2015

Back in September, Adobe ate some crow after showing off the new Photoshop Fix, a mobile app that has many of the powerful retouching features of Photoshop. In the demo, an image of a model was used to demonstrate the new “Smile” feature, whereby the user can manipulate the strength of a smile by simply dragging a finger.

Modelsbelike created this 5-minute comedy sketch about the different types of fashion photographers …

What makes one smartphone camera good and another one bad? YouTube tech video star Marques Brownlee of …

In September, the animal rights group PETA filed a lawsuit against photographer David Slater, arguing that the monkey who took a series of viral selfies with Slater's camera in 2011 should be the rightful copyright owner.

If you thought that was strange, get this: the legal battle has now evolved into a dispute over the pictured monkey's identity and gender.

The first time I witnessed a camera detect a face to aid the autofocus system, I was amazed. In part because the technology seemed magical and the highlighted rectangle tracking faces seemed like science fiction, and in part because I seem to possess a talent for taking out-of-focus photos.

Here’s a crazy Animal Planet clip in which wildlife photographer “Mad Mike” Penman …

Restrictive concert photography contracts have been a big story in the photo world over the past several months. Taylor Swift, the Foo Fighters, Dweezil Zappa, and Janet Jackson have all made headlines for their extremely strict -- and often rights-grabbing -- contracts that photographers and reporters must sign before covering a concert.

Now a number of the media industry's biggest associations and organizations have published an open letter to performers on behalf of thousands of photographers and journalists in the United States.

German photographer Kilian Schönberger recently shot a series of photos showing one of the most unusual forests in the world. Located near the city of Gryfino in West Poland, the so-called "Crooked Forest" has a grove of pine trees that are curved at the base.

If you have the app "InstaAgent" on your phone to track the people who visit your Instagram account, you might want to delete it now. The app has been banned by Apple and Google from their app stores after it was discovered that the app steals account passwords and posts ads without permission to people's photo feeds.

Eyefi is best known for its Wi-Fi-capable memory cards that allow photos to be beamed to computers and mobile devices directly from cameras. Wi-Fi is appearing as a built-in feature in more and more cameras, though, and Eyefi has been pivoting its business in recent days.

Today the company jumped into the world of mobile apps by announcing that it has acquired OKDOTHIS, the photography inspiration app and community that was created in 2012 by photographer Jeremy Cowart and the Nashville-based app startup Aloompa.

Back in February, time-lapse photographer Rob Whitworth captured the world's imagination with his insane "Dubai Flow Motion" project, which took the concept of the hyperlapse to a whole new level.

Now he's back again with the video above, titled "Istanbul: Flow Through the City of Tales." Whitworth used his same ambitious hyperlapse techniques to create a dazzling tour of Istanbul, Turkey.

How small can you go when it comes to wet plate collodion photography? Photographer Anton Orlov of The Photo Palace recently experimented with this question by shooting thumbnail-sized 8x11mm tintypes using an old Minox subminiature camera -- a model A III from the 1950s.

Want to see what "bridge" cameras were like before the days of digital? EEVBlog got its hands on a Chinon Genesis II 35mm from 1989 and recorded the 18-minute teardown above to show us the guts. The Genesis II was marketed as a "Zoom Lens Reflex" (ZLR) bridge camera because it was more advanced than a point-and-shoot and easier-to-use than an single-lens reflex.

We're introduced to the "zero latency" viewfinder that doesn't require power, the 24- and 36-shot "memory card" compartment, and the strangely-shaped 4-blade aperture.

In 2012, 35 years after its launch in 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe left the Solar System and became the first human-man object to enter interstellar space. On board is a Golden Record with sounds and images that show life on Earth. 116 images were selected for inclusion by a committee led by Carl Sagan.

Vox just published the 5-minute video above to share a rapid-fire slideshow of the photos we humans chose to send toward the farthest reaches of space (note: one photo shows nudity).

"How do you give a second life to an old film camera?," asks the French ad agency Maison Carnot. They had an old and non-functional Fujica ST 705 camera on their hands, so they decided to create a stop-motion video and a piece of art with it. It took the team a day to disassemble the camera into its basic pieces, select some choice components, and then arrange them neatly in a frame for display. The 2-minute video above is titled "DISASSEMBLY."

