March 2014

Looking back at photography from the past is always an incredible experience, and this beautiful collection of color images from the early parts of the 20th century in Russia is no exception.

It's been over a year since the last Sony A-Mount camera was announced, but it looks like that dry spell may be over soon. According to the ever-reliable sonyalpharumors, a successor to Sony's A77 SLT is on the way, and it's going to pack some serious speed.

Another of the photographers who had been bravely providing coverage from the front lines of the Syrian conflict lost his life on Sunday when a Syrian air strike dropped a barrel bomb on a rebel-held area of Aleppo.

Editor's Note: The video below contains strong imagery. None of it is NSFW per se, but it might not be suitable for all viewers.

March 8th was International Women's Day, and although Google Glass will no doubt be used in the future to document many a wonderful celebration on this day, this year it was instead used to send a strong, shocking message about domestic violence.

Pricing and availability information for the Panasonic GH4 are official now, and unsurprisingly, the 4K mirrorless system won't come cheap. In fact, it'll cost you as much to buy this shooter as it will to get the full frame Sony A7.

Tonight, at 9pm EST, more than 70 nations will broadcast the first episode in the 13-part remake of the show Cosmos. It will be the biggest launch ever for a global TV series.

But before Neil deGrasse Tyson takes over for the iconic Carl Sagan, explaining and enchanting a whole new generation by sharing the wonders of the our universe, NASA wants to get you excited in its own way.

Just like the agency did ahead of the Oscars, the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account has just uploaded a stunning set of 43 images that will hopefully inspire a bit of awe and get you that much more excited for tonight's premier.

Nokia recently teamed up with light painting photographer Ian Hobson to prove to the world that a smartphone as advanced as the 1020 was capable of capturing awesome light painting shots. The resulting video is part tutorial, part inspirational, part Nokia ad -- and if you can ignore the last part, the first two make it well worth a couple minutes of your time.

With 98% of mobile malware being directed towards the Android operating system, it's no surprise that the Google Play Store contains more than a few insidious applications that intend to do you harm.

The most recent of these to make headlines is an app uncovered by AVAST, which hides behind the thin facade of a night vision camera app and does its best to empty out your wallet.

The MōVI freefly systems are very expensive, there's no denying that. But when you see this behind the scenes video and the footage that the Red Bull Media House was able to capture with it while the camera man launched off massive jumps and flew through the air on skis, you'll never wonder whether or not it's worth it again.

Since its conception almost five years ago, Instagram has single-handedly changed the way individuals and companies represent themselves and interact with clients. Knowing this, and apparently feeling generous, they recently put together five tips for more successful marketing on Instagram that photographers might do well to take note of -- after all, build a solid enough following and you might make $15,000 overnight selling prints...

What's churning away in the rumor mills regarding Nikon? According to Nikon Rumors, it's the impending announcement of the Nikon 1 V3, the 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 PD VR lens, the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR zoom, and a new Nikon 1-series light that may very well be one of the prototype LED lights Nikon revealed at PhotoPlus.

The anti-Photoshop movement is serious business. Videos that demonstrate what the liquify tool and an overzealous retoucher can do …

Where do you draw the line between pornography and artistic nudity? Well, if you don't already know you'll have to figure it out fairly soon if you're part of the small percentage of people using Vine to post sexually explicit material.

Still think Instagram isn't for you? If you're a professional photographer, you might want to reconsider, because there's some serious marketing potential there among the poorly exposed sunset pics and photos of cats lounging in strange places.

Brooklyn-based photographer Daniel Arnold all but proved this a couple of days ago when he made over $15,000 selling prints over Instagram in a single day.

Every so often, something comes across our desks that makes us do a bit of a double-take. This was one of those moments.

What you see above is a building shaped like a compact camera. What is the building used for? That's where it gets interesting. It's not a camera store or an electronics repair shop, it's a public restroom... seriously.

One of the most exciting things about Sony's new A6000 is the crazy-fast AF system that's been built in. At just 0.06 seconds of lag, the A6000 claims the title of 'world's fastest AF' and blows most mirrorless cameras and APS-C DSLRs out of the water.

But if you're like us, you're not satisfied with knowing THAT it's fast... you want the WHY and the HOW as well. Fortunately, Sony has just released an episode of LearnTV that answers this question for you, and teaches you a few things about the different types of AF systems while it's at it.

