2013

Under development in the Ishikawa Oku Lab at the University of Tokyo is a dynamic target tracking camera capable of keeping fast-moving objects centered in frame.

The term "hipster" is only decades old (at most) and has only become widely used over the past half decade, but what if the concept had existed in days of old? That's the idea behind photographer Leo Caillard's project, "Hipster in Stone." Combining his photography and Photoshoppin' skills, Caillard imagines what it would be like if ancient Greek sculpture subjects were hipsters.

Turns out that driver's license photos are useful for more than acute embarrassment. States, realizing they have a de-facto visual database of most of their residents, are increasingly plugging those photos into facial-recognition software and Facebook to solve crimes -- and worrying privacy advocates in the process.

Many of us know that feeling. That gut punch of shock and denial as we watch our camera fall from our grip or swing to the earth from an unsecured tripod. We've watched as it impacted with the ground with a hard thud or bounced amongst the rocks collecting more damage with every tumble as it travels farther away from the safety of your hands.

Long exposure photographs of stars and romantic engagement photographs aren't often found together, but that's the fusion wedding photography couple Robert Paetz and Felicia Wong have been dabbling with as of late. The duo takes their clients out into natural landscapes away from light-polluted cities and photographs them under the night sky. They call the resulting photos, "astro wedding photography."

Located the Mexican state of Puebla, Popocatépetl is the second highest peak in Mexico and an active volcano -- a really active volcano. It's one of the most lively ones in the country of Mexico, with over 15 major eruptions on record since 1519 and plenty of smaller explosions through the years.

Adobe officially launched Photoshop CC to the public today after announcing its major move to the cloud at its Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles last month. The program is now available for download through the Creative Cloud website.

The advent and continuous expansion of Google Street View has made it possible to explore far off places that we may never be able to visit in person. But where exactly does Google's reach end? One person deigned to find out.

Each year, an estimated 300 million animals are brought into the United States illegally to serve as exotic pets. In New York, many of those animals wind up at the New York City Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine, where the trained practitioners there nurse them back to health.

Search giant Google has revealed that it's working on a global database it expects to help rid the Internet of child porn.

About a month ago, we shared some stunning footage that showed what London was like all the way back in 1926. The original filming was done by Claude Friese-Greene, whose father William invented the 'Biocolour' technique of capturing color film footage.

A handful of groups representing professional photographers are calling for a boycott of a Conde Nast photo contest whose terms they consider exploitative.

Underneath Manhattan's West Side Highway, at 135th and 12th Avenue, photographer Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography discovered something pretty cool: at least 100 old disconnected payphones stacked unceremoniously and rusting away.

Need a way to covertly transport your memory card loaded with digital photos from one place to another? You should look into using spy coins.

Once you've lived somewhere long enough, it's easy to fall into a photographic rut. We're not talking about a running low on creativity (read this if you're dealing with creative burnout), we're talking about running low on places to shoot.

Light meters are less common now than they used to be. Now that we can see our photos right after we've shot them and delete, adjust settings and re-shoot, some people just don't see the merit in spending $300+ on a professional meter.

Rumors of a high-megapixel Canon DSLR have been floating around for quite some time now, but the photo above might be the first time a photograph of the actual camera has leaked onto the Web.

If you're planning on stealing somebody's credit card (and we don't suggest you do), then at least have the presence of mind not to hop in a photo booth with the card and several of your friends to take potentially incriminating photos. That's what police suspect a group of teens did after stealing a woman's credit card in Crofton, MD.

This past weekend, hundreds of protestors clashed with riot police in the area surrounding the Maracana football stadium in Rio de Janiero. Their main gripe was the fact that the country is spending so much on hosting the 2014 World Cup despite many of the country's public services still lacking in funding.

It started with a trip to Hong Kong. That's what got skateboard photographer Jonathan Mehring hooked on travelling. But while there are a lot of photographers that travel the world capturing different cultures, Mehring was more interested in answering the question: "is it even possible to skate some of these places?" …

Rumor has it that photo-sharing and social networking service Instagram is said to be getting video support this week -- June 20th. That's according to TechCrunch, who has cited an unnamed source familiar with the matter.

I wanted to create a dramatic portrait series of “arctic explorers” that appeared to be taken outside in a blizzard. The concept for this shoot was something I’ve been mulling over for quite awhile, but never had the proper platform to pull it off. 


When I was a kid, my school had an end of the year event all students were expected to participate in. They called it "Field and Track Day," which was a fancy way of saying, "Okay kids, we've got to kill a mandatory school day, so we're going to ship you all out to a local park, make you run around in the hot May sun for about 6 hours until you feel like passing out or puking, or both, and then send you home. Have fun!"

Jacob A. Riis arrived in New York in 1870. As the economy slowed, the Danish American photographer found himself among the many other immigrants in the area whose daily life consisted of joblessness, hunger, homelessness, and thoughts of suicide. So when he finally found work as a police reporter in 1877, he made it his mission to reveal the crime and poverty of New York City's East Side slum district to the world.

Battle hardened photographers will tell you that theirs used to be an elite profession, difficult to do, hard to enter, and accorded the proper respect. Now that everyone and their grandmother has a super computer/camera in their pocket or purse or on their face (read: Google Glass), it seems like everybody is sharing their filtered masterpieces with the entire world.

For his most recent album Immunity, musician Jon Hopkins wanted to create visuals that would match the colors he sees in his mind when he's composing his music. The thing was, he would rather they not be computer generated -- his music is organic, he wanted the visuals to match.