Rumors have been swirling around in the photo industry the past couple of months about Samsung pulling out of the camera industry. Samsung hasn't announced anything new in recent times, and its camera division has reportedly been bleeding money every year since the NX system was announced in 2010.

Back in 2011, photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck helped coin and popularize the "cinemagraph," an animated GIF showing a mostly static photo with certain elements moving and looping.

Now, as the world of virtual reality is starting to take off in a big way, photographer Eran Amir is taking the cinemagraph to a new dimension: 3D. He has created a series of virtual reality cinemagraphs, which you can watch in the 2.5-minute video above.

Photographer Antoine Geiger has put together a strange photo series titled SUR-FAKE. Each Photoshopped image shows people in public having their faces sucked into the screens they're staring at.

Want to set a new Guinness world record with a stunt explosion in your next photo or video shoot? You're going to have to beat the explosion in the video above.

The new James Bond movie Spectre has been awarded the Guinness World Record for "Largest Film Stunt Explosion." Rather than use CGI for the scene, the team opted for 8,418 liters of fuel and 33 kilograms of explosives.

My name is Louis Amore, and I'm a 42-year-old photographer based in London, England. I have been a professional photographer for the past 6 years, but I have studied photography since a young age... since the days of film and developing in my bedroom.

Want to see what Photoshop's adjustment layers are actually doing to your photos in terms of curves? There's an easy new way to do so.

Los Angeles-based photographer and retoucher Edmon Amiraghyan has created a special PSD file called Live Curves. It's simply a Document window that contains a Curves view of the document that updates in real time.

In a Nutshell created this 5-minute video that offers a simple explanation of the problem of "freebooting" on Facebook, when copyrighted videos are ripped from other sources (mostly YouTube) and uploaded to the service without permission. The videos then go viral, gaining attention for the uploader and ad views for Facebook, but leaving the original content creator out in the cold.

Earlier today, we shared a viral video of student photojournalist Tim Tai being confronted by activists while photographing the ongoing University of Missouri protests. One of the main people under fire for their actions in the video is Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media.

Cameraman Mark Schierbecker has just posted a longer version of his video (embedded above) that shows Click's role in the human media blockade more clearly.

The developers behind the popular Android camera app Camera51 have just announced a new app for helping people shoot the photos they need. This time the startup has targeted the online seller community with Product Camera, which lets you easily shoot product photos by automatically masking out the background behind objects.

A photojournalist has withdrawn his entry from Australia's most prestigious press photography contest after it was discovered that he had cloned out a piece of distracting straw from one of his pictures.

Leica today announced the 0.95 Collection, a new sub-brand for high-end accessories. No, not camera accessories... luxury lifestyle accessories.

The initial batch of products includes an $840 lighter, an $840 fountain pen, and a $175 keyring.

Love the look of wet plate collodion photographs? Did you know you can give any digital photo that same look using Photoshop? It's a technique that can be learned in about 10 minutes.

Facebook is in the process of rolling out a new feature in its Messenger app called Photo Magic. Using facial recognition, it scans through your new photographs, spots the faces of your friends, and asks you if you'd like to send those photos to those friends.

Ongoing student protests at the University of Missouri over campus race relations have dominated the media over the the past several days. Now a new video showing the group blocking a student photographer is sparking controversy and discussion about press freedom.

The 6.5-minute video above shows student photographer Tim Tai being blocked from a public area of campus on Monday while on assignment for ESPN.

It was a wedding like many others. The bride and groom were all smiles the entire day and excited for the ceremony. That semi-chaotic buzz of electricity was in the air as tasked bridesmaids went from place to place working on a variety of details before the ceremony. And after a brief portrait session, the bride was ready to take her father’s arm in their walk down the aisle.

And then it happened. In an all too familiar scenario, Aunt Harriet emerged in the back of the church with camera in hand. While not ideal, the resolution to this was to move over to the other side of the aisle as well as using the bridal party walking down to cover her up. With no signs of anyone with an iPad getting ready to lean into the aisle we were ready to rock and roll!

Understanding the exposure triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO is one of the first steps in learning photography. To help people wrap their heads around the concept, photographer Tony Catalano has created the Interactive Exposure Tool, an online tool for experimenting with how changing camera settings affects the resulting photo of a scene.

Photographer Trey Ratcliff is on a roll. Just months after designing a camera bag with Peak Designs and watching it become the most-funded bag in the history of Kickstarter, Ratcliff announced today that he has teamed up with Macphun to create the ultimate HDR creation software, a program called Aurora HDR.

