June 2013

Once you've lived somewhere long enough, it's easy to fall into a photographic rut. We're not talking about a running low on creativity (read this if you're dealing with creative burnout), we're talking about running low on places to shoot.

Photographer Darren Johnson ran into this problem, and was frustrated at the amount of work he had to put in to track down new photography locations online. That's why he created ShotHotspot: a new website that intelligently uses sites like Flickr and Panoramio to find and rank photo hotspots in your area.

Light meters are less common now than they used to be. Now that we can see our photos right after we've shot them and delete, adjust settings and re-shoot, some people just don't see the merit in spending $300+ on a professional meter.

Of course, a light meter can be an amazing tool, and so the folks at Lumu Labs have designed one they're calling "the light meter of the 21st century": a tiny, iPhone attachable light meter that claims to perform far outside its price range.

Rumors of a high-megapixel Canon DSLR have been floating around for quite some time now, but the photo above might be the first time a photograph of the actual camera has leaked onto the Web.

If you're planning on stealing somebody's credit card (and we don't suggest you do), then at least have the presence of mind not to hop in a photo booth with the card and several of your friends to take potentially incriminating photos. That's what police suspect a group of teens did after stealing a woman's credit card in Crofton, MD.

This past weekend, hundreds of protestors clashed with riot police in the area surrounding the Maracana football stadium in Rio de Janiero. Their main gripe was the fact that the country is spending so much on hosting the 2014 World Cup despite many of the country's public services still lacking in funding.

Rio de Janiero-based photographer Michel de Souza was at the protests capturing everything on camera, and also captured the point-of-view footage above showing what he saw as he snapped photos.

It started with a trip to Hong Kong. That's what got skateboard photographer Jonathan Mehring hooked on travelling. But while there are a lot of photographers that travel the world capturing different cultures, Mehring was more interested in answering the question: "is it even possible to skate some of these places?"

This short interview was put together by The Photographer Series, a site by multimedia storyteller Andrew Norton that dedicates itself to telling the stories behind some of skateboarding's coolest images -- and Mehring has captured some awesome images.

Rumor has it that photo-sharing and social networking service Instagram is said to be getting video support this week -- June 20th. That's according to TechCrunch, who has cited an unnamed source familiar with the matter.

I wanted to create a dramatic portrait series of “arctic explorers” that appeared to be taken outside in a blizzard. The concept for this shoot was something I’ve been mulling over for quite awhile, but never had the proper platform to pull it off. 


When I was a kid, my school had an end of the year event all students were expected to participate in. They called it "Field and Track Day," which was a fancy way of saying, "Okay kids, we've got to kill a mandatory school day, so we're going to ship you all out to a local park, make you run around in the hot May sun for about 6 hours until you feel like passing out or puking, or both, and then send you home. Have fun!"

Jacob A. Riis arrived in New York in 1870. As the economy slowed, the Danish American photographer found himself among the many other immigrants in the area whose daily life consisted of joblessness, hunger, homelessness, and thoughts of suicide. So when he finally found work as a police reporter in 1877, he made it his mission to reveal the crime and poverty of New York City's East Side slum district to the world.

Battle hardened photographers will tell you that theirs used to be an elite profession, difficult to do, hard to enter, and accorded the proper respect. Now that everyone and their grandmother has a super computer/camera in their pocket or purse or on their face (read: Google Glass), it seems like everybody is sharing their filtered masterpieces with the entire world.

And like our very own Cheri Frost wrote, next is for the camera-ed masses to hang out their shingles and call themselves professional photographers.

For his most recent album Immunity, musician Jon Hopkins wanted to create visuals that would match the colors he sees in his mind when he's composing his music. The thing was, he would rather they not be computer generated -- his music is organic, he wanted the visuals to match.

Enter photographer Linden Gledhill and art director Craig Ward. In partnership with The Creators Project, they came up with a solution: use abstract imagery of things that happen on a microscopic scale.

