April 2013

Update: Sigma has officially announced the lens! …

Cameras today have many extra functions that are often buried in menus and forgotten. Last year, I bought the Canon 5D Mark III and, after a few months, realized that there were some interesting features I had never played with. After figuring out that there was a way to do in-camera double exposures, I immediately started experimenting. At first it was very hit and miss. (I still hadn’t read the manual.)

Apple's next iPhone release may come with enticing upgrades to the phone's camera, including a 12-megapixel sensor, improved low-light capabilities, and HDR photography.

Photographer Jeff Cremer has figured out a winning formula for masking a splash on the Internet: travel to exotic jungles and take pictures of things that are rare, interesting, and bizarre.

In the aftermath of the tragic Boston Marathon bombing on Monday, investigators are turning to crowdsourced photographs and videos in order to hunt down the perpetrator(s). Authorities are calling for anyone at the marathon that day to send in photographs or videos captured in the area.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced at the end of this post.

Andy Day is a London-based photographer who specializes in shooting parkour and freerunning. In case you've never heard of it before, parkour is an activity in which participants (called "traceurs") move fluidly through urban landscapes by running, climbing, and jumping across/through/on obstacles, getting from one place to another through the most efficient route possible using only their bodies.

The Internet let out a collective gasp back in October 2011 when Adobe gave an advanced preview of a crazy new image deblurring feature it has been working on. The feature can take a photo that's blurry due to camera shake, calculate the movements that caused the blur, and "reverse it" to create a sharper photo.

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg are scientists by trade and artists at heart. They work as the leads of a Google research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are constantly on the lookout for interesting (and artistic) ways to visualize data.

One of the big trends in the digital camera industry right now is the stuffing of large sensors into tiny cameras. Today Ricoh became the latest camera company to join in on the action. It has officially announced the Ricoh GR, a compact camera that features a beastly APS-C-sized sensor at its core.

The Android operating system has been expanding beyond the world of smartphones and into the realm of "smartcameras" as of late, but did you know that by doing so it has simply gone full circle? That's right: Android was originally intended for digital cameras rather than for phones.

In this article, I will share a behind-the-scenes look at how I created photos of fried chicken for one of the world's most iconic brands: KFC.

Want to explore famous New York City locations without leaving the comfort of your chair? Check out photographer Nuno Madeira's New York City 360 project. It's like browsing Google Street View panorama photographs on steroids.

Hey Canon: get ready to have your toes stepped on. Nokia is reportedly prepping two new flagship smartphones for launch, and the two devices are rumored to have 'EOS' branding and a huge focus on high-quality photography.

Dmitriy Yoav Reinshtein is a 26-year-old photographer based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He works as an advertising photographer and creative retoucher, but one of his personal passions is shooting highly detailed macro photographs of tiny insects. While all of his macro photographs are amazing to look all, there's a particular subset that caught our eye: Reinshtein managed to capture a number of insects with water drops sitting on their top of their heads.

Want to see how much of an effect the direction and color of your lighting has on your portrait subject's face? Check out this trippy video by Nacho Guzman, who used a moving light and changing colors to cause a woman's face to look like it's constantly morphing.

Before I begin with an observation of a photo that emerged from yesterday’s horrific bombings, I’d like to first take a moment to acknowledge the insignificance of my thoughts vis a vis the tragedy that has unfolded. There have been many great pieces that have already emerged in the first 24 hours like this one from Bruce Schneier of The Atlantic. That said, I blog about salient issues in photography, and there is no better time to discuss an issue than when it is in our collective …

If you're a frugal photographer who's constantly searching for ways to save some dough when buying gear, you might want to look into the new Los Angeles-based startup company Greentoe. It's a shopping site that's trying to turn the e-commerce world on its head by taking pricing power from merchants and putting it into the hands of consumers.

Google has officially announced the specs for its Glass wearable computer/camera. Of interest to readers of this blog is the fact that the camera will be able to capture decent photographs -- at least resolution-wise. It'll be a 5-megapixel camera that has WiFi capabilities. The camera will also be able to capture 720p video and audio.

