August 2013

Got a few dozen spare DSLRs and fistful of startup capital? Then you, too, could get into the emerging field of 3D selfies, as pioneered by Texas photo studio Captured Dimensions.

I admit that I am an Instagram Junkie. To paraphrase that classic SNL line: "I got a fever and the only prescription is MORE INSTAGRAM." It's not that I really enjoy sharing images of my dog and what I had for dinner, it's more that I love looking at the uploads of those I follow. Following celebrities is a lot of fun, as you get to see a glimpse inside their world. What are they thinking? Where are they going? What are they doing? …

Photographs may have become depressingly common in your world, but there are still vast chunks of the globe where images are rare and powerful. A new charity is hoping to fill some of that void by offering portrait sessions and prints in impoverished areas, funded by the sale of prints by noted photographers.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner has been announced at the end of this post.

Chances are you may, at some point or another, have seen New York-based photographer Zhang Jingna's work in your daily lives. Her work has appeared in Photo Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar print media, and her commercial clients include popular that include: Wacom, TRESemmé, Mercedes-Benz, and even Canon.

The third EF-M lens – finally! The Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM is an important lens for Canon. Since the launch of the EOS M, Canon has been trying to quell the dissatisfaction of consumers who lament about the lens selection, which until recently has been limited to the EF-M 18-55mm and EF-M 22mm.

Ever since June of 2011, NASA has had cause to retire the photographic equipment it used to capture shuttle launches because, well, they don't plan on launching any more shuttles. But before that decision was made, it looks like NASA was finally giving digital photographic equipment a chance to oust the analog cameras they had always used in the past.

It’s incredible how Pinterest has taken the wedding industry by storm. My husband and I have always been, and still are, big supporters of Pinterest. It has been such an incredible tool for our business and has helped so many brides find our work. It can be a great place for brides to gather wedding ideas, color schemes, flowers they love, etc. It wasn’t until recently though, have we started seeing the negative affects of Pinterest on wedding photography.

Over the years, photojournalist Anthony S. Karen has gained access to some of the most secretive groups in the world. From Skinheads, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to the Vodou societies of NYC and Haiti, he prides himself on earning his elusive subjects' trust, and a candid look into their lives along with it.

“Ya wanna see Edgerton’s lab?” …

David Brandford became a cab driver in 1990, and immediately picked up a camera when he realized he now had a front-row seat to life in New York City. Since then, he's not been able to stop taking pictures and capturing the city he loves.

Most of us can agree that having a toddler is a lot less fun than being one, but photographing one... well that can fall closer to the latter given the right circumstances. For photographers April Maciborka and David Wile, the right circumstances were just a lemon slice and a cute reaction away.

There was a time in the mid to late 90s when Nirvana was all the rage, people wore too much flannel, and the design world was pre-occupied with “grunge.” Ironically, the proliferation of digital design via Aldus Pagemaker led to a decidedly analog look that was epitomized by David Carson’s Ray Gun magazine – a vehement statement against clarity, cleanliness and legibility. Carson even went so far as to lay out an entire magazine piece in Zapf Dingbats because it was “just a really …

In my experience there seems to be a common misconception that shooting production photography and behind the scenes videos/documentaries are an easy task. While it's true that these sometimes don't require the normal spit and polish, photographers are used to, especially in terms of video work, I can assure you they're no walk in the park.

They're some of the most dramatic photographic documents of air combat in World War I, showing planes diving at each other, crashing in flames and pilots ejecting. And they're all completely bogus.

When the term model is thrown around, there's a fairly typical image that probably comes to mind for most people. In the male department, six-pack abs or a clean-cut look might fit the bill. And the female department more often than not involves the descriptors tall and slender.

Early last month, just days after Carl Zeiss rebranded itself simply as "ZEISS," Pentax Ricoh announced that it would be dropping the Pentax from its name, reverting the "Pentax" name to brand status. Now that people have had a month to let that news sink in, Ricoh is making the first major post-name-change alterations by rebranding the Pentax websites and social network accounts.

Earlier this month, we showed you how some astrophotographers were turning their standard DSLRs monochrome by physically scratching the color filter array off of their sensor in order to get sharper black-and-white photos.

In yet another triumph for the "Look, it moves!" school of photography, supermodel Tyra Banks has signed on as a supporter of cinemagraph maker Flixel Photos.

Smartphones might be bludgeoning the point-and-shoot market, and wearable computers like Google Glass may someday return the favor, but there's a new gadget picking up steam that could help the smartphone retain superiority. We're talking about the smartwatch, and if the new Hyetis Crossbow is any indication, smartwatches aren't playing around when it comes to photography.

With the college football season winding down, I had the assignment of covering the last Texas A&M home game. The last game I was available to shoot was the second to last home game against Sam Houston State University. This game was just a week after A&M upset the Alabama Roll Tide in Alabama, and Johnny Manziel was instantly catapulted into the rare position of becoming a freshman Heisman finalist.

Want a "complete set" of Nikon DSLR equipment without having to buy each of the lenses individually? The Japanese camera shop Map Camera is offering a sale on a massive Nikon kit containing a Nikon D4 and 20 different Nikkor N lenses. All you need is $82,700.

“Don’t forget, Eric: there is a story in your backyard.” This is the advice David Alan Harvey gave me while reviewing my portfolio of travel images during a 2011 Magnum Photos Workshop I attended in Toronto.