School portraits don't often make the news for causing controversy, but that's exactly what the class photo above has been doing over in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Parents of the boy seen on the right side of the frame were unhappy after receiving the photo and finding that their son had been set apart from his classmates and teacher due to the fact that he uses a wheelchair.

At last year's Fall Photography at the Summit, the folks at the Summit Series of Workshops got a chance to sit down and speak with legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge. They asked him about "the importance of the still image," and Eppridge responded by sharing the wise views on photography he has spent a lifetime acquiring.

How should I describe the Leica X Vario? It's as if Leica engineers met at the cafeteria and decided Fuji wasn’t kicking their a** hard enough with the X100/X100s. “Hey, let’s challenge the Fuji XE-1 with a new camera. We will up the ante this time… let’s be double the price of Fuji, AND we will not have interchangeable lens!” Guffaws exploded across the cafeteria as the engineers outlined more specifications to make life living hell for the Leica sales team.

We humans have done quite a lot in the span of a thousand years. We've discovered new lands by sail boat, sent men to the moon, and successfully managed to ruin the economy-class flying experience as we know it. So now that it's 2013 -- the obvious move would be to beam an animated GIF to a distant solar system, right?

There's no doubt about the fact that using the camera on your shiny smartphone is killing your battery life. But up until now, it seems like the only proposed solutions have been to work on the battery itself instead of looking at the camera.

Researchers at both Microsoft and Rice University think they've come up with a solution that will make your gadget's camera far more energy efficient by focusing on the camera's sensor and the power it uses.

"I've concentrated on the poor ... the rich ones have their own photographers." Those words, spoken by the late great Milton Rogovin, begin the award-winning short documentary The Forgotten Ones.

NYC-based photographer Joy Mckinney has spent most of her life conforming to the norms she believed to be "socially correct." Her latest series, The Guardian, is about breaking through those norms and her own socially guarded personality in order to interact with strangers on the streets of New York in a real and meaningful way.

Sara Hansson and Jens Lennartsson feel that the media at large has painted an unfair and inaccurate picture of children in developing countries. And so, they've founded an organization that seeks to undo this wrong in a unique way.

The organization is called EYE AM, and through it, Hansson and Lennartsson hope to reach out to the children in these countries, teach them the basics of photography, and then help them to tell their own stories.

With the NBA Conference playoffs nearing completion and the Spurs already a lock for the Finals, I got a call from Brad Smith, the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated, asking if I could quickly get to San Antonio.

Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker rarely if ever pose together, but had reluctantly agreed to pose for an SI cover which would come out a couple of days later, to coincide with the beginning of the finals.

The know-how to properly shoot day-to-night or night-to-day when you're capturing a time-lapse can add a special something to your final product, but the task may seem daunting at first. That's why photographer Preston Kanak has put together this comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorial that discusses three approaches to shooting the perfect day-to-night time-lapse.

Electronic autofocus and aperture control are new features introduced by Zeiss' new Touit lenses into the company's consumer lens lineup. After the lenses were announced, I couldn’t wait to take a look inside and see how things were put together.

Getting your camera noticed if it's not also a smartphone or a high-end shooter is getting harder by the day. And phones such as the newly announced Galaxy S4 Zoom are quickly shrinking the quality gap between the camera phone and the regular old camera.

It was a day of typically brutal summer heat in Phoenix, and I had the air conditioner blasting as I raced down the freeway en route to some event I was obliged to cover in my role as a general-assignment newspaper reporter.

The scene came to me in pieces as I glanced to the other side of the roadway. A car on the shoulder, broken down and steam billowing from under the raised hood. Somebody, presumably the driver, sitting on the grass embankment nearby, head in his hands. Wearing a full-on clown outfit -- wild hair, floppy shoes, pancake makeup, red nose, the whole package. And looking about as morose and defeated as a clown can get.

We've featured astrophotographer Stéphane Guisard's beautiful time-lapse work capturing the stars once before when he put together the time-lapse of the comet Lovejoy rising above the Andes mountains. His most recent video, however, takes a much larger field of view, and teaches us a little bit about our place (or rather placement) in the Milky Way all at the same time.

