Back in 1865, if you wanted to be a photographer, you needed to be patient, determined, and a bit crazy (not all that different from today, though for different reasons). As an artist and photographer, exploring new methods and mediums is an important part of the journey.
Here's a 6-minute video by photographer Kelly Hofer of Theory of Curiosity on Background Oriented Schlieren (BOS), a technique that lets you shoot photos and videos of heat using an ordinary camera and Photoshop.
Mapplethorpe is a new biopic that details the life of controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The movie depicts Mapplethorpe's rise to fame in the 1970s and his death due to complications from AIDS at age 42 in 1989.
The defiant cry of the nostalgic hipster that’s become a hashtag: #filmisnotdead. But why? It’s 2019, people -- the digital camera reigns supreme; why won’t this analog trend die? Rationalism abandons the old way in recognition of the new’s superior efficiency. The combine harvester supplanted the scythe, clocks replaced the sundial, and electric lights extinguished the candle.
Photographer Stephanie Smith recently shot birthday portraits for her best friend, Nicole Ham. But instead of normal portraits, Ham got swaddled for her 336-month shoot and posed in the style of those infant portraits you find all over social media.
The Drone is an upcoming horror movie about a serial killer... who transfers his mind into a DJI camera drone. You can watch the new 2-minute trailer above.
Photography is the bastard art. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that everyone owns a smartphone and many of those people are under the mistaken impression that they are “excellent” photographers.
One of the most overlooked aspects of the rangefinder method of photography, when comparing it to other systems, is the role of imagination when it comes to the focus and pre-visualisation of the composition.
2018 was an important year for mirrorless. As we kick off the new year, it's a good time for some reflection on the market. I've written quite a bit about where we are now that all the big players are seriously in the mirrorless game. This time I thought I'd write about what I think each company will/should be doing in the coming year+.
No matter how it looks, this is the story of the photographs I didn't make this year. On January 1st, 2018 my colleague, the military photojournalist C.S. Muncy, presented me with a gift: a small, handmade box he'd crafted out of salvaged wood. Muncy, a film lover, had given to me, an unquestioning digital-age professional, a box full of 35mm film.
The storage startup ProGrade Digital has announced its latest card reader, the SD Dual Slot USB 3.1 Gen 2 card reader. Files on each card can be transferred simultaneously at speeds of up to 10Gb/s, or 1.25GB/s.
On Christmas Day, President Trump and first lady Melania made an unannounced flight to visit troops stationed in Iraq. But before the first news articles and official photos were published, one photographer in the UK had already accidentally uncovered the secret mission on social media.
Before the 2019 Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day, someone decided it would be a good idea to have Texas Longhorns mascot Bevo the longhorn steer meet Georgia Bulldogs mascot Uga the bulldog. Bevo decided to charge Uga at first sight, and photographer Nick Wagner unexpectedly found himself in the way.
During the Geminid meteor shower in December 2018, Colorado-based photographer Dean Rowe managed to capture this massive meteor streaking across the sky with a length 60 times the angular diameter of the Moon.
In the past two decades, most people went from not carrying a camera to always having a smartphone camera with them at all times. With millions upon millions of photos shot (and shared) every single day, how is this explosion in photography affecting us? Here's a 10-minute video by WIRED that explores that question.
Olympus just released this 18-second video teasing an upcoming mirrorless camera that will be announced on January 24th, 2019. From the glimpses we see, it seems clear that it's the previously leaked OM-D E-M1X camera, which features a pro-style body that has a built-in vertical grip.
China just became the first country to achieve a soft-landing on the far side of the moon after its Chang'e-4 probe landed at 2:30 AM Universal Time today. And shortly after landing, the probe sent back this first photo ever shot from the surface of the "dark side of the moon."
Airports is an ongoing project by photographer Pete Mauney, who spends hours shooting long exposure photos near airports. He then combines the photos to create mesmerizing composites in which the night sky is filled with airplane light trails.
If you've been itching to see what the next Canon EF lens announcement will be, you may have to wait over a year to find out. Canon is reportedly pausing EF DSLR lens announcements entirely in 2019 to focus on catching up in the full-frame mirrorless camera war with new RF mirrorless lenses.
If you are a member of any photography groups, I can guarantee you've seen the issue of pricing come up often. One of the favorite activities of some photographers seems to be analyzing/criticizing how others run their businesses. It's wonderful to be able to ask for advice in these groups, but unsolicited criticism, or random rants on how everyone else is doing it all wrong and you're doing it right, are never okay.
NASA has released the first clear, close-up photos of an object at the edge of our Solar System. The photos of Ultima Thule were captured by the New Horizon's spacecraft during its flyby on January 1st, 2019, 4.1 billion miles (6.6B km) away from Earth.
Check out this aerial photo of four lakes in an icy winter landscape. It's actually not what it seems. Photographer Josh Newcomb captured this photo of a frozen puddle from ground level in his own backyard.
My name is Gabriel Isak. Over the past year, I have been working on a collection of images in which I wanted to depict the internal world of solitary people who symbolize our own unconscious states. The work is inspired by the years I went through depression, where I wanted to reflect human experiences that would allow the viewer to reflect on their own journey.
How do you go about shooting one of the rarest sports cars in the world? Here's a 17-minute tutorial in which automotive photographer Mike D'Ambrosio shares the 5 steps of his "night flare" style while shooting a $2.75 million Maserati MC12.
How much has camera image quality improved over the past decade and a half? Photographer Jeff Rey recently decided to see by doing a simple test with his Nikon D200 crop sensor CCD DSLR, a camera that was originally announced back in 2005 with a price tag of $1,700 (over $2,200 in today's dollars).
