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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.

Want to see how far DSLRs have come in the past decade? Lee Morris of Fstoppers published these two photos taken at Super Bowl halftime shows. The crop on the left was captured in 2001, possibly with the Nikon D1H at 2.7 megapixels and ISO 800 (state of the art specs at the time). The slice on the right was from this past weekend, and was shot with a Nikon D3s at 12MP and ISO 12,800.

You've likely seen plenty of images of giant waves from above the surface of the water, but have you ever seen what it's like to pass under a wave? Photographer Mark Tipple has an amazing project called "The Underwater Project" in which he captures epic photographs of swimmers diving deep in order to survive passing waves, which look like ominous storm clouds rolling overhead.

After images started leaking last night, Canon today officially announced three new lenses for the EF lineup: the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, 24mm f/2.8 IS, and 28mm f/2.8 IS. Compared to the first version, the new 24-70mm weighs 100 grams less (it's 850g), costs $1,000 more, still doesn't offer IS, uses 82mm filters (instead of 77mm), extends at the telephoto end (instead of the wide end like the previous version), features a zoom lock, and connects with the hood at the extension. As we noted …

For his project Life on the Edge, Detroit-based photographer Dennis Maitland seeks out high locations for vertigo-inducing shots of his feet dangling off the edges. Rather than use a remote shutter release, he captures all his photographs by hand. Once an acrophobe, Maitland now craves the adrenaline that comes from doing his photography.

The months of rumors and speculation are finally over: Nikon has announced its long-awaited D800 FX-format DSLR. As was revealed back in October 2011, the camera offers a staggering 36.3-megapixels -- the world's highest in a 35mm DSLR. Other specs include an ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 25,600), 91k RGB 3D color metering, a speedy 51-point AF system, a 3.2-inch LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting (5fps for DX shots), 1080/30p HD video recording, and... in-camera two-shot HDR.

This is the first photo of Canon's upcoming 24-70mm f/2.8L II, the followup to an extremely popular and well-regarded lens. It'll weigh less than the first version (which is nicknamed "The Brick") and have a 82mm filter thread (up from 77mm), but -- to the dismay of Canonites everywhere -- won't have Image Stabilization. No word on availability, but Canon Rumors thinks it'll be priced between $1,800 and $1,900 when it hits store shelves.

Here's a first look at two lenses Canon has up its sleeve: the new Canon 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and Canon EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM. It looks like Canon is making an effort to bring image stabilization to cheaper and wider prime lenses. Currently the "widest" Canon prime lens with image stabilization is the Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS USM. These would also be the first non-L series prime lenses to offer IS. Price and release date for both are currently unknown.

Swedish photographer Göran Strand created this amazing "little planet" photo (AKA a stereographic projection) that shows the Aurora Borealis overhead. He titled it "Planet Aurora".

Last week we reported that the Sacramento Bee had suspended one of its photographers for splicing together a photo of egrets. After some further investigation into Bryan Patrick's body of work, the newspaper discovered two more photos that had been Photoshopped. It immediately fired Patrick and published a notice: …

A funny photography-related remix of a well-known Dueling Analogs comic.

Remember the hoopla last year after artist/programmer Kyle McDonald installed an app on Apple store computers to secretly snap portraits of customers? Outcries of "invasion of privacy" sprang up everywhere, and Apple got the Secret Service involved in putting an end to it. Well, photographer Irby Pace has done something similar, but instead of secretly capturing images, Pace simply visits Apple Stores and harvests self-portraits "abandoned" on the devices. Pace collected over 1,000 images in …

Photographer Brock Davis likes playing with food. Among his food related experiments are recreations of famous explosions done with cauliflower. The image above shows the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Destin of Smarter Every Day made this helpful video in which he and his daughter explain the basics of light painting and digital camera sensors using "super simple speak".

Malaysian photographer Peiling Lee captures beautiful, dreamlike macro photographs of tiny critters she finds in her garden. She uses a Canon 50D and a 100mm Macro lens. Her work reminds us of Nadav Bagim's Wonderland project that we shared last year.

Here's a disturbing video called "If You See Something, Film Something" that shows why it's important that citizens have the right to turn cameras on the activities of police officers without being stopped or harassed: …

Here are the first full photographs of Olympus' new OM-D series Micro Four Thirds camera, the EM-5 (with an optional battery grip attached). The images were published to Amazon Japan before quickly being taken down. The camera is expected to become official on Wednesday, so we'll have a full spec list in a couple days.

