As baby photographers will tell you, there are a lot of props out there on the market for photographing infants. And, as is the nature of portrait photography, many of these props have a life cycle of a couple years and then, it's on to the next Big Thing. Or, since it's babies, Little Thing.
How not to run a wedding photography business: Take deposits from clients, don't show up for the weddings and skip town before the law catches on. That was the strategy employed by Ramon Rodriguez, a Louisville, Kentucky photographer who remains in jail after bilking prospective clients out of $27,000.
"Please film in landscape mode, turn your phone please turn your phone..." sings musician Jonathan Mann in his most recent video extolling the virtues of shooting videos in landscape. It's a humorous short PSA music video in which Mann takes on the dreaded problem of Vertical Video Syndrome (or VVS) by taking to the streets.
Ed Drew is an artist who's studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, pursuing a BFA in sculpture with a minor in photography. He's also a defensive heavy weapons and tactics specialist for the California Air National Guard.
When Drew was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan this past April as a helicopter aerial gunner, he decided to bring his passion for photography with him. What resulted were the first tintype photos to be created in a combat zone since the Civil War.
Earlier today, the folks over at DIYPhotography announced a revolutionary new product that they believe will "push your creative potential to the max." It's called the Light Blaster, and it's a light modifier that, with some help from one of your lenses and a speedlight, can project a 35mm slide or transparency into your image the moment you click your shutter.
If you're the type of person who prefers umbrellas to rain ponchos, you might prefer the Brolly rain umbrella to rain covers when using your camera in wet weather. It features a special finger hole grip handle that frees up the fingers that would otherwise be clutching the umbrella, allowing you to use your cameras more naturally without getting wet.
It's the Internet age, and the lot of us have some form of website or blog. With 130 million monthly active users sharing an average of 45 million photos per day, a good chunk of us are also Instagram users. What do you get when you put the two together? Embeddable Instagram pictures and videos, of course!
A photographer for an Egyptian newspaper, shot while covering political protests Monday, appears to have captured his own death on camera.
On July 9th, 2012, photographer Sam Cornwell of Hayling Island, England welcomed his son Indigo into the world and became a father for the first time. Starting on that life-changing day, Cornwell and his wife Beverley have been documenting the growth of their boy by capturing at least one second of video every single day.
Yesterday, one year and thousands of videos after the project began, the photographer took the clips and combined them into the beautiful "moving time-lapse" seen above.
Finding a website using your photographs without your authorization can be a distressing situation. Luckily, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 helps to protect individuals who have had their intellectual properties stolen on the web. This article is a guide to detecting and enforcing copyright by filing DMCA takedown notices with hosting providers that harbor copyright infringement.
Where popular culture is concerned, YOLO might be the new Carpe Diem. The acronym, which stands for "you only live once," has become increasingly popular over the past several years after its first known mention in the NBC reality show The Average Joe back in 2004. Now, almost 10 years later, it's broken into the photography industry with the new site PhotoYOLO.
I recently had an unusual experience. I was standing in a department store aimlessly browsing some shiny shelving that held many glittery bottles with promises of youth and perfect beauty. In the process of being pseudo hypnotized by the lovely array of bright colors, I heard a small feminine voice pipe up in the aisle behind me.
She was fawning over the stunning portraits of celebrity beauties that held small spaces, conveniently placed right above eye level. She kept saying how perfect and beautiful they all were, and you could hear a kind of wistful tone to her phrases. The kind of tone that says “I wish that were me”. After a few moments of hearing her adoration, I couldn’t keep quiet.
Yesterday we shared some news coming out of photographer Vincent LaForet's camp that the website service liveBooks -- which is used by many photographers -- was quite possibly on its way out. This after a month of silence and "knowledgeable sources" indicating that the US branch of the business was all but shut down.
A few hours after that news broke, however, we found out what was really happening: liveBooks has been acquired by the online event marketplace WeddingWire.
It seems the perfect storm of affordable cameras, constant updates in technology, and adventurous artists has hit us and brought with it a large wave of time lapses. I'm not sure when time lapses really became as popular as they are right now but they show no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
It seems like developers are always finding goodies hidden in Apple's iOS 7 beta software. Late last month it was discovered that iOS 7 may eventually be capable of detecting blinking and smiling in photos, and now? Well, let's just say Apple may be developing a slow-motion camera for the next iteration of the iPhone, which is expected to be announced later this year.
Zooey Deschanel is the latest performer to weigh in on concert etiquette, with signs posted at concerts by the actress/singer's indie pop act She & Him asking fans to ditch their cameraphones and refrain from snapping photos.
Sad news from the Whistler ski resort in Canada, where a weekend search for a missing GoPro camera with priceless images for a newly widowed skier turned up nothing.
Australian couple Matt Lorraway and Rebecca Ware had a great vacation at Whistler last February, with Ware trying out skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling and ziplining, all captured on Lorraway's helmet-mounted GoPro. Sadly, the camera fell off and got lost in the snow on one of their last ski runs.