We started off the day with some good news for drone photographers (and Amazon), and so we thought we'd send you off into the weekend with some spectacular drone footage.

There are many ways to remove color casts from your images in Photoshop, but this tutorial by photographer and retoucher Michael Woloszynowicz offers one of the quickest, easiest and most effective methods we've seen.

The past few days seem to be filling up with more and more stock photography drama. From the announcement of Getty's new embedding tool to 500px Prime's change in payment, things keep getting more and more confusing. Well, to add to this confusion, we have yet another piece of news, this time from iStock... a company owned by none other than Getty.

Early adopters of the Sony A7 and A7r full-frame mirrorless cameras will be happy to know that Sony has a big firmware update coming their way that will address several of the issues users have brought up.

There's nothing like a Hubble Space Telescope image to break up all of the law and stock photography-related news (and there has been a LOT in the last 24 hours). Then again, this video and image aren't the most peaceful NASA has ever released, given they show a galaxy tearing itself apart as it hurtles through a particularly harsh part of our universe.

When 500px announced that it was introducing its own photo licensing feature, 500px Prime, the company received a lot of backlash from photographers who thought a 30% cut was far too little.

Well, it looks like 500px was listening. Because Prime went live yesterday with a significantly more favorable payment breakdown.

One of the judges of the National Transportation Safety Board (the NTSB) ruled yesterday that the FAA has no authority to regulate drones, striking down a six-year-old ban on commercial drones and saving a Swiss drone operator $10,000 that the FAA was trying to fine him.

They say that the DSLR’s better days are behind it, but it’s still the choice for most working pros. Rapid advances on point and shoots, ILCs (mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras) and smart phones have left the DSLR looking like the camera of yesteryear, so here are a few features we think every DSLR should have now.

Last year, TIME teamed up with Portland-based software company GigaPan to create something special: a 360-degree panorama from the top of the Freedom Tower (aka. The One World Trade Center). The image was supposed to represent "the rebirth and healing of Lower Manhattan," and above we have an inside look at how it came together.

Well that was fast. Only a day after news broke of the controversial Massachusetts ruling that 'upskirt' photographs were in fact legal according to the states Peeping Tom laws, the state's legislature has responded by passing a ban.

Update: It looks like it's already been fixed. Kudos to Getty for the quick response.

Getty's embed tool has been live for less than 24 hours and ALREADY somebody has figured out how it can be taken advantage of. It turns out that all it takes is some extremely simple code to remove attribution entirely.

The rebranding war continues, but to Leica's credit, the next camera they're supposedly releasing on April 24th actually has people excited. It seems a brand new Leica mirrorless system is on the way, although this one will be a Panasonic in Leica clothing.

With the rise in popularity and drop in price of high speed cameras, more and more incredible footage is getting captured of events our human brain would otherwise be unable to see in such detail.

And today, we have yet another one of those events, the protagonist being a Goshawk and the victim being a water balloon baited with a piece of the soon-to-be-dinner that, we'll be honest, never stood a chance.

So Getty Images has made some waves with the announcement of its embedding "feature" to allow non-commercial use of their images without a watermark.  This move is bound to kick off some interesting discussions on the state of photography in a digital sharing age.

The relatively new Sony A7 and A7r are in the news again, only this time it's not for a good reason. It seems a good number of users are experiencing light leak issues, so many that Sony has actually come out and officially admitted there is a problem and a fix is in the works.

The saying goes, "your cell phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launched a bird into pigs."

Thankfully, in addition to launching furious balls of feathers into evil swine, we also use our phones for taking photographs. And just as our phones have more computing power than all of NASA in 1969, our phones also have better imaging capabilities than many of the astrophotography endeavors of the past.

Light painter Jason D. Page recently got in touch to show us an impressive series three years in the making that he has just completed. It's called 'Icons,' and it features a set of psychedelic light portraits Page calls 'Light Prints' that are done entirely in-camera.

Almost a year after Zack Arias first announced that he was working on an educational project called DEDPXL (pronounced dead pixel), the project has gone live on the web and is ready for you take a look at.

According to Photo Rumors, one of their readers spoke to a Sigma rep at the Photography Show in Birmingham and was told that the much-anticipated 50mm f/1.4 Art series lens will make landfall in about two months time.

In what is quite possibly the creepiest photo-related ruling we've ever run across, the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston has ruled that 'upskirt' photographs taken in public by sneaky perverts are actually 100% legal.

