2013

Swiss photographer and artist Fabian Oefner calls his Disintegrating series of exploded car photographs 'possibly the slowest high-speed images ever taken."

One of the most recent videos to go extremely viral over the past several days involves a behind the scenes look at how a portrait of Morgan Freeman came together... and when we say came together, we mean created from scratch on an iPad by finger-painting!

Stunning, breathtaking, Oh Em Gee, however you want to put it, the photos in this post are incredible to look at and incredibly difficult to capture. Not because it takes any crazy skills to properly photograph the Grand Canyon, but because the atmospheric conditions necessary to make these photos possible happens only about once per decade!

Metabones, maker of the impressive Speedbooster adapters is back at it again. When the Speedbooster first came out, I wrote about it being like magic, increasing the aperture and field-of-view of Nikon and Canon full-frame lenses mounted to NEX and micro 4/3 cameras, while maintaining or even improving image quality. Now they’ve brought the Metabones magic to the Blackmagic cinema and pocket cinema cameras.

When it comes to photo apps, VSCO Cam is one that stands out from the myriad other options out there. But, up until now, only iOS users could enjoy the app that calls itself "the standard of mobile photography." All of that changes today with the release of VSCO Cam for Android.

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you may have noticed that our news editor DL Cade has been running the show as of late. Here's the reason: for the past 3-4 months, I've been hard at work building a new website and service -- one that we're finally revealing to the world today.

It's called Bokeh, and is a mobile lifeblogging service that lets you save and share all of life's little moments through an easy-to-use app and easy-to-browse website.

Canon owners certainly boast the most advanced custom firmware with Magic Lantern, but Nikon Hacker is making some progress. Case in point: with the release of a new hack, Nikon D5100 owners can now use manual controls while shooting in LiveView.

Last week, photographer Richard Gottardo decided to trek into the Rocky Mountains (not his first time by any means) for a couple of days because, as he puts it, "conditions looked right for some good fog." Two days in the mountains, 620 miles of driving and about 18 hours worth of shooting later, he returned with some gorgeous footage that he was kind enough to send our way.

Canon's first mirrorless camera, the EOS M, received mixed reviews when it first hit the market, mainly because of its slow autofocus. Canon is hoping to address those concerns with the newly-announced EOS M2, but it looks like this one might not even make it to the US or Europe.

This is certainly not the first time we've shared a video uploaded to YouTube by a frustrated videographer whose shots were consistently ruined by the photographers at the wedding, but this might be the most extreme example we've seen.

Try all the tricky ski moves and skateboard jumps you want, but it'll be hard to beat the latest action video auteur -- a curious Australian sea eagle who snagged a wildlife camera to create a brief but exciting aerial tour of his neighborhood.

"Put down that phone and eat!" That's what a lot of frustrated cooks must have been yelling Thursday, as Instagram set a new one-day record for uploads thanks to the overlapping of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

In the past, before resumes, interviews and portfolios, there was the master/apprentice relationship. If you wanted to learn a trade, craft or skill, you sought out a master of that skill and humbly asked for their tutelage.

That system has all but disappeared where most professions are concerned, but photographer Trey Ratcliff wants to bring it back into the world of the arts, and he's doing it through a newly-formed online "Magical Academy for the Mastery of the Arts" that he's calling "The Arcanum."

Media giant Clear Channel recently stirred up some controversy when it decided to flat out reject an advertising image of an American soldier embracing a veiled Muslim woman from its Times Square billboards due to its 'uncomfortable' nature.

Kevin Parry and Andrea Nesbitt of Candy Glass Productions have a thing for creating 'spinning' hyperlapses that make you feel like you're flying around a landmark at super-speed. But while they've taken on landmarks like the CN tower and a few notable San Francisco locations before, they recently took their craft to the next level when they decided to 'spin' an entire mountain. (Note: Spinning mountain starts at 1:15 in the video above).

Usually we try to stay away from traumatizing you at the very beginning of the week, but this week, we'll make an exception. The video above started out as a tutorial on how to quickly attach and detach a lens "just like a pro"; it turned into a cringeworthy photographer fail.

Photographers have the power to make dreams come true, and if you've ever doubted that statement you won't after watching the video above and hearing the story behind it -- a story that includes a sweet, sick woman's shy email, and a photographer's determination to come through no matter what.