Boston-based artist and inventor Steve Hollinger has just been granted a second patent here in the United States for his Squito invention, a ball sporting embedded cameras and position sensors that allow for panoramic imagery in reconnaissance and recreational situations.
For his project titled Improbabilità ("improbability"), Italian photographer and photo manipulator Giuseppe Colarusso created a series of surreal photographs showing various household objects and scenes... with a twist.
Photographers still irked about about Adobe's decision to make Photoshop rental-only have a new alternative with the re-release of the pioneering LightZone application as a free, open-source program for Windows, Linux and (eventually) Mac OS.
My seventh grade teacher was Mrs. Reynolds. She ran a tight ship and was very particular with whom she decided to grant the blessing of her smile. She wore frosted lipstick and polyester pantsuits and had a habit of swinging the charm on her necklace back and forth when she talked. She had a lot of rules for her classroom, most of which I've forgotten, but the one rule that still sticks in my head is this: "One person can spoil it for everyone."
When famed sports photographer Bob Martin came to this year's Wimbledon competition, he came not only armed with his usual gear, but with a powerful robotics system that allowed him to capture imagery from vantage points not previously seen at the world's oldest tennis tournament.
The leading photography portfolio service PhotoShelter (also known for their sales and marketing tools for photogs) today announced the launch of their overhauled and much improved portfolio sites and tool suite, dubbed 'Beam.'
Presently in beta, Beam is an API-based platform that promises to allow photographers to "showcase their images at their best on nearly any device." Not only that, Beam is designed to be flexible, allowing for rapid expansion of template designs, tools, and the inclusion of third-party integrations.
There are as many career paths in photography as there are food pictures on Instagram. The difference is that on Instagram, the pictures are posted for fun. When it comes to a career though, pictures are produced for profit. At least that's how it's supposed to be.
There is no denying that the business of photography has changed recently and so has the landscape of the clients that need pictures. From the dramatically slashed budgets at national magazines to the recent layoff of the entire photo staff at the Chicago Sun-Times, editorial photographers in particular are finding themselves questioning a marketplace that has devalued photography to the point where it has often become unprofitable to work in the editorial market -- particularly if you're a freelancer.
Madhava Bence Kalmar is a 22-year-old Hungarian photographer who's currently studying at the University of Brighton in the UK. Passionate about experimental and portrait photography, he has been working on a project that combines the two. It's called "Stone and Silver," and involves printing black and white photographs on rocks instead of traditional mediums.
Combining the impressive technological improvements humanity has made with regard to cameras and cleverly-written software has yielded some interesting products for consumers. Case in point: UK's Snap Fashion, an application made for iPhone that lets users snap a photo of an outfit they see and get information on where to buy it.
Back in 2011, the BBC show The Real Hustle shared how easy it is for thieves to quickly and quietly steal an expensive lens off your camera -- even when your gear is hanging around your neck. If you didn't believe it then, check out the video above. It reportedly shows a photographer having his lens stolen by a group of robbers over in Russia.
Predominantly using an 8x10 view camera, Greg Miller's photography utilizes street photography, found moments and portraiture to capture human relationships and a sense of suspended reality. In 2008, he received a Fellowship in photography from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, TIME, People, Fortune and LIFE.
Take away the visual element from photography and what have you got?
Quite a lot, according to Partho Bhowmick, founder of the Blind With Camera project in Mumbai, India, which to date has taught more than 500 blind people how to express themselves through photography (you can find a gallery here).
Photojournalists in the Philippines are accusing a National Geographic photographer of pushing and kicking a newspaper photographer at a recent press event.
Wildlife researchers now have a much clearer idea of how bats fly, thanks to the wicked-looking X-Ray video above that shows the animal's skeleton at work.
Yesterday we shared a beautiful photo showing 4th of July fireworks overlaid on a flash of lightning. After seeing that image, photographer Delilah Carter of DC Photography got in touch with us to say that she had also captured fireworks and lightning together this past weekend.
First Lytro tried to make focusing irrelevant, and now an MIT project wants to make choosing a camera angle a thing of the past.
Aydin Arpa, a reserarcher at MIT's Media Lab, recently presented a paper on CrowdCam, an app in development that would combine images taken from multiple perspectives into a seamless visual field where you could change the perspective just by swiping your finger on the screen.
During a recent engagement shoot at Wissahickon Creek in Pennsylvania, photographer Ken Beerger had the genre of his images unexpectedly change from love and romance to danger and documentary. In the end, Beerger captured some intense photographs, a young boy's life was saved, and one of his subjects is now being called a hero.
Photographers commonly place UV filters on the front of their camera lenses in order to protect the glass front element. Aside from preventing dust buildup, the filter also takes the brunt of any impact seen by the front of the lens. If you have to have some glass shatter, you'd rather it be a relatively cheap filter compared to an entire lens, right?
