I get a call on Saturday, February 28th, 2015, telling me “The Champ can give you an hour if you can pick him up at the hotel in 10 minutes”. “I'll be there in 8," I say to the person on the phone.
Photos of a frog riding a beetle have been flooding the Internet over the past month. Think it looks cute and adorable? Reactions to the series of photos have been split between blind praise and outrage over the authenticity of the photo-story and welfare of the subjects. So, did this scene really occur naturally as claimed? We don't think so, and here's why.
An octopus is getting quite a bit of attention this week for its photography skills. After noticing a camera placed in its enclosure to photograph it, the eight-legged creature grabbed the camera, turned it around, and unintentionally captured a portrait of the photographer.
Mike Mellia is an advertising and fine art photographer based in New York City. Over the past year, he has been working on a project titled "A Selfie a Day Keeps the Doctor Away." It's an ongoing series of self-portraits captured in a studio and shared through Instagram.
Jonathon Keats wants to set a world record in photography that he won't live long enough to see. Nor will his children, or his children's children for many generations. It's a project that won't complete for a millennium.
In a surprising turn of events, the World Press Photo organization has announced that it will be withdrawing the 1st prize award it had given photographer Giovanni Troilo for his Contemporary Issues series "The Dark Heart of Europe." This comes one day after a new claim surfaced that accused Troilo of misrepresenting where a photo was shot.
While major art museums around the world are issuing bans on selfie sticks, there's one unusual museum in the Philippines that's continuing to encourage visitors to capture silly portraits with paintings. In fact, that's what the museum is all about.
Earlier this year, I dropped my Minolta 28mm f/2.8 in the ocean where it sat submerged for at least two minutes. I don’t have any tools on hand to tear it down to clean it out. I let it sit overnight on the air conditioner. The next morning, it had drops of water all over the inside elements and the aperture blades were sticking.
The word "speed" is used a lot in the world of photography equipment -- things like lens speed, film speed, and shutter speed. But speed is generally used to refer to how quickly something travels or operates per unit time, rather than a period of time itself. So is the term "shutter speed" a misnomer?
Although things like RSS feeds and social networks have become primary channels for broadcasting and consuming content these days, some people still enjoy good old fashioned email newsletters. If that describes people in your life whom you'd like to share your latest kid photos with, KidPost is a service that wants to help.
This is a picture of the smallest life form that's known to exist, an ultra-small bacterial cell. That black bar you see is for scale -- it indicates 100 nanometers. To put things into perspective, more than 150,000 of these bacteria could fit onto the top of a human hair.
Here's a 5-minute video by Seeker Stories about how young urban explorers are connecting through Instagram and teaming up to explore the hidden places of New York City. They risk arrest -- and often death -- to see and photograph the city from perspectives that ordinary people will never get to experience.
If you want photobooth-style prints of your pics, one way to get them is through Social Print Studio's Photostrips printing service. If you want to super-size your order, there's now an option for that too. The company has announced a new product called Giant Photostrips. It allows you to turn your photos into giant photobooth-style strips.
Editor's note: This review is by photographer Tim Dodd. You can follow him on Instagram at @timdoddphotography.
Update: World Press Photo has decided to strip Troilo of his 1st place award.
If you sell your photography as stock shots with royalty free licenses through services such as Getty Images, you need to be okay with buyers using the images in ways that seem disproportionate to the meager price they paid. That's a lesson Turkish photographer Murat Koc learned this past week after discovering his photo used as a wallpaper on a newly launched laptop.
Sony today announced four new full-frame lenses for its E-mount camera system today, bringing the total number of FE lenses to 11. The new lenses are: the 28mm f/2, 35mm f/1.4, 90mm f/2.8 macro, and 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3.
This photograph may look like some kind of computer-generated artist rendering of a futuristic space, but it's actually a high-key architectural photograph of the beautiful public library of the city of Stuttgart, Germany. Called the Stadtbibliothek Stuttgart, the library's new building features a simple cube-like design and a minimalist white interior, and it opened its doors in 2011.
