Originally produced for the US military in WW2, the Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm f/2.5 is a large-format monster of a lens. Mounted in bombers, facing down at Europe, this lens was sold to the US government for the price of a family car. It found its way into military surplus after the war, and was widely used in journalism and by professional photographers.
Frenchman Joe Bunni is not a photographer; first and foremost he's a dentist. Once you learn that, the fact that he captured the above photo and won the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year award in 2011 is even more incredible. The photo shows a polar bear swimming not more than a few feet away from Bunni, and if you think the photo is amazing, wait until you hear the story behind it.
Here's the story of how I was in the right-place at the right-time for a special series of eagle photographs.
I was driving down a dirt road near my house when I spotted a red-tailed hawk sitting on the ground. I pulled over for a shot, thinking it may be feeding on something, but it took off and flew across the road in front of me.
Eposure, a UK company that brings commercial photographers together with the companies that need them, recently released the results of a survey they conducted about the day rates of UK and U.S.-based photographers. And even though some might expect that the vast majority are charging a pittance in our photography-saturated world, the outlook isn't as grim as you may think.
All of his life, French photographer Pierre Carreau has been fascinated by the shape and movement of waves. It makes sense, then, that much of his photography revolves around the project "AquaViva" -- a series that captures the majesty of waves in action.
The Civil War wasn't the first war to be photographed, but the leaps and bounds that photographic technology had taken leading up to the war in 1861 enabled American photographers at the time to come out en masse when news of the attack on Fort Sumter came.
Many photos came out of the war, showing everything from the horrifically scarred back of an escaped slave, to the bravado of young confederate soldiers. In the video above, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Photography and the American Civil War" exhibit Jeff L. Rosenheim walks us through some of those photos, explaining the role each one played in documenting four years of bloodshed.
Artist Todd McLellan gets to live out many a destructive child's dream: he takes gadgets apart with no intention of putting them back together -- occasionally, he even throws the pieces in the air. The project, which was initially called the Disassembled series, has officially been dubbed Things Come Apart, and it's a photo series made up of both arranged and "falling apart" images of common objects that McLellan has broken down to their most basic components.
At a public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1934, four hundred lucky students were privy to a lecture by Albert Einstein, in which the great man mathematically derived his famous mass-energy equivalence equation: E=mc2. What you see above is a photo from that lecture, and what is thought to be the only surviving photo that shows Einstein working on that derivation.
Last week we shared some photos from an awareness campaign by the Mexican organization Save the Children, which showed the "cycle of abuse" through powerful, hard-to-stomach photos of children growing into future abusers. The ads were meant to illustrate the statistic that 70 percent of abused children turn into abusing adults.
Spanish organization the ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk) recently released a campaign that makes similarly powerful use of photography, only they're taking advantage of the process of lenticular printing to send an offer of help to abused children without alerting their abusers, even if they're walking together.
Late last month, NASA launched Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket into space, and with it a trio of satellites powered, get this, by Android Phones. Part of the NASA project "PhoneSats," the three satellites spent a total of 5 days in space, after which they burned up in the atmosphere as planned -- but not before they had a chance to beam down some sub-par smartphone snaps of Earth as seen from Orbit.
Located in the city of Toronto, ALPHA Alternative School is one of Canada's oldest free schools. For the school's 40th anniversary last year, photographer Michael Barker worked on a project titled Alpha Alternative School 1972/2012. It's a series of diptychs with portraits of students shot back in the 1970s/1980s placed next to new portraits of the students captured around four decades later.
Icebreakers are the bouncers of the ship world. With specially designed thicker hulls shaped to direct ice to the sides and under the ship, they ram into massive ice pockets and drive their way through, sometimes climbing up onto the ice to crack it under the ship's weight.
For the last couple of months, marine scientist Cassandra Brooks has been on one of these massive machines called the Nathaniel B. Palmer in the Ross Sea, and she's decided to upload a hyperlapse to prove it and take us on a two month ice breaking research voyage in the process.
For 20 years, 52-year-old photojournalist Mark Hirsch drove by the lonely old Bur Oak two miles from his home in southwest Wisconsin without thinking to take its picture even once. Then, one evening, he took a particularly beautiful photo of the tree at sunset using his newly purchased iPhone.
It was just his way of testing out the phone's camera (which he was very skeptical of) and, lo and behold, he was hooked. For a full year after that, starting on March 23, 2012, Hirsch took one photo per day of the towering Bur Oak, and he's titled the resulting project "That Tree."
