February 2016

During the Great Depression, the US government launched the largest photography project it ever sponsored by sending photographers across the country to document America. Of the 170,000 photos captured by photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein, some of them showed other photographers at work with their cameras.

Last week, the Museum of Modern Art unleashed a free online course on Coursera entitled “Seeing Through Photographs” as taught by MOMA Department of Photography Curator Sarah Meister. Although I’ve watched dozens if not hundreds of YouTube videos on everything from “How to tie a bowtie” to last night’s “Coq Au Vin Recipe,” I had never taken an online course, and was intrigued by the subject matter.

Earlier this month, Instagram finally added support for switching between multiple accounts in the same app. Now the photo sharing service is adding another oft-requested feature: 2-factor authentication.

Dear Friend, …

Here's a short and sweet 2-minute-tip by New York-based photographer sports and music photographer David Bergman on the subject of using your camera in extremely cold weather. Batteries lose capacity when temperatures drop, so it's important to keep them as warm as possible so they can keep powering your camera and gear as long as possible.

You probably know about the chicken and the egg problem that aspiring wedding photographers experience. On one hand you want to shoot your own weddings as the primary photographer, but on the other hand you don’t have enough experience or an adequate portfolio to attract clients, and on top of that when you shoot as a second photographer you are not allowed to show your work.

Want a crazy photography challenge? Try photographing a snowflake. Want to make it even more challenging? Try doing it with the wet plate collodion process.

Nobuyuki Kobayashi is a Japanese photographer who creates gorgeous platinum palladium photo prints of nature. His project is titled "Portrait of Nature: Myriads of Gods."

Jeremy Cowart has an inspiring life story that he wants to share with you. Growing up with bad grades and no self-confidence, Cowart didn't seem destined for anything great. Fast forward a few decades, and Cowart is now a sought after celebrity portrait photographer who's considered to be the most influential photographer on the Web. He has gone from flunking in school to starting his own online photography school.

My name is Cooper Neill, and I'm a freelance photographer based in Dallas, Texas. I've found that sports photography can be an extremely challenging creative endeavor. At every game, there are several photographers, all with the same equipment, sitting in the same spots along the sidelines. When you're sitting in those same seats in the same arenas several times a week for a few years, it can make work very repetitive.

With a new exhibition on the work of French artist Edgar Degas opening soon at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Harper's Bazaar commissioned photographers Ken Browar and Deborah Ory of the NYC Dance Project to recreate famous Degas ballet artworks as portraits of dancer Misty Copeland.

An Australian real estate company is in hot water this week after it was discovered that one of its listing photographs isn't an accurate depiction of what the property is like. But even though the photo looks like it was manipulated with Photoshop, it may have been a clever composition that uses a wide angle lens and a tricky perspective.

Sony's CMOS sensors are widely used in digital cameras and smartphones these days, and the company's latest sensor shows why. The new IMX318 sensor is designed for smartphones and features 22.5 megapixel photos, 4K videos, hybrid autofocus, and built-in 3-axis image stabilization.

If you back up your photos on optical disks or storage drives, there's a good chance your data won't last as long as you do due to things known as "disc rot" and "data rot". But what if you want to ensure that your precious photos live longer than you? Good news: a new "eternal" storage technology may be on the horizon.

Last week, we shared how this year's Grammy Awards would be the first to feature footage captured with the GrammyCam, a special Grammy trophy that has a built-in GoPro camera in its base. Well, the Grammys were last night, and the world's first GrammyCam videos are now available for the world to see.

NPR's All Things Considered just broadcast this short segment on the FlatCam, a thin camera that can capture sharp images without the help of a large lens. Being developed over at Rice University, the technology could transform the way cameras are designed in the future.

I bought a Holga Digital through the Kickstarter fundraising campaign in August 2015. It is a fairly early model, so by the time you read this there might have been some tweaks or firmware updates.

Music photography "rock star" Danny Clinch was recently interviewed by Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes. You can watch the 4.5-minute segment above. Clinch has created iconic images of many of the music world's biggest stars.

The Chinese company ZY Optics has just announced the Zhongyi Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 Mark II, an improved version of the original manual focus lens.

"Lost Property" is a wonderful 5-minute animated short film by freelance animator Asa Lucander of Bristol, UK.

Here's a beautiful photo of the Earth and Moon in a single frame, captured back on October 3, 2007 by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Our planet was about 88 million miles away from the camera.

Panasonic has just unveiled the new Lumix GF8, a mirrorless camera followup to the GF7 from last year. The GF7 was a entry-level camera geared toward selfies, and the GF8 takes that to the next level with even more selfie-focused features.

I am a photojournalist with a severe anxiety disorder and last week it got the better of me while trying to work. Here’s what happened.

In 35mm photography, a "portrait lens" is usually considered to be a fast lens with a focal length of around 80-135mm. This allows you to achieve a shallow depth of field and a pleasant perspective that doesn't distort your subject's facial features. But that doesn't mean you should rule out wide angle lenses completely when shooting portraits.

If you use Facebook (or Instagram), you may have seen people share photos of themselves that they "accidentally" snapped... but really the photo was clearly planned. YouTuber Crispy Dingo decided to poke fun at these types of pictures. In the 37-second video above, Dingo reveals how "accidental" Facebook selfies actually come about.

