August 2014

There's something to be said for thinking outside the box and turning an idea on its head, and that's exactly what photographer Trevor Christensen is doing with his hilarious and surprisingly thought-provoking series, Nude Portraits.

That's because there aren't actually any nude people in his portraits... the only person who's naked during the photo shoot is Christensen himself, who is busy capturing his subjects' reaction to his birthday suit.

Metabones already has an impressive lineup of Speed Boosters -- the lens adapters that can bypass crop factors, increase maximum aperture and more -- but they made headlines yesterday when they added a much sought-after adapter to the lineup: the Canon EF to Micro Four-Thirds model.

The goal of almost any portrait is to ensure that the subject being photographed looks their absolute best. That is NOT the case with the newest video and portraits series by Patrick Hall.

Hall instead chose to shock his (willing) subjects with 300,000 volts of electricity and capture the literally and hilariously shocking results in stills and slow motion video.

It turns out the average Instagram image looks a bit like a dirty piece of cloth, and we arrived at this Earth-shaking conclusion courtesy of a surprisingly addictive web app called Metagramme.

If you're sick of retro, love cameras, and used to dream of installing 'underglow' on your souped up Honda Civic, then Pentax has a DSLR you will absolutely adore.

Jokes aside, the new Pentax K-S1 from Ricoh combines portability and powerful imaging capabilities with a status quo-shattering flashy design and simple UI that will undoubtedly appeal to a lot of first-time DSLR buyers.

There's only so much you can do with a smartphone, and as more and more people begin exploring photography through the little device in their pockets, they inevitably bump up against those boundaries.

These are the people Olympus built the new PEN E-PL7 for, with its social sharing capabilities and selfie-friendly features, hoping to lure a few of the smartphone faithful over to the world of interchangeable lenses and sensor size wars.

Editor's Note: Part two of Rfotofolio's interview with San Francisco photographer Fred Lyon

Cue privacy overreaction in three... two... one...

Remember DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3, the first high-res public imaging satellite we told you about earlier this month? Well, it's up in orbit, and the company wants to show off just how capable the WorldView-3 really is.

Photographer and mother Holly Spring's photography has always been about her daughter. Born with only one hand and suffering from something known as Hirschprung's disease, little Violet almost died from surgical complications before Holly ever got a chance to take a single picture of her.

Shortly after that, her husband bought her a DSLR, and she has been taking pictures of Violet ever since.

It's unlikely that pointing fingers and placing blame will do anything to help freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, who was kidnapped in 2013 and is currently being held by ISIS, the same militant group who executed photojournalist James Foley on video.

But blame is being placed, and there's a lesson to be learned from the supposed actions of one Canadian photographer initially identified only as "Alex."

25 years and two days ago today, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft passed right over Neptune’s largest moon Triton. It’s …

Whether or not you’re conscious of it when watching a movie, the sounds and soundtrack play as significant of a role as the actual imagery. Sadly, none of the standard photo sharing options allow us still photographers the luxury of framing our visual message with melody... until now.

A fairly new and interesting platform called Ubersnap is looking to change this music-less status quo.

It took a week of sleepless nights and a whole lot of Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy shots, but the duo of photographers behind Tree Speed Photo managed to get through it in order to capture this, dare we say 'epic,' motion time-lapse in Death Valley.

Film photographers are used to options slowly fading away, but today we have news of the opposite variety: a film company making a dramatic return to the game. Originally announced via blog post in July of last year, Italian film company FILM Ferrania is finally preparing to start making film again in mid-September.

It takes work to stand out among today's wedding photographers. After all, you've got shots like these from Iceland to compete with, so how do you create photos that will widen eyes and loosen jaws?

Well, if you're photographer Josh Martinez from Chugach Peaks Photography, you helicopter the couple onto a glacier in Alaska and let nature do the talking while you take some pictures and ruin a wedding dress.

Photography drones are facing a perilous atmosphere of distrust and legal chaos. In these circumstances, even small mistakes can have big consequences. A shift in public sentiment against private drone usage could easily result in the application of restrictive regulations, or perhaps even conditional bans.

