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Mark Rober -- the guy behind the gaping-hole-in-torso costume -- recently came up with a creative way of getting up close and personal with gorillas at his local zoo. It turns out that apes can't resist looking at themselves in mirrors, so Rober drilled a hole in a mirror and pointed his iPhone's camera through it. He was then able to snag some awesome footage that most visitors would never be able to capture. This trick may also work for other animals that are known to pass the mirror test of …

A security van transporting roughly £100,000 (~$156,000) in Nikon camera gear was targeted by robbers this past Saturday after the Dublin NPS Roadshow. The thieves made off with the entire truckload of equipment, including demo versions of the Nikon D4 and Nikon D800 -- cameras that aren't available yet to the general public. You can find an list of what was stolen (and their individual serial numbers) here. Camera gear thieves have been pretty active so far in 2012 -- just last month someone …

For his project titled 141 Boxers, photographer Nicolai Howalt shot portraits of boxers before and after boxing matches. The images side-by-side tell the stories of what happened in between when they were captured.

It wasn't too long ago that Kodak filed multiple patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in a scramble for life-giving cash, but now the tables have turned. Less than a month after Kodak filed for bankruptcy and announced the end of its camera business, Apple is reportedly in the process of asking the court for permission to sue bankrupt Kodak for infringing on Apple's patents in its printers, digital cameras, and digital picture frames. This back and forth IP fight is one that Kodak might …

Most photographers would be happy to capture a photo showing just the northern lights or lava leaping out of a volcano crater. Photographer James Appleton managed to capture a series of beautiful photographs that show both in the same frame. The images were made at Fimmvörðuháls in Iceland.

Last week we reported on a dispute between photographer Jonathan Kent and The Telegraph over the newspaper's "use first and ask/pay later" policy. After contacting the paper over an image of his that was used without permission, Kent received a response from picture editor Matthew Fearn, who informed him stating that their policy is standard and due to the "ever-shifting nature of news". In response, Kent wrote up a tongue-in-cheek letter likening the paper's actions to borrowing a car for a …

Photography enthusiast Maciej Pietuszynski jumped into tilt-shift photography recently by building a do-it-yourself tilt-shift lens out of an old 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, a shower head, and a rubber glove. The process isn't for the faint of heart -- it involves disassembling the lens. You can see some of the resulting photographs in this Flickr set.

Here's an awesome TED lecture in which digital artist Erik Johansson discusses creating realistic "photographs" of impossible scenes.

For her project titled Learning to Love the State I Am In, photographer Sam Schubert takes planking to a new level by putting her body in bizarre positions and locations in order to "integrate" herself into the materials and environments found in Baltimore.

Adorama had a Valentine's Day discount on Adobe Lightroom 3 yesterday, pricing it at just $80. It's back to $135 now, but if you missed out, you now have another chance: B&H has decided to one-up Adorama by selling the program for just $70. The sale will last until the end of today, so you might want to act fast this time if you've been on the fence.

Photographer Martin Klimas, whose porcelain figurine photos we shared yesterday, has a series of photographs that look like 3D Jackson Pollock paintings. He spent six months photographing portraits of sound by playing music through a speaker that's crowned with paint. Klimas dials up the volume and then photographs the paint coming alive from vibrations caused by the sound waves.

Street photographer Eric Kim created this video showing what it's like to photograph passers-by on the sidewalks of Beverly Hills, CA. He attached a GoPro camera to his Leica M6 (loaded with Kodak Portra 400 film) to record his adventure, and then edited in the final photographs after getting the film developed. Kim ruffled a lot of feathers with some of his old behind-the-scenes videos due to his in-your-face style, but has since toned it down quite a bit -- not using a large handheld flash …

Last year imaging company Scalado showed off an app called Rewind that lets you create perfect group shots by picking out the best faces from a burst of shots and then combining them into a single image. Now the company is back with another futuristic photo app: it's called Remove, and lets you create images of scenes without the clutter of things passing through (e.g. people, cars, bikes). It works like this: simply snap a photograph, and the app will outline everything that's moving in the …

For his project titled Time, photographer John Clang shoots various locations multiple times from the same perspective, and then rips and weaves the photographs together to show multiple points in time in each image.

We're unclear on whether this is a permanent price drop or a temporary sale, but Adorama is current selling Lightroom 3 for just $80. That's $59 cheaper than Amazon's price and cheaper than the student and teacher edition.