When Israeli photographer Natan Dvir visited New York City in 2008, he was taken aback by the massive advertising billboards dominating commercial hubs and the fact that giant models on them loomed over the pedestrians walking by. Dvir began documenting these billboards and the juxtaposition of huge fake humans and tiny real humans through his project titled "Coming Soon."

Columbia University has announced the winning photographs of both the Breaking News and Feature Photography Pulitzer prizes for 2013 -- all of which depict the heartrending civil war in Syria. At first glance that may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that the Breaking News prize wasn't awarded to one, but five AP photographers jointly, the power of these photos begins to sink in.

It turns out that the sharing of images taken by orbiters and rovers in space may have more of a purpose than just being cool to look at. According to a NASA press release published last Thursday, a group of amateur Russian space enthusiasts may have found a missing soviet Mars lander using nothing more than images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Stop motion animation was already being used in the late 1890's as a way to make objects in films move by "magic," but full stop-motion animated films like the ones of today didn't come to be until around 1910. When they did, one of the great pioneers of the technique was Russian photographer and entomologist Wladyslaw Starewicz.

The National Press Photographers Association has decided to throw their hat in the ring with 15 other organizations that are all suing Google over what they see as "widespread, well-publicized, and uncompensated infringement of exclusive rights" perpetrated by the search giant's Google Books program.

From the very first version of Lightroom in 2006, Adobe has been releasing public betas prior to shipping to make sure that the final product has all of the kinks worked out, and this year is no exception. Earlier today, Adobe released the public beta of its upcoming Lightroom 5, complete with video and photo examples of a few exciting new features.

Slovenia photographer Matej Peljhan has a touching series of photographs titled The Little Prince, which stars a 12-year-old boy named Luka. The images show the boy exploring an imaginary world created by laying colored sheets and household objects on the ground. Peljhan created the images to give Luka the feeling of being able to do things he can't.

Magazine and newspaper stories have traditionally revolved around the writer. A writer would pitch stories and was almost always the architect of the piece. When the story needed visuals, a photographer or illustrator would be brought in, often after the story was finished. This order of operations placed the writer in the driver's seat.

Craig Royal is an award-winning fine art photographer based in Tampa, Florida. Visit his website here.

Back in January, we reported that Ricoh's upcoming GR Digital V camera will be the first in the series to feature a large APS-C sensor. Now, a video has leaked that not only confirms that sensor size, but reveals much more about the camera as well.

Nikon released software development kits (SDKs) for its SLRs some time ago, allowing for developers to create software that play nice with Nikon cameras. Using the company's DSLR SDKs, savvy programmers can develop software that controls camera functions such as aperture, shutter speed and even shutter release.

What does severe depression look like in photographs? The work of photographer Christian Hopkins may offer a clue. The 20-year-old photographer has been battling Major Depression (AKA clinical depression) for the past four years, and many of his photographs are a reflection of the dark thoughts and feelings swirling around in his mind.

One of the most prominent celebrity endorsement deals in the camera industry has been actor Ashton Kutcher serving as the face of Nikon. Since 2009, Kutcher -- a guy who boasts over 14 million Twitter followers -- has been appearing in commercials and print ads hawking Nikon digital cameras. In 2012, TIME voted the partnership as a top 10 celebrity tech endorsement.

Has someone ever asked you why you like an image? Beneath the surface of great picture, there is a geometric design in hiding. During World War II, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt worked for the early version of the Associated Press and went on to become a Life Magazine photographer, taking over fifty cover shots for them. Without getting too deep into Eisenstaedt’s personal story, I will say that he started photography with very little formal training.

When the presidential election was looming on the horizon last year, photographer Ashley Pizzuti decided to shoot a project that had been brewing in her mind for some time. Titled "Vote for Chase," the series imagines what political campaign photographs would look like if innocent young children ran for president rather than weathered adult politicians.

For a long time, photographer Travis Lawton had been toying with two ideas: shooting film for the first time since he was 6 years old, and doing a 365 project where he shot something every day for a year. Instead of choosing one, he decided to mix the two desires into a project he felt he could realistically keep up with for an entire year; that's how he came up with Project OneRollFifty2.