Dropbox is a Go-To for many photographers. Whether they're storing their photography, sharing albums with clients or, ahem, sending files to the press, more often than not it's Dropbox they use. And starting today, anybody not using Dropbox's Pro offering has a whole lot more reason to do so thanks to a steep drop in price, a big jump in storage space, and a bunch of new features and functionality.

Editor's note: In early February Rfotofolio had the pleasure of talking to photographer Fred Lyon. We are honored to share the first of two interviews with this photographic master.

A clever new project called Location-Based Light Painting is putting a new spin on visualizing the number and specific location of photos taken in any particular spot.

Using a custom-built iPhone app, a speedlight, long exposure photography and geolocation data readily available online, the project literally 'paints' each location into a separate photo to create haunting orb-covered landscapes.

GorillaPods are an incredible little photography accessory to have in your arsenal. You can pick up a model for cameras as small as a GoPro and as large as a DSLR with a 70–200mm lens attached. Heck, some even come with unique features such as magnets in the feet that allow you to more easily position them onto magnetic surfaces.

As cool as the magnetic ones are though, Instructables user tinstructable realized that Joby’s magnetic options are limited to only the smallest offerings in the GorillaPod lineup. And so, naturally, he came up with a DIY method to turn the larger model into a stronger, more capable magnetic version of his own.

GoPro has just launched its first ever dedicated dog mount. Called the ‘Fetch’ mount, this unique harness system allows you to officially and easily attach up to two GoPros to your pooch and capture the playtime shenanigans from their point of view.

Earlier today, B&H officially launched a new online resource called the Canon Lens Experience. It’s a dedicated microsite that takes a comprehensive look at the various lenses Canon offers, presenting unique and interactive features that demonstrate the various capabilities.

Even more interesting is the series of interviews which features 15 well-respected photographers from different fields, each of whom talk about their experience as a photographer and how their respective Canon gear have helped them make the iconic shots they’ve captured.

Photoshop is a wonderful resource, full of creative potential; to help streamline that creative potential, Adobe has included an insane amount of shortcuts that allow you to easily apply effects, swap tools and perform actions. There's just one issue... there's too many of them to keep track of.

With so many shortcuts for so many different things, it’s sometimes hard to remember the shortcut you need the moment you need it -- unless, of course, you're using Cheetyr.

There are many ways to almost destroy your GoPro trying to capture viral footage -- jumping off cliffs, jumping a mountain bike across a cliff... pretty much anything with a cliff will work -- but this is the first time we've run across someone almost destroying their action cam by boiling it. All to give you an underwater view of an egg being poached.

Wedding photos are wonderful. But sometimes sitting around the living room looking through a couple hundred, if not thousand, wedding photos isn’t exactly ‘fun’ for the friends you inevitably force into it.

Well, there’s a solution for that. Just do what this couple did and turn the wedding photographs into an animated short film.

We’ve known for a few weeks that a Nikon full frame camera is in the works. In our previous coverage we’ve shared some of the initial specs and a reported confirmation of the name, but today we have a few more thanks to a screenshot acquired by Nikon Rumors.

Instagram is shaking up the mobile photography/videography sphere in a big way today with the release of Hyperlapse, a brand new app that transforms shaky videos up to 45 minutes long into super-smooth, stable and cinematic feeling hyperlapses/time-lapses at the press of a button.

You have a powerful idea for a photography project, but not all the funds you need to make it happen. Sound familiar?

The great news is there are many foundations, non-profits and private companies alike, who are willing to fund worthy photographers based on talent and project goals. Some offer grants for photojournalists who expose social injustices; others focus on editorial photographers who tell long-form stories.

We’ve rounded up 16 as a start to help you in your search. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to add others to the list via the comments section!

First it was Ludacris, who decided to convey the impression that he was on a beach by stealing and posting a photographer's beautiful sunset photo on his Instagram account. Now, it seems famed rapper Shawn "Diddy” Combs is following in his copyright infringement footsteps.

After many a rumor and photo leak, Fujifilm has officially released the followup to its popular X20 premium compact. Appropriately dubbed the X30, this is no meager update, sporting an EVF, build-in WiFi, a better LCD, better battery and more.