February 2014

If you've ever dreamed of being published in National Geographic -- and let's be honest, a good number of us have fantasized about that career path -- then you're going to want to pay special attention to the short video above.

At the request of Nat Geo photographer and burn magazine editor David Alan Harvey, Nat Geo photo editor Susan Welchman gives you some concise advice on what she's looking for from her photographers.

The Obama Administration is yet again making headlines thanks to its 'closed-door' policy when it comes to anyone other than official White House photographer Pete Souza getting time to photograph the President.

This time the controversy revolves around President Obama's meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a meeting with far-reaching political implications that everyone but Mr. Souza was yet again shut out of.

This is just plain beautiful, no matter which way you slice it. Using the magic of time-lapse photography and microscopy, Vyacheslav Ivanov captured the formation of those ice crystals we call snowflakes that caused so much grief in the northeastern US over the past several weeks.

Riding in the Goodyear Blimp might not be a lifelong dream for everybody, but it was for photographer Dan Marker-Moore, and it's now one he can cross off his bucket list. Last week, he got to ride in (and even fly!) the blimp, capturing video and photos that he graciously sent our way to share with all of you.

Here's a video from back in 2012 that shows a basic GoPro video stabilization tip you might not have heard of yet. Put together by Mitch Bergsma of MicBergsma Productions, it shows you how holding your GoPro against your face will lead to more stable footage.

There's a reason the retro movement has such staunch supporters, and it's not just because there are a lot of people with ironic facial hair intent on buying a camera that looks as old as possible. The old cameras were at once functional and beautiful, or at the very least beautiful, and an industry that prides itself on appreciating beauty can't help but appreciate the beauty of their tools.

Treasured Cameras is a short photo series by photographer Julian Calverley that celebrates this aesthetic beauty in an ironic way: by taking portraits of vintage cameras using an iPhone.

If you're in the market to purchase a new full-frame camera from Canon, but aren't sure whether to go with the 6D or 5DMIII, the folks over at DSLR Video Shooter have created the above video to help you compare and contrast the two offerings from Canon and decide if the 5D is going to be worth the extra dinero for you.

Apparently the newest, coolest way to show off your new camera is by sending it up with some professional skydivers and telling them to have at it. Okay, maybe it's too early to spot a trend, but Nikon did recently decide to follow in Sony's footsteps and send a couple of D5300s up with a pro skydive photographer to show them off.

Yesterday, Adobe released the Adobe Camera Raw 8.4 release candidate for both Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC. Full of the usual updates in terms of new camera systems and lens support, as well as a few other notable features, it's another step in the right direction for Adobe as they strive to remain on top.

Simeon Quarrie of Vivida is back at it again, giving us a behind the scenes look at yet another of his equal parts intricate and subtle pre-wedding (read: engagement) shoots, Released by Love.

If you walk into the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center right now, you'll very quickly find your jaw on the floor alongside the reason for its gaping state. Stretched across the entire promenade of the theatre is a large-scale photo installation that has well-dressed ballet-goers so enthralled they're laying down on the floor, striking poses and climbing up several flights of stairs to get a better view of the massive photograph.

While it's not often a patent filing for new lenses can make your jaw drop, it's certainly not out of the question, as Olympus is demonstrating with two particular pieces of glass in their latest patent filings published February 20th.

While planning to originally write up an article about an infographic sent to Nikon Rumors that showed every camera created by Nikon from 1948 to 2005, we came across an even more thorough collection of Nikon cameras in the form of a poster, created by none other than Nikon itself.

We're unfortunately accustomed to bad news in the photo industry. That's not to say there's not great news and exciting new products and a bright future ahead, all of those things are there too, but slumping sales and discontinued products are becoming all-too-common reports.

Case in point: it seems flash trigger king PocketWizard is struggling of late, with reports claiming that the company has had to lay off as many as 20 of its 50 employees due to low sales figures and increasing competition out of China.

Have you ever accidentally deleted or lost a folder full of master images in Lightroom? If you have a backup you should be okay, but even backups fail, and what then? Are you really out of luck? Are those images gone forever? Maybe not.

The folks over at PDN recently sat down with National Press Photographers Association attorney Mickey Osterreicher to talk about photographers' rights, police intimidation and how to handle yourself around cops who don't understand what you are and are not allowed to photograph.

