March 2013

When Google acquired Nik Software back in September, the photographic community took it as a sign that the internet giant was focusing more intently on our passion. But last week, when Google announced it would be pulling support for the desktop version of Nik's popular mobile editor Snapseed, the same people wondered if this spelled the end of the rest of Nik's well-respected suite of plugins.

Fortunately, the opposite is the case. Google may have pulled their support for the desktop version of Snapseed, but the remaining offerings from Nik are not only still available, they will be sold in a record-low-priced bundle.

Photographer Váncsa Domokos created a neat do-it-yourself camera accessory that uses optical fibers to control the direction and intensity of a flash unit's light. Instead of having light come directly out of the flash unit, the accessory redirects it through a thick bundle of optical fibers, allowing you to point the light in any direction -- and in different directions if you'd like.

The hearts of many a film photographer sank last June when it was reported that Fujifilm would soon be killing off most of its Velvia film lines, including all off the sheet film lines, leaving only 35mm and 120 format films for Velvia 50. If you're one of the people who went out and began stockpiling the film for future use, here's some good (and perhaps bad?) news for you: reports of Velvia's death were greatly exaggerated.

For his most recent project, French photography collector and editor Thomas Sauvin has been spending his time digging though illegal silver recycling centers in Beijing. He's doing this because buried within piles of X-Rays and CD-ROMs are hidden millions of discarded film negatives that Sauvin is intent on preserving.

"Skywalking" is a photo fad that gained quite a bit of publicity last year, and many of the crazy images were created by thrill-seekers in and around Russia.

A Ukranian daredevil who goes by Mustang Wanted is taking the concept one step further: rather than simply climbing to high locations and photographing his feet on the edge, the 26-year-old man poses for portraits while hanging off edges by his arms and by his legs. The concept could be described as, "skyhanging."

On March 16th, a massive solar flare at sunspot AR1692 -- a spot roughly the size of our quaint little planet -- sent a huge burst of solar wind headed our way. On March 17th, when it came into contact with the Earth's magnetic field, several hours of breathtaking aurora borealis resulted.

Seeing as the Voyager-1 spacecraft has been in the news recently, here's the story of a very special photograph that it took 23 years ago known as "The Pale Blue Dot".

In 1990, 13 years after Voyager-1 left Earth on its mission to visit two of the gas giants and their moons of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, one last command was sent to the spacecraft as suggested by Carl Sagan who was then part of the Voyager-1's imaging team. That instruction was to turn back around and take one last photo of our solar system before continuing on its epic journey away from the Sun and the planets.

Faced with another birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, a place my daughter loves but low ISOs do not, I decided to get creative. I shot a collection of photos with a set of three Yongnuo YN-560 and YN-560 II flashes with a diffuser cap/"omni bounce" inside of small lampshades placed along the table.

One of the most entertaining events that photographers get to enjoy each year is the annual Gulf Photo Plus shootout, in which 3 photographers each get 20 minutes to take a photo from concept to completion. In 2012, the shootout pinned David Hobby, Martin Prihoda, and Greg Heisler against each other. This year, John Keatley, Lindsay Adler and Zack Arias are the victims participants, and one of last year's contestants is actually the subject.

New cameras are like new computers. Both of them depreciate quite quickly as new technologies and new models are churned out year after year. This presents a perpetual problem for photographers, as many constantly grapple with the question of whether to upgrade their camera to a more recent model, or whether to purchase a higher-end model so that it keeps its value longer.

Market research software company Terapeak recently did a study that looks at depreciation in Canon EOS DSLRs. The results are pretty interesting.

Photographer Brian Bowen Smith learned his craft at the feet of legendary shooter Herb Ritts; and now, many years and many star-studded photo shoots later, he's sharing some of his wisdom with the rest of us as part of Chicago Ideas Week.

In the above video, he uses three photo shoots to exemplify the versatility and creativity required to be one of the best. From Hillary Swank in a studio, to Matthew Fox in an airplane hangar, to Gabrielle Union on the beach, each shoot exemplifies a different lesson that Smith hopes you'll walk away with.

Canon shook up the photography equipment rental space last Wednesday when the company announced that Canon Singapore would soon be launching a lens-rental program of its own, dubbed "Try and Buy." Overlooking the slightly presumptuous name, the program will allow pros and amateurs alike a chance to try out lenses that might otherwise land beyond the boarders of their budget.

For its H5D ad campaign, Hasselblad approached underwater photographer Henrik Sorensen, knowing that he would put together something worthwhile. What he came up with is a "twisted take" on Denmark as a fairytale country that he's calling "Not Just a Fairytale," and the above video takes us behind the scenes at the underwater shoot.