If you think Content Aware Fill is an amazing Photoshop feature, wait till you play around with the new content aware tools found in Photoshop CS6. In addition to a new Patch Tool for selecting where you want to Content Aware Fill from, the program will also introduce new a Content Aware Move tool that lets you easily move portions of your photographs around and extend them intelligently.

Want to improve the quality of the photos captured using your DSLR's popup flash? Tina (AKA synthetic_meat) discovered that the cardboard box that came with a particular brand of chocolate had a nice silver lining on the inside -- perfect for making a mirrored bounce reflector! After some cutting, scoring, and folding, she came up with a DIY Lightscoop clone that lets you bounce your onboard flash off the ceiling or wall for softer and more appealing images. You can download the free template …

The beautiful light painting photo you see here was created using steel wool (here's a tutorial on the technique). Basically, you fix some steel wool on the end of a rope, set it on fire by rubbing a 9V battery against it, and then swing it around to fling sparks all over the place. While it's becoming a pretty common photo project, it can also be hazardous to your lens' -- and your body's -- health. Jon Beard, the photographer behind this photo, learned the hard way. See that thick yellow line …

National Geographic photographers get to do the coolest things. In this video, photographer Carsten Peter takes us along with him on a journey into Son Doong, the world's largest cave located in Vietnam. The biggest chamber in the cave is over 3 miles long and more than four times taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Photo meme alert: here's a series of humorous images that have been spreading across the Internet like wildfire. They show the differences between what various groups of people think about what photographers do.

For his project titled "Porcelain Figurines", photographer Martin Klimas dropped various porcelain figurines onto the ground from a height of 3 meters and set up a camera to capture photos triggered by the sound of the crash. The result are razor-sharp images of exploding figurines frozen in time -- "temporary sculptures made visible to the human eye by high-speed photography".

Toys are getting fancier and cameras are getting weirder. Mattel is set to launch a new camera barbie called Barbie Photo Fashion that'll upgrade many a dollhouse with a human-shaped 5-megapixel digital camera. Unlike the soon-to-be-outdated Video Girl Barbie and its chest-cam, this new photography doll features a camera built into her back with the LCD screen moved to her frontside. She can store 100 photos, features a mini USB port on her lower back, and comes with 15 built-in photo "filters" …

Here's an interesting 12-minute video that offers one explanation into how the world of art works. Even if you don't agree with the philosophy and worldview described in the video, it's still an eye-opening tour of the different things that influence and power the mysterious world of art.

Pet photographer Seth Casteel of LittleFriendsPhoto captures hilarious underwater portraits of dogs as they jump into a swimming pool to fetch balls and toys.

Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch created this helpful diagram showing the relative sizes of various sensors, including the one found inside the Lytro light field camera (a camera that lets you focus after shots are taken). The FCC published photos of the Lytro camera's guts last week, revealing that the sensor inside is roughly 6.5×4.5mm (smaller than our previous estimate). This means that it's slightly larger than the iPhone sensor and slightly smaller than the one in most point-and-shoot …

This powerful photograph by photographer Samuel Aranda was introduced today as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012. The description reads, …

After discovering his photograph used without permission on The Telegraph's website, photographer Jonathan Kent contacted the newspaper asking to be compensated for the unauthorized use. He then received an email from deputy picture editor Matthew Fearn, who defended the newspaper's actions, stating, …

Captured on April 1, 1995 by the Hubble Telescope, the photograph Pillars of Creation is one of the most famous space images ever made. Here's a crazy fact though: did you know that the "pillars" seen in the photo were already long gone by the time the image was captured? Astronomers have concluded that the pillars -- which measure up to 4 light years in length -- were destroyed about 6,000 years ago by the shock wave from a supernova. Because of how long it takes light to travel across such …

Photography author Ben Long has a thought-provoking article over at CreativePro in which he argues that "all photos are manipulated" and that "there is no such thing as absolute truth in photography": …

Starting in 2001, photographer Mary Mattingly has created an image every year on the winter solstice -- the day of the year when daylight is shortest -- showing the first light of the day and the last light of the day blended into a single photo. The series is called "First Light / Last Light".

For those of you who are interested in the fine art of studio lighting, here's a video in which American celebrity photographer George Holz talks about how he went about photographing Beyonce for the cover of Spin magazine.

It's not uncommon to see photographs printed onto clothing, but Milan-based Marios' new Nowhere summer collection takes it to a whole new level. Many of the pieces in the collection feature landscape photographs printed across the entire garment.