Kodak Theatre, the famous theater on Hollywood Boulevard that hosts the Academy Awards, may soon have a different name. As part of its recent bankruptcy filing, Kodak is now trying to get out of the 20-year, $75-million-dollar naming rights contract it signed back in 2000. The theatre's about page states, …

L.L.Bean recently decided to celebrate its 100-year anniversary by having commercial photographer Randal Ford recreated a classic 1933 catalog cover as a photograph. It's amazing how faithfully Ford and his team was able to recreate the illustration -- some of the vintage clothing had to be purchased off eBay!

Dutch illustrator Tineke Meirink likes to take a closer look at photographs and then draw whatever her playful imagination reveals to her. Her website stop:watch is a collection of these "what it is" and "what I see" comparisons.

The Sacramento Bee has suspended award-winning staff photographer Bryan Patrick after it was discovered that he had Photoshopped two photographs of an egret eating a frog into a single photo. The newspaper, which is the 5th largest in California and the 25th largest in the US, says that the manipulation was done to make the frog more visible while still showing a second bird lunging for it. NPPA president Sean Elliot labeled the case a "betrayal": …

Here's your interesting photo fact of the day: did you know that sepia toning (when B&W photos are given that distinctive warm tone) is named after the Common Cuttlefish? The scientific name of the species is Sepia officinalis, and the ink produced by the cuttlefish was used for sepia toning when the technique first emerged in the 1880s.

Are you a photographer who needs to dress nicely but loves to dress comfortably? Now you can have both! Check out these new Dress Pant Sweatpants by Betabrand: they look just like a pair of fine charcoal wool trousers, but they're actually a super comfortable pair of sweatpants.

New photos have emerged showing the retro OM-styled EM-5 Micro Four Thirds camera that Olympus is planning to unleash on the photo world. It's the first camera in a new OM-D line, and offers a beautiful old school SLR aesthetic. The image above, which looks like some kind of ad, reads, …

AgeMaps is a project by photographer Bobby Neel Adams in which he does "photo surgery" on portraits to show two different moments in a person's life in the same image. For each subject, Adams takes a childhood photo and a current photo, prints them at the same proportions, tears them in half, and glues the halves together. He says that this is to "telescope the slow process of aging into a single picture," and that "a jump of time is established at the tear."

For those of you who are interested in the business and technology side of things, here's an interesting 45-minute interview in which Digg founder Kevin Rose chats with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom: …

Do you use a free Dropbox account for storing and backing up your files? If so, get this: the company is currently offering up to 4.5GB of extra free space for anyone willing to help it test out the software's new auto photo import feature. Your first photo import will land you 500MB of extra space, and every 500MB of photos and videos uploaded afterward will score you an additional 500MB. The new feature helps you automatically backup your photos every time you connect your memory card, phone, …

Here's a Photoshop protip: before saving a final version of a photo for publishing on the web, make sure all the layers you want in the image are actually visible. Apparently some Photoshopper working for JCrew got careless with his layers, which led to the above catalog photo showing a model with transparent hair (in fact, the hair appeared by itself in a separate photo). The catalog entry has since been fixed, with the invisible-haired woman replaced with a boring photo of a blue blazer.

Photoshop guru Scott Kelby has high praise for the overhauled Develop Module that's coming in Lightroom 4. In a recent post titled "Why I Think Lightroom 4 is Going To Sell Like Crazy", he writes, …

Reddit user tirceol's father is an amateur astronomer who captures some amazing photographs of space from his front yard by hooking up a camera to his telescope's eyepiece. He uses everything from a webcam to a Meade camera to capture the images, which are sometimes composites created using multiple photos. The above image shows the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away.

Here's a diagram created by Reddit user GeneralSarsby that shows the effective field of view of lenses of various focal lengths when used on a 1.6x crop factor sensor. You can also download the source svg if you want to edit or build upon it.

Kai of DigitalRev shares some tips -- both serious and humorous -- on the art of street photography.