Here's an interesting video that offers a perspective we don't often get on the whole "anti-Photoshop," "what really is 'Beauty'" debate. In this short interview, former supermodel Paulina Porizkova gives her take on an industry she left behind in the mid-nineties.

Controversy over the World Press Photo organization and the way they handle their judging aside, most people were in agreement that photographer John Stanmeyer deserved the award he received this year. In the above video, the World Press Photo winner shares some insight as to how his widely-praised photograph came to be.

I’ve not long been back from a trip which took myself and my family back to the UK via a few other places, this wasn’t a photography trip but I’ve included a few of my favourite images picked up along the way. The are more images along with a more extensive write-up on my blog here -- The Reluctant Tourist.

DIRE Studio has released an application for photographers and cinematographers alike that they've aptly named Mark II Artist's Viewfinder.

Reddit user Nasdaf created this moving composite photograph using images of Kiev's Independence Square captured before and after the havoc wreaked by violent clashes between the government and protesters.

Editor's Note: This video is a tiny bit NSFW. All nudity has been censored, but the models are at times very scantily clad so you may want to wait until you're at home to watch it.

While The Body Issue of ESPN Magazine usually keeps the focus on bodies in a sporty sense, Fiat wanted to make an impression in its advertising pages as well.

It seems as though with each passing day the eagerly anticipated and highly touted Fujifilm X-T1 is garnering more and more attention. We've already shared The Camera Store's thoughts after they got some hands-on time with it, and today it's our favorite face from DigitalRev, Kai, taking the X-T1 for a spin.

Human photographers aren't the only ones dragging their cameras to every corner of the globe in search of the decisive moment. As it turns out, a little LEGO man spent a year doing the same thing as part of life-sized human photographer Andrew Whyte's fun 'The Legographer' series.

When the Samsung NX30 and Galaxy Camera 2 rang in the New Year as some of the first major announcements of 2014, Samsung declined to reveal detailed pricing or availability info for either shooter. Today, that changes, and one of the cameras is already ready to ship.

A couple of days ago, National Geographic released this fascinating look inside the magazine's vintage photo archive and introduced us to the dedicated man who runs the whole thing, Bill Bonner.

Each year, the breakdown of gear usage statistics by some of the largest news agencies and associations makes itself public; and this year is no exception, thanks to this infographic provided by hastalosmegapixeles.

Looking through the infographic, we get a great look at what gear the press photography pros prefer when they're out in the field shooting World Press Photo award-winners.

Actual 3D footage can be a pain, both to capture and to watch, which is why we fell in love with this super simple technique when we ran across it. It turns out, all you have to do to turn a normal photo or animated GIF into a 3D experience is add a couple of white bars...

If the idea hadn't been around for so long, we'd call 'In My Bag' type websites the flavor of the month. First there was InMyBag, which we shared with you at the beginning of last week, and now we have ShotKit, the latest 'in my bag' site turning heads online.

As was inevitable, the more common and generic top level domains (e.g. .com, .net, and even .co) are becoming scarce as more and more domains are registered each day.

Knowing this moment in time would come, ICANN, the authority in charge of managing domain names, has been putting out more and more top level domains in hopes of opening up more options for those looking to grab their own piece of the web -- and photographers are benefiting more directly than most.

Don't expect Canon to come out with any retro-styled cameras. According to a brochure on the design process that went into the recently released Canon G1 X Mark II, the company prefers function to form, which is why it has 'kept its distance' from the retro design movement.

Not all of the women in this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue are made of plastic, and yet the unique Barbie swimsuit shots we told you about a few days back will STILL play second fiddle to a much cooler photo shoot of model and actress Kate Upton... scantily clad... floating around in actual zero gravity.

Alright, the rumor sites are giving this another shot. After getting the announcement date wrong the first time -- it seems that February 11th event was not related to the D4s at all -- Nikon Rumors is confidently reporting that the camera will get its official announcement on February 25th.

Earlier this month, storm Petra battered parts of the French and British coast only days after another storm had smashed its way through the area. And while powerful winds and massive waves were tearing into the French coast, photographer Philip Plisson was in a helicopter capturing the action from a bird's eye view.

Want to know what it takes to photograph the Olympic Games these days? Well, according to Jeff Cable it takes the kind of speed that most photographers can only dream of, because when it comes to the Internet age, people want their photos and they want them NOW.

Buckle up, because this is a copyright battle that has hit rock bottom and started digging with gusto. How much gusto? Lets just say that the he-said-she-said nature of this ferocious back-and-forth between a photographer and a magazine that used her photo without permission makes the whole Color Run debacle look tame.

