One of the major shortcomings of sharing work online, especially on social media, is that it is often a highlight reel of incredible work. That's not a bad thing if your only goal is to enjoy work, but for people looking to learn, it can offer some unrealistic expectations.
The prestigious Hamdan International Photography Award (HIPA) has announced its 2019 winners, and Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong Wee Kee won the $120,000 Grand Prize with a photo shot in Vietnam showing a mother carrying two children. But the win is proving controversial today after a behind-the-scenes photo revealed that the shot was apparently staged.
Episode 316 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Photographer and Author, Gary Hershorn
New Zealand’s South Island is known for its picturesque landscapes, breathtaking high peak alps, and ever-changing weather. It is a world heritage for its untouched wilderness, clear night skies, and adventure tourism. After traveling through the North Island, it was time for me to jump south.
I recently converted my friend's Durst Laborator 1200 enlarger to use LED lights. In this article I'll share how I did it.
During an earthquake, a camera capturing a long exposure of the night sky can capture star trails as seismograms that records the motion of the ground.
I was out in Death Valley last week and was fortunate to photograph some unique scenes of the floods. A rare 10-mile-long lake formed in Death Valley after heavy rains.
Changing camera systems is not something to be taken lightly. As a die-hard Nikon fan since I first got into photography, I didn’t think I would ever consider switching away from them. And yet, here I am, sitting with no Nikon kit in sight having just shot my first wedding entirely on Sony kit and no regrets.
How do I find my style? It’s a question that inevitably comes up for almost every photographer actively trying to improve their images. It’s a tough question, at first. Because at first, you don’t really know what that means. Many photographers think that “style” is just equal to how someone might edit their images.
A long, long time ago, that is, in days of film photography, it was a rather difficult task to learn how to produce properly exposed pictures. There was no instant feedback and the only way to see how good of a job you did exposing the scene was to wait until the picture was developed.
Samyang has announced the new AF 85mm f/1.4 FE prime lens for Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras. It's a lens with "stunning resolution and bokeh" and "excellent AF performance," the South Korean company says.
Although it’s been six months since the Nikon mirrorless Z system was announced, there’s still a dearth of native Z mount lenses, and the ones that are available are in my opinion somewhat overpriced (starting at $599 for the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 S). While the FTZ adapter does work remarkably well, it adds quite a bit of bulk to even the smallest F mount lenses. This is where I believe the Meike 50mm f/1.7 finds its niche.
Dive tour operator Rainer Schimpf was documenting a sardine run in February off the coast of South Africa when something unexpected and terrified happened: Schimpf was sucked into the mouth of a whale and then spat out, and the whole thing was caught on camera.
Before Instagram, selfie sticks, disposable cameras, Polaroids, and box brownies, there were carte de visites -- small photographic albumen prints, mounted on card, which were wildly popular during the Victorian era.
If you're always looking for ways to optimize and streamline your photography post-processing workflow, here's an 11-minute video for you. Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel shares 15 helpful Photoshop keyboard shortcuts (AKA hotkeys) that aren't as commonly known.
ILFORD PHOTO just released this 15-minute short film that looks at the work of Brendan Barry, a large format photographer, lecturer, and camera builder who does unusual work with cameras and photography. It's titled, "The Camera Maker."
Godox is getting ready to launch the V1, its affordable rival to the $995 Profoto A1 round head flash, but it may soon hit a major roadblock: Profoto is accusing Godox of patent infringement, saying the Chinese lighting company copied its A1 designs for the V1.
I recently shot this image while teaching a street photography workshop in London. I had been talking to my students about noticing things that were “odd” or out of place which normally makes for an engaging subject.
The mobile photo-editing app startup Polarr has announced that it just raised another $11.5 million in Series A funding as it continues to capitalize on the boom in smartphone photography.
The world of high fashion can get weird, and YouTubers Zac and Jay wanted to see whether they could fake their way to the top of London Fashion Week 2019 by capitalizing on this weirdness. As you can see in this humorous 15-minute video, they accomplished their goal in getting photographers to buy the ruse, hook, line, and sinker.
MAYA is a darkroom timer project that was born out of necessity when my old darkroom timer had started to malfunction. It has become a pretty successful crowdfunding campaign so far, exceeding 300% of its initial goal with a few days left to go.
A few months ago, the Czech car brand Škoda got in touch with Hungarian photographer Benedek Lampert and asked him to shoot car photos. But instead of expensive shoots featuring real Škoda cars, the company asked that Lampert only use 1:43-scale models of the cars.
The Hungarian government has launched a public campaign to encourage couples to have more children. What's humorous is the choice of stock photo: whoever was responsible for the giant billboards chose the same couple that appears in the well-known "Distracted Boyfriend" photo meme.
The CompactFlash Association's new CFexpress standard is getting ready to take its place as the new dominant memory card format, and six companies have already announced CFexpress cards: Apacer, Delkin, Lexar, ProGrade Digital, SanDisk, and Sony. But here's something you might have missed: CFexpress will feature three different card sizes.
There’s something unique about being a wedding photographer. It's a job that filled with joyful moments and happiness. A wedding photographer plays a significant part in the best day of someone's life. Plus, you can make a fair amount of cash capturing those joyful moments. Could this be a career for you? Well, it’s certainly an excellent idea, but there are certain things you need to know before you take the plunge.
I remember when I just started out with photography I would use external hard drives to save the biggest amount of my data on. I’m sure most of you reading have been there (or are still in this phase). The drive got full, and then I would get another drive, and because of technology and price, this one was often bigger... but eventually it would also run out of space.
