One month ago today, the Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera -- a camera that TIME's own Harry McCracken called "the greatest gadget of all time" -- celebrated its 41st birthday. When it came out it was absolutely revolutionary, and to get the word out, Polaroid put together a few ads to show off the instant shooter.
Art directors Andrew MacPhee and Bart Batchelor are intimately familiar with Getty Images' massive stock photo library. Over the course of their careers, they've had to dig through tens of thousands of photos to find ones that would do for whatever campaign they were working on.
But for every "right one" they found, there were hundreds of "wrong ones." And for every hundred "wrong ones" there were at least one or two that were downright hilariously absurd. It seemed only right that these ridiculous stock photos be shared with the world: thus was born Getty Critics.
In some cases, it seems like the stars align, the sea parts and the universe itself conspires to help you get the perfect shot. That's sort of what happened to photographer Richard Crawley when he attended a Rolling Stones concert in the 1970s and wound up with the most famous shot he would ever take.
Did you know that all of the properties in the Monopoly board game, from Baltic to Boardwalk, were named after real streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey? The names have been used since the 1930s, and a recent fit of curiosity mixed with nostalgia sent Nick Carr of Scouting NY out into the world to photograph these properties in real life.
There are many reasons why "photographer" and "photojournalist" ranked so low on last year's "best and worst jobs" list, but according to a paper released by The Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at Oxford University, the threat of computerization isn't one of them.
I've met a lot of bitter photographers over the years, especially as high-end cameras have become cheaper and more accessible. They complain that Photographer A gets more work than Photographer B even though Photographer B's work is clearly better; or that Photographer C doesn't get any work even though their work is the best of the three (Side Note: often times the photographer complaining IS Photographer C).
What these people don't realize is that, sadly, success often has little to do with talent and a lot more to do with personality. I don't mean that you have to be likable either, there are a ton of successful people that could easily be described as horrible human beings. What I mean is that you have to be motivated, unafraid and adventurous.
Back in July, Chinese electronics company OPPO confirmed that it was working on an "N-Lens" line of camera-centric devices that would be the "most important flagship series for OPPO going forward."
Well, the first of these devices has officially arrived, and although it is still more of a smartphone with a camera than a camera that can make calls, the phone packs some interesting features, including (according to OPPO) the world's first rotating smartphone camera.
Boy, is Kanye West going to feel like a wuss when he hears about this. Turns out that if you're really serious about putting paparazzi in their place, nothing short of homicide will do anymore.
At least that seems to be the way it works in Costa Rica, where three former bodyguards for supermodel Gisele Bundchen are on trial for attempted murder after they opened fire on a couple of uncooperative photographers.
For most photographers, names like "Yosemite" and "Yellowstone" likely conjure impeccably detailed images in the Ansel Adams tradition. San Francisco photographer Ashley Erin Somers, however, thinks there's something to be said for a more low-fi aesthetic.
She's started a project to photograph some of the biggest attractions in the National Park system with a homemade pinhole camera, with the end goal being to produce a fine-art photography book documenting her work.
Although the pixel war probably isn't ending anytime soon, a new sensor technology from Samsung shows how yet another company is focusing on improving the tech instead of stacking the spec sheet.
We've seen amazing low-light sensors and dual-pixel AF tech from Canon, organic sensors with insane dynamic range from Fuji and Panasonic, and now new ISOCELL technology from Samsung, which promises substantial increases in color and light sensitivity.
Sometimes photo projects take days. Sometimes they take months. In photographer and filmmaker Gioacchino Petronicce's case, his project "PICTURES" took years. Three years and 80,000 photos that eventually turned into the elegant cinematic stop motion video you see above.
It's one thing to swipe a photo and slap it on your website, and quite another to enter that stolen image into a high-profile photo contest passed off as your own work.
That is exactly what Mark Joseph Solis, a graduate student at the University of the Philippines, is discovering as he becomes a subject of international ridicule for winning several thousand dollars worth of prizes with a purloined portrait.
On June 7th, 2007, a Delta II rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California, carrying with it the Italian Thales Alenia-Space COSMO-SkyMed Satellite. And while the rocket was careening towards space, Staff Sgt. Eric Thompson (who was moving in the decidedly opposite direction) managed to snap this amazing photo.
High resolution, super slow-motion video is usually reserved for movie studios or individuals with very deep pockets. Once the frame rate capabilities reach into the thousands, the price range often hits the tens of thousands.
Two MIT-trained engineers are looking to change all that, and with their new edgertronic super slow motion camera, they've done just that.
This year I was presented with the unexpected opportunity to take a short trip to Afghanistan, and was able to take my camera gear with me. I had wanted to shoot portraits of deployed Marines being, well ... themselves for quite some time now.
