April 2015

How I Make Money as a Travel Photographer in 2015

Long gone are the days in which being a travel photographer simply meant you shot photography for a certain travel magazine or newspaper. The world isn't that simple anymore, and the level of competition in the photography world has never been higher. But still, I'm fairly sure there are more “travel photographers” on the planet now than there ever were -- just check your Instagram feeds.

So, if travel photography as a traditional career is dying, than how are these people making their money? Well, I wish I could give you the answer to that question, but I can't. These days, everyone has a different method of money-making. All I can do is tell you my story, and how I manage to keep from sleeping under a bridge every night -- though barely.

How I Built My First Photo Studio Over the Course of Three Months

When I was 15 years old, I began saving to become a self-employed photographer who owns her own photography studio. After saving $9,000 through working part-time and having an absolutely miserable first year of university, I decided to bite the bullet and pursue my dream now.

In this post, I will share how I built a photo studio for myself over three months using my savings.

Dog Shoots Marriage Proposal for Her Owner

People often ask friends to secretly capture their proposals on camera. Some ask strangers. Kurt Gies asked his dog, Roo.

When Gies proposed to his girlfriend Amanda Wiseman on a beach earlier this month, he strapped a GoPro camera to Roo's back using a special camera harness. Roo ended up shooting the proposal better than many humans would have: no vertical video and no camera shake -- just some sweet and memorable footage of Gies popping the big question.

A Life-Sized Mannequin Stop Motion Animated with the Help of Strangers

Artist Anton Hecht recently created an unusual stop motion film using photos of a giant life-sized mannequin. Instead of doing the animation themselves, the team invited random strangers who were walking by to help move the dummy around in the public square. The video above is what resulted from their help under careful direction.

A Wedding Photographer Story

She stands in the front of the church; her face carefully set into a pleasant expression, her breathing slow. The knuckles of her right hand, however, are white with rage as she clutches her camera.

Photoflex Returns From the Grave, Says It’s Back in Business

Well-known lighting gear manufacturer Photoflex may live on after all. No, its original April 1st announcement that it was closing shop wasn't an ill-conceived April Fool's Joke or a bizarre marketing stunt -- the struggling company is reportedly working on a deal that will allow the brand to live on.

Policeman Returns Woman’s Smartphone by Posting Photos to Her Facebook Page

A police officer in Albury, Australia, did some online photo sharing that drew quite a few chuckles last week. After someone turned in a lost iPhone at his police station, the officer found that the phone didn't have any type of passcode protection. So, to get in touch with the woman who lost it, he started posting humorous photos to her Facebook account.

Man Who Shot South Carolina Police Shooting Wants $10,000 Per Use

A white police officer in South Carolina is facing murder charges after shooting an unarmed black man in the back and killing him as he ran away. A bystander named Feidin Santana witnessed the whole incident on April 4th and managed to capture cell phone footage, which then became widely seen around the world and sparked fresh new outrage about police brutality.

Now, nearly two weeks after the shooting, the video is at the center of a new discussion: news outlets are being asked for a $10,000 fee if they wish to share the video.

Photo Scanning Businessman Being Sued for $90M After Making $120K Per Week

John Rogers was once one of the high flying entrepreneurs in the photo world. After coming up with the brilliant idea of scanning old photos for newspapers and splitting the rights to the digital images, Rogers was on his way to amassing one of the largest photo libraries in the world and was earning a whopping $120,000 per week selling his images on eBay.

Now his empire has come crashing down. Rogers is reportedly being sued for more than $90 million and has lost his business entirely.

WikiLeaks’ Sony Docs: A7r II, A6000 II, and RX Cameras Coming. A-Mount Left to Die?

WikiLeaks has just published a massive collection of emails and documents that were leaked through the 2014 Sony hack. Among the documents was a product and service launch calendar that mentions new cameras Sony is (or was) planning to launch in the first part of this year.

If the calendar is still accurate, then Sony will soon be announcing new cameras in the A7r, A6000, and RX lines.

EllaSnap Helps You Measure and Design Your Walls for Photo Collages

EllaSnap is a photo canvas and book making service that offers an interesting app for helping you design a photo arrangement for your walls. Instead of spending time and energy measuring your walls yourself, the app lets you easily see what your design would look like on your wall using augmented reality.

EyeEm Raises $18M More to Turn Photo Sharers Into Photo Sellers

Photo sharing service EyeEm has raised an additional $18 million in funding after taking $6 million from investors back in 2013. The new war chest will be used to further the company's mission of becoming the top network for photographers looking to make some money with their photos.

Instagram Clarifies Its Rules on Copyright and Nudity

Instagram updated its community guidelines today in order to give users a clearer picture of where the service stands on the issues of copyright and nudity. Policies themselves haven't changed, Instagram says, but the rules have been fleshed out and clarified in response to user questions and various incidents.

Old Film Roll from eBay Reveals Photos of Korea from Half a Century Ago

Photographer Ben Larsen purchased a lot on eBay that included several old rolls of film, one of which was a roll of Kodak Plus-X Pan black and white 35mm film. Not knowing anything about the roll, Larsen tossed it into a tank while processing his own roll of Kodak Tri-X at home. To his surprise, the film emerged from the developer with a large number of old photos of Seoul, South Korea, from five decades ago.

A First-Person Shooter Called Street Photography

In my early teenage years I loved nothing more than gaming and going to LAN parties every weekend. Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942 and Counter-Strike were my favorites back then. Although I also liked strategy games like Warcraft 3, I spent most of my time playing Counter-Strike with my friends till early in the morning.

I'm not much of a gamer anymore besides an occasional SNES night, but recently a crazy thought crossed my mind. If street photography were a game, it would definitely be a first-person shooter.

This Experimental Time-Lapse Imagines Life Without Light Pollution

What kind of nighttime time-lapses could you shoot in cities like Los Angeles if light pollution weren't a problem? A couple of time-lapse photographers want to show you. They've created an experimental time-lapse that shows a sky full of stars and star trails over the light-polluted city of Los Angeles.

Short Film Explores the State of Film Photography in Calgary

Canadian freelance photographer Jesse Yardley created this mini documentary about the current state of film photography in Calgary. Worried that analog may be a "dying art," Yardley did interviews with some notable photographers in the area to find out if film still has a chance.

Sony’s Next RX Model May Pack a Four Thirds Sensor

Bigger things may be coming to Sony's popular RX compact camera line, sensor-wise. A new report says that Sony is field testing a new RX camera that packs a significantly larger sensor -- possibly a Four Thirds format one -- that would put it in direct competition with cameras like the Panasonic LX100.

The Earliest Known Photos of People Smiling

The following is a collection of some of the earliest known images of people smiling, starting with a pair of soldiers in the Mexican American War in 1847 and up to a group of soldiers near the end of the Civil War.

If early images of people smiling do not come as a surprise to you, there are a few things to note. Among other things, a portrait of a person with a grin of any kind is quite a rare find in the early decades of photography.

Photog! Transforms Your Offline Pictures Folder Into a Photo Website

If you'd like to quickly create a custom photography website and are familiar with installing software through a command line interface, there's a new free and open source program you can check out. It's called Photog!, and is a simple photography website generator that can turn your pictures directory into a simple yet elegant photo website.

Every Frame a Photo: Black and White Moments on New York City Streets

What would a black and white street photographer capture if given a cinema camera instead of a still camera? Perhaps something like this.

"Moments" is a short cinematography film that offers a hauntingly beautiful portrait of New York City in carefully framed slow motion shots. Each scene looks like a street photo unfolding before the eyes of a photographer.