Insta360 has announced the EVO, a groundbreaking new camera that features a folding design and two cameras. Folded up, the camera can shoot 360° spherical imagery, capturing every angle at once. Unfolded, the camera can shoot 180° 3D content.
Sony's new FE 135mm F1.8 GM lens will hit store shelves next month, but it's already dropping jaws with its sharpness. According to one new test, it may be the sharpest lens of its kind on the market today.
It seems like having dual cameras on your phone has become almost the norm nowadays, but many people don’t even know that they are there, let alone why. However, I believe that Portrait Mode is an incredible tool for the modern photographer to promote themselves -- particularly on Instagram.
Last winter, I got the beautiful chance to spend time living and photographing on a freezing island located right in the central Helsinki. I spent 24 nights there as the cold winter turned to spring.
While still cameras use histograms to show tonal distribution and clipping, many video cameras use waveforms for the same purpose. Here's an educational 8-minute video in which DPReview's Chris Nichols argues why waveforms are better than histograms and why still cameras should adopt them too.
F_MU1 was an incredible elephant. For more than 60 years, she lived a peaceful life in a quiet corner of Tsavo in Kenya. When I first saw her I was awestruck, for she had the most amazing tusks I had ever seen. If I hadn’t looked upon her with my own eyes, I might not have believed that such an elephant could exist in our world. If there were a Queen of Elephants, it would surely have been her.
A year ago, I wrote an article over at 35mmc in which I discussed some of the jobs I had worked on using 35mm film and the way I handle a film workflow for assigned work. Since writing that piece I have taken on many more commissions for film-based work, and I thought it would be useful to take a more detailed look at some of the implications of shooting film as part of these projects.
It looks like Huawei still hasn't learned its lesson after getting caught faking smartphone photos in ads multiple times. The company's latest teaser ads for the upcoming P30 Pro smartphone imply that they show sample photos, but they don't.
For Easter, I made a pinhole camera out of a chocolate Easter egg. In this 5-minute video and article, I'll show you how it's done.
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a growing trend of photographers in the UK using workshops and styled shoots to boost their wedding portfolio. It wasn’t as prevalent when I started shooting weddings 6 years ago (following many years of documenting my own life with a camera), and I’m glad because if I’d not been as savvy as I was today, I might have been fooled into thinking those images were from real weddings. And from someone who’s only had a camera 6 months? Wow!
NASA has captured the first-ever photos showing the shockwaves of supersonic jets interacting in flight. The beautiful images were captured in an extremely difficult air-to-air photo shoot.
A woman was attacked by a jaguar at a zoo in Arizona on Saturday after crossing a barrier to get closer to the animal for a selfie. The cat reached out and gashed the woman's arm, and she was rushed to a nearby hospital.
Storm-chasing photographer and filmmaker Martin Lisius wanted to demonstrate the danger of flying debris in a tornado, so he got scientists to fire a camera out of a tornado projectile test cannon at 264mph. As you can see from the 1.5-minute video above, the camera doesn't fare too well.
After years of ridiculous photo fads such as "planking," there's finally a viral photo fad that's worth getting behind and giving exposure. It's called #trashtag, and it's a challenge to share the most epic before-and-after photos of trash cleanups.
I was assigned by Fair Trade to go to northern Peru and photograph cacao and coffee production for the Australian and New Zealand markets. The idea was to show a little of the story of both products and the people behind them before they make it to your cup. I am a very enthusiastic consumer of both coffee and chocolate, in liquid or slab form. So as far as I was concerned, it was an assignment made in food heaven.
This guide will be a walkthrough of the basics of Milky Way photography. It is best for beginners, but even intermediate and expert photographers might find something new! Plus, I always find it never hurts to refresh yourself on the basics.
You probably know that the lasers in concerts and even on self-driving cars can damage your camera's sensor in a direct hit, but did you know that light reflected off skin during laser tattoo removal can also destroy your sensor? Watch this 37-second video to see for yourself.
Flickr will begin deleting photos of accounts over the 1,000 file limit starting on March 12th, but the photo-sharing service has just announced two changes to its policy: spared from deletion will be all Creative Commons photos and the accounts of deceased members.
My name is Aaron Chen, and I'm a photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was in Yosemite for the 2019 Firefall and would love to share my experience so that others can do it themselves!
Portrait photos are often disliked by the subject themselves. From the early formative years of grade school on into the advanced years of adulthood, the feeling of dislike of your own picture is universal. Yet it is not for vanity sake, nor is it to spare the shock of another from seeing self-assumed horrors. Assuming you are neither a narcissist nor a person with flawless perfection, you may simply be like the rest of the human race: there is real science behind the reason why you may not like your own photograph.
Episode 315 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Fine Art Photographer, Carrie Lewis
Sony's imaging sensors have been the talk of the photography world for several years now, and the company's mirrorless cameras have been praised for their imaging quality and abilities. But while Sony dominates the global image sensor industry, its own smartphone cameras have trailed rivals in hype and features.
Filmmaker and journalist Johnny Harris made this inspiring 7-minute video about the picturesque Austrian town of Hallstatt, which sits nestled between a lake and a mountain in the Alps. Harris looks at the idea of photography clichés and breaking out of them to find unique photos and experiences.
My daughter loves female superheroes and I love making her superhero dreams come true. The other day she literally thought she was a superhero. She came home from school one day and told us that her friends had made fun of her because of her worn down shoes. To my surprise, she didn't seem too affected and so I kept asking for more details. After all, she is a 5-year-old who makes up a bunch of stories anyway, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.