I'm hoping this post can explain a lot of the confusion beginning photographers have about focal length and crop factors. Some understanding of basic geometry is required for you to fully grasp this post. Also note that I'll be rounding the math decently well. Just run through the calculations if you want exact answers.

With the ability to shoot video now nearly ubiquitous among DSLRs, many photographers take advantage and switch into video mode on occasion. But because video isn't a photographer's first priority, camera sliders and cranes that many videographers find necessary for beautiful, smooth tracking shots don't always make the budget.

Thankfully, if you're not in the market for a slider or crane, but you still want to shoot the occasional tracking shot, the folks at DSLR filmmaking tutorial site Fenchel & Janisch shared this simple trick for getting similar results using the tripod already at your disposal.

Portraitist Miller Mobley is a successful photographer twice over. As a college student, he built a successful photography business in Tuscaloosa, AL, working for both local and regional clients. Later, he and his wife picked up their entire life and moved to New York City, where the now 24-year-old Mobley has managed to land all of his dream clients one after the other.

About a year ago, I was sitting around narcissistically Google-ing myself when I came across the photo above of "Robert C. Paetz + Mother". It was dated 1923 and was being sold for $12 by a man named Paul in Northern California.

I quickly did the math and figured it was my 93-year-old grandfather and my great-grandmother, Matilda (who eventually lived until 102 when I was 16).

The Curiosity Rover has been trekking the surface of Mars since late last year, and so far, there has been no shortage of great imagery.

But what gear is behind those intriguing images we see so frequently? NASA JPL has put together a short video on the camera equipment on board the Curiosity rover.

It appears that "wedding party running from _____" is at risk of becoming a meme among wedding photographers. After seeing that photo of a wedding party running from a T-Rex that went viral last month, photographers Danielle and Tony Lombardo of Little Blue Lemon decided to do their own remix.

A state-funded museum in Paris is drawing widespread criticism for a new exhibit of photos that show sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian suicide bombers.

It’s a stark divide. In front of me, a man snores softly among a pile of beer bottles, yet somehow manages to sit upright on the edge of a slab of broken cement, not far from the edge of the crumbling bridge I’m standing on. Just beyond the bridge and barely 30 feet below lies a line of townhouses; each easily sold for over half a million. They stand sentinel-like, crowding each other, overlooking an old, unused elevated railroad embankment. Between the snoring man and I lie old rails, overgrown grass, and gravel. To the east, Chicago’s downtown skyline towers over the flat Midwest expanse. Welcome to The Bloomingdale Trail.

Here's yet another reason why it's a bad idea to think reporters outfitted with cameras can replace actual photojournalists -- the reporters apparently are dumb enough to wander into an abandoned insane asylum full of zombies.

(The first thing a real photojournalist would do, of course is ask "Do I get paid mileage?" before refusing to take the gig.)

I feel stupid. I admit I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I have to use my index finger when figuring out clockwise vs. counter-clockwise; it wasn't until recently I found out that capers are the buds of a flower and not teeny tiny olives; and I made it all the way to my sophomore year in high school before discovering the name of the book is "Catcher in the Rye" and not "Catch HER in the Rye."

Rumors emerged earlier this week that Sony is planning to announce a followup to its popular RX100 large sensor compact camera by the end of this month. Those rumors got a huge boost in credibility today after pages from the camera's Japanese instruction manual were leaked onto the web.

Flip through the pages of any major magazine published in the last few years and it's likely you've seen a picture snapped by Martin Schoeller therein. The German-born award-winning photographer got off to a rough start upon moving to the United States in the early 1990s, only to find himself as an in-demand iconic picture taker today.

He's covered every major celebrity you can imagine with his trademark close-up portraiture and fashion photos alike (though, he admits fashion isn't quite his bag). From Paris Hilton to Barack Obama, Schoeller has worked with Hollywood's elite and America's most influential politicians. He's seen it all.