A while back, Atlanta-based editorial and commercial photographer Zack Arias decided to start a Q&A blog that would, in his words, "add signal to an industry filled with far too much noise." On this Tumblr he's answered 1,000+ questions ranging from the relevant to the rude about the art and business of photography.
Now he's decided to take that blog project to another level by compiling 100+ of the best and most common questions he's gotten into a book called, appropriately enough, Photography Q&A -- Real Questions, Real Answers.
The Peregrine Falcon, also known as the Duck Hawk (a fact you won't soon forget after watching this video), is a spectacular bird of prey. Claiming the title of fastest member of the animal kingdom, a Peregrine Falcon can reach speeds in excess of 200mph during its characteristic high-speed hunting dives -- take that cheetah.
In the video above, YouTube user drhodie's falcon Dora happens to have a camera on her back as she performs one of these dives and takes an unsuspecting duck in mid-air.
Late last year, Google one-upped Apple's iOS 6 Panorama feature by bringing a special street view-style panorama app called "Photo Sphere" to Android 4.2. With the app, users can create 360-degree panoramas that can be viewed as both flat images and explorable street-view "spheres."
The only real pitfall was the fact that you were extremely limited when it came to viewing them as "spheres," the way there were meant to be viewed. Unless you were viewing the photo on the device you took it on, Google+ or Google Maps, you were given a standard, flat panorama. Well, we can now consider that problem solved thanks to Google's new Photo Sphere Widget.
New York-based photographer Richard Silver is a passionate traveler, and his primary goal as an artist is to share his life experiences by creating beautiful photographs during his travels. Rather than shoot traditional photos, he uses techniques such as tilt shift, HDR, panorama, and time-slice in order to capture the world in eye-catching ways. Last year we shared his time-slice photos of NYC, which showed day turning into night in single photos.
Another major project he has been working on is called "Tilt Shift." He has been photographing some of the world's most famous locations and turning them into miniature scenes.
Check out this creative and moving music video that was shot entirely through the reflection of an eyeball. The band is James Wallace and the Naked Light, the song is "To the River," and the video is a beautiful example of simplicity and creativity working hand in hand.
I've been watching with great interest over the past few weeks as the naysayers seem to have gone crazy overboard trying to bash Google Glass every chance they can. I've seen articles in Wired and on CNN and on blogs, etc., all stating how terrible Google Glass is. Oh no! Geeky white dudes are wearing Google Glass! This will never work! Oh no, someone wore a pair into the shower! Oh no, I will punch someone in the face if they try talk to me with them on -- all sorts of gibberish.
There's nothing like change to bring out the absolute haters.
When musicians sign contracts to perform in major concerts, their documents often contain riders (more commonly known as addendums). These are a series of special requests made by the band or musician, and outlines specifics of what they're expecting when they arrive.
Photographer Henry Hargreaves noticed that riders often contain strange requests for the foods and drinks requested, so he decided to turn the requests into a photo project that offer a glimpse into the lives of famous musicians.
When a huge meteor exploded over Russia back in February, the incident was captured by a large number of drivers who drive around with dashcams pointed out the front of their windshield. The story put a spotlight on the fact that dashcams are widely used in Russia due to the prevalence of insurance fraud.
Footage from Russian dashcams found online is often quite dark (figuratively, not literally), showing horrible accidents and tragedies. Not so with the video above -- it's a compilation of random acts of kindness captured by ordinary drivers.
Late last year, we shared a video in which a photographer tested the radioactivity of an old Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens that is really popular with film photographers. But that is far from the only lens you have to worry about when it comes to radioactivity.
Camerapedia lists 54 lenses that have been reported as radioactive and that, if you use them often enough, you may want to take note of.
As photographers, one thing we're always interested in is improving our photography. Today we'll discuss something that is often overlooked and can make dramatic improvement in all of the photos we show, as well as increase our perceived skill in the art.
Top photographers know only their top 1% or less of photos taken will ever see the light of day. They know the first step to having interesting work is culling out that which is not. This isn't something that should be limited to the professionals or those with professional editors... It's something we can all use!
Aerial cameras based around RC helicopters are becoming widely used these days for all kinds of photographic and video-related purposes, but here's one use that we've never seen before. An RC helicopter camera was recently used to both deliver an engagement ring and capture the proposal as it went down.
