May 2014

It’s fairly well-known that, when it comes to capturing images, more important than almost any camera body is the glass being put in front of it. However, there are times when your camera body plays a vital role in determining the quality of the image rendered by said glass.

To prove this and also help show off what glass performs best with a particular body, DxOMark has published a series of articles that break down what the best lenses are for the Nikon D800E.

This piece originally appeared in PhotoShelter's guide Building Your Outdoor & Adventure Photography Business – for the full article download the guide here.

Elizabeth Krist, Senior Photo Editor at National Geographic, and the rest of the Nat Geo team seek photographers who have an eye for composing striking and electrifying images. But perhaps even more importantly, they want photographers who have a real curiosity about the world around them -- those who aren’t afraid to delve into the intellectual and research aspects of an assignment.

To give photographers a better sense of what goes on behind the scenes at National Geographic, Elizabeth provided some insight into what type of work the magazine commissions, how photographers can pitch Nat Geo, and what you can do to get noticed.

Although there’s no shortage of press surrounding young pop star, Justin Bieber, today he’s getting a bit more in the form of a lawsuit from photographer Manuel Munoz.

Munoz is suing both Bieber and his bodyguard, Dwayne Patterson, after an incident outside the SET Nightclub in Miami Beach, where Patterson supposedly locked him in a Subway restaurant, demanding he delete his photos of the pop star if he wanted to leave.

GoPros seem to have captured every activity known to man, but this is the first time we've ever seen a dog fly. The footage is part of a National Geographic feature on adrenaline junkie Dean Potter, who brings his dog Whisper along for every crazy ride.

You carry a camera everywhere because you just never know when something or someone worthy of having its picture taken will appear. You also work plenty of weddings and events, or you may be a photo journalist for a newspaper. You are a photographer, and are always on the lookout for beauty. But what makes a city good for a working photographer? While it’s important that there are plenty things to photograph, these statistics are equally relevant as well.

What do you do when the usual outlets for photographic media choose not to show images you risked your life to capture? What is the next best way to make sure the world sees what is really happening?

It's these questions that led French photojournalist Pierre Terdjman and his buddies to create something called Dysturb, a project that plasters ignored, hard-hitting and hard-to-swallow photojournalism all over the streets of Paris.

If you've been thinking of swapping out your old DSLR for a more nimble mirrorless camera, but you just don't want to go through the hassle of selling your old kit and raising the necessary funds, Samsung has one hell of a deal for you.

On June 4th between the hours of 12pm and 6pm in Times Square, Samsung will GIVE you an NX30 for free if you're willing to hand over your DSLR (any DSLR) in exchange.

There comes a point in any passion or career when you feel like you hit a brick wall; you feel like you’re standing there motionless while everyone else is carrying on achieving things and becoming more successful than you -- whatever your definition of success.

But as you'll understand once you watch this fantastic two-part video series, everybody who has ever achieved anything has gone through this (sometimes many-year-long) phase. We just never hear about this lost chapter in their lives.

Earlier today, Photojojo announced its latest endeavor called “Engineer Prints.” Sold under the tagline, “your photos, human-sized,” Engineer Prints offer a unique, inexpensive way to bring your digital images into the real world... in a big way.

There is anything but a shortage of options when it comes to mounting your GoPro. Whether it's from the company itself, a third party, or one of the dozens of DIY rigs, if there’s somewhere you’re considering mounting a GoPro, there’s probably a way to do it.

On that note, today we stumbled across an awesome (and cheap!) DIY magnet mount put together by Instructables user nlinventor.

No matter how many years you’ve been a photographer or what level you’re on, sometimes it’s important to get back to the basics. To help do just that, Adobe Creative Cloud News has put out a new video that goes through the basics of flagging and rating images in Lightroom.

Brooklyn-based artist Ariana Page Russell takes the saying “being comfortable in your own skin” to an artful and literal degree.

Born with dermatographic urticaria, Russell takes advantage of this condition also known as “skin writing” to turn herself into a living, breathing work of art, photographing her sometimes beautiful, sometimes intricate, and sometimes itchy designs for a series titled Dermatographia.

There was a gap in time between the first newspapers and the rise of something called 'photojournalism." Photography was still in its infancy (or not even invented yet, in many cases) when many of the major newspapers came to be, and so the front page that would greet the informed citizen contained only words.

