March 2013

Skin care company Dove is speaking out on the issue of "fake beauty" being promoted in photographs through Photoshopping. Rather than address the issue directly at first, the company decided to speak out directly to those responsible for "fake" images by doing some clever guerrilla marketing. It essentially pranked retouchers through the Web by releasing a fake Photoshop beauty Action that undoes manipulation rather than creates it.

The US Department of Justice issued a statement this past Sunday that confirms the fact that the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendment protect citizens' rights to photograph police in public places.

Madrid, Spain-based photographer Eugenio Recuenco shot a series of fashion photographs that pay homage to Pablo Picasso's paintings.

David Hobby over at Strobist shares a fantastic idea for photographers who would …

Have you ever seen an entire river from start to finish, from source to sea? That's what photographers and adventurers Will Stauffer-Norris and Zak Podmore set out to do back in October 2011. The duo spent 113 days journeying down the Green and Colorado Rivers, traveling 1,700 miles from the mountains of Wyoming to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. The journey ended in January 2012.

Rumors are starting to heat up about an upcoming Olympus E-P5, which would be the flagship PEN camera sitting on the highest tier (we briefly covered how Olympus' PEN lines are organized in our recent review of the E-PM2). The latest things being said about the E-P5 is that it will have a new retro design, no viewfinder, and a relatively high price point.

In July 2011, we shared a report that Google was planning to rebrand Picasa as Google Photos later that year. Well, that didn't happen, but it still looks like the Picasa brand name is on track to be sunsetted.

Google has begun redirecting the Picasa Web Albums URL to personal Google+ Photo Album pages.

The Harlem Shake meme has taken over the Internet over the past few weeks, and even the world of photography has been invaded. Here's a small roundup of Harlem Shake videos put out by photography and camera enthusiasts.

As more and more consumers use their smartphones as their primary camera, camera gear manufacturers have been brainstorming new products designed to mount phones to camera tripods. Universal mounts to this point have largely been focused on ways of gripping the phone securely. The JackPod is a new stupidly simple answer to how to get phones mounted to tripods: it uses the standard headphone jack found on pretty much every smartphone on the market.

German photographer Thomas Kellner creates large-scale panoramas of famous locations using

"How's the image quality on the TriPod 5?" That's a question you would perhaps be hearing these days if certain decisions had been made differently years ago over in Apple HQ. When the Cupertino-based company was brainstorming names for the smartphone that would eventually be called the "iPhone," one of the names that was being considered was "TriPod."

The most recent copyright dispute to hit our radar is one between Canada-based Barbara Ann Studios and an Ottawa radio station called HOT 89.9. Each spring, the radio station runs a contest in which they get a couple married in 24-hours.

Ann isn't a big fan of the contest, and so when she saw her image was being used to illustrate the station's marketing kit, she began a dialogue with the company to get the image taken down and receive compensation for what amounted to commercial use of her image. That's when things got ugly.

Artist, swimmer and former Olympian Casey Legler is in the process of adding another line to her resume: male model. As a model for Ford Models, Legler is making headlines over the fact that she models only men's clothing for the agency. In fact, to her knowledge, she is the first woman to ever sign an exclusively-male modeling contract.

Entekaphobia is fear of the number 11. I’m a resolution fanatic. I test every new lens for resolution. For personal use, I’ll choose the lens with higher resolution over the one with creamy bokeh every time. When choosing a camera, I have a (yes, I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s true) strong tendency to want the most megapixels. I’m a resoholic.

Being a resoholic, I’ve always been somewhat fanatical about apertures. Whenever possible I shoot with the lens stopped down at least one stop to wring the maximum sharpness out of my lens. But I’m always careful not to stop down too far because I was taught, soon after I picked up a camera, that if you stopped down too far the dreaded diffraction softening would kick in.

No official version of Instagram exists for BlackBerry 10; so while users might be able to adjust their photos to get the perfect shot, they haven't been able to share those shots with the 100M+ member Instagram community.

Fortunately for Instagram-loving BlackBerry users, that need has been (somewhat) filled by the folks at BerryThai. They got their hands on and released an Android port of the app to keep users happy until such a time as Instagram decides to show BlackBerry some love.

"Choros" is a beautiful experimental film by Michael Langan and dancer Terah Maher. It features a single dancer layered 32 times, which each layer slightly offset in time from the previous one. The "visual echo" technique turns a single woman into a "chorus of women," and transform the dance from single movements into waves of motion. The 13-minute video is set to the song Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich.

In addition to announcing a long-overdue lens update and the company's very first APS-C compact, Nikon has also chosen today to update one of the members of its Coolpix performance series. The new P330 replaces the P310 and, in one fell swoop, manages to almost overtake the more expensive P7700 announced in August of last year.