A Miami man is in jail after allegedly killing his wife, then confessing to the crime and posting a grisly image of the body on Facebook.

I took this picture with one of five remote-controlled cameras I’d set up by the side of the track to capture the race winner from various angles and perspectives. Of course, I didn’t know for sure who’d win, but when I was setting up the gear it seemed like a fair bet to focus on Usain Bolt’s lane!

There's been a lot of doubt surrounding recent rumors that Sony is working on a couple of revolutionary "lens cameras." The smartphone-attachable lenses -- complete with built-in sensor and processor -- seemed far-fetched to some, but now that we have our first leaked images, any remaining doubts should start melting away.

As a photographer, you will sooner or later bump into the phrase "the decisive moment". The decisive moment is a concept made popular by the street photographer, photojournalist, and Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. The decisive moment refers to capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.

Ever since Lytro caused a stir by releasing the world's first consumer light field camera almost two years ago, the company has been somewhat quiet. With the exception of a few updates in November of last year and an iOS app released a couple of months ago, most of the stories we've covered with "Lytro" in the title had to do with competitors working on Lytro-like features. All of that is about to change, however, in 2014.

Have an afternoon to kill at a public library and want to go directly to the photography section? Just remember the magical number 770.

Although it shares a name with a certain state about 90-miles east of where I live, the country of Georgia couldn't be more different in every other way. The mountainous 26,216 square mile country is packed with gorgeous sights that range from Black Sea beaches to gorgeous mountain ranges.

After Toronto-based artist Kyle Clements put together his popular D600 sensor dust time-lapse, he began receiving many questions about how his new camera stacked up against the D70 he used up until that point.

You probably wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I belong to a gym.

Yep, it happened. It really did...

Heather Champ is a well-known personality in the online photo community. For almost 5 years she served as Director of Community at Flickr, after which she co-founded JPG Magazine with her husband Derek Powazek. Now she's embarked on her next adventure: a weekly email newsletter dubbed "Favorites."

At the beginning of the year, the Fraenkel Gallery debuted an exhibition and book that approached photography from an interesting angle: the exhibit focused exclusively on "that which cannot be photographed." …

When legendary director Orson Welles of "Citizen Kane" fame was all of 23 years old, he made his first movie meant to be seen by a paying public. Dubbed "Too Much Johnson," the silent slapstick comedy was to be shown in three parts, one before each act of a Welles' adaptation of the 1894 play by William Gillette.

Like many great photographers of the past, Domenic Quartuccio is not a household name. Although some of his photographs appear in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York City, and he was at one point working at some of the most successful studios in the world, his successful career played out quietly within the city of New York.

When you think of New York City, the places that come to mind most likely revolve around Midtown Manhattan. The Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center, Times Square and more all fall within the boundaries of Midtown.

The idea that Canon would take the leap into medium format has been tossed around as both rumor and joke. Last August, we were told to expect a Canon Medium Format DSLR at Photokina -- obviously that rumor didn't pan out. Eight months later, photographer Krik Tuck made an April Fools announcement along the same lines.

French photographer Stephane Vetter is a master of capturing gorgeous photos of landscapes at night. One of his favorite things to shoot are the northern lights (AKA aurora borealis) over Iceland, so many of his long exposure photographs show greenish glows illuminating the sky above.

In 1938, after many prototypes, the first 8x11mm subminiature camera was brought to market by German inventor Walter Zapp. It was called the Minox Riga, and the tiny camera actually saw espionage action in both WWII and the Cold War.

I'm serious, they don't. They don't know that they don't, but they don't. If you grab a co-workers iPhone and they have 2500 photos on the camera roll, then you know they don't. They'll just keep taking photos and assume "the cloud" or whatever is backing it up.

There is no shortage of apps available to you if you'd like to create a photo book on your smartphone or tablet computer (apps like Mosaic immediately come to mind). But one of the big guys just entered the market.

Getting quality astrophotography shots comes with several challenges, and one of the main ones is that the starts don't stand still -- or, more accurately, we don't. Since the Earth enjoys spinning on its axis once every 24-hours or so, exposures in excess of about 1 second begin producing star trails unless you have the camera or telescope on some sort of tracking mount.

It's the weekend, which means we get to share something silly with you to help you either forget about last week, put off thinking about next week, or both.

New Jersey native and fine art photographer Michael Massaia suffers from insomnia. And so, when he first heard the term "seeing the black dog" in relation to the hallucinations truckers see when they're sleep deprived, the idea for a photo series by the same name immediately took shape.

Next time you're in a big corporate meeting, particularly one that concerns impending layoffs at the company, it might be a good idea to keep your camera in your pocket. That's the lesson Patch Creative Director Abel Lenz learned yesterday when he was unceremoniously given the boot while about 1,000 of his coworkers listened in on a conference call.

The San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is one of the world's 30 busiest airports. The "gateway to the Pacific," as it is sometimes called, handled over 44 million passengers last year alone, and it was even the subject of its own short-lived television series back in the 1970s.

Want to snap a memorable bridal photo? Just have her pose on the side of a mountain, and then capture a double rainbow in the background. That's what Alaskan wedding photographer Josh Martinez did yesterday, resulting in the incredible image above.

Iconic artist Andy Warhol is a legend in the arts community. The Andy Warhol Museum -- which contains a massive archive of his creations -- is actually the largest US museum dedicated to a single artist.