Charles Peterson is known for being one of the primary photographers on the forefront of the grunge music scene when it emerged from the Seattle underground during the 80s and 90s. He was able to capture images showing the movement from its inception through the days of bands such as Nirvana becoming huge commercial successes in the music industry.
20th Century Fox has come up with an unusual way to promote its upcoming film Unfinished Business. Teaming up with Getty Images and its iStock service, the studio has created a series of generic-looking stock photos showing Vince Vaughn and his co-stars in a corporate atmosphere.
Check out this handmade Leica rangefinder replica crafted out of wood. It has quite a bit of detail, a viewfinder you can look through, an iconic red dot, and two wooden lenses that you can actually swap on and off the lens mount.
Three years ago, photographer Marvin Lewis and his then-girlfriend-of-5-years Amanda Marie began an annual tradition of doing a photo shoot on their anniversary. For this year's photo shoot on the couple's 8th annivesary, Lewis decided to make it extra special by asking Amanda to marry him.
If you're a fan of both photography and major Hollywood movies, there's an upcoming film to add to your "must watch" list. Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct a war photographer biopic with actress Jennifer Lawrence as photojournalist Lynsey Addario.
“World Press Photo is committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism and documentary photography worldwide.” …
Last year Nikon announced that it had set aside $1.96 billion for mergers and acquisitions into new industries in order to diversity from the camera industry that had grown the 98-year-old company to greatness.
Since 2012, photographer Brian Batista has been shooting an ongoing project titled Tattoos & Rescues. It's a series of portraits that seeks to combat the negative stereotypes surrounding both rescue dogs and tattooed people. The photos are meant to show that looks can be deceiving, and you should get to know both dogs and people before judging them based on outward appearances.
A photographer and birdwatcher in London has captured a strange and rare photo that has the Internet abuzz: an image showing a weasel riding on the back of a woodpecker as it flies through the air.
One of the strange properties of light is that it behaves as both a wave and a particle. Experiments over the years have confirmed both aspects, but none have succeeded in directly observing both natures at exactly the same time... until now.
If GoPro camera prices drop far below $100 in the future, you may have a Chinese company called Xiaomi to thank. Known for its popular smartphones that dominate the Chinese market, the company has launched a new product called the Yi Action Camera that aims to become the GoPro of China while costing just a fraction of the price.
Lowepro is known for its extensive collection of sporty and durable camera bags, but one word that probably doesn't come to mind when you think of the company is "luxury." It wants to change that. Today Lowepro unleashed a new line of photo equipment luggage that "brings trusted protection to the discerning" photographer. It's called Echelon.
We shared last week that the Belgian town of Charleroi was protesting after a series of photos casting it in a bad light was awarded 1st prize at the prestigious World Press Photo contest. According to the town's mayor, Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo had gone out of his way to stage shots for the purpose of painting the city as "The Dark Heart of Europe." …
After shaking up the lighting industry with the B1 flash system back in 2013, Profoto is back today with another "game changing" product: the Profoto B2. It's a small and lightweight off-camera flash system that's designed for easy and fast on-location shoots.
"Boundaries" is a project by photographer Allaire Bartel that aims to capture what it feels like to be a woman in an atmosphere of male entitlement.
Nikon today unveiled the new Coolpix P900, a superzoom compact camera with a crazy 83x of optical zoom, allowing photographers to "take creativity to extreme distances."
22-year-old photography enthusiast David Maitland is a huge fan of film photography and shooting with his Mamiya 645 Pro TL medium format camera and Sekor 80mm 2.8 lens. So, for his recent birthday, he got a cake modeled after his beloved camera kit. The camera, lens, strap, film, and photos in the photo above are all edible.