It's in the Oxford Dictionaries Online, it's even been dubbed the word of the year 2013, and now, it's also a highly secure way to encrypt your personal data. We're talking, of course, about the selfie, which added the last of those three abilities to its repertoire recently with the debut of iOS app FaceCrypt.

There's something inspirational about watching a seasoned photographer work at his craft -- whether it's a studio photog who molds light to his will or a street photographer whose demeanor and results both scream professionalism.

Jack Simon falls under the latter of those categories, and in the video above, fellow street photographer Eric Kim takes us behind the scenes with Simon as he walks the streets of San Francisco.

One of the more difficult things about being a creative is having to come up with fresh ideas on a daily basis, constantly challenging yourself and expanding your horizons. These things aren't always easy and it's not uncommon to find yourself in a creative rut with (seemingly) nowhere to turn.

Thankfully, there's a new app in town that is designed to help you out of those kinds of situations while simultaneously keeping you on your game even when you are inspired. It's called OKDOTHIS.

A few commenters have on occasion joked that we need to add a "tenuous links to photography" category for those stories where, strictly speaking, there's not much photography involved. The video above might quality, but we ask your forgiveness ahead of time because, a) there is a link, and b) it is one of the most touching, uplifting and inspirational things we've seen in a long time.

Sometimes you run across a photo that causes you to feel equal parts wonder and envy all at the same time. Wonder because the photo is just amazing; and envy because... well... you didn't take it. The photo above by photographer Guido Montañés is such a photo.

If you're in the US and you've decided to brave Black Friday to get the most recent must-have Elmo, here's an awesome London time-lapse that'll give you a chance to escape the Black Friday madness, if not the crowds, for a few minutes.

This is just awesome: professional-looking product photography done using nothing more than a tripod, an iPad, an iPhone and your camera of choice. Given the extremely affordable nature of the process, the results are downright epic.

Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.

Nikon's stock is down, and down bad, according to a report by Reuters. Although the report starts by saying that Nikon is currently up 0.8%, it continues on by revealing that:

Nikon is down 23.6 percent year-to-date and is the worst underperformer in the Nikkei this year, while the benchmark has rallied nearly 49 percent.

Our quest to continue giving dogs the attention they deserve in the photography world continues (for the record, we don't dislike cats... we just think they get too much attention). We've had dogs shaking, dogs licking and now, for the sake of rhyming, dogs dripping.

This series is called Wet Dog, and it's a fun and funny series by pet photographer Sophie Gamand of Striking Paws Photography.

Here's a new way to be violated in the social media era: Post a photo of yourself on Instagram, then wait for somebody you don't know and didn't authorize to repost an edited version that looks vaguely like you, except shinier and with a lot more makeup.

A super-fast, affordable new camera currently under development at MIT could improve everything from video game experiences to driving safety, researchers reported at a recent tech convention.

The 2D or Not 2D series isn't the first time Russian photographer Alexander Khokhlov has dabbled in painting his models faces and taking striking portraits of the results. His Weird Beauty series got quite popular, with black and white designs jumping out at you from the faces of his made-up models.

2D or Not 2D, however, is different -- and not just because he used color this time. It's different because the point of each photo is to trick your mind into thinking you're looking at a two-dimensional painting.

This might just be one of those services both the loves and haters of Instagram will like. Because while other services print your Instagram shots on magnets or postcards, Boomf prints them on... marshmallows.

So, you see, if you like Instagram you get to turn your favorite photos into edible confections, and if you don't, you get to eat all of those pretentious selfies, food shots and cappuccino pictures you so despise. As Michael Scott would say: "win win win."

Here's a bit of inspiration that should help start your Wednesday off on the right foot -- whether you're preparing to stuff your face tomorrow or today is just another hump day. It's a short stop motion film that pays tribute to the late great Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and it was created by a 14-year-old with some time and the Foldify iPad app.

I’m not going to say that we flew down to Florida to get a picture, because we didn’t. We flew down to Florida to see my grandfather, who is 94-years-old and my son’s only living great-grandparent. All my own great-grandparents passed away long before I was born, as did my husband’s great-grandparents.

So I’m not saying that we flew down to Florida to take a picture, but I’m admitting we wanted one. A photograph of four generations, all alive at the same time. Proof that it had happened. Me, my son, my father, and his father.

Lomography is no stranger to releasing strange cameras -- everything from Where's Waldo editions to a hand-cranked movie camera have crossed our desks -- but the Transparent Collector's Edition Konstruktor is perhaps cooler and definitely less useful than all of those.

