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Just when you thought you’d seen it all... Excuse me for a moment while I climb atop my soap box. *Taps Mic* Check? Is this thing on? Okay.

This was sent to me by a friend this morning and, after I opened it, I just sat staring at it. I could see it was a Craigslist ad, that much was evident, but I had to keep reading it over and over because the words just would not register. I knew they were English, and complete sentences were formed, but what it was asking went beyond my means of comprehension.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I realized, it wasn’t. Then I said a very very bad word.

What in the world is going on here!?

'What's in Your Bag' posts are popular on major photography websites. National Geographic's PROOF blog even does a unique version where they focus on those things that have meaning, but aren't necessarily gear.

But what about the rest of us? If you're not expecting a call from Nat Geo asking you to reveal the contents of your camera bag any time soon, the website InMyBag gives you a chance to share that with the world and pique your gear envy at the same time.

We've shared some pretty good one second of video per day for a year videos in the past -- there was even an app developed for this purpose at some point -- but comedian Brooks Wheelan's video is unique... simply because he had one HECK of a year.

Wheelan began the year as a stand up comedian with an engineering job, and ended it as a cast member for Saturday Night Live.

Austrian photographer Josef Hoflehner's portfolio is made up almost entirely of places. His work revolves around capturing cities or, in this case, entire countries in such a way as to bring out some unspoken quality of the place that makes it unique.

In his series on India, a place teeming with that mystical spiritual power often associated with the East, he uses black and white photography to portray tourist landmarks and natural oases alike as haunting, mysterious and solitary places of peace.

Where Photoshop and other advanced image editing software is concerned, the standard keyboard is woefully outmatched. To get around this, Adobe and other developers use shortcuts (that aren't always all that short), but one designer decided that instead of going down to the keyboard's level, he would bring the keyboard up to his.

Thus was born the Shortcut-S: a massive 319-key keyboard that is designed specifically so that you never have to use more than one finger when selecting an editing function ever again.

The time is almost here for Nikon fans. Nikon Rumors is reporting that as of yesterday, the D4 has officially been discontinued and is out of stock or back-ordered at all the major online retailers. This, of course, comes just in time for the D4s launch.

The nostalgic ‘Look Back’ videos that Facebook offered to automatically create for anybody and everybody as part …

The popular wedding blog The Wedding Chicks has become the focus of much of the photo community's ire today after an article on the popular photography blog Fstoppers brought attention to one of their business practices. Namely: that they offer "social media packages" in which photographers can pay the blog to have their work featured on the Wedding Chicks Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.

GoPro's rise to the undisputed title of action camera king has been nothing short of meteoric. The company has gone from an operation out of founder and CEO Nick Woodman's van, to a massive company that expects revenue to top 1 billion this year (a great story that you can find out about here) and now they're hoping to make the jump to a publicly traded company.

PetaPixel readers should already be familiar with Eric Paré's work. Often a combination of multiple photographic disciplines, his videos offer, if not something unique, then something at the very least different from the multitude of time-lapse, stop-motion and light painting work out there.

His newest project, called WindScale, is a combination of time-lapse and stop-motion that he and a friend created on their way from Montréal to Burning Man in Nevada last year.

Panasonic is serious about the 4K-capable GH4 as both a video AND stills camera. But particularly in the stills category, a price tag that will likely push 2 grand and a sensor that is only Micro Four Thirds size makes for an uphill battle when it comes to convincing folks to jump on board.

Someday, when the first humans walk on Mars -- after they've taken a commemorative "one small step for man" selfie, of course -- they will turn their iPhone 27's back towards Earth and snap a photo of their home planet that might look something like the image above.

Earlier today, 500px announced that it would be getting into the licensing game with a new commercial licensing site dubbed 500px Prime.

Bear Kirkpatrick lives and works in Portsmouth, NH. You can visit his website here

PetaPixel: First Bear, tell us about what spurred your initial interest in photography?

Bear Kirkpatrick: Two things happened, and they never fully blended. My father had a 35mm film camera when I was a boy. One day he, my younger brother, our two black dogs and I went into the woods beside our house -- it was winter, we had coats on -- and my father took pictures.

When he developed the film and showed us the beautiful black and white prints, it was like the top of my head came off -- I didn't understand right away, but certainly felt right away the elevating nature that photographs had over life. Or had to life. Everything was better.

This TV Spot is the height of creativity, and we absolutely love it. In 50 seconds and one uninterrupted flowing video shot, UK directing duo US and advertising agency Grey (the guys behind the amazing exploding spices commercial) pay tribute to six completely unique, culturally iconic images by expertly recreating one after the other.

If you're still upset that you missed out on buying one of those limited edition Ralph Gibson Monochrom cameras that sold out in five minutes, and that spare $28K is burning a hole in your pocket, Leica might have something for you -- although it probably won't do away with all that cash.

Defending the selfie in this day and age is a dangerous angle to take, but the folks at the PBS Idea Channel are taking a swing at it because, in their words, "despite being possibly the world’s most annoying habit, selfies are undeniably a major part of modern visual language."

