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Smartphones are being used more and more to capture daily life photography, but many of its loyal users are perpetually stuck at the point-and-shoot level of photographic know-how. If that describes you, and you'd like to add a little more technical understanding to your brain, Photojojo has a new service designed just for you. It's called Photojojo University, a new educational service that teaches you photography lessons through bite-sized tutorials and assignments delivered into your email …

Mug shots and airbrushing are both photography-related, but they aren't commonly found together in stories. Not so with some ongoing controversy over in Greece, though. The police there may soon be under investigation after releasing a number of mug shots that appear to have been Photoshopped.

A recent study performed by Tim Davies and his team at the Imperial College's Department of Life Sciences discovered that underwater pics taken by tourists can actually help track the movements of individual whale sharks.

In June of last year, we gave you a quick "photo trivia o' the day" lesson on the history of presidential photography. We told you that John Quincy Adams sat for what is currently the oldest surviving photo of a US President, that James Polk sat for the oldest of a US President in office, and that President Obama was actually the first to have his official photo taken digitally. That first of those three facts, however, comes with an interesting story.

Memphis-based photographer Haley Morris-Cafiero has long been aware of strangers making fun of her behind her back due to her size. So aware, in fact, that she has turned the whole concept into a full-blown photography project. Titled Wait Watchers, the series consists of Morris-Cafiero's self-portraits in public in which strangers can be seen in the background giving her strange looks and/or laughing.

Approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women suffer from some form of color blindness. Given those statistics, it might not be a bad idea for photographers to occasionally consider how their work is being viewed by those who can't see the entire spectrum. And right on cue, a new online simulator from Etre is here to help.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is a bit of a space celebrity. Some of his hobbies include tweeting back and forth with William Shatner, posting recordings from space on SoundCloud, and even beaming down the occasional video of himself playing the guitar.

It's safe to say that paparazzi aren't exactly adored in most photography circles. Given the comments we typically get on most paparazzi stories, you could say they're loathed. But that doesn't mean they don't fascinate us all the same.

Here's an interesting bit of photography/movie trivia that surfaced recently. Remember the infamous HAL 9000? HAL 9000 was the AI villain from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, and the main bad guy in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

When tasked with making the music video for the song HAVOC by While You Slept, Frokost films decided to get a little creative. In addition to shooting the whole thing in slow motion, they managed to shoot the entire music video using just one 18-second continuous shot.

When we run into issues regarding photo usage, the photographer is typically involved in one way or another. A company may be trying to use their work without paying, or they might find derivative works of their photography in an art show.

Photographic history doesn't get much classier than this: above we have what may very well be the first ever photograph of someone giving the middle finger. In a team picture of the Boston Beaneaters, pitcher "Old Hoss" Charles Radbourn was caught flipping the New York Giants the bird in the top left hand corner of the photo.

The IMAGO1:1 is the largest life-size self-portrait camera in the world. Exposing beautiful black and white self-portraits on 2ft x 6.5ft silver gelatin photo paper, it's a photographic marvel that is currently housed and used in an art gallery in Berlin.

Here's an interesting project by multi-media journalist Rebecca Davis that captures what you might witness while riding the New York City subway over the course of one year. It's a 'flip book' put together using Instagram photos of everything from the bored commuter to the intimate couple.

Paparazzi working in the state of Hawaii might have to pack their bags and move back to the mainland. That's because a new bill requested by Aerosmith lead and part-time Maui resident Steven Tyler may soon ban celebrity photography in the 50th state all-together.

Chrysler hit a home run this past Super Bowl with its photographic "God Made a Farmer" commercial... so let the spoofs begin. Photo backup service Mosaic create the parody above titled "God Made a Photographer."

24-year-old photographer Sébastian Dahl is quite the adventurer. Back on September 15th, 2012, Dahl left his home in Oslo, Norway and began a hitchhiking journey that ended nearly three months later and thousands of miles away in Beirut, Lebanon. He snapped photographs along the way, creating a beautiful travel photography diary documenting the trip.