Many moons ago I was enrolled in a class on portraiture by Don Giannatti that studied and sought inspiration from the greats in photographic portraiture. The final artist studied was William Coupon. Coupon is known for his formal painterly backdrop portraits. Being the dutiful student I turned my assignment in post haste, or rather several months late. Either way, I learned that creating a painted backdrop had to be neither difficult nor costly.

The Rodenstock XR-Heligon 50mm 0.75 lens is an old lens that was made for medical X-ray imaging by the German optics company Rodenstock. You can find them for sale on eBay these days for $50 and up.

My name is David Weightman, and I do wedding photography as Married to My Camera. As my brand name suggests, I’m rather attached to one camera! Due to the documentary style of wedding photography I practice, I feel it’s more important that I know my camera inside out, rather than upgrade constantly to the latest model on the market.

By day, Zun Lee is a doctor in Toronto, Canada. When he's not working, he's often unwinding from stress with a camera in hand. As a self-taught photographer, his documentary and street projects have caught the eye of The New York Times, The New Yorker, Magnum, and more.

Pentax has been teasing its first full frame DSLR for months now, and the latest word is that it'll be arriving in the spring of 2016. If shadowy teaser photos and sample shots aren't enough for you, check out these new leaked product photos and specs.

Here's a major warning to those of you who use Adobe Creative Cloud on a Mac: the latest version of Creative Cloud has a bug that deletes unrelated data from your root directory without warning.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York just launched its first free and massive online course for the general public. Titled "Seeing Through Photographs," it's a 6-session class on Coursera that's designed to help you go beyond simply seeing photos and advance to truly understanding them.

Photoshop and Lightroom both have built-in tools for dealing with chromatic aberration (AKA color fringing), but in some cases the features don't work as well as you'd hope. In the 8-minute video tutorial above, photographer Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery shares a quick and easy trick he uses in Photoshop to manually remove fringing from his shots.

Farrah Karapetian is a renowned Los Angeles based conceptual artist who creates stunning imagery through photograms or “cameraless” photography. She studied as an undergraduate at Yale University and received her MFA at UCLA. She just concluded an exhibition at Danziger Gallery in New York City and looks forward to her second exhibition at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles in January 2016.

Photographer Nao Tharp of Los Angeles, California, just released this short video that shows something neat he captured on a freezing cold winter night back on December 12th, 2015. While shooting a time-lapse of the Geminid meteor shower at Red Rock Canyon State Park in California's Mojave desert, his camera caught a bright meteor explosion and a resulting orange glowing plume that lingered for about 40 minutes.

Google has been making big moves into the world of digital photos recently through its Google Photos product, which offers free and unlimited storage and sharing. As the popularity of the service grows -- over 100 million people use it now -- the relevance of another fades: Google announced today that it's shutting down Picasa to focus solely on Google Photos.

Leica, watch your back: you have a competitor in the horizon. The iconic Zenit Soviet camera brand is coming back... as a luxury camera brand.

If you've been following the ongoing presidential race in the US, you may have seen the Bernie Sanders video above that has been going viral over the past 2 weeks. Titled "TOGETHER," it has the tagline: "America should work for all of us. #votetogether." …

Brussels-based photographer Ezequiel Scagnetti stirred up a hornets nest this past weekend after calling out a world famous boy boy singer for posting a photo on Instagram without any permission or credit. Fans of the star began harassing Scagnetti, defending the singer with abusive messages.

Rob Cantor is a talented musician and songwriter who's a mastermind at creating viral and creative content. His video titled “Perfect” features him doing 29 celebrity impressions in 1 original song, and has over 14 million views.

Kevin Steele is a Santa Barbara-based commercial photographer whose clients include The North Face, Nike, Patagonia, Oakley and more. This is his story.

Curious about how many people are actually watching your short Instagram videos? Soon you'll wonder no more. Instagram announced today that it's rolling out view counts on videos.

Life took a 180-degree turn last week for one woman in Nigeria. While walking through town to sell bread, she stumbled into the frame of a pop star's photo shoot. One thing led to another, and now that accidental photo bomb has earned the woman a modeling contract.

Swiss International Air Lines, the flag carrier airline of Switzerland, just released this 5-minute short film titled "The people behind SWISS." It's a look at the work done by over 100 of the company's 8,000+ employees spread across 30 different divisions, and how their efforts all come together for the service provided to passengers.

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If you've received any photography and Photoshop training and news from Scott Kelby's KelbyOne, you probably recognize the names Pete Collins, RC Concepcion, Brad Moore, and Mia McCormick. Those are a few of the big names who are now looking for a new job -- they are being laid off by KelbyOne as the company attempts to refocus on its "core principles" of training creatives.

The Guangzhou, China-based company Techart has officially unveiled the Techart PRO AF adapter, world's first autofocus adapter for manual focus lenses. The adapter, which was teased last month, actually lets you autofocus with lenses that don't have that ability.

Wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas was asked by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) last year to shoot high-quality photos of some of Africa's most elusive animals. It's extremely difficult to stumble upon some of them, so Burrard-Lucas decided to set up 5 Canon DSLR camera traps. Over 3 months, the project managed to capture a large number of beautiful close-up photos of hyenas, lions, leopards, and other skittish creatures.