At the beginning of the year, Nikon usually overhauls its entire Coolpix line of cameras, releasing new point-and-shoots and bridge cameras galore in an announcement fest that is usually swallowed up by other photography news.

Like we did last year, we'll give you a quick rundown of all the new models, which this year include two new 'professional' point-and-shoots, a couple of superzooms and a some upgraded rugged cameras.

For some of us photo types, the enduring relationship we'll be celebrating this February 14th will be the one we share with our beloved gear. Fortunately, the wonderfully quirky people at LensRentals understand, and have created a hilarious ad that takes "loving" your gear to the literal extreme.

After months of rumors, spec and image leaks -- including a full press text leak... yikes -- Panasonic has is finally launching the much-talked-about GH4: a Micro Four Thirds shooter with 4K video capability that the company is calling the "ultimate photo/video hybrid Digital Single Lens Mirrorless(DSLM) camera."

We know Sigma's recently-announced 50mm f/1.4 Art Series lens is supposed to be good, great even. In fact, it's supposed to be so good that it competes on the same level as the ZEISS Otus that we've heard so much about (and may or may not be reviewing as I type this).

The question on everybody's mind, then, is "how much will this beast cost?" Thanks to an Australian website, we now have an idea.

In Sweden's Abisko National Park, 2014 has been something of a God-send for time-lapse photographers. In the first 32 nights of the year, the so-called 'polar spirits' have come out to dance 29 times! But even that couldn't have prepared photographer Chad Blakley for the spectacular light show he captured on February 1st.

In the picture above, taken on January 30th 2014, you see more than 315,000 Euro worth of Canon camera …

So much for a medium format CMOS sensor being a novel idea. Following closely behind Hasseblad and Phase One's CMOS medium format announcements is the news that Ricoh is working on its own CMOS MF model, a followup to the 645D that is tentatively being called the Pentax 645D 2014.

In addition to the rugged cameras announced earlier, Ricoh also unveiled the long-awaited 1.4x rear teleconverter first mentioned at Photokina in 2008 (H/T to PopPhoto for that little tidbit). Fortunately, they seem to have done a bang up job with it, so we'll excuse the delay.

And the award for most repugnant and moronic selfie of the year (or maybe decade?) goes to... an Alabama High School senior who, earlier this week, decided it would be okay to completely ignore rules she was explicitly informed about (not to mention any shred of common decency) in order to take a selfie with a cadaver in a University of Alabama at Birmingham anatomy lab.

You could go alone to New Zealand, Mexico, Cuba, or wherever your wanderlust takes you, and bring your camera along for the trip -- hope to stumble upon the ‘photographic’ spots, and take some pictures you think might be good.

Or, you could sign up for an amazing, fully immersive photography workshop in an exotic locale with a pro photographer who knows the land, guides you to all the best spots, gives you feedback during critiques, and helps you edit your new travel portfolio along the way. We prefer the latter -- and after finding out about all the amazing photography courses happening all over the world this year, we had to share. Wherever and whatever your heart desires to go and photograph, there’s probably a workshop to guide you through it.

It's February, which means Ricoh is right on schedule when it comes to introducing the new 'rugged' cameras in the Pentax WG line... except they're not called Pentax anymore. For the first time since acquiring the brand, Ricoh has dropped the Pentax name from these cameras entirely by introducing the updated Ricoh WG-4, WG-4 GPS and WG-20.

Nikon already revealed that the D4s is in the works -- the company even had one on display in a 'so-close-and-yet-so-far' glass case at CES -- but so far, we've had very little info about the camera itself. Officially, we know that the new flagship will feature a new image processor and "more advanced autofocusing performance," but thanks to Nikon Rumors, we now know a bit more.

LED streetlights are the wave of the future, but in addition to being the environmentally friendly choice, doing away with high-pressure sodium streetlight has one other significant (at least to photographers and filmmakers) side effect: it completely changes the look of night photography.

Artist Emma Howell's landscape images are unlike any we've ever run across. Not because she's capturing something unique, or using a process we've not seen before. They are unique because her images, captured using the wet plate collodion method, are exposed directly onto handblown glass vessels she creates herself.

Here’s a fun little thought experiment for you: what would Instagram have been like if the filter-tastic service had …

The first time that I had worked with Disney ABC TV as their official stills photographer was a couple years back when they came to Japan to film for the reality show I Survived a Japanese Game Show. It was a super big production and I'm grateful I got to be a part of that. Although the working hours were somewhere between 12-14+ moving around on foot each day, I couldn’t complain because the entire crew were all fun to work with.

As with lots of the non-news related picture work that I do, it’s typical that I can’t post any pictures up due to contract reasons (or until the story runs) even though the Internet makes it so tempting with just four clicks of a button. One of the assignments that I’m allowed to finally take out of the bag (now that the show is broadcasted) and share with all of you is when Disney ABC TV put me on the plane bound for Seoul, South Korea to shoot all the stills for the filming of The Bachelor Season 18 Episode 4. Although I couldn’t fly first class, they did put me up in a nice little room towards the top at the Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel, which I was more than fine with. Thanks again Disney and ABC.

