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Check out this awesome picture frame: it's an old french door that was cut in half, stripped, painted, distressed. Old windows can make for unique frames as well! …

Wildlife photographer Markus Thompson was scuba diving in Deep Bay outside Vancouver recently when he stumbled upon a rusty Canon Rebel DSLR at the bottom of the ocean floor. After taking the SD card out and cleaning it, he was surprised to discover that it still worked, especially because the photos on it revealed that the camera was dropped back in August 2010. Thompson then turned to Google+ to find the owners, writing, …

This video shows a social experiment in which disposable cameras were left unattended in various public locations with a simple message: "Take a Photo". Hidden cameras were stationed nearby to observe how people responded to the cameras, and to provide some behind-the-scenes footage to how the various photographs were captured.

Did you know that Pablo Picasso was a light painter? His most famous light painting image shows him drawing a centaur in the air, but there are quite a few lesser-known photos showing the master dabbling in the art. LIFE writes, …

Here's a Photoshop tutorial by Twin Cities Photography Group teaching how you can use Photoshop's High Pass Filter to soften the skin on a portrait subject without losing the skin's texture.

In this short video, photographer Allen Mowery shows how you can create a super-simple DIY Gary Fong Lightsphere for about $1 using some vinyl drawer liner and some velcro.

Here's an hour-long program from 1981 that featured Joel Meyerowitz and his street photography in New York City.

Canon's 50mm f/1.8 Mark II is a terrific lens for its price, but its build quality definitely leaves something to be desired. Do a quick search, and you'll find legions of broken-hearted Canonites who had their 'Nifty Fifty' split into two pieces after accidentally bumping or dropping it. Flickr user tastygiant is one such Canonite, but he subsequently discovered an awesome use for the broken lens: …

After seeing a video on YouTube of an Indonesian toddler who smokes 40 cigarettes a day, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens decided to respond to a general smoking ban introduced in her country recently with a series of photos showing children smoking.

Did you know that you can use Photoshop's Match Color feature to turn old paintings into "filters" for your images? James Delaney of Unfocused Brain explains, …

Here's a geeky shirt that's relevant to photography: today's Woot shirt of the day is titled "Everything is Golden", and features the golden ratio! It's available until the end of the day for $10 with free shipping.

Here's a helpful tutorial by Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens on how to mix strobe light with sunlight to make photographs more interesting.

Here's an amazing time-lapse created using NASA's Earth Observatory photographs of our planet. It spans an entire year, and shows how lands change with the passing of seasons. You can download a higher-res version here.

Here's some interesting color footage showing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1939. Tom Pappalardo stumbled upon it after buying some 8mm film from a junk shop. He writes, …

Just launched this week, Lighting Diagram is another simple web-based tool that lets photographers create and share lighting diagrams and the photos created with the setups.

Fujifilm officially unveiled the XS-1 today after details and photos of the camera first appeared last month. Unlike the X100 and X10, the XS-1 isn't a rangefinger-esque mirrorless camera but is instead a beastly bridge camera. The camera packs the same 12-megapixel 2/3-inch sensor as the X10, and features a 26x zoom lens that's the 35mm equivalent of a 24-624mm lens. As if that range wasn't enough, they also decided to include a macro mode that allows the camera to focus from just 1cm away.

For her 3rd year dissertation project Katy Beveridge set out to find a creative way to film animation in real time rather through techniques like stop-motion. She then came up with the brilliant idea of placing paper on a bike wheel and using a video camera's -- and the human eye's -- frame rate limitations to create the animation.

Want a super simple macro lens for your phone without shelling out big bucks? You can use 3D printing to assemble your own! Shapeways user Lens42 has created a 3D model for a slide-on iPhone lens -- all you need to do is have the 3D model printed for $11 and to attach a $4 glass lens from Surplus Shed (part number L4471) using some superglue. If you have something other than an iPhone but know your way around 3D modeling programs, you make some measurements yourself and have a custom 3D model …

Here's an amazing clip from the BBC series Frozen Planet. The film crew used time-lapse photography to capture "brinicle" forming under sea ice. As the beautiful icicle forms, it also becomes deadly -- once it touches down, the resulting web of ice kills the slow-moving life on the sea floor. You can read more about the phenomenon here.

The George Eastman House in Rochester, NY is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography. A couple years ago, curator Todd Gustavson wrote a book on the history of photography featuring the museum's gigantic collection of historical cameras. This behind-the-scenes video with Gustavson gives a glimpse into the drool-worthy warehouse and a brief tour of some legendary cameras.

You know you’re addicted to analog photography if your fridge has more film than food.

Jasna Hodzic, the photo editor of the student run newspaper at UC Davis, has been covering the Occupy UC Davis movement since its inception -- before the pepper spraying incident became international news.

Here's a quick tip for if you ever have a hard time removing a lens filter from a lens (e.g. when it's damaged): use a shoe. Simply take any shoe with a grippy flat bottom, press it firmly against the filter, and then turn it. It's a super simple technique that should work every time unless the threads on the lens itself are badly damaged.

Picture Post is an interesting (and NASA-funded) citizen science project that turns photographers into citizen scientists, crowdsourcing the task of environmental monitoring. Anyone around the world can install a Picture Post: …

In the past week, two different lens dial camera cases have been announced for iPhoneographers: a Holga toy camera case and a more serious lens dial case. If you don't want to shell out cash to add a lens dial to your phone (and don't mind it looking ridiculous), you can make a do-it-yourself lens dial using a jar lid and random lenses scavenged from various devices. The dial is attached to the back of your phone using a suction cup, and can give you magnification on-the-go.

