2013

(Today is National Doughnut Day. I am of the opinion it should be a National Holiday, but other people in my studio don't share the belief. They would be wrong.)  …

Photographers need clients, and clients need photographers (even if they don't always think they do). The issue is that most clients have no idea how to find good quality local photographers; they have no place where they can find reviews, look through work and pricing, and compare photogs side-by-side. In lieu of other options, many amateurs in particular get work through a quality website, cold calls and word of mouth.

Visual Supply Co has been teasing the release of its new VSCO Cam and Grid apps for a couple of weeks now, and the wait is finally over. Released yesterday as an entirely new (and entirely free) app, VSCO claims that the new iOS camera app yields images more "elegant" and "stunning" than have ever been possible out of a mobile platform before.

Check out this mind-bending video that talks about the "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" image captured by NASA astronomers nearly a decade ago -- a photograph that some call "the most important image ever taken."

There was a great deal of excitement when Canon entered the mirrorless camera market with the EOS M last year, but much of the buzz evaporated when people began putting the camera through its paces. Although the camera features impressive image quality, one of the biggest issues is the sluggish autofocus that often gets in the way of capturing "decisive moments." …

When it comes to viewing and editing RAW photos, many photographers turn to editing software such as Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture. But one developer hopes to harness the power behind web browsers to view -- and potentially edit -- RAW image files.

In 1996, a palm tree was introduced to a suburb in Cape Town Africa. The tree appeared almost overnight, and it wasn't an ordinary tree: it was one of the world's first (if not the first) disguised cell phone towers. Rather than have unnatural and unattractive metal towers jutting out of the ground, companies began working to make the towers blend in with the natural environment. This fake tree concept soon spread across Cape Town, across South Africa, and finally across the world.

Check out this photo of a gigantic Canon 9.3-930mm broadcast lens mounted to a tiny Panasonic GH2 mirrorless camera. The size difference is so great that it might be more accurate to say that the camera is mounted to the lens.

In an all-too-clear display of how journalistic carelessness can lead to big legal troubles, the two "Bag Men" who were shown on the front page of the New York Post following the Boston Marathon bombings have filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper on Wednesday of this week.

When the Canon 50D camera made its debut in August 2008, video capture wasn't one of the listed features available to buyers. Today, that's a different story, thanks to the Magic Lantern RAW hack that has brought video recording to the now 5-year-old camera.

Shane Lavalette is an American photographer who currently lives in Upstate New York. He is the founding publisher and editor of the independent publisher Lay Flat, and is the new director of Light Work, an influential non-profit photo organization.

HDR (high-dyanamic-range) video is no new concept. In fact, Magic Lantern has offered a way to shoot HDR footage utilizing Canon DSLRs since 2011. It's even become a feature of some mobile phones. But capturing and displaying HDR video in real-time? Well, that's another story.

What you see above is an ultra-high resolution aerial photograph of San Francisco as it looked in 1938. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection put the image together using 164 large format black-and-white photos of SF that were shot in 1938. When viewed through a zoomable image viewer, the composite photo is pretty much a 1938 version of Google Earth's satellite view.

Leaked images from GSM Arena and a Twitter user of what could very well be Nokia's next flagship mobile phone reveal yet another camera-centric device with a high-capacity sensor.

In a short segment titled "Photojournalists vs. iPhones" on The Colbert Report yesterday, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the Chicago Sun-Times' decision to lay off its entire photography department.

Canon has today announced to the masses the an 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens, expanding the company's EF-M lens line with an ultra-wide barrel of glass fit for the EOS-M mirrorless compact system camera.

Here's a dose of humor and creativity to put a smile on your face as we're rounding the corner into the weekend: a Bracebridge, Ontario-based teen named Ethan Nudd created this funny -- and incredibly strange -- 12-second-long stop-motion video showing himself riding a broomstick. He writes, …

Perhaps Leica isn't spreading false rumors through a strange marketing campaign after all. Earlier this week, we wrote that Leica may have been leaking fake photos and specs of its upcoming Leica "M Mini" camera in order to make the real thing seem more attractive once it appears. That no longer appears to be the case.

I've been living out of my car and driving all over the country to create new work. This past Sunday, I stopped near Nashville, Tennessee to see my friend and fellow photographer Marissa Bolen. While there, we collaborated to put together a photo shoot -- a shoot that involved a homemade dam, water, milk, and girls covered with flour.

"Earthquake astrophotography light painting." How's that for a novel photography technique? It sounds strange, it's an apt description of how photographer Andrew Dare captured the squiggly photo above (on right). Dare was photographing the night sky with long exposures when an earthquake struck while his shutter was open.

Firefly photographs are commonly shot using long exposures from a tripod. The proper exposure depends on the ratio of the fireflies' luminosity to that of the background. That ratio is constant if we assume (as is usually the case) that the background lighting doesn't change much over the course of a session. We usually would like a rather long exposure because we want to see lots of fireflies in the final image.

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square -- an event that has been immortalized in history by AP photographer Jeff Widener’s famous “Tank Man” photo we shared earlier today. What you may not know is that, in China, the government still does everything it can to keep the event shrouded in mystery, pretending it never happened.

I'm not gonna lie; I was worried.

This beautiful photograph is titled "Last Dance of the Fairies." It was shot by Japanese photographer Yume Cyan in a forested area near Nagoya City, Japan.

Some might say that simplicity is a lost art these days. Where the digital realm is concerned, many of us judge a product based on how much it can do -- and camera apps are no exception. We want myriad filters, editing options, the ability to comment and like other people's photos in a social environment, and we want it all to be free.