So with about two weeks notice I was off to the sand box. Cameras, film and the closest thing to a darkroom I could pack into my luggage in tow.
In early August, the New York Times ran an article on New York City window cleaner Brent Weingard alongside some footage that showed the man scrubbing and squeegee-ing away at massive apartment windows in the West Village.
Thanks to the vertigo-inducing footage of Weingard strapped in ten stories up, the piece got a lot of attention, but one of the main questions the Times got after running it was "who was the daredevil behind the camera?" Thankfully, they've put together a BTS video in response.
Ever wonder why people in old paintings and photographs generally don't have smiles on their faces? We explored this subject a little back in November 2012, and found that reasons may have included technical limitations, oral hygiene, and the seriousness of formal occasions.
Over at the Public Domain Review, Nicholas Jeeves has written up an in-depth piece on this subject that comes to some different conclusions.
Photographer Daniel Shea recently penned an op/ed on sexism in editorial photography that generated an important discussion about women in photography. It is a topic that I've thought about for a while now, especially as it relates to the diversity (or lack thereof) of the photographers who are most often promoted by the industry at large, whether by the photo media or the companies that produce the equipment and gear that we all use.
Hyperlapse photography is an increasingly popular technique in which standard timelapse imagery is brought to life with camera movement. Rather than move the camera with a slider or with a crane, hyperlapse shots move the camera across very long distances.
19-year-old photographer Morten Rustad wanted to pass on some of the things he has learned about creating hyperlapses, so he created the helpful 9-minute-long video tutorial above. It's a great primer for anyone looking to get started with this type of photography.
North Webster, Indiana-based photographer and videographer Justin Fredrick Clark recently shared this awesome behind-the-scenes video showing how he and some other guys at his church built a rotating room for just $350 (granted, they already had access to some pretty serious equipment) for a creative work project.
These days, most photographers spend way more time staring at a computer screen than peering through a viewfinder. Despite this, we sure do spend a lot more talking about lenses and cameras than widescreen monitors. Perhaps that's because editing tends to be the far more tedious part of the job. With a little investment though, you can make those late nights pouring over the day's images just a little bit more comfortable.
Be careful when photographing sculptures for commercial purposes -- you could quickly find yourself on the losing end of a copyright infringement case and being forced to pay a lot of money.
This happened back in 2011, when photographer Mike Hipple was forced to pay up after shooting stock photos of a public art installation in Seattle. Now it has happened again: a court has ordered the United States Postal Service to pay a whopping $684,844 to sculptor Frank Gaylord for using a photograph of the Korean War Veterans Memorial on a stamp.
Love photo sharing but wish you could tell more of the story behind each photo as you share it? Shadow Puppet is a new app that's designed to help you do just that. Rather than simply sharing photos by themselves or with text captions, the app lets you share sets of photographs while narrating what the recipient is seeing.
Stock photography heavyweight Getty Images is in some hot water after being sued by a model over the use of her portrait in an HIV-positive advertisement.
I originally saw the National Beard and Mustache Championships in the local news paper in Vegas, where I currently live. I had missed the 2012 Championships by one day and it was only a mile or two from my studio, so I was kicking myself in the ass for the missed opportunity. I tracked down the person responsible for organizing the "The Championships" and he put me in touch with the producer for the event.
Last month, we reported on a rumor that Nikon's upcoming D610 DSLR will simply be a D600 clone that fixes the sensor speck issue that some owners grumbled about a while back. Now, a newly leaked set of camera specs seems to confirm that initial report.
Want to see some mind-blowing research into photography (from the mid-2000s)? Check out the video above about "Dual Photography," a Stanford-developed technique that allows you to virtually swap the locations of a camera and a projector, allowing you to take pictures from the perspective of the light source instead of the camera sensor.
Any professional photographer who's been working long enough has experienced the humiliation of missing the big shot, so it wasn't that big a story when two sports photographers missed Ichiro Suzuki's landmark 4,000th base hit at a recent New York Yankees game.
It's what happened afterward, when USA Today Sports Images photographer Debby Wong passed off a photo of another Suzuki swing as the iconic moment, that turned the incident into a significant photojournalism ethics fail.
Collecting vintage equipment isn't an uncommon hobby among photography and camera enthusiasts, but it is one that has apparently gotten one Ukrainian man in trouble with the law. A well-known collector and dealer named Alexandr Komarov (seen above) was recently arrested for possessing decades-old Soviet spy cameras, and now faces up to 7 years in prison for the offense.
Nothing makes a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, or in this case, a baked potato, look more warm and appetizing than a beautiful cloud of steam. Immediately, your taste buds think of a hot, comforting meal, and your nose can almost sniff the fresh-from-the-oven smell.