As Instagram goes to show, people love to give their mobile photos that extra bit of pop, to make them stand out from the rest and give them an aesthetic true to photography past. To do so, they rely on various applications, most notably VSCO Cam, which claims to be the “standard” among mobile photography applications. However, as of today, there’s a new contender: Litely.
Soft-release buttons help you capture photos with less shake blur by reducing the amount of pressure it takes to trigger the shutter. Unfortunately, most of them are designed for cameras that have threaded shutter buttons (for plugging in shutter release cables).
What do Polaroids and Hot Pockets have in common? 99.9% of the time nothing. But, thanks to Berlin-based fashion and portrait photographer, Oliver Blohm, there’s that .1% remaining. To create that .1%, he has literally developed a way in which to combine Polaroid film with a microwave to create some very... unique photographs.
Rotating around the earth approximately sixteen times each day, the International Space Station is the venue from which many astronauts have been able to capture incredible photographs of our Earth. Taking it to the next level though is a project from NASA called the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment.
Roadtrippers claims to be the first and only website dedicated specifically to road travels. “Discovering America’s best lodging & attractions", the website has a YouTube channel dedicated to sharing footage of these locations and attractions, most of which are done so in a time-lapse fashion.
Who is it that captures these time-lapses though? And what type of work goes into them? Their latest video answers those questions and more.
You might think you have a fast lens if it tops f/1.2 or f/1.0, but that's nothing compared to the De Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75. It's one of the fastest lenses in the world, and -- compared to other super speedy lenses -- isn't that expensive.
Want to see what it's like to be inside a tornado? Check out this eye-opening footage captured by a security camera at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Tupelo, Mississippi. Things go from relative calmness to chaos and destruction in a matter of minutes.
Put together by cinematographer Alec Weinstein, this head-to-head test video puts two unlikely competitors head to head in a battle royale: the Canon 5D Mark III (a $3,500 DSLR) and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (a $600 phone).
Samsung today announced the new NX3000, a mirrorless camera that blends retro styling, beefier specs, and improved connectivity.
Have you ever heard of an anamorphic lens? If you’re a movie fan then you may have, but if not you’ve certainly seen them used in many films made for the big screen.
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, it’s probably a good time to share some inspiration for gift ideas. So, we’ve put together a little collection of items, both DIY and available for purchase to make your life a bit easier come May 11th.
We’ll start from least expensive and work our way towards the more expensive gear. Along with each project or product will be a short summary of what it is and an accompanying link to find out how to make it or where to purchase it.
This past weekend I had the incredible opportunity to shoot the Kentucky Derby with the Getty team.
Oleg Oprisco is a photographer based in Ukraine whose magical, dreamlike photographs have been shared far and wide on the Internet. In an age where realistic photo manipulations are the secret sauce behind impossible images, Oprisco's work stands out for one simple mind-blowing fact: they aren't artificial digital manipulations.
This incredible interview above is with photographer Wally McNamee, a retired Newsweek Senior Photographer and four-time winner of the White House Photographer of the Year. Put together by Bertrand Guez, McNamee shares his experience photographing the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, throughout his years of service at the White House.
Camera equipment rentals is becoming big business. LensRentals proves it: the 7-year-old company was reportedly on track to take in revenues of $13 million last year.
Now it looks like camera makers may want a piece of the pie as well: Fujifilm has announced that it's launching its own lens rental service in Japan.
Just the other day we shared an awesome ‘hack’ of sorts to get up to nine times as much battery life out of your camera using an external battery. And today we have another hack, albeit one that’s a bit more involved and uses extra batteries you might actually have laying around the house.
Have you heard of the "onion ring" effect in bokeh? It's a rather obscure term that emerged as lenses began featuring aspherical lens elements to reduce aberrations and reduce size. Due to the way aspherical lenses are produced, strange "onion ring" lines can appear in out-of-focus points of light.
The term may also soon be a thing of the past: Panasonic has reportedly figured out how to cut the onion (effect), allowing aspherical lenses to produce smooth and pleasing bokeh.
Have you ever watched slow motion car crash tests and wondered how they go about capturing the imagery they do? Well, if you have, the above video might answer some of your questions.