It's not uncommon for digital cameras to have burst modes as fast as 10 frames per second these days -- especially in mirrorless and pellicle mirror cameras -- but do you think you have a good understanding of just how fast 10FPS is? If not, check out this video by YouTube user krnabrnydziobak, who pointed a Phantom Miro eX2 at a Nikon D4 to see what 10FPS looks like when captured at a staggering 1920FPS.

Released in 2001, Nikon's original 80-400mm telephoto zoom lens has consistently made it onto owners' "please update" lists for over a decade. It was the first of Nikon's lenses to feature VR, and though it wasn't without fault, it was a very versatile lens.

Now 12-years in the making, the new AF-S Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR seeks to add to its predecessor's abilities, while improving on common complaints such as slow focus and the inability to use the auto focus with newer SLRs.

Japanese photographer Wataru Yamamoto's "Drawing a Line" project might look like a series of strange photos of a forest, but they're actually self portraits. His description is simple: they're "self-portraits taken in the forest, using a cable release made of string."

Nikon had quite a surprise for the camera world today, as it announced the new Coolpix A -- the company's first compact camera to sport a massive DX-format sensor.

Chinese photographer and artist Liu Bolin was invited to speak at the TED 2013 conference last week, and talked about his widely published photos that show himself blended into various backgrounds thanks to paint that's carefully applied to his body. At the end of this talk (which hasn't been published online yet), he showed a photograph of himself blended into the background of the conference stage. The time-lapse above shows the process that went into making the image.

Apparently robbers in Northern California are starting to learn that photojournalists typically shoot with pretty expensive gear. The …

Adventure photographer and Nikon ambassador Kamil Tamiola of Alpine Photography recently shot a project titled "Cascades of Light." He traveled to the Cascate di Lillaz icefall in Cogne, Italy with professional ice climber Jeff Mercier.

His goal was to capture adventure images of ice climbing in a different light -- literally. Instead of shooting with natural light, he decided to light the scene artificially during both night and day.

Underwater photo gear company Backscatter has released a new product that's designed to give photographers peace of mind when diving with expensive camera gear in waterproof housings. Called the AirLock Vacuum System, it's a new device that lets you verify that your housing is completely free of leaks before you take it into the water.

If you need to chop off portions of the human body while cropping a photograph, where should you draw the line? The folks over at Digital Camera World have released this helpful graphic with suggestions on appropriate and inappropriate areas to crop at.

Oakland Raiders football player Desmond Bryant was arrested this past weekend and charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief (apparently the 27-year-old show up at a neighbor's house drunk). While it's not uncommon for a famous athlete to find themselves in jail, Bryant's case is attracting quite a bit of attention due to the ridiculous way he posed for his mugshot (seen above) when he was booked at around 9:30 in the morning on Sunday.

Brooklyn-based photographer Romain Laurent's "Tilt" project from 2009 is one that turns an oh-so-simple concept into unique photos that instant grab your attention. Each photograph shows a person standing, walking, or skateboarding in an urban environment, except the whole world is tilted around them.

Here's an interesting fusion of analog camera technologies: Kevin over at the Hong Kong-based photo site FilMe figured out how to make his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera shoot Fujifilm Instax instant photos.

Frustrated with how your camera's CMOS sensor performs in dimly-lit situations? Canon has just announced a new CMOS sensor that'll put a smile on your face. It's a new 35mm full-frame sensor that's designed specifically for capturing video in "exceptionally low-light environments." Canon claims the sensor can capture high quality video with high-sensitivity while keeping noise very low.

Here's how sensitive the new sensor is: it will reportedly be able to see meteor shows, rooms lit with incense sticks, and scenes lit only by moonlight.

Photographer Adam Kennedy has a hobby that's pretty unique among the photo projects we've seen. He photographs fire hydrants and Photoshops them into planets. That sounds random, but the results are actually quite neat.

The photograph above shows a before-and-after of what his original photos look like and what he turns the rusty old hydrants into.

Back in early January, we reported that the Polaroid brand would soon be launching physical retail locations called Polaroid Fotobars. Well, the first of these spaces opened last Friday at the Delray Marketplace in Delray Beach, Florida.

Joey Lawrence, better known by his professional name, "Joey L.," is a Canadian commercial photographer, director and published author based in Brooklyn, New York. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us about yourself and how you got started in photography?

Joey L: When I was 16 years old and in high school, all my friends were in bands. I could never sing (I'm beyond horrible) or play any instruments, so instead I became the photographer. I would help them build press kits and band profiles for their websites, experimenting along the way and learning everything I could about the technical side of photography.

