October 2013

If you're looking to make an argument for the inherent superiority of Western-style capitalism, consider how difficult it apparently is to find a competent Photoshop jockey in the Communist world.

The latest example comes from the Eastern provinces of China, where what was supposed to be a heartwarming record of regional officials honoring the elderly turned into an internationally recognized example of how not to doctor a photograph.

Google is planning on rolling wearable camera glasses out to the general public in the near future, so we may soon be hearing utterances of "okay glass" all around us as owners snap photos with voice control. If using your voice as a shutter isn't your thing, you might want to start waiting for the Neurocam. It's a crazy iPhone-based camera system that uses your brain waves to snap photos!

No doubt feeling pressure from certain other social media sites raking in the dough, Google announced Wednesday a slew of new features for Google+ intended to enhance the way users share, organize and tweak photos.

I'm a very accomplished photographer. My photos have been in magazines, newspapers, textbooks, blogs, online videos, television and any other medium that you can think of. My work has been seen by millions and will be one of the most important resources for the history of video games. The only catch is that I'm almost never credited and don't get paid for it.

Light painting is something that takes a lot of time and patience. Even after many trial and error attempts, nailing the exact look you're going for can be a challenge. pixelstick is a crazy new tool that aims to change all that, making mind-blowing light paintings something even artistically challenged photographers can create.

A basic description of it is: it's a stick-like device that lets you print digital images into long exposure photos.

For the photo above, titled "Dead Little Things," I wanted to create a scene out of strictly dollhouse supplies. Inspired by many of the weather events that have occurred in recent years: tornados in Joplin and Oklahoma City, Hurricane Sandy and even Katrina.

I was struck by the indelible photos of homes destroyed in various ways that almost make them look fake, a physical upending of one's life as defined by materialistic possessions.

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

Howdy y'all! Time for another major giveaway to thank you for reading PetaPixel! This week we're giving away a brand-spankin'-new Sony Alpha a7. It's a full frame mirrorless camera that packs a 24.3MP sensor, a 3-inch tilting LCD, and a 2.4M-dot electronic viewfinder. This prize is bundled with a 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, and has a price tag of $2,000!

I grew up without the Internet.

When I was young and starting out in the business, I had no Internet, although I did have a computer. It was an Apple IIe. I felt very fancy with it, kind of like Matthew Broderick in "War Games." To me, it was like a big expensive calculator because I only used it to run reports and for record keeping. When it came to photography and the running of a business, I had to obtain information from classes and teachers, and by doing research via those archaic inventions called "books" -- you might have heard of them.

If you want a daily dose of creativity and humor, start following the Instagram account (@cintascotch) of art director Javier Pérez. The Ecuador-based artist regularly posts simple and quirky photographs that consist of only a small object and a simple sketch.

Recently there’s been a fair bit of hullaballoo about these new cameras Fuji has been bringing out – the X-series. X100, X-Pro 1, XE-1 and most recently the X-M1 or something like that. All touted as great cameras – the perfect blend of retro styling and cutting edge sensor technology, paring away anything extraneous to the act of shooting.

The Fuji X series – peerless walk-around cameras that can be adapted for wedding work, editorial work heck, even commercial work. Photography bloggers whom I respect and admire all clambered over each other to shout the praises of these lightweight wonder-cameras. They could do no wrong on the digital camera review sites, and quickly developed a cult following which exploded into a massive fanbase. The Fuji X-series. Messianic.

Olympus is bringing the sleek design of its mirrorless cameras to the world of premium compacts. Yesterday it unveiled the new Stylus 1, a fixed-lens camera that borrows quite a bit of form from the company's popular OM-D line of cameras.

Here's an advanced tip for all you would-be stormchasers: Watch out for the water.

That seemingly obvious proposition apparently escaped a couple of British photographers in one of the better photobombs to emerge from Europe's not-quite-a-hurricane.

This week marks the one year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, the most devastating storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season and the second most costly hurricane in the history of the United States. To capture how far New York City has come since being pummeled by Sandy, resident photographer Natan Dvir decided to re-shoot photographs that he captured last year after the storm.

Kirk Crippens was inspired to take photographs by his grandfather. In 2010 he was Top 50 Photographer in Critical Mass and nominated for the Eureka Fellowship. In 2011 he was Top 50 photographer for the second consecutive year and participated in eighteen exhibitions. In 2012 he was AIR at RayKo. In 2013 he was AIR at Newspace in Portland, Oregon. He is in the MFA, Houston collection and was recently curated into an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

When it's time to buy new gear, we usually need to seek out options that offer the best bang for the buck. In the process of doing so, we're forced to suppress our deep desire for the gear that provides the loudest bang. We've rounded up of some highest-ticket items sold at B&H, so we could fantasize about clicking the Checkout button with the confidence of a newly-minted billionaire.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? But, depending upon your definition, this photograph, a team effort by 9 men, is the most honored picture in U. S. History. If you want to find out about it, read on. It’s an interesting tale about how people sometimes rise beyond all expectations.

