At least once a day I see a social media rant about other photographers, also referred to as “the competition”, and how they are “devaluing” photography. I see it across the board from wedding and newborn photography to commercial work and fashion photography.
In this article and the 8-minute video above, we are comparing the $2,200 Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens with the $880 Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD lens in sharpness, image quality, focal length, autofocus, and video.
Well-known London street photographer Nick Turpin has started a new point-of-view video series to allow people to "come along for the ride" as he creates his work. The 17.5-minute video above is a look into how he works and things on the streets of the UK's capital.
How far would you go to set up the scene of your dreams for the perfect wedding day photo shoot? Photographer Priscila Valentina was recently hired by a guy named Samuel whose grand romantic gesture was to spend a morning pushing a piano through the streets of Paris and up to the Eiffel Tower.
Kim Jong-un's personal photographer has reportedly been fired for breaking the dictator's photography rules. The photographer's offense? Standing directly between Kim and a crowd for just three seconds and blocking the view of Kim's neck with a camera flash.
Canon may be developing a Quad Pixel Autofocus sensor as the followup to its highly-regarding Dual Pixel AF. A newly-surfaced patent shows a sensor in which each pixel is split into not two, but four areas.
Fujifilm has received rave reviews for its cameras in recent years, but sadly the same can't be said about its companion app for mobile devices. But Fujifilm just released a new major version of its Camera Remote app, and v4.0 promises design and usability improvements.
Canon has announced its first two instant cameras, the IVY CLIQ+ and CLIQ. Both cameras can both save digital photos as well as print them out on ZINK photo paper.
Cone of Shame is an ongoing project by Brooklyn-based photographer Winnie Au, who shot colorful portraits of dogs wearing unusual "cones of shame" around their heads.
By carefully applying blur to a portrait, you can make it look like it was shot with a shallow depth-of-field using a fast (and expensive) lens. Here's a 12-minute tutorial by PiXimperfect that teaches the key to creating this faux blur in a realistic way.
In the good old days of analog photography, print aspect ratio was ultimately determined by the paper size. In other words, if you printed an 8x10-inch, you had to crop your negative to a 4:5 aspect ratio. For slide film, the image aspect ratio was determined by the film format, for instance, 3:2 for 35mm film.
"Eyes" is a collection of multiple exposure photos by Leeds, UK-based photographer Ben Dauré. What's impressive about the surreal photos of human eyes is that they were created entirely in-camera rather than with Photoshop.
NASA has released photos it captured of a rare ultra-powerful meteor explosion that occurred above the Bering Sea back on December 18th, 2018. The "fireball" unleashed over 10 times the energy of the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima in World War II.
Profoto has just announced an unusual new flash trigger called the Profoto Connect. While flash triggers generally have physical buttons built into them, the Connect takes a page from Apple's design manual and is completely button-free.
American music star Ariana Grande has sparked an outcry from photographers and media organizations with her new concert tour agreement. Reportedly a response to "greedy photographers" taking advantage of her in the past, the new contract requires that photographers hand over full copyright to their photos.
Episode 317 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Street and portrait photographer, Jaleel King
Bhutan is a small landlocked country in the Eastern Himalayas of South Asia located between Tibet and India. Photographer Andrew Studer of Portland, Oregon, traveled to the country in 2017 and 2018 and spent weeks shooting photos of the places and people he encountered. His project is titled, "Faces of Bhutan."
Huawei has just announced its new P30 and P30 Pro flagship smartphones, and one of the biggest things Huawei focused on was smartphone quality. Both phones are low-light monsters, and the P30 Pro has a sensitivity that goes up to a staggering ISO 409600.
Have you ever found yourself looking at your children's toys and thought to yourself, "Man that would look great in an image?" Well I have, I do, and I love creating images this way, trying to create a realistic/surreal image which tells a story from using nothing more than a piece of plastic.
During the Vietnam War in 1969, Beatles' singer John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a now-famous "Bed-In for Peace" at the Hilton Amsterdam. Govert De Roos was a 15-year-old photographer at the time who desperately wanted to cover the event, and he managed to sneak in by making his own fake press pass.
"Streets in Mind" is a new short film by SmugMug Films that looks at the life and work of London-based street photographer Alan Schaller. Walking the streets of NYC, Schaller offers thoughts and insights on shooting street photos in major cities.
Sony has unveiled the Cyber-shot RX0 II, a followup to the RX0 action camera announced back in August 2017.
Smartphone camera quality continues to hit new heights, and here's another example of how far we've come: NBC will air an episode of "The Tonight Show" shot entirely on the Samsung Galaxy S10+.
Photographer Miguel Quiles made this 7-minute video tutorial on a trick you can use to shoot eye-catching portraits. It's all about paying attention to and manipulating the catchlights in your subject's eyes.
The Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup GuruShots has raised $5 million in Series A funding for its crowd-based real-world photography game, which gamifies photography for enthusiasts around the world.
Photoshop enthusiast Shawn Pollock has been practicing his skills at retouching and colorizing old B&W photos in recent days, and while searching for historical photos to work on, he came across this photo of a couple.