Designer and web developer Ryan Taylor has developed a nifty piece of online software for photographers that he hopes to get funded through Kickstarter by the end of this month. Dubbed Safelight, the software would offer an online selling and proofing solution for those photographers who want to integrate an interactive store into their online portfolio.

There are a few reason why some of us fight over who gets the window seat on airplanes, and the view that Tim Sessler captured in his mesmerizing short film "Drift" tops that list. While on a flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia (with a layover in Salt Lake City) Sessler pulled out his 5D MarK III and shot some of the stunning vistas outside his airplane window.

New York-Based designers Sarah Frances Kuhn (SFK) and Meredith Wendell are teaming up to bring a little bit more fashion into the world of photography. Only their fashion accessories won't be displayed on a model standing in front of your camera, they'll be keeping your camera securely attached to you.

For the upcoming game Rustclad, indie video game studio Skull Theatre is taking a different approach towards designing a virtual world. Instead of creating it entirely inside of a 3D design program and trying to mimic reality, the studio is using a technique called photogrammetry to design the world of Rustclad using photographs of artistically altered real world objects.

Here’s a wonderfully soothing look at how the ink that brings many of our photos from digital to physical …

NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery’s first launch was back on August 30th, 1984 from …

Take a quick look at Chinese photographer Yao Lu's "New Landscapes" photos, and they may look to you like old Chinese paintings of misty mountains, green hills, and choppy brown rivers. Each one even bears a red seal stamp that artists use as signatures on finished works.

Look a little closer, however, and it becomes apparent that something isn't quite right. "Those are some strange looking mountains, you think to yourself." Well, they aren't actually mountains, but rather mounds of garbage covered with green construction netting.

Olympus first ushered its PEN brand into the digital age back in 2009 with the E-P1. Since then, the lineup has split into three distinct tiers: the E-P line for standard PEN cameras, the E-PL line for smaller "Lite" models, and the E-PM line for even smaller "Mini" models. Goldilockean photographers can therefore choose the size and feature set most appropriate to their needs (and hands).

California-based company DigitalOptics debuted their newest creation this week. It's called the Mems|Cam, and it's stirring up a bit of excitement in the tech world. That's because, in addition to blazing fast focus and facial recognition, the camera module actually mimics Lytro's "take now, focus later" abilities -- only it does it in 8-13 megapixel packages that can fit inside the thinnest of phones.

British photographer Luke Massey has been fascinated by the wildlife he has made a living photographing since he was a little boy stealing his sister's camera when he went on walks. Back then he was limited to photographing the wildlife that made its home within walking distance of his front step. Today he travels all over the world.

The gear has improved, his techniques and expertise have improved, but his passion is still the same. And in this short video he talks about that passion, and drops a few tips along the way for those of you who also love snapping photos of wildlife.

In a red carpet interview with Access Hollywood's Billy Bush, Jennifer Lawrence shocked viewers by actually saying that she loves Photoshop "more than anything in the world." The conversation began on the red carpet when Bush showed Lawrence the results of a photo shoot she did for Christian Dior.

The Miss Dior ads she did recently turned out unrealistically stunning. In them she has perfect skin, a long slender neck and incredibly thin arms. Seeing them for the first time on the red carpet, her reaction was a delighted "That doesn't look like me at all!" Followed by the above "I love Photoshop more than anything in the world."

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to direct your attention to an interesting study that was published yesterday by Pingdom. The website tracking company decided to analyze the demographics of the world's top 100 blogs (according to Technorati), sorting them by reader age and gender. It's findings regarding PetaPixel caught our eye.

While in an antique shop looking for old Nikon lenses, the folks over at …

Our pal and fellow photo blogger David Hobby of Strobist is currently over in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, and yesterday he had the privilege of purchasing the first Fujifilm X100S to be sold on planet Earth. Hobby tells us he's in love.

We've shown you the snowflake photos you can achieve using a DSLR and a macro lens and also a point-and-shoot and a macro rig. Now, here's what you can achieve using a smartphone.

Photo enthusiast Ben Woodworth shot these snowflake photographs using his iPhone 5 and a tiny macro lens he purchased for $5 online.

Benedict XVI officially resigned yesterday after eight years as the Pope of the Catholic Church. The Vatican decided to commemorate his papacy by publishing a digital photo album to its website. It's a serious set of photos that marks a serious occasion, but it's attracting attention for the wrong reason: most sites that are reporting on it seem to be focusing on the font selections rather than the images themselves.

The text in the album is Comic Sans and the watermarks on the photos are Papyrus.

Still photographs are easy to print and share, but how would you go about sharing a video with someone physically, without having to pass them some kind of tablet computer? HP has a solution: it's called Live Photo, and is an app that uses augmented reality to view videos "embedded" in printed photographs.