March 2013

One of the problems photographers face today is explaining to clients why it's worth it to pay a professional to do a job the client often feels they can do themselves. And while people familiar with photography can immediately give a plethora of reasons why an entry-level DSLR in an layman's hands is NOT the same as hiring a professional, clients often don't get it.

That's why Sudbury, Ontario-based photographer James Hodgins started his witty, "Crappy Vs Snappy" showcase. He either invites clients to tag along on shoots with their own camera or snaps his own crappy images in "P" mode, and then places the results side-by-side with his professional-quality shots. The client rarely needs any more convincing after that.

I’ve read too many lists online of “traveling photographer tips” that don’t actually appear to be written by actual photographers. Some things work in the real world, others simply do not. Here’s some collected tips shaped from 7 years of travel experience on the road. I don’t think you’ll find most of these anywhere else.

Argentinian photographer Daniel Mordzinski, know for his work photographing literary giants, is accusing famous French newspaper Le Monde of trashing 27 years of his work without warning. Boxes worth of negatives and slides were allegedly thrown away when the photographer's office at the newspaper was cleaned out without notice earlier this month.

Rooftopping photography enthusiasts enjoy climbing to locations that would make most people's legs turn to jelly, pointing a camera straight down, and snapping a photo that commonly shows feet, a ledge, and a huge drop. While in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, famed National Geographic photographer Joe McNally managed to snap the mother of all rooftopping photos, seen above. The Instagram snap was captured from the tip of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest manmade structure in the world.

Winter can be a dull season for macro photographers. Many of the usual subjects are desolate, lifeless or invisible. However, there is one subject that's often in abundance outdoors (depending on where you live): snowflakes. There have been many strategies for photographing these ice crystals over the past century, but the simple stage of an old mitten is ideal.

Photo-sharing apps run the gamut between the hyper-social (ala Instagram: like, comment and share to your heart's content) and the secretive (ala Snapchat: this photo will self-destruct in 3 ... 2 ... ). Ustwo's new app Rando falls somewhere in that latter category, because while you can share photos with Rando, you have no idea who you're sharing them with, or who is sharing them with you -- and forget about likes, comments and favorites.

Photographer Nick Fancher tells us that he recently came up with an interesting way of customizing the catch light in subjects' eyes. If, in your portraiture, you place white or black foam boards to control the amount and direction of bounce light, you can also use white and black gaffers tape to control what goes on in your subjects' eyeballs!

Over the course of his career, Antonin Kratochvil has made a name for himself as one of the great photojournalists of our time. He's photographed everything from Mongolian Street Children to war zones, to Bono, and through it all has managed to maintain an intimacy in his style and simplicity in his approach that is both inspirational and refreshing.

Canon's soon-to-be-announced pint-sized DSLR is now nearly completely leaked. Just days after detailed specs were leaked by Best Buy, two photographs of the camera itself have emerged on the web.

Messe Kopp sent us this awesome and mind-bending video he shot on the streets of Downtown Jerusalem. It it's a backward-is-forward video that shows a man getting up from bed and taking a stroll down a city street, interacting with various people and objects along the way. The entire 2.5-minute video was shot in a single take.

Amazon recently added a helpful tool geared specifically towards photographers looking to supplement their camera bag with some fresh glass. This Lens Finder Tool lets photographers input their camera and then spits out a list of all the compatible lenses Amazon caries for that particular model.

French photographer Philippe Echaroux is known, among other things, as a great portrait photographer. You might remember his work taking studio quality "celebrity" portraits of random strangers on the street.

For his most recent portraiture project, however, he eschewed even the limited studio gear he brought out on the street with him, and issued himself a challenge: take a high-quality, professional portrait, using nothing more than an iPhone and a €10 lighting budget.

Some people have been asking for tips on how to do star trails. There seems to be a few misconceptions and a few different methods. Here's a tutorial on my personal technique.

The latest panorama sent down by NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover is unique in more ways than one. Not only is it a panorama taken on another planet (still blows our minds), it's also been subjected to some post production. The photo -- a piece of which is seen above -- has actually had its white balance modified by NASA to make it look more like it was taken on Earth.

Here's a lighthearted dose of humor to get you through the workday: Thumbs & Ammo is a humorous new photo blog with a tagline that says, "Real tough guys don't need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude." Each image in the ongoing blog is a movie still or poster from a famous flick, with the action heroes' guns replaced with thumbs-ups.