Want to win the most prestigious press photo contest in the world this year? It's okay if you don't shoot with the latest camera gear -- just make sure your work stands out from things that have come before.

Last August, we wrote about how renowned photojournalist David Burnett was spotted using a large format camera at the London Olympics. If you've been wondering how the photographs turned out, today's your lucky day.

The space agencies that run the Hubble Space Telescope may have some of the most powerful photographic equipment at their disposal, but every now and then they can still use a little help from amateur astrophotographers.

One of the big emerging ideas in the camera world is the idea of wearable cameras that automatically capture your memories for you. Memoto is the wearable camera project that caused the biggest splash in 2012, but a month before it was announced, there was another camera that made a quieter entrance. It was the Autographer, a camera shaped like a pack of gum that uses a number of different sensors to intelligently snap photos during interesting moments in your life.

What do you get when you combine a Lomography Diana F+ camera with a remote controlled Tricopter? Answer: the Lomo-Copter! …

Cameratico is a new "humanized camera recommendation engine" that's being developed by Brasília, Brazil-based photographer and programmer Fábio Pili. Sick of camera comparison websites that only dealt with specifications, Pili decided to create one that takes into account real world usage experiences.

Want a perfect example of the Streisand effect in action? Look no further than what happened this week involving Beyonce's publicist, some unflattering Super Bowl performance photos, and a single email requesting that photos be taken offline.

Here's a series of clever pictures by Stockholm-based photographer Christian Åslund, who turned the ground of various city locations into a backdrop by having his models lie on their sides. By taking advantage of patterns, structures, and objects, the subjects look as though they're strolling on platforms, hanging from ledges, and resting on walls.

We've shared photographs of neatly arranged camera gear before, but they've generally been cameras disassembled into its individual components. Photographer Jim Golden took the whole "neatly arranged" concept to a whole new level recently: he shot the photograph above after arranging more than 190 cameras, lenses, and accessories in his studio.

One of the big stories in the business world today was that Nikon's stock took a historic fall of nearly 19%. The company is weighted so heavily in the Nikkei Stock Average that the news had a rippling effect across the market, causing most Asian shares to drop.

Look what we have here -- it's the first leaked photograph of the upcoming Sony NEX-3N mirrorless camera. The leaked photo, first published by sonyalpharumors, shows a camera that may be arriving sometime over the next couple of months alongside an (also rumored) Playstation 4.

For his project Transform, Hungarian photographer Bence Bakonyi scouted out colorful locations around his city and found clothing that matched each of the main colors in the scene. By dressing up models and having them stand in just the right location, Bakonyi was able to create photographs that look as though his subjects are blended into the background.

Sometimes it’s easy for photographers to take for granted our skill set. It becomes natural to forget, from time to time, all of the elements rattling around in the synapses of our visual cortexes in the few tenths of a second it takes to put in motion the mechanics that make a picture. Like any professional of a trade, eventually you get to that point where you can begin to make it ‘look easy’, like anyone can do this. And with digital cameras and software readily available everyone sure …

If you're constantly on the prowl for new sources of photographic inspiration, there's a pretty sweet deal going on over at National Geographic. The magazine has long been praised for its focus on delivering high quality photography showing all kinds of subjects in all kinds of locations around the world, and now it's offering its complete collection of issues between 1888 and 2011 for just $25. The set of 7 DVDs normally costs $80, so it's a savings of almost 70%.

Drive across the west end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and you're bound to see the iconic Portland, Oregon sign, commonly known as the "White Stag sign." It's an oft-photographed sign that was named a historic landmark back in 1977.

If you think about it, any digital photograph is simply a finite collection of pixels, with each one showing a specific color. There are also only a finite number of colors each pixel on a display can be. Thus, there are only a finite number of photographs that could possibly exist. An unfathomably large number, but finite nonetheless.

Mobile photo sharing has become one of the big photography trends over the past couple of years, and smartphone makers are now working hard to win the affections of smartphoneographer by developing better cameras and sleeker features. Two of the big players in the game, HTC and Nokia, are both generating some buzz this week through reports that they have some big photo-related plans in store for their upcoming phones.