Want to give your plain-looking camera a dash of color? Kapsones can help you do that. It's a new line of custom lens hoods -- the company describes them as "jewelry for your camera" -- that launched recently over in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

In the Iron Man movies, billionaire Tony Stark developed exoskeleton suits to gain superhero prowess, and refined every generation of his armor with slight upgrades. Up to Mk 7 of his suit, the changes had always been slight and incremental, and in many ways it is the same story with the Canon EOS 70D – the Mk 7 of a successful and evolving EOS DSLR line from the billion-dollar business.

So how does the new tech compare against the EOS 60D? Looking at the brochure it is like another version of the Volkswagen Golf – every generation gains more buttons and dials, more screens, more features, more efficiency and more speed.

A Bohemian-looking man stands in a picturesque Scottish glen. Wild grasses sway in the wind, green hills loom to either side and moody, dark clouds drift along above. The man takes in the scene and fiddles with a camera around his neck. We hear satisfying mechanical clicks as he sets the aperture and shutter speed.

The shot cuts to a wide view of the man in the landscape, and we see him lift the camera to his eye, although it is still obscured from view. Another satisfying snap as he trips the shutter, and the screen fades to black. Then a brief flash of the front of a lens, and the words "Pure Photography" in dainty, white lettering.

Wherever you stand on the idea of having children, one of the advantages seems to be the infinite photographic possibilities opened up by having a cute child at your disposal. Whether you're talking Photoshop trickery or just watching them grow up, we've seen plenty of creative and adorable photos and videos come out of the photographic parent/photogenic child relationship.

One incredibly creative example that is currently making the rounds on the Internet is mother and photographer Queenie Liao's series Wengenn in Wonderland.

If you're not familiar with the light painting photography of Darren Pearson then you're really missing out. Even if you're not a big fan of light painting, his work truly is something to behold -- whether it's his photos or the short skateboarder animation we shared with you at the beginning of the year.

But that skateboarder animation's got nothing on the video that Pearson released just a couple of days ago.

The Nikon full-frame teaser campaign continues with yet another video of the solitary Nikon user making his way across Scotland -- discovering himself as we slowly discover the rumored camera, supposedly called the Nikon DF.

In 2009, photographer Hannah Price made a cross-country move from Colorado to Philadelphia, and along with the inevitable change of scenery came a different, more surprising change: for the first time in her life she started having men catcall her on the street.

Being a photographer, she didn't react the same way most women might. Instead, she began turning her camera on these men, birthing the now-viral photo series City of Brotherly Love.

Well, we started the photography tips train rolling earlier today with four incredibly informative short interviews with portrait master Gregory Heisler, and what better way to follow that up than with some great tips from the sillier side of the photo industry: the folks over at DigitalRev.

A few days ago, we stumbled on a new set of short interviews with portrait photography master Gregory Heisler that cover everything from lighting, to relating with your subjects, to getting creative, to (and we know you're all interested in this one) getting hired.

A couple of weekends ago we shared a short Ray-Ban ad that demonstrated the concept of perspective anamorphosis in a sufficiently mind-blowing way. But if you thought that video was impressive, this Honda ad will probably leave you speechless.

"Look at me," he said. Complying, I turned in the man's direction. "Look me in the eyes!"... I tried to raise my eyes and look into his, but I couldn't. Actually, I couldn't look anyone in the eyes at that point, it felt weird and uncomfortable. That man... was my own older brother.

The holiday season is upon us, so it was perfect timing for photographer Oliver Blackwell and his wife Catherine to get in touch with us to tell us about their new ides/service GoldBug: an online store that sells beautiful classic SLRs made even more beautiful by plating them in 18 carat gold. And what's more, they're willing to plate yours if you send it in!

When it comes to images, Pinterest is a bit of a copyright nightmare. It's not unusual for people to pin photos without any information or attribution, which inevitably leads to others using or sharing the photo without permission.

Still, you have to give the company credit, it's trying to "wake up" so to speak. In addition to a deal struck up with Flickr last year, Pinterest has just announced a new arrangement with GettyImages, in which Pinterest will pay Getty so that images from the service might be given proper MetaData.

Whether or not the camera will live up to the hype, we won't know until we've gotten our hands on it. But if there's one thing Nikon is doing right regarding the soon-to-be-released retro-styled full-frame, it's building a crap load of hype.

We've already had one teaser trailer (which you can watch here), and now, Nikon has released another, this one giving us tantalizing split-second glances of the camera that we didn't see at all in the previous ad.