Fujifilm announced back in January at CES that it was working on an M-mount adapter for the X-Pro1, a camera that looks strikingly similar to Leica's digital rangefinders. The company is now showing off the adapter at the CP+ trade show in Japan. Leica film aficionados who want to play around with digital in style can now choose between paying $1700 for the X-Pro1 or $6000-$7000 for the Leica M8 or Leica M9.

Want to inform someone of their right to take pictures in the US? Just share this short cartoon created by the ACLU, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and The Gregory Brothers. It features Benjamin Franklin's ghost, who sings about the various things you're legally allowed to do without being harassed by law enforcement.

After NASA published its latest jaw-dropping "Blue Marble" photograph of Earth last month, many of you wondered how "real" the image was. Here's NASA's explanation on how their images are created: …

Here's a sweet DIY project idea by Brittany Morin that's perfect for that special day that's right around the corner: scratch-off cards made from Polaroid pictures! Basically all you need is some acrylic paint and some dish soap. Mix the two together with a ratio of one part soap for every two parts paint and you'll have yourself some scratch-able paint!

Cloud-based photo hosting service Snapjoy launched a clever web app (and marketing ploy) yesterday called Flickraft that made it easy for Flickr users to rescue their photos "from a sinking ship". With just a few clicks, the app would import a user's entire collection of Flickr photos over to Snapjoy using the Flickr API. The response was overwhelming: in just two hours, Flickr users had exported over 250,000 photos from their accounts. The app became so popular that Flickr disabled the API key …

Photographer and makeup artist Nadia Wicker has a beautiful series of abstract photographs titled Ursides in which she captures self-portraits in which her face looks like exploding fireworks. While her method is secret, Wicker says that she uses her experience with makeup -- rather than Photoshop -- to create the photos.

This is your standard kit lens that comes with most entry-level DSLRs from Canon. It does an okay job for most things, but here's how to make it better.

Shocking news: Kodak, the company that invented the first digital camera back in 1975, announced today that it is pulling out of the camera market entirely. The phasing out of digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and digital picture frames will likely happen by the end of June. Instead, the company will be focusing on licensing out its patents and brand name (much like Polaroid does), and on inkjet photo printing. Although Kodak wasn't a big player in the digital camera space, it was once a …

When Sigma released its SD1 DSLR with its fancy Foveon sensor last year, many photographers balked at the camera's $9,700 price tag. Now, perhaps due to the launch of a new generation of Canon and Nikon DSLRs, Sigma is rethinking the camera's price. In a press release put out today, the company announced that the camera will be re-launched the Sigma SD1 Merrill -- named in honor of Foveon co-creator Richard “Dick” Merrill.

Adobe's cloud-based subscription program, called Creative Cloud, now has a price tag: $50/month with a minimum one-year agreement. Subscribing will get you access to the latest version of Adobe's popular programs (e.g. CS6 and Lightroom 4) without the pain of shelling out big bucks for buying the boxed version and subsequent upgrades. In addition to receiving updates to the programs as soon as they're released, you'll also be given 20GB of cloud storage that can be used for syncing your work.

There comes a point where your obsession with photography becomes a problem for those around you.

Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.

Less than a week ago we featured a viral video called "Sh*t Photographers Say", which poked fun at the various clichéd expressions commonly uttered by photographers. Now here's a humorous video by Bernie Kale about the other end of the lens: a compilations of things non-photographers say to photographers.

Today Olympus finally announced its OM-series Micro Four Thirds camera, the OM-D E-M5. In chrome and without a battery grip, the camera actually looks a lot better than the leaked images we saw a couple days ago. Styled like an old school SLR, the E-M5 is a 16-megapixel camera with blazing 9fps continuous shooting, RAW capabilities, weatherproofing, 1080i video recording, the "world's fastest autofocus" on any camera, 5-axis image stabilization, a 3-inch tilting LCD screen, an ISO range of …

Anna Franz, a researcher at the the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford, has won Nikon's first annual Small World in Motion competition with an amazing video that shows the beating heart and blood vessels of a 72-hour-old chick embryo. Franz cut a window into an egg to expose the embryo, and then carefully injected ink into the yolk sac artery in order to visualize the beating heart and the vasculature of the embryo.

Photographer Kenneth Jarecke has written up an interesting article on how Internet culture is hindering the development of people who want to get better at photography: …

Back in 2010, we shared that Facebook had a zombie photo problem: a test photo that we deleted from the service in October was still accessible for four or five months. Ars Technica has been following up on the issue, and reports that a fix is on the horizon: …

SYNC is a creative short film that tells a love story with a "backward world" twist. It was filmed an original iPhone 4 (not the 4S), a Steadicam Smoothee, and a crew of 4 people.