Last night, Getty Images made a huge announcement that could forever change the way high quality images are shared on the Internet. Like Flickr before it, Getty is introducing an embed feature, essentially creating an "easy, legal, and free" way for people to share the majority of the agency's images in a non-commercial context.

Update: The original version of this post quoted a flight attendant in the intro, when it was in fact the author's girlfriend who made the remark that he was annoying people. This was an editorial mistake on our part, and has been fixed.

"The sound of your shutter clicking is annoying the people around you." said my girlfriend, sitting next to me. "I know," I replied "I don't care at the moment, I'm shooting some crazy unique footage!"

Last week I was lucky enough to shoot the world's first sunset hyperlapse sequence from an airplane, here's how I did it.

Although there was plenty to be happy about for us photographers last year, 2013 was statistically a very bad year when it comes to camera sales. And now, thanks to an infographic and accompanying video put together by LensVid, we get to look back and find out exactly why that is.

No matter how long you've been shooting or what level you're at in your photography endeavors, there will always be those moments where you walk away from a shoot unsatisfied with how some of the images turned out. It happens to the best of us.

Thankfully, photographer and retoucher Glyn Dewis has created a great tutorial that shows you how to turn an OK -- or even bad -- shot into an awesome one with the help of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

Although it is a niche market to say the least, the world of super telephoto lenses is a rather demanding one, with both sports and wildlife photographers depending on this massive and expensive glass to capture crisp images from far away.

Canon users seem to get a bit better treatment in this department than most, with prime glass ranging from their $11,000 400mm f/2.8L IS II to their $13,200 800mm f/5.6L IS. However, today's point of interest is going to be the glass that falls smack dab between those two, the 600mm range.

Here's a set of fun and funny self-portraits to get you through the rest of your Wednesday with a smile on your face.

Created by literary translator, editor and grad student Kaija Straumanis, the Headshots series is more frequently referred to these days as "Stuff Being Thrown at My Head" -- a deceptive title since nothing is actually being thrown at Straumanis' head at all.

At a time when digital production workflows are becoming more and more ubiquitous within Hollywood, the news of a director utilizing an analogue workflow on a big production always seems to strike a chord with those who appreciate the aesthetic and feel of film.

Thankfully, for those of you who do enjoy such news (myself included), two major directors are choosing film over even the highest-of-res digital for their upcoming (and already released) blockbusters.

"Just because it isn't happening here, doesn't mean it isn't happening." That's the tagline of one of the most powerful, shocking ad campaign we have ever run across.

Put together by Save the Children UK, this campaign uses the popular 'second per day video' lifelogging concept to drive home an anti-war message in the most stark and unsettling way, focusing on how war affects children.

This is a photo of an atomic bomb milliseconds after detonation, shot by Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton in 1952 through his Rapatronic (Rapid Action Electronic) Camera.

The photo was shot at night through a 10 foot lens, situated 7 miles away from the blast, atop a 75 foot tower. Edgerton systematically turned on and off magnetic fields acting as the camera’s shutter, as opposed to a conventional, mechanical close.

How fast was the magnetic field shutter? 1/100,000,000th of a second.

In the latest bit of news that would show up on our version of 'REALLY!? with Seth and Amy' if we made such a thing, Leica has teamed up with none other than adult entertainment giant Playboy and kid-friendly icon Hello Kitty for its most recent ultra-limited edition Leica C camera.

After sharing Paul Trillo's double exposure-inspired music video for "Be Around" by the folk duo The Peach Kings, several commenters here and on Facebook pointed out that the opening titles for the HBO show True Detective make use of the same technique.

And so we checked them out, and were blown away by the execution on this awesome video. We can see why one reader said that it's the only show she doesn't skip over the titles on.

Is it okay for a professional photographer to try and crowdfund a new camera? It seems like the answer to that is No, if you go by the response to pro wedding photographer Stephen Yanni's recent GoFundMe campaign. A campaign that raised no money, but a whole lot of outrage, before being ultimately pulled.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the National Park Service's remote cameras struck gold. Installed to check up on some cubs the park hadn't seen since tagging them at 3 weeks old, the camera did one heck of a job and returned over 350 high-quality images of the two cubs and their momma feeding on a deer carcass over two days in Malibu Creek State Park.

If you're worried that spending hours upon hours staring at a computer post-processing thousands of photos will damage your eyeballs, rest assured: it won't. And the video above by the folks at DNews explains why that is.