Sea creatures are out to get your cameras. Don't believe us? Well the evidence is overwhelmingly in our favor. Sharks, crabs and manta rays have all tried to snatch photography equipment from unsuspecting camera men and women in the past, and this video shows that octopuses (octopi? moosen?) are trying to get in on the action as well.

Getting your own commercial camera slider can get a bit pricey, but thanks to Derek Mellott and this great Instructables tutorial, you can build your very own DIY slider in about an hour using only $30 worth of parts from IKEA and a bit of DIY know-how!

Tragedies happen. We weep. We grieve. And then, life moves on. I suppose it’s good that it stands still …

John Stanmeyer of VII won the World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday with this magnificent image of migrants in Djibouti trying to get a cheaper cell phone signal from neighboring Somalia.

It looks like a movie poster, but not for the reasons that I complained about last year.

Don't you just hate it when you spend several thousand dollars on a dressed up Sony RX100 (Mark I) or NEX-7 with a Hasselblad logo on it, only to find yourself carrying it around in the same cheap camera bag as that guy down the street who bought the Sony version?

Well fear not, dear citizen of the luxury world, because Louis Vuitton is here to help! Introducing: the $3,500 Louis V camera bag for small and medium-sized cameras.

New York-based photographer Alex John Beck began his series Both Sides Of in order to explore two beliefs. First, that perfectly symmetrical faces are the most beautiful. And second, that one face is representative of one character.

The final photographs, displayed as pairs of symmetrical portraits that show what the subject would look like if you simply mirrored their left or right sides, seem to indicate that neither of these beliefs holds true.

We first introduced you to scientist and photographer Zachary Copfer's 'bacteriographs' back in 2012. A technique that he invented and, as far as we know, only he uses, Bacteriography uses the subject's own bacteria to 'grow' a portrait of them on a petri dish.

Earlier this month, Copfer brought his signature technique to the UK for the first time ever in order to photograph several British celebrities at the UK's Big Bang Fair.

If you're just getting into studio photography, trying to figure out how to light, shoot and set up your shots can be both frustrating and expensive. After all, if you're trying to take high-quality studio shots, you need high end strobes and all sorts of other gear, right?

Maybe not. Of course high end equipment helps, but in the video above, photographer Alex Koloskov of Photigy shows you how you can light studio still life shots using a few $30 dimmable LED bulbs instead of strobes.

When we say 'night vision' camera, what sort of image does that bring to mind? Probably something green, or maybe grey if you're into IR, but definitely not 720p footage shot in full color. Well, that may change soon if the newly announced Falcon Eye KC-2000 night vision camera delivers on its promises.

World Press Photo 2014 jury chair Gary Knight has said that many of this year's entries into the contest were "missing something" -- and there's quite a bit of controversy surrounding the contest -- but he doesn't want that to take away from your opinion of the winning photographs.

To that end, World Press Photo has released the video above in which Knight talks about several of the winning entries and why the jury picked them to take home first (and in one case second) prize.

DxOMark has already had a chance to put the exciting new Tamron 150-600mm super telephoto lens through its paces, and the results might surprise you. At a fraction of the cost, it actually OUTPERFORMS pricier (and not as far-reaching) Canon glass when mounted on full-frame systems.

If we had to name the most exciting camera of 2014 thus far, Fuji's X-T1 would probably get the nod (although the Sony a6000 is no slouch). Some call it the Nikon Df done right, others are saying it's the camera that will finally take the X-Series mainstream, but general opinion about this camera seems to be very good.

There's only one problem... many of those opinions come from people who haven't had a chance to use it yet. And since a spec sheet and press release can only say so much, The Camera Store and photographer Nick Devlin decided to go hands-on and take you in the field with this exciting new shooter.

Here's something that'll help you start off the week with a grin (or a grimace, if you harbor an aversion to beards). Will it Beard is a fun photo experiment of sorts created by art director Pierce Thiot and his photographer wife Stacy Thiot.

They wanted to determine what household items 'will beard' -- meaning what random objects they could successfully pack into Mr. Thiot's beard -- and got a fun, viral photo series for their troubles.

Michael Shainblum captured this perfectly timed (call it luck if you want, but luck favors the prepared, so we're going with perfectly timed) shot of lightning striking the Burj Khalifa during a storm on Wednesday of last week.