School portraits don't often make the news for causing controversy, but that's exactly what the class photo above has been doing over in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Parents of the boy seen on the right side of the frame were unhappy after receiving the photo and finding that their son had been set apart from his classmates and teacher due to the fact that he uses a wheelchair.

At last year's Fall Photography at the Summit, the folks at the Summit Series of Workshops got a chance to sit down and speak with legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge. They asked him about "the importance of the still image," and Eppridge responded by sharing the wise views on photography he has spent a lifetime acquiring.

How should I describe the Leica X Vario? It's as if Leica engineers met at the cafeteria and decided Fuji wasn’t kicking their a** hard enough with the X100/X100s. “Hey, let’s challenge the Fuji XE-1 with a new camera. We will up the ante this time… let’s be double the price of Fuji, AND we will not have interchangeable lens!” Guffaws exploded across the cafeteria as the engineers outlined more specifications to make life living hell for the Leica sales team.

We humans have done quite a lot in the span of a thousand years. We've discovered new lands by sail boat, sent men to the moon, and successfully managed to ruin the economy-class flying experience as we know it. So now that it's 2013 -- the obvious move would be to beam an animated GIF to a distant solar system, right?

There's no doubt about the fact that using the camera on your shiny smartphone is killing your battery life. But up until now, it seems like the only proposed solutions have been to work on the battery itself instead of looking at the camera.

"I've concentrated on the poor ... the rich ones have their own photographers." Those words, spoken by the late great Milton Rogovin, begin the award-winning short documentary The Forgotten Ones.

NYC-based photographer Joy Mckinney has spent most of her life conforming to the norms she believed to be "socially correct." Her latest series, The Guardian, is about breaking through those norms and her own socially guarded personality in order to interact with strangers on the streets of New York in a real and meaningful way.

Sara Hansson and Jens Lennartsson feel that the media at large has painted an unfair and inaccurate picture of children in developing countries. And so, they've founded an organization that seeks to undo this wrong in a unique way.

With the NBA Conference playoffs nearing completion and the Spurs already a lock for the Finals, I got a call from Brad Smith, the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated, asking if I could quickly get to San Antonio.

The know-how to properly shoot day-to-night or night-to-day when you're capturing a time-lapse can add a special something to your final product, but the task may seem daunting at first. That's why photographer Preston Kanak has put together this comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorial that discusses three approaches to shooting the perfect day-to-night time-lapse.

Electronic autofocus and aperture control are new features introduced by Zeiss' new Touit lenses into the company's consumer lens lineup. After the lenses were announced, I couldn’t wait to take a look inside and see how things were put together.

Getting your camera noticed if it's not also a smartphone or a high-end shooter is getting harder by the day. And phones such as the newly announced Galaxy S4 Zoom are quickly shrinking the quality gap between the camera phone and the regular old camera.

It was a day of typically brutal summer heat in Phoenix, and I had the air conditioner blasting as I raced down the freeway en route to some event I was obliged to cover in my role as a general-assignment newspaper reporter.

We've featured astrophotographer Stéphane Guisard's beautiful time-lapse work capturing the stars once before when he put together the time-lapse of the comet Lovejoy rising above the Andes mountains. His most recent video, however, takes a much larger field of view, and teaches us a little bit about our place (or rather placement) in the Milky Way all at the same time.

I'm hoping this post can explain a lot of the confusion beginning photographers have about focal length and crop factors. Some understanding of basic geometry is required for you to fully grasp this post. Also note that I'll be rounding the math decently well. Just run through the calculations if you want exact answers.

With the ability to shoot video now nearly ubiquitous among DSLRs, many photographers take advantage and switch into video mode on occasion. But because video isn't a photographer's first priority, camera sliders and cranes that many videographers find necessary for beautiful, smooth tracking shots don't always make the budget.

Portraitist Miller Mobley is a successful photographer twice over. As a college student, he built a successful photography business in Tuscaloosa, AL, working for both local and regional clients. Later, he and his wife picked up their entire life and moved to New York City, where the now 24-year-old Mobley has managed to land all of his dream clients one after the other.

About a year ago, I was sitting around narcissistically Google-ing myself when I came across the photo above of "Robert C. Paetz + Mother". It was dated 1923 and was being sold for $12 by a man named Paul in Northern California.

The Curiosity Rover has been trekking the surface of Mars since late last year, and so far, there has been no shortage of great imagery.

It appears that "wedding party running from _____" is at risk of becoming a meme among wedding photographers. After seeing that photo of a wedding party running from a T-Rex that went viral last month, photographers Danielle and Tony Lombardo of Little Blue Lemon decided to do their own remix.

A state-funded museum in Paris is drawing widespread criticism for a new exhibit of photos that show sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian suicide bombers.

It’s a stark divide. In front of me, a man snores softly among a pile of beer bottles, yet somehow manages to sit upright on the edge of a slab of broken cement, not far from the edge of the crumbling bridge I’m standing on. Just beyond the bridge and barely 30 feet below lies a line of townhouses; each easily sold for over half a million. They stand sentinel-like, crowding each other, overlooking an old, unused elevated railroad embankment. Between the snoring man and I lie old rails, …

Here's yet another reason why it's a bad idea to think reporters outfitted with cameras can replace actual photojournalists -- the reporters apparently are dumb enough to wander into an abandoned insane asylum full of zombies.

I feel stupid. I admit I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I have to use my index finger when figuring out clockwise vs. counter-clockwise; it wasn't until recently I found out that capers are the buds of a flower and not teeny tiny olives; and I made it all the way to my sophomore year in high school before discovering the name of the book is "Catcher in the Rye" and not "Catch HER in the Rye."