Since 1971, the Met Gala has been the fashion industry's premier annual red carpet event. Some of the biggest names in arts, fashion, and entertainment flock to the exclusive gathering that raises money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
Photographer Brandon Stanton, who has become quite well known for his intimate portraits of New Yorkers on Humans of New York, was invited by Vogue to document the glitzy gathering with his trademark, street-portrait style.
When it comes to masking out and/or selecting hair in an image, be it to remove a background or selectively style it, it’s never an easy task. Even with the most tamed of manes, it can be a pain, but thanks to this "Advance Hair Selection Tutorial" by the Photoshop Training Channel, your life is going to get a lot easier.
Art Wolfe has been photographing the natural world for the past thirty years. His work has taken him all over the planet, and many of his adventures are now showcased in his television series, Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge, which first aired in 2007.
When it comes to sharing images on social media, it usually doesn’t take more than a few reflags or retweets before the original creator of the content is completely taken out of the context. Here to help is Tagg.ly, a new watermarking app for iOS which offers up an extremely simple solution for going about properly crediting the images you take on your iOS device.
It’s not often a company hands out an entire piece of $100 software for free, but today is one of those exceptions, thanks to onOne Software. As of writing this article onOne is offering a completely free download of Perfect Effects 8 Premium Edition and there’s no sign of when this offer will end.
Known most for their film emulation presets, mobile app, and creative network, Visual Supply Co. has taken the photography world by storm since their inception in March of 2011. Releasing VSCO Film, VSCO Keys, VSCO Cam, VSCO Grid, and their VSCO Journal, they’ve shown that they aren’t only a company looking to sell products – they’re a company striving to build an entire community by creating and establishing effective resources for photographers.
And as of today, there’s proof in the form of dollars that others believe in their endeavors. $40 million dollars worth of belief to be precise.
New cameras, lenses and accessories open up the possibility of fresh adventures in photography. In reality though, most of us have to make do with what we’ve got, upgrading to new camera kit as and when we can afford it. With that in mind, here are 15 suggestions to help beginning and intermediate photographers improve your photography without splashing out on new gear.
With cameras as ubiquitous as they are, citizen-provided evidence is becoming more and more substantial when it comes to acquitting or incriminating victims in court. However, no matter how much information is captured, it’s rare for it all to be seen by those in charge of making the critical decisions, as there isn’t an effective way to submit or sort through the media.
To change that, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has launched a new online app, built around Amazon’s Web Services, to allow anyone to submit photo and video evidence of incidences.
Back in January, we featured the story of Anthony Carbajal, a California-based wedding photographer whose career came to an abrupt end when he was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. After the story broke, media journalist Avni Nijhawan created the above video that offers a touching portrait of Carbajal's life and struggles.
If you’re sick of the standard, monotone, boring-to-look-at unboxing videos, this one by Peter Gregg might help you appreciate them again. Combining a borderline theatrical performance with both an unboxing and quick review, it definitely keeps things interesting.
As digital photographs become easier and easier to create, edit, and share, it's also becoming easier to doubt the authenticity of photos. There have been quite a few stories in recent days of photojournalists, news organizations, and contest winners throwing their reputations away by using Photoshop to manipulate the truthfulness of photos.
Izitru (pronounced "is it true") is a new free service that aims to make it easier for honest photographers to prove the authenticity of their images.
Trina Merry is a bodypainting artist based in San Francisco. There's a good chance you've seen her work before, as a number of her projects have enjoyed widespread viral success on the Web.
Her "Human Motorcycle Project" is a series of photographs showing motorcycles created entirely out of painted human bodies.
Is Amazon attempting to patent an age old photography lighting technique? A recently published patent seems to suggest that, and it's getting some photographers up in arms.
It’s probably safe to say many -- if not all -- of us know how to remove a background from an image in order to separate the subject of that image. But, thanks to a convenient website called Background Burner, the process has been simplified for when you need speed more than specificity.
Back in 2012, the Republican Study Committee caused widespread debate over intellectual property law after publishing and then pulling a paper on copyright reform. Derek Khanna, the conservative staffer behind the paper, was fired by the committee shortly afterward.