Lucas Foglia grew up on a small family farm in New York and graduated from Brown University and the Yale School of Art. Foglia’s photographs are exhibited and collected internationally. Nazraeli Press just published Foglia’s second book, Frontcountry. Frontcountry focuses on people living in the midst of a mining boom in the modern American West.

Whether or not you're a fan of smartphone photography, there's no denying Apple's claim that the iPhone is the most popular camera in the world. So what does Apple have in store for this 'most popular camera' that also makes calls? Some new whisperings from the rumor mill give us a clue.

We never get sick of going behind the scenes with Brandon Stanton and Humans of New York, probably because we never tire of hearing Stanton's story. An amateur photographer who moved to New York in 2010 with two suitcases and a goal has somehow managed to start a movement that has attracted millions of followers, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, and spawned many a Humans of _____ copycat.

At 2.8 million followers, HONY is one of the most successful pages on Facebook's massive network, and so Facebook chose it as one of the 10 'stories' they would tell for the site's 10th Anniversary.

For going on two decades after the end of World War I, Costica Ascinte was quite possibly the only professional photographer in all of Romania. He continued to work right up until his death in 1984, by which point he had accumulated over 5,000 glass plate negatives and several hundred prints -- a visual history of the Romanian people and a culture that, we know from previous articles, may soon be gone for good.

Unfortunately, this massive, culturally-rich archive is slowly disappearing as time and improper storage take their toll. But one man, Cezar Popescu, is determined to rescue whatever is still salvageable, and is well on his way to digitizing the entire archive even as it deteriorates before his very eyes.

We all-too-frequently find ourselves sharing stories of police officers abusing the power they have been given by harassing and often threatening to arrest photographers even if they have done nothing wrong.

What we don't hardly ever share -- in fact, a cursory search dug up exactly zero such stories -- is the news that those officers, who are usually 'under investigation' at the time of the original story, have been fired or significantly disciplined in any way. Today, that changes.

Birte Kaufmann was born in 1981. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She is a visual storyteller focusing on social and society relevant issues. Her work has earned her several Awards and Grants, and has been exhibited worldwide.

Arie van't Riet isn't your typical photographer. In fact, he's not a photographer at all. Riet is a Dutch physicist-artist who has a knack for creating stunning colored X-ray images of nature that he calls 'Bioramas.'

A lot of people might have thought Leica had staked out enough of a challenge convincing people to pay $8,000 for a digital camera that only shoots black-and-white.

Never one to shy away from a luxury marketing opportunity, however, the German camera maker briefly offered the opportunity to pay an extra $20,000 for a limited-edition version of the M-Monochrom... an opportunity people jumped at.

Facebook turned 10 years old today, and the social network is trying its best to get you misty eyed in celebration. If you head over to this link, Facebook will create a personalized video that takes you on a journey from the moment you first joined until today.

If there is only one way for me to describe Iceland, it would be “Monumental Scale Shock”. The country really borders on the extreme. The entire country’s population of 320,137 (as of 2012) is less than one half of Boston’s and two-thirds of everyone lives in the capital, Reykjavik. It's north of NYC by almost all of Canada, but it is warmer by about ten degrees in the winter. And 85% of the country is on renewable energy (Volcanic and Water) as compared to the 13.2% for the US.

After an illustrious 14-year career with Adobe, former Senior Product Manager for Photoshop and prolific Adobe blogger John Nack is packing up his things and moving to Mountain View, where he will join Google's digital photography team.

We're not in the habit of reposting things we've covered before, even though at least once per week we run across some post or video from a few years ago that is going 're-viral' and is being covered by everyone who missed it the last go around (and some who didn't).

For this video, however, we're making an exception. And we beg your forgiveness for that but the truth is, our readership has more than doubled since 2012 and it would be an injustice not to share this with those new readers. Plus, those who have already seen it will definitely benefit from re-visiting this motivational message.

You don't exactly have to be telepathic to know where this Boston-area photographer is coming from. He/she was probably checking over his accounts receivable, wondering how he was going to make it to the next gig, when some clueless would-be entrepreneur contacted him with a fabulous opportunity to do head shots of his entire staff in return for exposure and goodwill, aka bupkis.

If recent rumors are to be trusted, Sony is getting ready to continue its assault on all ends of the mirrorless market with the announcement next week of a successor to the mid-line NEX-6 and NEX-7 models -- among other potential announcements.

On January 24th, 2014, the Macintosh turned 30 years old. Admittedly, 30 is a rough birthday for most humans, but even though the Mac seemed to take it pretty well, Apple still made sure to celebrate in style by creating a tribute video shot entirely on iPhones in just one day.

Don't lie, you saw this one coming. Adobe has already beaten the proverbial horse bloody when it comes to their Photoshop Photography Program being extended again and again and again... and again.

And yet, here they are doing it again, this time once more allowing anybody in the US (regardless of whether or not you own a previous license or not) to get the special bundle for only $10/month on an annual basis.

Sensor cleaning, especially if you've never tried to do it yourself, is a scary prospect. Sure, taking off your lens and using a rocket blower isn't all that nerve-wracking, but start talking to someone about wet cleaning a sensors and beads of perspiration will immediately begin to accumulate on their newly-furrowed brow.