But how easy is it to damage or destroy the front element of a lens? Photographer Richard Choi had the opportunity to find out a few years ago when he found a bricked lens on his hands.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about support and what it means. Is it something you can ask for, but not give back? Are we obligated to return the favor, or is it even important to worry about that?
If you’ve had a photo project on Indiegogo, or Emphas.is, or Kickstarter asking for money, I wonder: have you contributed to other photographer’s projects?
The media has been dominated by coverage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214's crash landing in San Francisco this past weekend. What's interesting is that some of the most powerful photographs showing the aftermath were not captured by professional photojournalists, but rather those with the most access to the site: US government employees.
It appears that Nokia's upcoming 41-megapixel smartphone (codenamed "EOS") will carry the name "Lumia 1020." This latest leak comes packaged with an even more interesting leak: new photos captured with the phone itself.
Our sun can look very different in photographs depending on the wavelength of light you're trying to capture. Some photographs show the sun as a glowing white ball, while others capture hotter areas in a cold blue color. NASA recently took a collection of sun photos shot at different wavelengths and combined them into the beautiful photo collage seen above (here's a higher-res version).
Want to see how much reflected light your polarizing filter eliminates from any scene? You can easily visualize this light using an image editing program like Photoshop.
Portland, Oregon-based photographer and art director Mako Miyamoto has an ongoing project that consists of lifestyle photographs... of Wookiees. The photographs have scenes and aesthetics you might see in some kind of clothing catalog or marketing campaign, except all of the models are sporting giant furry Chewbacca faces.
Freelance photographer Robert Caplin filed a copyright infringement and DMCA violation complaint on June 26, 2013 against Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr., aka Perez Hilton. Hilton is best described as an Internet gossip blogger, who has been known to appropriate copyrighted images and then “transform” them by drawing captions, tears, or other scribbles, and thereby claiming “fair use.”
His well-trafficked entertainment blog sells advertising to support itself. Caplin is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times. He also runs The Photo Brigade, is a prolific Instagrammer, and is an all around great guy. And I don’t like to see Perez Hilton stick it to great guys.
Nikon appears to be gearing up to drop some bombshell announcements on the camera industry sometime in the next half decade -- things that could shake up the photo world and change the way consumers think about cameras.
Contrary to what you might think, exploding wires are actually a fairly common photographic subject. Although cat bearding probably has it beat in terms of sheer volume, in the world of science, capturing photographs of wires turning into plasma is an often-attempted experiment.
But even though there is a lot of imagery of wires exploding out there, electrical engineer Patrick Herd's most recent experiment sought to capture the phenomenon in a unique way.
Nineteen young men. Fathers, brothers, and sons. Friends and fiancés, teammates and drinking buddies. These are the men who were lost on June 30, 2013 in Yarnell, AZ during an event labeled the Yarnell Hill Fire.
I knew most, if not all of these men by sight, some by name, a small handful I knew very closely, sharing laughs with them and their families over the years. Over the past 72 hours or so, I have had the privileged to watch first hand as the city of Prescott and the state of Arizona has been joined by the world in remembering and honoring these fallen firefighters.
It wouldn't be 4th of July weekend without a few fireworks. We already share an incredibly lucky photograph taken by New Mexico-based photographer Jason Smith that captured lightning and fireworks in one, and now we have 1,500 more photos to share. No worries, they're mercifully arranged into a 59 second time-lapse.
Web developer and photographer Nicholas Sherlock came up with a pretty cool customization recently. Inspired by Flickr's image montage layout that does proper justice to landscape and portrait photos alike, he took a stab at writing some code that does the exact same thing to any thumbnail gallery.
A couple of days ago, we shared a great little DIY project by Phoenix-based photographer Dan Tabár. Since he sometimes has to shoot on quiet soundstages where camera noise is not an option, he created a makeshift sound blimp for his Nikon D800 for only about $80 -- a professional sound blimp would have run him closer to $1,000.
As it turns out however, his DIY creation has another function. As you can see from the test video above, it doubles as a poor man's underwater housing!
My mentor was a cranky dude. He liked to put me through my paces every chance he got. Sometimes, when he needed something: “Hey, Greg—fetch that cable for me!” Yes, he said “fetch.” Sometimes, when he just knew better than I did: “Hey, Greg -- get off your a** and come assist me.” Or when I was feeling superior: “Hey, Greg—stop being an idiot.”
Ah, fond memories!
There a good few Instagram-related services out there that offer you different ways to print, send and/or use your favorite Instagram shots. From Postagram, which lets you send your Instagrams as (sometimes free) postcards to friends, to the Nike web app that allowed you to decorate your sneakers based on an Instagram photo, we've seen quite a few applications.
The most recent idea to catch our eye is Pixelist, and it's gotten our attention because, unlike any of the rest, it turns your Instagrams into a hand-crafted product.