and innovation are the things that produce the best works from the best artists. A lot of advice on how to improve your art focusses on technical and technological aspects; often with a cursory “develop your own style” thrown in somewhere. It’s a difficult thing to explain or teach: how do you develop your vision or style? And how do you know if you’ve found it?

Last night was packed full of announcements from Canon, as the Japanese company saw fit to announce four new point-and-shoots (including a new flagship), update the PowerShot N and release a new lens in one fell swoop.

Two new photo booth systems have appeared in a rather unlikely location: the New York Public Library. The library system (which, by the way, is the second largest public library in the US) recently installed the booths to allow visitors to capture moments from their library visits and share them with friends and family.

Earlier this month, Photoshelter did a live webinar with Carolyn E. Wright, AKA The Photo Attorney. Carolyn is a full-time attorney whose practice is aimed squarely at the legal needs of photographers. During the webinar talked extensively about copyright infringement, and what photographers need to know when they think their copyright has been infringed (you can watch a video recording here).

Earlier today, we showed you some of the impressive work the Photoshoppers of Reddit's r/ColorizedHistory community have been putting together. In case you read that post and though "I'd like to try that!" the short tutorial above by 19-year-old r/ColorizedHistory contributor Mads Madsen is a great place to start.

Andrew Nelles is a 26-year-old freelance photojournalist based in Chicago, Ill. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, he began freelancing in Chicago in 2009. Andrew was one of the 28 photojournalists laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times in May 2013 after spending 9 months at the paper.