Long exposure photography and light painted letters have been used in many a situation. One of the more elaborate we've seen was a massive light-painting proposal we shared with you back in 2011. But what do you get when a graphics designer and self-proclaimed Apple geek decides to use the technique? Well, in the case of Marcus Byrne, you get the typeface known as Phone Streak.
We've run across some neat web apps in the past -- be it the Face to GIF app that lets you create animated GIFs with ease using your computer's webcam, or something a bit more practical like UT's enlarging and denoising app.
Here's an interesting idea for engagement photographers looking to try something different. This Hungarian couple not only decided to do a horror-themed engagement shoot (something we've seen before), they took it one step further by turning the whole thing into a short horror-themed engagement comic.
Treasures are often buried under dirt. Well, that's usually the case, anyway. Treasures for photographers may mean finding a working copy of their dream camera at a flea market or on the second-hand camera market. However, more often than not, the camera may not be looking great.
There are DIY projects that just about anybody can do -- for example, turning an old film canister into a flashlight -- and there are DIY projects that have a very specific "Y" in mind.
It's not just Facebook that is eager to unleash the money-making capabilities of Instagram, many companies use the service regularly to connect with their clients and build a brand presence. Heineken's recent Crack the US Open competition is a great example.
When Adobe announced its shift to a subscription-only model earlier this year, there was an outcry from photographers who balked at the idea of paying over $20 a month to use Photoshop CC. There were soon murmurings that the company was brewing a special subscription package geared specifically toward photographers.
Attention amateur concert photographers: are you really being as annoying and disruptive as you could be? Because an attendee at a Major League Baseball game may have just set a new high/low at a recent Tampa Bay Rays home game.
Self-portraits aren't exactly ground-breaking -- in fact, the word "selfie" was recently added to the dictionary -- but Alex DeForest's self-portraits are anything but ordinary. His interesting creations mix light painting techniques with self-portrait photography to create some pretty cool results.
Earlier today, after weeks worth of rumors and leaks, Sony finally announced the 'lens cameras' we had heard so much about. No need to parse through rumors and speculate about what's truth and what's fiction, the company's QX100 and QX10 smartphone-attachable lens-style cameras are officially here.
It's been a long and depressing tunnel, but Kodak has finally reached the light at the end. Over a year and a half after declaring Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the once-great camera giant officially reached the end of its financial troubles yesterday.
In an ongoing effort to control the squirming beast that is social media, Instagram recently updated its service to ban even more hashtags.
It's no secret that Sony will soon be announcing its new QX10 and QX100 lens cameras, which can be paired with Sony smartphones to form a serious -- and seriously flexible -- compact camera. A large set of product photos leaked yesterday, and now a promotion video of the lens cameras has leaked as well.
When technology and marketing director Michael Kammes got married to the love of his life earlier this year, he wanted to capture some footage from a unique perspective that most people don't get to see: the groom's. Using a 1080p keychain camera, he created what may be the first ever pair of groom point-of-view hidden camera glasses.
One of the two Canon Speedlite flashes above is fake. Can you tell which one? …
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out onto the surface of the Moon, it wasn’t technically a military triumph, but it might as well have been. On July 20, 1969, the United States effectively routed the Soviet Union in the Cold War conquest of space. The suits that the astronauts wore, with the Stars and Strips splashed across the left shoulder, left no doubt as to who the victors were.
Enfojer is a new darkroom kit that mixes age-old analog photography processes with digital smartphone photography. It's a simple and portable photographic enlarger that's designed specifically to turn your smartphone photographs into physical prints created with chemicals.
Photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan is perhaps best known for his photos of the Civil War, which include his famous "Harvest of Death" photo. But after covering the war, O'Sullivan decided to strike out West, and when he came back, he brought with him some of the earliest photos of the (quite literally) "wild" American West.
If you've been to a play or other event put on by your child's elementary school recently, you might have experienced something similar to what the Nokia ad above depicts. Meant to tout the prowess of the Lumia 1020, it does a better job at showing just how close we've gotten to ridiculous when it comes to smartphone photography.
It looks like Sony isn't the only company interested in attaching some external camera hardware to your smartphone. According to a recent announcement, Chinese electronics company OPPO is making its own attachable lens cameras.
Back in April, we shared the first of cinematographer Mark Vargo's informative series of videos on different photographic concepts. The videos are meant to educate photographers and videographers alike on these concepts so that they might "unleash their creative potential." …
Two years ago, photographer and musician David Niles was watching his son Nathan let his imagination run wild as he played with his favorite toys. It was then that he was inspired to put Nate, now 9 years old, into these worlds with a little help from Photoshop. Thus was born the Nate's Adventures series.
Less than 24 hours before we're supposed to officially hear from Sony about the company's upcoming SmartShot lens cameras, a whole set of press images showing both models from every angle have leaked online.
It's Labor Day here in the US, which means most people (read: not the PetaPixel staff) are taking the day off, siting at home and possibly getting ready to fire up the grill in the next few hours. Whether you're at home or at work though, if you're looking to kill some time, we've found a great solution for you.