With more entry-level DSLRs on the market now than ever, the camera manufacturers seem to understand that it's time to woo the beginners. Canon is doing it with a new DSLR simulator website, and now Sony has launched a helpful microsite of its own, focusing on video tutorials that'll get Sony α beginners off to a good start in the world of photography.

There aren't many ways to get intimate access to the behind-the-scenes of government as a photog. Your best option is probably to try and snag a spot as the official White House photographer, but those jobs are hard to come by. A senator from Vermont, however, has found another way: get a day job as a Senator and moonlight as an amateur photographer.

Having your camera stolen is not a fun experience. If you're not fortunate enough to have a camera that catches its own theft in progress, your recovery options are limited to services like Stolen Camera Finder, CameraTrace and, the most likely fix, a good insurance policy.

Kate Seabrook is an entirely self-taught Australian photographer who fell in love with the art of picture taking after laying her hands on her first DSLR in 2009. For the next couple of years, she made a name for herself photographing Melbourne's underground music community, but when she moved to Berlin in late 2011, something entirely different caught her eye -- the U-Bahn system.

Greg Heisler is one of the great photographers of our time, and one of his strengths is meticulously planning his shots. Whether his subject is an NBA player or an olympian, Heisler's photos always capture the essence of that person, and his approach makes his BTS videos particularly educational and interesting to share.

Samsung only has a couple of weeks before the rumored "sometime between January and April 2013" timeframe for an NX2000 "smart" ILC release runs out, and just on schedule, a FCC filing with a top and front schematic of the camera has come to light.

In 1906, etiologist and photographer Edward S. Curtis set out across the United States to draw, photograph and otherwise document the lives of Native Americans that hadn't yet been contacted by Western society.

At TEDx Rio de la Plata, author Dan Ariely gave an interesting talk on motivation and how to feel good about our work. Challenging the conventional belief that money equals motivation, he shows how injecting meaning into our work -- be that by making the work itself harder or having others acknowledge it -- has a huge impact on why and how we stay motivated.

We've seen some strange photo projects in the past, but they're typically making a statement or serving some purpose. Haley Morris-Cafiero's photos of herself getting strange looks turned the tables on judging onlookers. Theron Humphrey's photos of his dog Maddie balancing on things across America allowed him to document his trip in an interesting way.

Using just a few pieces of wood, some serious DIY know-how and an Arduino, photographer and Instructables user Alexander Morris built this really cool, Instagram-inspired photo booth as a fun extra for events and parties. Fortunately for us, he uploaded a ton of pictures and instructions so that anybody with a little bit of time and skill can put one together for themselves.

Back in 2010, Adobe put out a short documentary called "Startup Memories -- The Beginning of Photoshop" to celebrate the program's 20-year anniversary by recalling its past. Somehow, that documentary slipped through our fingers at the time, but seeing as we've already started a conversation on how Photoshop is "remixing the world," we thought it was an opportune time to share this blast from the past.

There are many niches in photography, but one we don't talk about often is taking product photos. Even though these types of shots don't fall under the professional umbrella -- we're not talking professional product photography, just product shots for an online store -- almost everyone at one time or another has had to sell something on eBay or (not for the faint of heart) Craigslist.

In the first week of April, the three major auction houses in New York managed to post over $30 million in photography sales, showing that the photography as collectible market is thriving, to say the least. The houses posted a record-setting week as almost every auction blew away projected sale prices.

Photographing strangers can be a daunting proposition. It was one of the focuses of the workshops I held in NYC this past summer. What if they get mad, what if they yell at me, or what if they go completely psycho on me? Odds are, most people will simply say no pictures. Even the school of Bruce Gilden photographers have hardly been bothered with their “mugging style portrait.”

National Geographic's Stephen Alvarez is part photographer, part filmmaker and part explorer. That triad makes his photography great because while some photographers take pictures, Alvarez has learned to tell stories -- and as the years have gone by and his gear has improved, his stories have continued to get more compelling.