Alongside its new D7200 DSLR, Nikon today also announced the ME-W1 wireless microphone set. It's a water-resistant lavalier mic that makes it easy to capture high quality audio while capturing video.
High-flying Kickstarter campaigns get a lot of glory, but they come with their fair share of risks: just ask Triggertrap. Back in 2013, the UK-based camera trigger maker launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new modular camera trigger it had developed, called the Ada (initially it was the "Redsnap"). With an initial goal of only £50K, the company successfully raised £290,386 (~$446K) from nearly 1,971 backers.
Canon seems to be playing the numbers game against its arch-rival Nikon. Its new 50MP EOS 5DS and R-variant allowed Canon to leapfrog past Nikon’s D810’s 36MP in resolution. And with this new EF 11-24mm f/4L USM, Canon users can sneer at Nikon’s 14-24mm f/2.8G with “only” 14mm focal length.
Looking to buy a lens in the popular 70-200mm focal range for your Canon DSLR? If want the best money can buy, you're probably looking at a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, which costs a hefty $2,200. If you'd like the same range, fixed f/2.8 aperture, and stabilization but at a more affordable price point, the $1,500 Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC might be a product you've been eyeing. But how do these two lenses stack up against each other, and how big of a difference is there? …
Nikon today announced its new D7200, a 24.2-megapixel lightweight DSLR camera geared toward photography and videography enthusiasts. It boasts sharper image quality, a bigger buffer, improved autofocusing in low-light, and serious features for video recording.
Apple tells us that it's launching a new global advertising campaign called "Shot on iPhone 6." Starting this week, billboards in 70 cities in 24 countries around the world will feature photos captured by iPhone 6 owners. 77 iPhone photographers will be featured in the campaign after Apple selected their images as its favorites.
Preset maker Really Nice Images has announced RNI All Films 3.0, a new film simulation suite that aims to rival the software offered by companies such as DXO and VSCO. RNI claims to be so realistic in its simulation of film that film photographers are fooled by resulting photos in blind tests.
Want to start your own camera museum? There's a new listing on eBay that can put you on the fast track to doing so. It's for a gigantic collection of roughly 600 vintage cameras from between 1880 and 1980. The description claims the lot could be turned into one of the largest camera museums in the world.
According to a new report, Sony is saying that it will stop producing all CCD sensors by March 2017 in order to focus on expanding its involvement in CMOS image sensors.
New York-based photographer and instructor Lindsay Adler recently collaborated with cinemagraph software maker Flixel to create a set of three stylized wedding portraits to show off at the upcoming WPPI conference. The behind-the-scenes video above offers a quick introduction to the project.
Want a better understanding of how Photoshop's sharpening filters work and how to best use them? Here's a tutorial in which Photoshop expert Deke McClelland discusses using Photoshop's features to bring out clearer details in your digital photographs. McClelland discusses all the sharpening filters found in the Sharpen menu in Photoshop (e.g. the one-click sharpening filters, Unsharp Mask, and Smart Sharpen), as well as the Sharpening panel found in Adobe Camera Raw.
Photography-centric web comic CLICKittyCAT published a series of one-liner comics this week based on true stories it gathered from a camera store in Ventura, California, called Dexter's Camera. The shop has served customers since the 1960s, so they've fielded plenty of unusual questions over the years.
Did you know that certain wide angle lenses offer slots on the rear mount that allow you to insert gel filters? Often this design decision is due to the fact that the bulbous front element prevents the use of a standard filter that screws onto the front, but sometimes it's not.
Here's a collection of camera commercials that have appeared over the past 20 years. No matter your age, there’s probably something here that you’ll remember, and I hope it will bring back a bit of nostalgia. I've also selected what I consider the best commercial of them all.
The Impossible Project is continuing to branch out from the standard frame design for instant photos that made the original Polaroid pictures iconic. Last year the company launched a new line of film with colorful frames. This year it's the shape that's getting a makeover: the company has unveiled a new color instant film with round frames rather than square ones.