They're eerie, crowded and overwhelming... and they're a good reminder of why the words "photo" and "journalism," when combined, create something pretty incredible.

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Michelle Frankfurter is a documentary photographer from Takoma Park, MD. Before settling in the Washington, DC area, Frankfurter spent three years living in Nicaragua where she worked as a stringer for the British news agency, Reuters and with the human rights organization Witness For Peace documenting the effects of the contra war on civilians.

Since 2000, Frankfurter has concentrated on the border region between the United States and Mexico, and on themes of migration.

Mark your calendars ladies and gentlemen, because "the next evolution of Creative Cloud" will be revealed during a live-streaming keynote on June 18th at 1pm Eastern, and it promises to be a doozy of an announcement.

In this third -- and final? -- installment of his "camera companies are lying to you about crop factor" series that has caused such a stir, Tony Northrup hopes to silence the critics, make some corrections, and overall bring this debate to a close.

As of today, there's a new name in the world of instant photography; a name you'll definitely recognize; a name that you probably thought already made instant film cameras you just hadn't heard of; Lomography.

What you see in the video above is a real sculpture that does, in fact, look as if it is perpetually melting right before your eyes. But while creating the exact sculpture took months of design and engineering work, the photographic technique behind it was invented as long ago as 100 BC.

What you're looking at is a three-dimensional "zoetrope," an animation device that created the illusion of motion using lighting effects or a sequence of still images (in this case, it's a mix of clever sculpting and well-timed strobes).

If you've been following PetaPixel for a little while, then you know that the idea of a web app that shrinks down the file size of your images without "noticeable" loss in quality is nothing new. JPEGmini has been doing it for years. So what is it that makes the new Compressor.io web app stand out?

In 1863, at the age of forty-eight, Julia Margaret Cameron received her first camera. A mother of six children, the gift quickly spawned a hobby that turned into a life-long passion, and her approach to photography is one that still influences photographers to this day.

Maybe you're sick of the "cartoonist/photographer/artist inserts fun characters or images into the real world using forced perspective" thing, and admittedly there have been a lot, but the video above is an example that falls very near the top of the genre's "best of" list.

Put together by photographer Steve Perry, the video tutorial above shares a collection of useful tips, advice and examples that help explain how to best think of and use focal lengths when you're out capturing landscape photography.

Production value aside, the lip sync proposal video above took a serious amount of dedication and patience. Four years worth, to be exact.

Leaving behind a pioneering legacy, pin-up model turned pin-up photographer, Bunny Yeager, has sadly passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Born March 13, 1929 Yeager started her career as a pin-up model herself, eventually switching sides of the camera and becoming one of the most commercially successful female photographers of our time.

Photographer Nina Röder's photo series Mutter Schuhe (Translated: Mother’s Shoes) is a visual exploration of how time, emotions and perspective affect memories. Three generation -- Röder, her mother and her grandmother -- all dressed the same, posed slightly differently, reliving Röder's mother's childhood memories from their own perspectives.

When you're looking to get the most bang for your buck, sometimes the best bet is to wander off the beaten path and take an alternate route. The 'road less travelled' if you will.

When the medium-format Pentax 645Z was announced, we were given a price point of $8,500 and a release date of "June 2014." Of course, there are 30 days in June, so if you've pre-ordered yours and you'd like a more specific date to anticipate, you'll be happy to note that Ricoh Imaging Japan has provided one.

Leica has come out strong in 2014, showing off and releasing some impressive gear -- both on their own and in collaboration with third-parties -- in the first and second quarters.

And they should be, as this past March was the 100th anniversary of their camera manufacturing, albeit not technically in mass production.

The video above, featuring renowned Dancers Among Us photographer Jordan Matter, is only a minute and a half long, but he shares a very interesting perspective in it. Many photographers are all about planning every shot, and to be sure, this approach can yield spectacular results. As they say, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.

But Matter seems to take a different approach. He prefers to "make his own luck," ala Titanic antagonist Cal Hockley... minus the big diamond and evil tendencies.

With LED lighting systems growing in popularity for both video and photo use, it’s inevitable some interesting variations of such setups are going to come out. Case in point: behold the RagLite, or as its creators prefer to call it, “the first-ever flexible LED light bank.”