You know those iconic photos of NASA Apollo astronauts posing with the US flag on the moon? The 3-minute video above is a "behind-the-scenes" video that shows some of the portraits being shot.

Street photographer Keenan Hastings recently mounted a GoPro to his Fujifilm X-T1 and visited the Eastern Market in Downtown Detroit for up-close-and-personal street portraits. The 4.5-minute point-of-view video above shows how he approached his subjects for photos.

Earlier this year, Apple launched a global ad campaign called "Shot on iPhone 6" that featured the company's favorite iPhone 6 photos, which were captured by 77 different photographers. The iPhone 6S has since replaced the 6, but Apple hasn't forgotten about how the photographers helped the phone become yet another hit.

The company has begun shipping out fancy cloth-covered coffee table photo books to the photographers as a special "thank you" gift.

SLOPES is an innovative new stand for GoPro HERO cameras that uses a polyhedron shape to give you 20 different positions. Mount your camera to it, and you can position your camera in the orientation you'd like in just a couple seconds without having to adjust anything else.

Slovakian food recipe site Varme published this simple 1-minute video tutorial on how you can use $25 in IKEA products to create a DIY lightbox for improving your food and product photography.

People on the West Coast of the United States were treated to a light show Saturday night after the US Navy quietly launched a test of an unarmed missile. As a bright white light shot across the sky and burned out as a blue haze, panicked people placed 911 calls with theories of giant meteors or aliens in UFOs.

Some people were in the right place at the right time with their cameras and were able to capture remarkable photos, videos, and even time-lapses of the "UFO."

Want to own a camera that once belonged to a photography great? Now's your chance. The estate of the Mary Ellen Mark is currently holding an eBay auction for a Nikon FM2 that was part of the late and great American photographer's collection. Mark passed away back in May at the age of 75.

The United States announced last month that it's creating a federal drone registry and will soon require that all drone owners register their devices in order to fly legally. While the move should help reign in the "wild wild west" that is the drone industry today, some are wary that over-regulation could hurt the rights of drone owners -- including the rights of the media to gather news.

In a piece we published back in September, drone owner Pablo Castro argues that his country, Colombia, has implemented "absurd, abusive, illogical laws" that make it virtually impossible for people to use their drones legally.

The Internet is abuzz over a series of photographs by a farmer named Liezel Kennedy in Saskatchewan, Canada. The image above may appear at first glance to be a simple snapshot of a snowy Canadian countryside, but it's actually a photo showing how well sheep can blend into their surroundings in the wild. There are about 550 sheep in the photo.

The dangers, and perks, of sports photography: Northampton Town Football Club photographer Pete Norton was shooting a match recently …

Right, I've had enough. I want to talk to you all about guests using mobile phone cameras at weddings. I want to plead with you, and I'm going to make this very simple: brides and grooms, please have a completely unplugged wedding ceremony.

Look at the photo above. This groom had to lean out past the aisle just to see his bride approaching. Why? Because guests with their phones were in the aisle and in his way.

Think the Google Glass camera glasses are funny looking? Check out the 3RDi. Pronounced "third eye," it's a new camera that lets you capture your life while you're enjoying the moment by placing a camera smack dab in the center of your forehead, making you look like a camera cyclops.

Want to see where camera drones are headed? DJI made this 3-minute video that shows a concept drone called the DJI Phantom X. It's a look at what camera drones may soon offer for capturing both daily life and high-end productions.

Want a high-tech way to share photos with others? MOO recently launched a new product called Business Cards+ that can help. On the surface, they look just like ordinary business cards that can be printed with personalized designs. However, inside each one is an embedded NFC chip that can trigger actions with a simple tap of an NFC-capable smartphone.

If you're curious about what it takes to do well on Instagram, Connor Franta can tell you. He's one of the biggest stars on the photo sharing service, boasting over 4 million followers. Franta recently published the 6-minute video above with his tips and tricks for shooting and editing photos that attract eyeballs.

Franta's mobile photo workflow on his iPhone consists of VSCO Cam, Afterlight, Facetune, and SKRWT.

Akiwi is a new website that's designed to help you keyword photographs with minimal effort. It's a semi-automated image tagging system that is easier than manually tagging and more accurate than automatic image recognition.