Photographer Florian Knorn recently took a Fastcam SA4 high speed camera -- ordinarily used for observing things like ballistics and fluid dynamics -- and pointed it at a Sony HVL-F58AM flash unit, capturing what a camera flash firing looks like when captured at 500,000 frames per second and then slowed down to to 25fps.

According to a recent tip received by Phone Arena, Nikon may be getting more serious about the smartphone game. The tip references Google's upcoming Nexus 5 which, according to the site's source, will feature a Nikon branded "triple camera sensor" as its key selling point.

Just days after news broke that Facebook is looking to incorporate the hashtag into its services, Flickr has already made the change on its end, adding the capability to its recently redone iOS app. The pound sign-driven communication aid comes to the Flickr app as part of the most recent update, and joins retro filters and @-based usernames in helping the service keep up with the times.

Hawaii-based photographer Sean King captures beautiful photographs of lava flows in Hawaii, venturing into locations where lava reaches temperatures of 2000°F.

A Nikon Repair Center based in Taiwan reports that it recently repaired a damaged Nikkor lens by boiling it. The lens, an $1,800 Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8, had been accidentally dropped into the ocean and damaged by salt water.

If you've been wishing you could splurge on a 27-inch Apple monitor but just can't see yourself spending that kind of money, Monoprice has a cheaper solution for you. The company's 27-inch offering uses the same LG IPS LED panel as Apple's, but a Monoprice monitor will only run you $391 as opposed to the $1,000 you'll spend at Apple.

This photograph shows the One World Trade Center poking up above clouds above New York City. Photographer Matthew Ziegler shot the photo last Monday from the seat of an airplane, sold it to the Associated Press, and then saw it appear in photo slideshows on news websites across the Web.

Rumors that Canon has a smaller DSLR on the way gained a big boost this morning when Best Buy leaked the camera's product page, complete with a detailed spec list. The camera -- currently making the rumor rounds under the name "EOS 100D" but labeled EOS-b on the leaked page -- is rumored to make official landfall on either March 21st or 22nd alongside another new EOS.

By using Photoshop on photos taken by NASA at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, London-based illustrator Chris Keegan is able to create beautiful images of people and creatures out of deep space nebulae.

The process begins a lot like those summer days as a kid lying in the grass and picking shapes out of the clouds -- just replace clouds with celestial imagery. Once Keegan has picked out a shape, he takes the image into Photoshop and strengthens that shape until it will be recognizable to everyone.

The rise of a plethora of fashion blogs has led, almost inevitably, to the rise of a style of fashion photography known as "street style." The all-access blogging medium gave photography enthusiasts who admired what legends like Bill Cunningham do a way to break into the industry and share both their opinions and pictures.

Over the past several years, however, the practice has exploded -- much to the chagrin of big fashion editors and journalists who now have to deal with massive crowds of photogs outside of major fashion shows. GARAGE Magazine's Take My Picture is a short documentary that explores this explosion, and tries to offer both sides of the story.

Combining the capabilities of a high-speed camera with the basic idea that "there are enough [magical moments] happening every moment of any given day," New York artist James Nares is currently captivating audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mesmerizing video "Street."

Photographer Matthew Brandt takes a unique approach to photography, where the subject of the photographs take second place to the methods he uses to print them. His photography -- ranging in subject from lakes to buildings to bees -- have been printed using everything from dust, to Kool-Aid, to human tears.

While messing around with the features of his Nikon V1, EOSHD forum user Javier Sobremazas discovered something pretty awesome about the $220 camera: it can shoot 4k RAW ... sort of. The sort of plays in for two reasons. Firstly, it can only shoot 4K for one second at a time; and secondly, it's actually an extension of the camera's burst mode.

Here's another creative way to put those thousands of archived Instagram shots to some practical use, courtesy of the folks over at Photojojo. A fun DIY project, this step-by-step will show you how to turn the window of your choice into a stained glass-inspired photography display.

Even before the digital age, National Geographic's photographers, on average, took about 1,933 photos for every one photo published. And it's this dedication to showing the world only the very best of what they manage to capture that makes these photographers some of the best in the world.

In this B&H Event Space seminar, seasoned photographer Marcus Donner explains the necessity of quantity, and shares some lessons on how to go from taking pictures, to telling stories.