We've had precious few chances to get a glimpse into the secretive country of North Korea. With the exception of a few AP photographers working out of the DPRK who have taken to Instagram to share their work, photos of the people of North Korea are rare. It's not like your friends' Flickr streams often fill up with photos from their recent North Korean vacation.
The ability to shoot 4K video is usually reserved for higher-end cameras, but that's all changing. Just like ultra-high pixel counts made their way onto smartphones with Nokia's 808 PureView and Lumia 1020, 4K video has now infiltrated the mobile device world as well.
At first glance, these photos by London-based photographer Benedict Morgan don't seem like anything special. That is, until you find out that what you're looking at hasn't been touched by Photoshop at all.
Camera technology is always being used/tweaked in one way or another to yield surprising or novel results. In some cases, that means creating a camera that sees like a bug's eye. In others, one that perceives only motion, like a retina.
Street photographer Eric Kim has always believed in the value of 'open source.' Usually a term reserved for software and code, open source is a development model that promotes free public access and redistribution rights for a product.
Photojournalism can be a dangerous profession, especially for those photojournalists who are drawn to conflict photography. Once such photojournalist is Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic, who has been putting his life on the line in war zones for over 20 years.
By this point, the crippling blow dealt to compact cameras by the rise of smartphones is old news, but camera manufacturers are now mounting counterattacks. They've certainly suffered for long enough. Sales for compact cameras fell by 30% in 2011 alone, and kept on falling. They're at 102 million units for this year, compared to 144 million units just three years ago.
No doubt there are both Sony fans and detractors reading this right now. But if there's one thing even the detractors can't say about Sony at the moment, it's that the company isn't innovating.
Typically, the only people who would take a marker to your pictures would be your kids when you're not paying attention. But wouldn't it be at least a little fun to pretend you were a kid again, take out a marker, and just go to town on a few of your photos? …
Update: Unfortunately, the video has been taken down since we put this post up. We'll keep an eye out and get it back up if and when it is re-uploaded.
Last June, something happened that won't be happening again until the year 2117: Venus eclipsed the Sun. Of course, seeing as Venus is both small and far away from us, the event wasn't an actual eclipse, but rather a "transit." The small dot that is Venus made its way across the Sun for the second time in 8 years and the last time for more than a century.
For all intents and purposes, photographer Nick Brandreth was already doing very well as a photographer when he decided to go apprentice at the George Eastman House.
Here's a good weekend project for those of you who have some old film canisters lying around, and a bit of DIY know-how up your sleeves. Those old film canisters done need to go to waste, with a little work you can turn them into tiny portable flashlights.
San Francisco-based photographer Rob Prideaux spends most of his time taking product shots and still-lifes for companies such as Google and Wells Fargo. His recent Smoke & Fire series, therefore, is a pretty big departure from the norm.
There's a legal battle currently raging in the state of Texas that concerns photography. More specifically, it concerns improper photography -- defined as photographing another person without their consent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of another person -- which was illegal until the state's Fourth Court of Appeals declared the statute prohibiting it unconstitutional.
About twelve months ago, PetaPixel very kindly published my article "The Vital Link Between Emotions and Creativity in Photography." Well, it's one year later and I’m back to tell you how I over came my "Photographers block" and share a few key lessons that I have learned along the way.
It looks like we don't have much longer to wait until the QX10 and QX100 Sony 'lens cameras' actually make their official debut. And just in time for the rumored announcement on Tuesday, we've got ourselves some more specs and photos of the groundbreaking system to share with you.
If you've been following the U.S. Interior Department on Instagram (like we suggested some time ago) you probably saw the 15 second time-lapse clip of the Yosemite Rim Fire that the department put up yesterday afternoon.
If you don't really think about it, it's easy to take video for granted. After all, you can pull out your cell phone and be recording video in a few seconds flat (even fewer if you have Pressy). But what if you were limited to older photographic techniques? No, we don't mean film, we mean wet plate photography.
There have been several stories lately of musicians banning photography and asking fans to keep their cell phones in their pockets and enjoy the show. Most recently, Prince's "purple rules" had security guards at The City Winery in NYC snatching phones in mid-air and kicking people out.
There probably aren't a lot of people out there who would complain that taking pictures on their smartphone is inconvenient. Often, accessing the camera is a quick click or swipe away, and taking a picture another. Pressy takes it to the next level, however, by letting Android users do all of that and more with just a series of pre-programmed taps.
When I first heard of the CamRanger in October of 2012 in New York City at PhotoPlus Expo I was immediately intrigued.
A lot of people love the "vintage look" in photography these days.
Jovan 'Bonna' Lamb was born and raised in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida, an area marked by poverty and crime. As a teenager in the area, he'll tell you that he was "a young hoodlum ... becoming a thug" until something happened: he stumbled across a camera.
The most recent camera announcement news and rumors have come mainly out of the Sony camp, but it looks like Nikon has a couple of new cameras up its sleeve as well, including a new D610 that will finally put to rest the D600's sensor speck issue by replacing the camera all together.
It's obvious that Google is interested in mapping just about everything that is mappable via Street View, but even our future overlords they need some help on occasion. Although the company is willing to send employees with trekker backpacks to many an exotic location, when it comes to taking a virtual tour of local businesses, the search giant hires on "trusted photographers." …