Storage and backup solutions are increasingly moving to the cloud, and in keeping with the photography mantra to always "backup, backup and backup again!" new kid on the block Picturelife is offering a cloud-based solution to your picture storage and syncing needs.

In this short conclusion to his instructional DVD, Norwegian photographer Erik Almas gives 10 basic "steps" to becoming a photographer that caught our eye. It's not that they're groundbreaking; in fact, you've probably heard most of these at least once before.

But put all together, and following on the heels of the humorous Onion article on pursuing your dreams, they make for a great set of inspirational steps to follow if you're trying to go from hobbyist to professional.

According to Reuters, Shutterfly has officially filed court documents in an attempt to shut down Kodak's My Kodak Moments app. Shutterfly -- who purchased the Kodak Gallery from the bankrupt company for $23.8M last year -- is claiming that the app is in violation of the terms of that sale, and demanding that it be taken down.

Here's a pro tip: if you ever find yourself with a strong desire to photograph crocodiles in their natural habitat, don't do it like the photographer in the video above (warning: it contains a bit of strong language).

Photographer and director Greg Jardin made this creative music video for the song "New York City" by Joey Ramone. It's a stop-motion video that features 115 people (some of them random pedestrians yanked off the street) traveling backwards through various locations in New York City.

On the morning of December 14th, 2012 I found myself scanning the redundant array of social media apps on my phone. Just as I was about to pry myself out of bed, I had come across a recent twitter post by one of my fellow graduates of Newtown High School. In just a few minutes I would learn that my former hometown elementary school had become the site of one of the most horrific school shootings that this country has ever seen.

From time to time I post plots of color gamuts like the one above. Each time, I get emails asking how I make them, leading me to assume that the world's thirst for color nerdiness is going unquenched. I'm setting out to fix that in this post.

The Onion has published a humorous tongue-in-cheek piece that many non-professional photography enthusiasts …

The Online Lighting Diagram Creator is a web app for easily creating and sharing lighting diagrams. It was created back in 2009 by Sydney-based photographer and web developer Quoc Huy Nguyen Dinh. It's an extremely simple tool through which you can create detailed diagrams by simply clicking and dragging.

Fujifilm has announced two new consumer-level cameras that go extreme in different ways. The first is the new FinePix XP200, a new rugged cameras for outdoor environments. The second is the FinePix S8400W, a bridge camera that packs a massive zoom for photographers who are always shooting faraway subjects.

Swiss photography duo Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs were featured here in April of last year for their DIY large format camera created out of a stack of books. It turns out books aren't the only things the two are making cameras with: they also have cameras that mix the worlds of taxidermy and photography.

For their project titled Camera Collection, Onorato and Krebs created one-of-a-kind cameras out of extremely unusual things -- including an armadillo (shown above).

Facebook announced its photos-only news feed filter earlier this month (alongside a major News Feed revamp) at a major press event surrounded by much fanfare. Now, Google has followed suit with its Google+ social network -- albeit much, much more quietly.

The service unveiled a new photos-only feed today, but instead of holding a major press event about it, it was outed by Google engineer Dave Cohen through his Google+ page.

About a year ago, we shared an app called 645 Pro that saves photos shot with the iPhone (and other iOS devices) as TIFF files. Now there's a new app that's even more "raw". Digital Negative, a new app by a company called Cypress Innovations, claims to be the first app that captures uncompressed images that retain 100% of the information captured by the camera sensor.

Printic is a new service that mixes two popular cultural movements. The first is that nostalgic pull back towards the days when we actually got to hold our pictures in hand; the second, the square crop, retro, lo-fi movement.

So what do you get when you combine these two? You get a service that lets you select and crop photos directly from your phone, and send Polaroid-style high-quality prints to whomever for just $1 a piece.

School of Visual Arts photography student Michael Schmidt has been working on a series that documents the commuters who ride the Staten Island Ferry that shuttles people between Staten Island and Manhattan. It's an environment in which people are mostly stationary and often lost in their thoughts or absorbed in the things being displayed on their smartphones.

Dear (new-ish) Photographer,

My name is Model. I would love it if when you shoot me you take these things into consideration to achieve the greatest effect for us both.

One of the interesting ideas involving slow motion cameras (i.e. high speed cameras) is to move the camera very quickly during shots, resulting in footage that looks like the camera is moving in real time while everything in the shot moves in slow motion. Last year we shared an incredible demo reel by German studio The Marmalade, which uses this technique.

Caleb Kraft over at Hack A Day was inspired by this concept and by the bullet-time rigs that have gotten quite a bit of press lately, and decided to try his hand at moving slow-mo footage using a single GoPro.