"Building Security Through Insecurity." That's the tagline of photographer Steve Rosenfield's "What I Be Project." Each portrait in the ongoing series is one in which the subject uses some text to reveal the issues and insecurities that he or she struggles with.

Sigma shook up the camera world back in April by announcing its new 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM lens -- the world's first zoom lens with a fixed maximum aperture of f/1.8. It turns out the revolutionary lens will have a revolutionary price tag as well: the company announced today that the lens will cost just $799.

Kibera is a division of Nairobi, Kenya, and as a rule, girls there don't have much of a shot at an education. Kenya is still very patriarchal, and if a family has both boys and girls, it's the boys who will be granted the opportunity to attend secondary school.

The Kibera Girls Soccer Academy (KGSA) is trying to fix that by providing girls in the area with a free secondary education, and photographer Jake Naughton has been fortunate enough to spend time there helping with the school and documenting its impact on the students who attend it.

Photographer Jared Polin recently had the opportunity to photograph the musician Macklemore in concert. Fortunately, instead of just shooting the three song set and moving on with his life, he brought his GoPro along to give interested photographers a taste of what it's like taking photos from the pit at a packed out concert.

He put the above video together afterwards, adding his own commentary to give us some perspective of what exactly was going through his head as he tried to line up the perfect shot.

Right after Google I/O wrapped up in May, we shared the news that Google's personal image search had just gotten a whole lot better. The tech giant claimed that you could now search through yours and your friends photos based on visual content, even if the photos themselves weren't labeled or tagged.

At the time, all we knew was that the system used "computer vision and machine learning" to detect subjects like "flowers," "food" or "car" and generate searchable tag data that makes your photos easier to find. Now, thanks to Google's Research blog, we're getting a bit more detail on the tech under the hood.

Remember New Mexico-based photographer Wes Naman and his hilarious (if a bit silly) portraits of people with their faces comically distorted using Scotch tape?

That photo series -- which was featured all over the Internet -- instantly went viral, but after a time, the question Naman started getting asked most often was "what's next?" His Rubber Band series is the answer to that question.

Here's a neat idea for those of you who know the benefit of using sandbags to keep your light stands from tipping over, but aren't sure if that benefit is worth the 13-30 dollars heavy-duty light stand sandbags will run you on Amazon. It's a DIY solution, and it comes to us courtesy of Tylordfilms.

In a warning published on its website, the UK's Dorset Wildlife Trust is attempting to educate bird photographers of the dangers posed by using birdsong apps to lure certain species in view of your lens.

For the first time since the mid nineties, the band Black Sabbath has released a new album. With Ozzy Osbourne back at the helm, the album 13 made landfall in Europe on the 7th and in the US on the 11th.

And gracing the cover of that album was a giant burning number thirteen designed by Zip Design and photographed by Jonathan Knowles. In this short video, we get a quick behind the scenes look at how that shoot came together.

We reported earlier today that Samsung's CEO recently said that his company's next "mirrorless" camera would be Android-powered, but that it wasn't clear whether it would actually be an interchangeable lens NX mirrorless camera or simply a point-and-shoot. Turns out it's the former.

Photographs of an upcoming Samsung Galaxy NX leaked onto the web today, confirming that Samsung will soon be launching an Android-powered mirrorless camera.

Once upon a time, in the days of old, when photographers still used those light sensitive plastic strips in the back of their large black cameras -- cameras with funny names like Hasselblad and Mamiya -- there were photography workshops. They are not a new invention. They've been around for a very long time. But, back in the days of film and cameras with odd names, these workshops were a little different.

Let's face it: sometimes when you take a picture of someone, they look downright unflattering. Maybe it's that monster pimple on their cheek. Or perhaps the cat got angry again and left some scratches to the forehead.

Lightricks Ltd. -- based out of Israel -- released the application earlier this year called Facetune, and it promises to help with retouching images taken on your mobile phone while you're on-the-go.