February 2015

Photographer Stu Maschwitz of Prolost recently paid a visit to the Bay Area Lightroom User Group and tried something he's always wanted to do: Lightroom Iron Chef.

If you've always dreamed of taking pictures of the northern lights, the video above will give you a small taste of what it's like. Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand captured the behind-the-scenes footage recently when he drove out into the wilderness in the dead of night to chase auroras.

There's a mysterious and intriguing new website online for a startup camera company called Konost. From the looks of it, the team is trying to build a simple yet powerful digital camera that it claims will be "the world's first true digital rangefinder."

70 years ago today, photographer Joe Rosenthal captured a photograph of six US soldiers raising a flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. That photo (shown above), became an instant iconic image -- these days we would say it "went viral" -- and was published in thousands of publications around the world.

Apple aired a new iPad commercial during the Oscars ceremony last night. The ad touts the iPad as a tool that anyone can use for creating films. What viewers may not have known while watching the spot, however, was that the commercial itself was filmed entirely on an iPad.

A US court has ruled in favor of Bob Marley's family in a lawsuit they filed to get photos of the late reggae musician off unauthorized merchandise. The ruling will impact how iconic portraits of Marley are used for commercial purposes by third parties.

As books are easier to buy and borrow in digital forms, public libraries are evolving and experimenting with new ways to stay relevant. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has one awesome idea for how to do so: the main branch of the library in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, features a makerspace that provides free access to tools for creative people -- equipment that includes DSLRs and photo studio gear.

Photographer and Lightroom expert Jeff Hirsch created this 1-minute photo essay titled "Moments in Time" about the ephemeral nature of our daily lives, and the task of capturing fleeting moments with your camera as a photographer. It's a combination of 99 words and 550 photos in 60 seconds.

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

Here's a photograph of Jessie Tarbox Beals, America's first female photojournalist, with her camera on a street a century ago. While most female photographers of her time shot photos from the peace and safety of photo studios, Beals ventured into the world of photojournalism and made a name for herself through her tenacity, self-promotion, and freelance news photos.

It was around this time last year that we shared a new product called SHORTCUT-S, a 319-key keyboard designed specifically for editing photos in Photoshop.

Garry Winogrand was one of the most notable and prolific American street photographers of the 20th century. He is known for capturing a vast record of what American life was like during the decades following World War II; in addition to his published works, thousands of his undeveloped and unseen rolls of film were discovered when he passed away in 1984.

Remember that Taiwanese machine that can print a photo of your face onto the foam of a latte? Here's something along the same lines that's just as quirky: there's a new printer that can cook a photo of your face into a pancake.

Last December, the art world balked when photographer Peter Lik announced the world's priciest sale of a photograph: a single black-and-white print titled "Phantom" for $6.5 million. Here's another fact that will drop your jaws: Lik has sold nearly half a billion dollars worth of photographic prints, which means he's possibly the best-selling fine-art photographer in history.

In my work, the concept and the pre-visualization of the images are the key issues. It's all about fresh ideas and trying to achieve something that has never been seen when trying to create original pieces of art.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video showing how photographer Jason Bell recently photographed actor Benedict Cumberbatch for a special issue of Vanity Fair.

Erik Johansson is a Swedish photographer and retoucher based in Berlin who is well known on the Internet for his amazing surreal photo manipulations that show everyday scenes with major twists. A number of his works are optical illusions created by manipulating and combining images in creative ways.

Should you be able to patent the idea of online photo contests? Regardless of your opinion on the matter, someone has, and that patent is now being used to sue a number of small photo websites.

We’ve seen it in plenty of thriller/crime solver TV shows and movies: upon reviewing some grainy and very low-resolution surveillance footage, someone inevitably asks the technician, “can you zoom in on that and enhance it?” Then, with the quick press of a few masterfully placed keystrokes and bleepy computer sounds, the image is suddenly enhanced with vastly increased resolution and a key plot device is revealed.

"Finding Freedom" is a new art book collaborative project between Brandon Crockett, a community volunteer and advertising copywriter, and the renowned photographer Sandro Miller -- yes, the same one that recreated iconic photos with John Malkovich. The book features poetry and portraits from residents at a Chicago halfway house -- individuals who have recently left prison and are attempting to reintegrate with society.

I’m often asked how I am able to take high-quality images of the solar system using my iPhone. In short, the quality of today’s smartphone cameras makes it possible to take very respectable images of the Moon and planets through a telescope with your phone – but it takes some work.

Light projectors have been used in recent years for crazy 3D projections on buildings and other large surfaces. A Japanese company is using a similar concept to bring static 2D photos to life.

Family photographs used to be collected in things like photo albums and shoeboxes, but these days digital photographs are scattered across all kinds of devices and services. Bevy is a new device and service that wants to help you and your family cut through the clutter to organize and enjoy the photos you care about.

Boudoir photography, derived from the French word for "sulky," traditionally involves a woman posing for a suggestive series of tasteful photos in various states of undress. Over the past few years, however, a new trend has emerged. Called "dudeoir" photography, these shots involve men jumping into the frame to pose for sexy shots.