As we wrote this past Monday, Chrysler scored a major advertising win during the Super Bowl with the commercial above, titled "Farmer." It's a simple photo slideshow with Paul Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer" speech playing in the background.

Director Cesar Kuriyama received a good bit of attention on the Internet last year for capturing 1 second of video on each day of his 30th year of life, and then turning the snippets into a beautiful recap of his year. The video premiered during a TED talk Kuriyama gave in March. That talk has just been published by TED, and can be seen above.

Alexander Semenov is an underwater photographer who doubles as a zoologist specializing in invertebrate animals. He recently decided to use macro photography to explore something you've probably never seen before in photographs: the rough surfaces of different species of starfish.

Behold, the coolest photography-related toy we've seen so far this year: War Journalist: Battlefield Hero. It's a 1/6-scale Toymaster-brand action figure that lets kids play make believe with their very own conflict photographer!

Back on September 17, 2012, Leica held a launch party in Germany to unveil its new Leica M full-frame digital rangefinder, which does away with model numbers in favor of simply using the model name. People are referring to the camera as Leica M (Type 240).

Astronaut photographers on the International Space Station have been beaming quite a few photographs of Earth as of late, but have you ever wondered how they manage capture relatively sharp photographs of Earth's cities at night? …

Director and photographer Jess Dunlap spent all of 2012 creating the 4-minute time-lapse video above, titled Monolation. It comprises over 17,000 gorgeous landscape photographs, and features beautiful camera movements that make it feel as though you're looking around and watching the world pass in fast motion.

Looking to jump into a particular genre of professional photography? Instead of shelling out money and time for lessons, workshops, and/or internships, check out the handbook, "How to be a Photographer in Four Lessons." Written by Brussels-based photographer Thomas Vanden Driessche, it offers the basic gist of how you can instantly become great in contemporary photography, war photography, conceptual photography, and more!

Paparazzi photography is a topic that has come up quite a bit in recent days, with most of the stories putting the camera wielders in a pretty bad light. Joerg Colberg over on Conscientious has a thought provoking piece on how photographers' rights seem to be trumping basic human decency -- with the blessing of our culture.

When Milan-based engineer and photographer Andrea Biffi needed a constant source of power for his Canon 40D in order to shoot time-lapse photos over many hours, he decided to save some money by going the DIY route. Biffi turned a defunct lithium DSLR battery into a power supply unit that can be used with everything from a wall outlet to a car battery.

If you're maintaining any of kind bucket list of things you'd like to experience before you die, you might want to think about putting "a massive murmuration of starlings" on that list. That's what Paris-based director and photographer Neels Castillon was treated to recently, and his video documenting the encounter has been making waves on the web.

At the CP+ show in Japan, Ricoh is showing off a new camera prototype its developing that can capture full 360-degree immersive photographs with a singel push of the shutter. The omnidirectional camera looks like a cross between an electric toothbrush and a hammerhead shark. Lift it up into the air, press a button, and it will capture an image that shows every direction around you.

Remember Richard, the Fuji Rumors reader who turned his Fujifilm X-E1 into a Leica M9 lookalike by slapping on four small decals? He didn't stop there: once his camera was Leica-fied, he proceeded to give it a "Sniper configuration."

For the first two years of its young life, photo sharing darling Instagram focused primarily on delivering its service to smartphone users. Although demand would have likely been great, the company's founders decided to hold off on a browser-based component in order to become one of the pioneers of mobile photo sharing.

"Deadly sniper shot through the lens." That's the title of a photoblog entry published over on Reuters last week by staff photographer Goran Tomasevic, who's covering the deadly conflict in Syria. The photo above was accompanied by the text, "A tank fired a couple of shells onto the top of the building and rubble fell down around us."

Denver, Colorado-based action, adventure, and lifestyle photographer Dave Lehl recently wanted to do something a little different with skateboarding photography, and ended up settling on the idea of using fireworks to add extra action to the shots.