Photographer Paul Seibert created this beautiful aerial photo that shows how New York City changes between winter and summer. About half the frame shows a snowy winter view while the other portion shows the summer cityscape.
My name is Mattias Hedberg, and I'm a photographer based in Norrköping, Sweden. I was recently about to get the Flickr Pro upgrade and was hovering above the buy button when I decided to take a deeper look at the Adobe offer since it sounded a little too good. I was interested in other features of the plan also, but the Adobe one was very tempting.
In our hallway, we have some family portraits of our kids, but the portraits were taken some years ago -- time for some new ones! But we would also like to hang the portraits of their partners. The previous portraits were color portraits, and this time I would like to do some black and whites. So the challenge is taking seven portraits, each with the same look and feel. This is how I did it.
Sometimes one of the best things I can do for my photography, specifically for improving my compositions, is to put my camera down and walk around without taking photographs.
Episode 308 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Photoshop guru, Unmesh Dinda
Photographer Greg Sheard has suffered from depression for nearly two decades now, but two years ago he took up a new weapon in his fight against it: his camera. In this 5-minute video, Sheard shares his personal experience in how photography has been helping him combat depression.
The camera superstore B&H Photo Video is the largest non-chain camera store in the United States and one of the (if not the) largest in the world. The store made this 1.5-minute video that tells the story of how the juggernaut of the industry came to be.
I’ve been photographing weddings for 10 years now, so I’ve seen and dealt with nearly every lighting scenario possible, from a dark church with no windows, to a wedding ceremony at high noon with not a cloud in sight. But one thing most photographers don’t know is how to photograph in dappled light!
There is a particular obstacle that stands in the way of almost all travel, documentary and cultural photographers alike and, for some reason, no one seems to be willing to talk about it -- so I'm going to.
Are you a portrait photographer in search of a 2019 New Year’s resolution? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really stressed over the prospect of another year of not reaching my photography goals.
Photographer J Salmeron of Metal Blast sparked a huge outpouring of support from other photographers and creatives last week after he shared how he was blacklisted by the band Arch Enemy while trying to protect his copyright. Now the clothing business at the center of the controversy has closed up shop in response to all the "hate and threats" it has received.
Just get a new camera for Christmas and/or looking for a New Year's resolution to improve your photography skills in 2019? Here's a 52-week photo challenge designed to get you motivated and to stretch your creativity.
The rise of Instagram in our culture has spawned a generation of professional Instagrammers who make a living from broadcasting (often sponsored) photos to their massive followings. Meghan Young is one such Instagrammer, and this 12-minute feature by Bloomberg gives us a look into what her life and career are like.
One of my images has been subjected to criticism and scrutiny in a way that none of my other work ever has. The photograph in question is of a scene in London, Chinatown; a man reaches into a sewer while shouting about how someone threw his needles down there.
DPReview just published this humorous 3-minute stop-motion video about how the full-frame mirrorless camera party was finally crashed by new brands in 2018.
After shuttering its Lexar memory card business in June 2017, Micron sold the brand just 3 months later to the Chinese flash storage company Longsys and now Lexar cards are back from the grave. But Lexar is still waiting for US government approval, and the brand's warranty process is at a standstill because of it.
This past month, a student showed me an Instagram post with floating scrabble letters and asked me how it was done. After a few moments of reflection, I decided there was a number of ways to photograph floating letters and it would be a great idea for a student lab. To explore different techniques would be a great lab. The students evaluated the techniques to see which was best for creating floating letters.
Growing up as a skateboarder and BMX biker, Peter McKinnon never thought he would one day become a creative. But after he received a camera, he was bitten by the photography bug and got hooked. This 23-minute short film, titled "The Bucket Shot," tells the story of McKinnon's life journey to shooting the photo of his dreams.
The SLR has been the dominant camera type in photography for the last 70 years. SLRs are more intuitive, easy to focus, and versatile when it comes to mounting lenses of any length. So why does the rangefinder, as a design, persist into the modern era? There is not a single reason why anyone should be using these archaic and fiddly cameras when more advanced and efficient machines exist.
Have you ever had the desire to make your Sony mirrorless camera look like it was built out of LEGO blocks? No? Er... Well, in any case, now you can.
As I am always looking to improve my photography by learning, part of the process is seeking inspiration from others who create. I don’t, however, confine myself to just learning from other photographers. I cast my net for ideas wide, and look to artists, writers, musicians -- whoever it is that will inspire me with new ways of seeing and fresh ideas.
A number of prominent newspapers and magazines have laid off some or all of their photojournalists in recent years, but these moves are not without their consequences. A new study has found that switching from a photojournalist staff to non-professional photos causes, to no one's surprise, a significant drop in photo quality.
If you opened up Instagram today, you may have been surprised to find that the vertical scrolling method of browsing content had been replaced with a completely different horizontal tap-based scroll. You weren't alone, and the outcry was immediate. The good news is the switch was an accident and isn't a permanent change to Instagram.
In the mid-1970s, 134 of the top photographers and curators in the world of photography posed for an unusual set of baseball cards that now sell for thousands of dollars as a complete set. The SF Museum of Modern Art just released this 4-minute video in which photographer Mike Mandel shares the story of how these cards came to be.
One of my favorite environments for photojournalism is the world of fashion, which I fell into almost accidentally when I first started out as a photographer. It has been one of the most interesting, rewarding experiences both artistically and personally, and I would like to share some thoughts on working in that scene.