Pentax officially announced its new K-01 mirrorless camera today after leaked photos emerged yesterday. The system features the world's thinnest interchangeable lens: a 40mm lens that's just 1cm thick. The body, on the other hand, isn't exactly the sleekest camera we've seen. It's designed by "acclaimed and influential" designer Marc Newson, who hadn't designed a camera before this one (he spends much of his time designing airplanes). The camera features a 16.28MP sensor, an ISO range of …

Apple's tiny iPod Nano may soon be rejoining the ranks of Apple products that offer picture-taking capabilities. Photos have emerged on the Internet showing what appears to be the seventh-generation iPod Nano with a camera built into the clip on the back. It's rumored to be a 1.3-megapixel camera, though Apple may also be looking into a 2-megapixel version as well. A patent filed by the company near the end of 2009 shows illustrations that resemble what's seen in these photos.

New Zealand-based photographer Geoffrey H. Short has an ongoing series titled Towards Another (Big Bang) Theory that explores "the relationship between terror and the sublime" with images of large explosions frozen in midair. Short hired film industry special effects technicians to create the "big bangs" using fossil fuel mixed with gunpowder.

Facebook officially filed to become a publicly traded company today and, in doing so, spilled the beans on many of its internal figures and statistics that are normally under wraps. A crazy fact that emerged is that an average of 250 million photographs are uploaded to the service every day. That's equal to 10.4 million per hour, 174,000 per minute, or 3,000 photographs per second. In terms of storage, the photos and videos hosted by the service take up 100 petabytes, or 100 million gigabytes.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced this interesting segment on photographer Yuri Arcurs and how he turned his microstock photography into a million-dollar photography empire. Here's a mind-boggling statistic: on average, Arcurs sells one of his images every 8 seconds.

Nikon has unveiled a new superzoom compact camera called the P510 that offers a ridiculous 42x optical zoom -- the highest zoom ratio ever seen in such a camera. In 35mm terms, the lens goes from a 24mm on the wide-angle side to a 1000mm on the telephoto end. The 16.1MP camera also boasts a 3-inch LCD screen, 1080p video recording, GPS, 5fps continuous shooting, and ISO 3200. It'll hit store shelves later this month with a price tag of $430.

There's an Internet meme called "Sh*t People Say" that has been spreading around the web like crazy recently, sparked by a new YouTube web series called "Sh*t Girls Say". Here's the photographer's version.

We now know the price of the Fujifilm X-Pro1 for US residents: $1,700. One week after become available for preorders over on Amazon Japan for roughly $1,743, the camera is now listed on Amazon's US site for the price of $1,699.95 for the body only. The system's lenses are also available, and cost between $600 and $650 a pop.

Here's a short and sweet video in which Chicago-based food photographer Stephen Hamilton shares some tips on how to take photographs of food using your smartphone. One tip is to use a white napkin as a makeshift reflector to fill in some of the shadows in the shot.

The Microsoft team tasked with building Windows 8 has published a blog post with various user suggestions they've decided to implement in the OS. A big thing they're focusing on is file management -- something that isn't usually touted as a "feature" but is important in day-to-day computer usage. One useful improvement is having the OS read the EXIF data in JPEG photos to automatically present the correct orientation.

Antarctica - Glaciers & Caverns is a photo series by Belgian architect François Delfosse consisting of images captured from inside a white plastic bag.

Early in 2011, there was a brouhaha after newspaper photographer Jay Westcott complained about Lady Gaga's photo release form given to photographers attending her concerts. PDN characterized the story as a "fame monster gobbling up photographers’ copyrights". What you see above is a copy of the actual release form given at concerts. Apparently contracts like this one are pretty standard these days.

Pentax is on the verge of announcing a new mirrorless camera called the K-01. It'll be a K-mount camera with the same 16.3MP sensor as the K-5, and will come with a crazy 40mm lens that's less than 1cm thick (it looks more like a body cap). It'll feature a 3-inch LCD screen, HD video recording, a pop-up flash, and a design by famous industrial designer Marc Newson. The camera will reportedly be unveiled officially tomorrow at a launch event in London.

Here's a tutorial on how to do non-automated HDR for real estate photography using Photoshop CS5. The first thing you'll need is a sturdy tripod with a level. The closer you are to a leveled image, the less correction you'll have to do later.

When Fujifilm said that the X-Pro1's sensor "resolution and low noise will surpass rival 35mm full size sensor[s]", they weren't kidding. Photographers Christian Fletcher and Michael Coyne have both been testing out the camera, and have extremely positive things to say about it.