A couple of weeks ago, we shared a sneak peek of Adobe's upcoming Shake Reduction Tool for Photoshop that has been dropping jaws ever since an advanced preview was debuted all the way back in October of 2011. The tool selects a section of the image, uses some complicated calculations to determine how the camera was moving when the photo was taken, and then remove the blur -- pretty incredible stuff.
But it looks like Adobe has been beaten to this magical release by the small startup Intelligent Imaging Solutions and their newly announced Photoshop plugin Piccure.
PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a serious problem that affect a huge percentage of war veterans. A condition once associated most strongly with Vietnam War veterans, the Afghanistan and Iraq war have brought the condition back into the public eye with a vengeance.
According to the National Institute of Health, the VA estimates that approximately 31% of Vietnam vets, 10% of Desert Storm vets, 11% of Afghanistan vets and 20% of Iraq war veterans are affected. And while photography has been used to great effect to document PTSD in the past, one nurse at the VA in Palo Alto, California is using it to help treat veterans with the condition.
The rumor mill is churning regarding Canon's tilt-shift lens lineup. The company will reportedly be announcing replacements to its two oldest TS-E lenses by the end of this year, and the lenses are likely already floating around in the wild for real world field tests.
Want to plan out and test your studio lighting setups before setting up equipment and bringing subjects into the picture? German software development company Elixxier has been developing a software program designed to help you do just that. It's called set.a.light 3D STUDIO, and is, according to Elixxier, the world's first software dedicated to photo studio simulation.
The 2,700+ year old city of Palermo, Italy is well known for its gastronomy (the art of food eating) and its four main street markets. One of the busier ones is Il Capo, or "The Cape," a market with Arabic origins that mainly contains various foods and fish stalls.
22-year-old Italian photographer Manfredi Caracausi recently completed a project that focuses on telling the story of Il Capo. He shot portraits of the merchants manning the stalls and pictures of the goods they sell. The photographs are then displayed as a series of diptychs.
Photo booths are seeing a renaissance in the world of photography recently. We're not so much talking about the photo booths you'll find at the mall, where you feed them a dollar and they take your picture. We're talking about little contraptions that pros are building/buying nowadays and bringing along with them to parties and wedding shoots.
One great example is the Instagram-inspired DIY photo booth put together by Alexander Morris. Unfortunately, that one required a bit of electrical DIY skill to put together yourself, so for those of you looking for something similar minus the DIY part, Photoboop may be the perfect solution.
Here’s a wedding photographer who probably wishes now that he had set up a second camera with a lightning …
The photographic story of Sebastião Salgado doesn't begin when he was handed a camera as a child. It, like a few others we've shared, begins much later in life (after a PhD in economics) when photography, as Salgado puts it, "made a total invasion into [his] life."
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced at the end of this post.
With the iPad from our previous giveaway safely in the hands of its new owner, we're back again with a fun new giveaway. This week our giveaway is of particular interest to Instagram users: one lucky winner will receive 20 sheets of custom printed Instagram magnets by StickyGram! Each sheet of 9 magnets ordinarily costs $15, so the combined value of this prize is $300.
If you ever try your hand at shooting photos or videos from the sky using a remote-controlled helicopter, do your best to avoid trees, tall buildings, and... statues. Ohio-based cameraman Terry Cline found out the dangers of statues the hard way this past weekend. While capturing aerial imagery, Cline got his flying camera stuck in the arms of a statue 100 feet above the ground.
Wireless connectivity is one of the hot features in the camera world these days, and many (if not most) new cameras either have built-in wireless connectivity or an optional wireless adapter that provides the feature. Unfortunately, the wireless adapters are often quite pricey, especially for higher-end cameras.
Here's something neat that you might be interested in knowing if you shoot with a Canon 1D X: you can connect a cheap WiFi adapter designed for homes and offices to give your camera wireless tethering!
Yesterday, we wrote about how Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges brings his love of photography onto movie sets, snapping photos of the casts and crews. Last night Bridges was honored by the International Center of Photography in New York with a prestigious Infinity Award.
Seven other photographers were also presented with awards, and prior to each one receiving their prize, a short video feature was played to introduce people to the photographers and their work. We've collected the videos here for your enjoyment.
Are you so crazy in love with photography that you would wear a lens-inspired wedding ring on your finger? If so, alternative ring company Titanium Buzz has a wedding band just for you.
The company has just launched a new product called the Camera Lens Ring. It's a simple ring that looks like something torn from the middle of a camera lens.