In light of the ever-tightening bond between camera manufacturing giants, Olympus is rumored to be working hand-in-hand with Sony to bring their 5-Axis image stabilization technology to Sony's upcoming A-mount cameras.

Pursuing a career doing something you love can be a terrifying thing, and so we often look to the people who have "made it" in our field as sources of inspiration. We see the work of a Heisler, Hobby or Arias, and it helps us to push through when times get tough, as they inevitably do in any pursuit.

When the Chinese military moved into Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989 to forcibly remove pro-democracy protestors, an anonymous man famously decided to place himself in front of the long column of Chinese tanks that were rumbling into the area. Photos and videos of the incident were immediately published and broadcast around the world. AP photographer Jeff Widener's "Tank Man" photo, shown above, is widely considered to be one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century.

B&H Photo has had iPhone and Android apps for some time now, making it that much easier to browse through, learn about and purchase your photography gear from anywhere. And now, the superstore has announced the release of a brand new app designed specifically for the iPad.

If you're here to read about the Zeiss Touit 12mm f/2.8 for the Fujifilm X-mount, you've probably heard words like "great", "amazing", "superb", "lovely" and "well damped" used to describe this lens. It's wider then the Fuji 14mm and maybe, just maybe, as sharp as the Fuji 35mm. These too are all things others will say about this lens. The jury, however, is still out for this guy.

Is the photograph above the "perfect" Pinterest picture? It's a simple salad photo that originates from TV cooking show host Paula Deen's recipe website. Since being published, it has been repinned 300,000 times and liked 8,000 times on Pinterest. A Philidelphia-based analytics firm believes that it's the prototypical popular Pinterest photo.

Tourism Western Australia recently embarked on a $1.6 million ad campaign called 1001 Extraordinary Experiences. The campaign wanted to show just how gorgeous the state of Western Australia is by inviting people from all over the world to contribute photos they had taken there.

When Emil Nyström's daughter Signhild grows up, she'll have a number of baby photos showing how adventurous she was as an infant. Since Signhild was less than 1, Nyström has been creating whimsical conceptual photos of the girl in strange situations.

Time-lapse photographer Rob Whitworth (we've featured his work a number of times in the past) has released a beautiful new time-lapse video that offers a look into the Chinese city of Shanghai.

A couple of years ago, Irina Werning burst into the public eye when her series Back to the Future went viral. What started as a project were she would have relatives in Buenos Aires reenact old photos of themselves, has since expanded to a photographic phenomenon that has taken her all over the world.

It remains unknown just how popular Google Glass will be when it's available to the masses, but for the select group of individuals who are lucky enough to sport a pair today, the on board camera just got a bit better.

The folks over at NHK's (the Japan Broadcasting Corporation's) Science & Technology Research Laboratory have developed a groundbreaking multi-viewpoint, motion-controlled camera rig that could very soon be changing the way we view sports, among many other potential applications.

If you've never attempted to photograph the night sky, be it a constellation or a planet, the idea may seem daunting. You may think that you need a specific type of camera or that you need to invest in a high-quality telescope.

There are those who don't mind being photographed, those who do, and those who are photographed so often they can't help but mind. Celebrities in particular must deal with an onslaught of photography every time they leave their home, and inventors Wilbert Leon Smith, Jr. and Keelo Lamance Jackson want to do something to help.

Here's a little bit of entertainment and humor for your Tuesday afternoon. At a recent mixer they hosted for creative professionals in the ad industry, St. Louis, Missouri-based Bruton Stroube Studios set up a slow motion photo booth and let the party-goers go at it. The above video is a compilation of some of the coolest shots.

Olympus isn't the only camera manufacturer finding ways to cut costs by getting rid of their low-end camera offerings. Tokyo-based Fujifilm is expected to dramatically slim down their compact camera line by fifty percent in the near future.

Unsplash is a new Tumblr creation by the folks over at ooompf that allows photographers to share a set of images for free (in exchange for exposure, we assume) while simultaneously allowing those in need of high-quality imagery a place to find it.

Yahoo's recent Flickr redesign has been met with mixed reviews. After the release, a large number of users took to the Flickr Help forum and tore into everything from the look and feel to the team responsible.

Visual Supply Co is trying very hard to get people excited about the new and innovative products it has up its sleeve.

It wasn't very long ago that Leica began teasing its Mini M camera on the homepage of their website. Purported leaks of Mini M began to surface, including photographs and specifications.

It took 223 takes, 8 hard-boiled eggs, 5 microphones, 2 days and 1 camera, but Bob Boilen's Tiny Desk -- which is featured in the Boilen-created Tiny Desk Concert series on NPR Music -- has officially been moved to NPR's new headquarters.

Just a few days old, a new Kickstarter project called "Spinpod" is aiming to improve your panoramic photos and videos through the use of a spinning pod designed for smaller cameras such as smartphones, GoPros and so forth.

I was on little road trip recently, when the need for BBQ became so overwhelming that I had to stop at the first restaurant I could find. It happens sometimes. I'm not proud of it, but when Pork speaks, I listen. Luckily, there was an adorable little BBQ place in the next town. A tiny little mom-and-pop joint, which in my opinion, are always the best.

Many photographers get nervous when the talk turns to street photography. There are step-by-step plans laid out for those who want to get over their fear of street photography, and entire articles dedicated to using telephoto lenses when taking candid street shots so you're less likely to invade someone's personal space even as you're photographing it.

The advent of the GoPro has brought about a real surge in adventure and sports photography/videos. Suddenly amateurs have been able to capture some of their pro-level tricks and treks and share them with their friends and the Internet.