He may have lost the platform afforded by the RSC, but Khanna is still pushing to have his views on copyright reform heard. His latest writings continue to cause quite a discussion on how copyright should be handled in the United States.
Created by photography magazine COOPH, this handy little video follows photographer …
If you think your camera collection is impressive, you might want to check out the camera shop of Harry Mueller. Deemed “The Camera Magician,” Mueller’s shop holds over 4,000 cameras at any given time.
This post contains absolutely no mathematics. Explaining MTF without math is sort of like doing a high-wire act without a net. It’s dangerous, but for any number of reasons is more likely to keep the audience interested.
Photographer JP Danko recently put together the above video that takes a 20-minute behind-the-scenes look at the editing of an underwater photo. Detailing from beginning to end, Danko shares his personal technique for turning a straight-out-of-camera shot to something ready for publication.
For those of you who already have an Amazon camera gear purchasing infatuation, leading to a slim wallet and empty bank account, this may be NSFL (so turn your head away): Amazon has teamed up with social media giant Twitter for a new feature that allows you to now add items to your Amazon cart directly through the social network.
If you care about endangered animals that are hunted for their parts, here's something important you should keep in mind: make sure you scrub the GPS data on the images prior to sharing them online. Poachers have reportedly been turning to geotagged photos on social networks in order to find out where they can make their next kill.
Timelapse projects involving one photo or video per day have seen a surge in popularity in recent years ever since videos such as Noah Kalina's everyday went viral. Matt Bray wanted to do something similar to Kalina's project... but different. He set up a camera and captured himself doing the exact same dance in his room for 100 days, and then turned it into one impressive time-lapse dance.
There are times when actually creating and composing a photo are key. But, there are also times – especially to the general population – when just capturing an ‘alright’ photo is hard enough. Here to help solve this problem is a new iOS app called Vhoto, which blurs the line between capturing videos and photos.
I first heard about 5 Pointz in a Wall Street Journal article in the summer of 2011. The article detailed the recent attempts by the owner to knock what had become an internationally-reknown street art mecca down, and build high-rise condominiums.
Have you ever watched a movie and wondered what single frame could perfectly summarize the entire film? Well, Geoff Todd did and his resulting creation is One Perfect Shot, a Twitter account that does just that.
It’s no surprise that a market as vast and broad as photography is going to have problems with counterfeit gear, but the problem might be more prevalent than you think. According to a recent study commission by Canon, it's estimated that some 18% of consumers have purchased counterfeit goods without knowing it, despite the fact that companies like Canon often try to educate customers about this sort of thing.
Be careful who you let photograph you on the job... you might get suspended. That's what happened to a woman named Debbie Heald who, last week, was put on “administrative suspension” after a photographer from the local Guardian newspaper snapped her photo for an article.
Cinematographer Andy Newman has put together a series called Why We Create in an effort to gain a glimpse behind why we, as artist, make what we do.
One of his latest installments in the series features photographer Nick Fancher -- known for his work for ESPN, The Ohio State University, and Jackthreads -- going about his day as he explains via voiceover what it is that draws him to create the images he does.
Would you like to photograph the Upper Yosemite Falls by drone? Attach a GoPro to your newly-acquired DJI Phantom 2 and just have at it, capturing views that Ansel Adams would envy? Well, you can't, because it turns out "use of unmanned aircraft systems (drones)" is prohibited in Yosemite National Park.
Okay, to be fair, if you're of the photographic persuasion (and chances are good seeing as you're reading this) then your desire to visit places like New Zealand and Iceland doesn't need any more 'awakening.' It's like a wanderlust itch that just won't go away until you book that flight, pack the gear you do own, rent the gear you don't, and get you a** out there.
Still, this gorgeous time-lapse by photographer Martin Heck won't help things one bit.
The most recent video to come out of Adobe’s “Photoshop Playbook” series of …
Who knew a dipperful of seawater contained so much life? Well, photographer David Liittschwager, that's who, because in 2006 he captured this eye-opening photograph for National Geographic.