One of the key features afforded by the fusion of photo sharing and social networking is people tagging. On services such as Facebook and Flickr, adding information to identify the people in photos is as easy as clicking/tapping a face and telling the service who that subject is.
Instagram this morning announced that it's joining in on the people-tagging fun. The company has released a new "Photos of You" feature that makes tagging a person as easy as adding a hashtag.
Some photographers make a name for themselves by creating portraits of children, while others create similar images of wild animals. Photographer Robin Schwartz does both -- at the same time.
Since 2002, Schwartz has been photographing her daughter Amelia while the young girl interacts with all kinds of creatures in the animal kingdom. Subjects have included everything from dogs and cats to monkeys, kangaroos, and elephants.
While we're on the subject of Google Glass, check out this interesting use case by hockey player Joseph Lallouz. He decided to wear his Glass during a hockey match in order to capture what the sport looks and feels like from a participant's point of view.
A couple of weeks ago, it was discovered that Google Glass has wink detection features baked into the device that could allow users to stealthily snap photographs of anything just by winking at it. Today, the first wink-to-shoot app was launched.
Tablet computers may soon rival desktop computers in RAW editing potential. Adobe has revealed that it's working on bringing Lightroom-style photo editing to tablet devices, and the software would include powerful RAW photo editing features that are currently found only in the desktop versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
What you see here is artwork showing the rain of Hawaii and Northern California. It's from photographer Klea McKenna's project, "Rain Studies," and shows what rain looks like when you capture it with photo paper and light, rather than a traditional camera.
Just like the human eye, the arthropod eye is a marvel of natural engineering. But unlike human eyes, insect eyes approach seeing very differently. Instead of a curved lens focusing an image onto a plane of rods and cones, insects have curved eyes covered by "ommatidia," each acting as a tiny pixel.
In a paper published today in the scientific journal Nature, a team of researchers from the U.S., South Korea, Singapore and China announced that they have managed to create a camera that mimics that type of eye -- and all of its advantages and pitfalls along with it.
Created by photographer Peter Basma-Lord, the Eternal Light Mac and iOS app offers users a way to play back an infinite number of photos in a slideshow format, set to music, at any speed they like. If you so chose, you could select every single photo you have hidden deep within all of your external hard drives and play them back at breakneck speed -- a sort of, near-death experience slideshow if you will.
And even though this may not seem like something one would want to do, it's actually the idea that inspired Lord to create the app in the first place.
CyanogenMod is sort of like Magic Lantern for Android phones. It's an open source, replacement firmware option for people who want to get more out of certain Android devices. And the most recent update targets the photographic community -- in a hands-free sort of way.
A high-quality time-lapse is a beautiful thing. From the aurora borealis over Norway to the thriving metropolis that is San Diego, we've featured many a gorgeous photographic fast-forward through time, each of them put together by photographers that knew how to pull the most out of the time-lapse medium.
But just because there are a lot of stunning time-lapses out there, doesn't mean that the process is easy or self-explanatory. Creating a great time-lapse takes skills, and it's those skills that professional photographer Vincent Laforet is partnering with Canon to teach you in an informative 4-part educational video series.
The end of NASA's Space Shuttle program in 2011 meant the end for more than the shuttles themselves. One aspect of the program you may not have known about was the plethora of incredible photo and video equipment that was used during the program's heyday to capture each launch. At any given launch, about 138 professional still, video and TV cameras were pointing at the shuttle, and some of them were downright incredible.
The all-mighty selfie has gained a lot of ground over the years -- even the Mars Rover Curiosity is doing it -- but high-quality has never been its trademark. This is due, in part, to the horrible quality of most front facing smartphone cameras. Having to sandwich a sensor between a whole mess of other stuff leaves little to beef up quality.
OmniVision aims to solve that space issue, and it's doing so by packing a whole lot of power into an itsy bitsy sensor: the newly announced OV2724.
If you're into photography, whether as a serious hobby or as a profession, you probably find yourself doing repetitive tasks on a routine basis. You've probably also heard various tips, tricks, and strategies on how you can do these tasks faster and more efficiently. Heed them.
While saving a few seconds here or a few minutes there might not seem like much, optimizing your efficiency is definitely something worth doing, especially for tasks you're doing all the time. The reason is simple: small efficiency gains might seem inconsequential, but they build up and can save you quite a bit of time over time.