Sony has launched firmware version 5.0 for its flagship a9 mirrorless camera. The major software update brings AI-powered autofocus capabilities, better image quality, and workflow improvements.
As a dance photographer, I’m paying close attention to the response regarding an action photo of the Australian Football League’s Tayla Harris. This shot of her shows her leg extended after kicking the ball that would be the first goal of an AFL game.
Passport photos on wet plate collodion aren't legally compliant, but you're guaranteed to have fun making them. I shot wet plate collodion passport photos using a Polaroid Miniportrait camera.
"Process" is a 3-minute short film by director Will Campbell that looks into the mind of a large format photographer.
With the recent polemics surrounding a certain image that won a photography competition this week, I feel like we need to talk about travel photography. About people photography, in our case. And to set up boundaries as to what’s acceptable in both cases. Honestly, in my opinion, it’s a matter of common sense – but it seems that’s not enough. We still witness some shocking scenes in the world of travel photography these days.
Portraiture has never been a genre that resonated with me as a creator, which is odd because there are many examples of portraiture that I enjoy, and I’d absolutely love to be able to create meaningful portraits of people in the same way that I feel I’m able to create meaningful images in other genres.
Eye-rolls, shrugs, and barbs greeted the $120,000 Grand Prize winner of Dubai’s HIPA Photography Prize. Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong’s photo of a partially blind Vietnamese woman carrying her baby was derided for representing yet another “poverty porn” contest winner before it was suggested that the image was staged by photographer Ab Rashid.
The asset library Quixel has released this new 2.5-minute cinematic short film titled "Rebirth." It's an eye-opening look at how photorealistic real-time rendering in video game engines is now.
Want to up your portrait game? Here's a video by B&H in which Naew York City-based portrait photographer Peter Hurley shares 5 headshot tips in about 3 minutes.
When two of his good friends got engaged, photographer Mike Soulopulos flew his drone above them and got this creative proposal photo that captures the couple in a romantic shadow.
Emmy-winning cinematographer and time-lapse photographer Tyler Fairbank visited Central Park in New York City over the course of two years and shot photos from the same locations with the same framing. Afterward, he blended the images into this mesmerizing 2-minute time-lapse titled, "The Seasons of Central Park."
What is the best way to light glass? Glass doesn’t look good when you shine light directly at it. It soaks up the light it doesn’t define it. It just gives you specular highlights little pinpoints that don’t photograph well.
The Auschwitz Museum is reminding the public to be respectful when taking photos at the infamous former Nazi concentration camp. It seems that in recent days there has been an increase of people using the railway tracks leading into the camp as a balance beam for social media.
It would be safe to say that the gap between the number of interesting project ideas I've had compared to the number of photo projects I've produced is a wide one. In order to hold myself accountable in executing some of my project ideas, I've created a blueprint that helps me get past ideation and into producing new content.
Thinking about which lens to buy next? You might want to take a look at this 9-minute video first. In it, photographer Jamie Windsor argues that choosing the right focal length is more than a technical decision based on what type of photography you want to do -- your choice affects the dynamic and meaning of your photos.
Harvard University is being sued over daguerreotypes of slaves -- believed to be the earliest photos of American slaves -- commissioned by one of its professors back in 1850. A descendant of the slaves accuses Harvard of wrongfully seizing, possessing, and profiting from the photos.
When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent. Firstly, most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait, and secondly, the editing was awful.
What is it like to shoot a travel assignment for a major publication? What’s the process from start to finish? Every publication is a little different but I’ll speak from my experience shooting dozens of assignments for The New York Times travel section throughout Southeast Asia for over a decade.
A tourist visiting Bali just received a scare while posing for a photo at a popular spot known as "Devil’s Tears." While standing on the edge of a cliff, a gigantic wave crashed against the rock and blasted the woman off her feet. The frightening incident was captured in a video that's now going viral in China.
I hate it when I see photographers writing articles like this. I always think, "why bother?… just let it go, this isn’t going to change anything." But here I am anyway, tapping away to release some of this pent up anger. And I don’t expect this to change anything for me, but I sincerely hope it can stop at least one other person making the same mistake I did: buying a Drobo.
My first time in a Sub-Saharan African country was in Ethiopia, and to be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect. Well, yes I know, I was expecting to get ‘in the zone’ at all times and take hundreds of great pictures like I expect from all my photography trips. Not too much to ask, is it?
The popular craft brewery Dogfish Head is launching a new gose beer called SuperEIGHT. The brew shares more than a name with Kodak's famous Super 8 film format: the beer was actually designed to process the film.
Is your Photoshop running a bit sluggish at times? There might be a way to speed things up. Here's a helpful 10.5-minute video by photoshopCAFE that goes over 10 tips that will help you squeeze the fastest possible performance from the program.
Most the time when I am out doing landscape photography, I have a Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS and Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS with me. On road trips, I try to bring my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II -- it’s a fantastic lens with great image stabilization and impressive image quality. Unfortunately, it is a bit too big and heavy for me to bring out more often!