During a horse race, the track itself probably isn't the place you should be wandering in order to snap the perfect action shot. Even if racers do tend to stay toward the inside of the track, things don't always go as expected. A photographer in Finland learned this lesson the hard way this past week.

China is a country that's known to take the Olympics (the summer ones, at least) very seriously as the nation competes for a bigger presence on the world stage. Chinese gold medal winners become instant superstars and the role models for a generation of aspiring athletes.

A murmuration of starlings is a beautiful sight to behold, as giant flocks of birds float through the air like a dark cloud with a mind of its own. French photographer Alain Delorme captured this beauty in his project Murmurations, but instead of birds and wildlife photography, Delorme's images were created through plastic bags and Photoshop.

Support is a funny thing.

Adobe celebrated Photoshop's 25th birthday yesterday with great fanfare. Since the original Photoshop version 1.0 was launched back on February 19th, 1990, there have been 15 major versions released that have advanced the way we work with (and look at) photographs.

Rooftopping: we have all seen the dozens of media articles and blogs about this, so this one surely is not the first, it won’t be the last, and it is not going to be the best.

A team of researchers at Harvard are trying to revolutionize the world of optical lenses. Instead of traditional curved lenses that suffer from various optical flaws, they are working on a completely flat and ultra-thin lens that overcomes age-old problems and pushes optical quality to the limits of the laws of nature.

Earlier this month, we reported that a North Carolina-based photographer Faith Massey had gotten her camera bag stolen from her car. Inside was a memory card that contained irreplaceable photos of the last moments of a baby's life, which Massey captured through the charity organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

A recent patent filing by Apple suggests that the company is working on a new periscope-style camera module design that offers better optical stabilization with the use of mirrors.

The web service IFTTT (short for "If This Then That") has launched a new camera app called Do Camera. It's a simple little program that lets you personalize how your camera works and what happens to your photos after they're snapped.

Streetlights polluting your shots of the starry night sky? A strategically placed laser might be just what you need.

My name is Eric Brushett, and I'm a full time wedding photographer based in Hamden, Connecticut. I recently redid my home office space for the 2015 wedding season. Here's a look at the process and the final result.

Romanian photographer Noroc Mihaela is on a mission to photograph women from every single country on Earth in order to show that beauty is found everywhere. Her project is titled "The Atlas of Beauty."

Artist Daniel Arsham has a new exhibition at the Leica Gallery Los Angeles that consists of 25 life-sized Leica camera replicas created out of various geological materials. The sculptures reimagine some of Leica's most famous products as "relics of a time past."

Lightroom 6 is coming soon, and a leaked product listing is giving us a good idea of what we can expect in the latest version of Adobe's popular tool for photographers.

Siri Kaur is a conceptual fine art photographer who has been breaking some interesting ground and news with her fascinating series This Kind of Face. The unique series was recently exhibited at the Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles. I had a moment to talk to Siri about this work and other aspects of her career.

Today marks the 25 year anniversary of Adobe Photoshop being launched and changing the way we see the world. Here's a look at how Photoshop started and how far it has come in the past two-and-a-half decades.

Update: We have removed the photos after receiving a takedown request from the photographer.

Canon just had a torrent of new product announcements earlier this month, and now it looks like Nikon will follow suit with some big announcements of its own.

For telephoto lenses with huge front elements, screw-on filters aren't very practical or economical. Thus, for certain lenses, companies like Canon and Nikon offer drop-in filters that slide into a slot close to the rear element.

xkcd's latest comic, titled "Flowcharts," is a tongue-in-cheek take on the concept of the golden ratio (or golden spiral) in photography. It's a flow chart in which one of the steps reads: "Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?" If you choose "yes" from there, you're taken on a golden ratio journey that magically fits the design of the chart.

My name is Martin Szabo and I am commercial and portrait photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was recently doing volunteer work for a charity event in Vancouver and wanted to bring little twist and fun to the party. I ended up creating a photo booth to shoot portraits of people while their faces were being blasted by 240 mph wind coming from a leaf blower.

Wow... Where do I even begin? I would say that “The Decisive Moment” by Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of the most beautiful photo books I have ever handled, and it is a book that brings me extreme joy and happiness (you can see all the photos from the book for free over at Magnum Photos).

Russian photographer Vadim Trunov recently captured a series of photographs showing wild squirrels doing human things. In the snow covered forests outside the city of Voronezh in western Russia, Trunov set out some props and waited with his camera as a pair of squirrels entered his makeshift set.

Growing up in a surfing family in Hawaii, The Endless Summer was a rite of passage. As a young boy, not only did that surf film give me a love of the ocean and adventure, the image of the cover was burned into my memory (Even Vanity Fair applauds the world renowned portrait).

Scams targeting photographers are nothing new. There’s one that we’ve seen for a few years in which the “client” asks if they can send you a check for more than they owe you so you can pay some other vendor for them (they then bounce the check and you end up having paid the vendor scammer your money). Another one out there tries to sell you an interesting or desirable domain name. There are other more local ones (fake Craigslist ads or eBay sales for instance).