A patent filed back in September of 2011 was finally awarded to Apple today, and it has the whole photo world atwitter. That's because this patent describes a camera system that would use the light-field technology made famous by Lytro to take refocusable images -- and it could work inside portable devices such as an iPhone.

That's right, light-field technology in an iPhone... now you see why everybody is excited over something that is, after all, still just a patent.

When the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photo staff last year, I commented that one of the problems was the utter failure of website design to appropriately showcase photography. Above is an example of the current design and the way photography is displayed.

Leica began its takeover of Swiss view camera manufacturer Sinar all the way back in 2006, when the German company acquired a 51% stake in Sinar from Jenoptik. The real goal, however, was only truly achieved yesterday when both companies announced via press release that they had reached an acquisition deal.

News broke yesterday that four of the photographers fired in last May's mass-layoff instituted at the Chicago Sun-Times may soon be rehired, while others will see restitution payments, thanks to a new agreement reached by the Chicago Newspaper Guild. Under the agreement, four photographers would get their jobs back and some of the rest will see one-time payments of $2,000.

Some may be inclined to call that a victory for photojournalism, at least a small one, but they should reconsider.

Back in June, graffiti artist Sofles was featured in a hyperlapse that showed him making his way around an abandoned building and creating various impressive tags at super speed. That video was received very well, so naturally, if one graffiti artist is good, four would be four times better right?

Last week, we reported the news that Android developer Josh Brown had discovered some juicy tidbits within the Google camera API: namely, that RAW capabilities and a few other features were in the works. That was just an interpretation of code, but now, it looks like Google has come out to confirm some of what Brown found.

Born in Vienna and trained as a filmmaker in England, Tina Schula's photography combines cinematic techniques, portraiture, family stories and political history to create staged narratives of complex human drama. In 2009, she received her MFA in Photography from The School of Visual Arts in New York.

She was a finalist at Critical Mass 2013, Photoville 2012, The Print Center 86th International Photography Contest 2011, The Sixth Annual BamArt Silent Auction, Scope Basel 2010 and a winner of the  CCNY Darkroom Residency in 2010.

News regarding the Chicago Sun-Times and its former photo staff is usually of the negative variety. Whether we were covering how the entire staff was unceremoniously laid off, or the fact that they were being replaced by iPhone photography classes, there hasn't been much positive news to report.

That changes today (at least to some degree) thanks to a settlement between Sun-Times Media and a newsroom employees union that managed to get four of the 28 photographers their jobs back, and secure a $2,000 one-time payout for the rest.

On the off-chance you thought photo blogs had some kind of monopoly on rants about lazy and thoughtless photography practices, witness the majesty of Denver TV news anchor Kyle Clark in action.

It's not a proper beginning to the week if you don't get at least one awesome time-lapse in your system. Okay, maybe we made that rule up just now, but regardless this one is well worth the three minutes of your time it demands.

After experiencing one too many embarrassing, high-profile Photoshop disasters, China is turning its research focus on image-editing software, although not in the way you might think.

In English, the title of husband and wife photographer team Kurt and Edwige Moses' photo series Un Petit Monde translates into "A Small World," but there's nothing small about the world the duo have created for the series, only its inhabitants.

An Instagram 'short film' time-lapse has been making its way across the Internet recently, simultaneously demonstrating the creativity of the filmmaker who created it and the lack thereof of the smartphone photographers from whom the content was crowdsourced.

You might have found yourself in this situation before: you're in the middle of a photo shoot and you find that you badly need to set up a shot or lighting that is, in fact, impossible to do 'professionally' given the gear you have on hand.

So what do you do? You go all MacGyver of course! You put together an off-the-top-of-your-head DIY fix that gets the job done (even if it doesn't look all that good doing it). The Tumblr blog Shitty Rigs is dedicated to showing off those brilliant, if a bit silly, creations.

The one-of-a-kind Leica M created by world-famous designers Jony Ive and Mark Newson finally went up on the auction block yesterday, and it wound up fetching more than twice as much as auction house Sotheby's highest estimate.

A few days ago it was a National Geographic robot camera rig vs. a tiger, today we swap out the tigers for a pride of lions and the Nat Geo rig for "Car-L," a little remote-controlled 'buggy' packing a Nikon D800E.