Last week we reported that starting with Adobe CS6, only people who own the previous major release of the software (i.e. CS5 and above) will be eligible for upgrade pricing. Needless to say, Photoshop users are't too happy about the changes, and now National Association of Photoshop Professionals president Scott Kelby is weighing in. In an open letter to Adobe, he writes, …

Photographer Radu Dumitrescu was shooting in an abandoned house in Bucharest, Romania when a couple teens noticed the flashes going off and decided to investigate. When Radu noticed them pulling out their cell phones to document the "paranormal activity", he decided to give them a scare by pretending to be a ghost.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

Xerox is showing off a new tool called Aesthetic Image Search over on Open Xerox (the Xerox equivalent of Google Labs). It's an algorithm being developed at one of the company's labs that aims to make judging a photograph's aesthetics something a computer can do.

Fine art photographer Mitch Dobrowner wanted to photograph storm systems, so he partnered up with Roger Hill -- regarded as one of the top storm-chasers in the world -- and was introduced to Tornado Alley. Dobrowner writes, …

If you had the task of choosing some photos that represented Earth and mankind to extraterrestrial life forms, which photos would you select? NASA had to do this back in 1977 when it launched the Voyager space probes, which are now the farthest human-made objects from Earth. A committee led by Carl Sagan eventually settled on 116 images: …

Address Is Approximate is a beautiful and creative stop-motion video by Tom Jenkins of Theory Films. Here's the one-sentence synopsis: …

An earlier post here on PetaPixel showcased a wonderful image of a flock of cell phones and the method used to create it. In a rather snarky comment, I said to get back to me when they started tossing babies, and linked to my daughter merrily jumping in her crib with her toys. Mike was kind enough to approach me about writing up a small walk-through on how I created my image, and who can honestly turn down a chance to show off their baby daughter looking so cute?

Just days after Holga announced a new iPhone case with 9 lens filters in a rotary dial, a new challenger emerges: the iPhone Lens Dial. Compared to the Holga case, it's much more professional looking -- but equally as bizarre. The oversized dial packs three different lenses (wide angle, fisheye, and telephoto) into one aircraft-grade aluminum case. The price is prohibitive to all but the most obsessed iPhoneographers though: each case costs a cool $249.

Rodney Smith of The End Starts Here has written an interesting piece on the topic of smiling, and argues that smiling is a "false sentiment" that separates a casual photograph from a portrait.

Photographer Carolyn Marks Blackwood's Birds project contains photographs in which birds dominate the frame.

What if framing a scene with your fingers actually caused photos to be created? Air Camera is a clever camera concept by designer Yeon Su Kim that would make that idea a reality. It consists of two components: a ring-like camera worn on the thumb, and a tension-sensing device worn on the forefinger. If the tension unit senses that you're making a camera gesture, it triggers the camera to snap a photo. Make a video camera gesture, and it begins recording video! The resulting photos would also be …

We've seen that Google Street View imagery is capable of winning photojournalism awards, but how would the camera-equipped cars do as fine art photographers? Photographer Aaron Hobson has a fascinating gallery of fine art-style photographs found in Street View -- cinematic photos that would look great blown up and exhibited on museum walls.

Last week we featured Jason Hull's awesome nightlights created out of old (and cheap) vintage cameras. If you've been dying to learn how you can make one yourself, today's your lucky day: Hull has written up a step-by-step tutorial showing how the conversion is done. If you do attempt this project, try to find a broken camera -- working ones are happiest when they're used for photo-making! …

French animator and photographer Micaël Reynaud took a large number of black & white head shots by photographer Michael Jang and turned them into this super trippy video showing the faces morph through a ripple effect. You can also find an animated GIF of the morphing here.

For his project Infra, photographer Richard Mosse photographed landscapes, villages, and people in Eastern Congo using Kodak Aerochrome infrared film.

While most 14-year-old boys are hooked on things like video games, Laurent V. Joli-Coeur is busy using astronomy and photography for crazy science projects. A few months ago, he had the crazy idea of photographing a shadow caused by Jupiter's light. He then spent 7 hours building an instrument to do so, and used a Nikon D700 and 60mm Macro lens lent to him by Nikon to capture the image: …

This giant film roll packs a roll of toilet paper instead of photographic film. It's refillable, and can be placed on a table (dispensing TP through the top) or mounted on a wall (with the TP coming out the side). They come in red, yellow, and green, and cost $17 apiece over at Brando.

The Nikon D800 has been rumored for quite some time, but was reportedly delayed last month after production was halted by the massive floods in Thailand. If you've been frustrated with the lack of Nikon news on the DSLR front, here's something that should tide you over temporarily: photos of the upcoming Nikon D800 were leaked this past weekend.

Kevin Klein has a hobby of miniaturizing Victorian technology, and recently he made the world's smallest wet plate camera using 1/32-inch plywood and other wood materials. The camera is only a little bigger than a quarter, and shoots miniature 1/2-inch square plate images.

Want to learn the basics of studio lighting? Here's a two-hour-long lecture with photographer Joey Quintero in which he gives an overview of the basic principles, techniques, and tools.

Caleb Barrett wanted a simple ring light to play around with, so he built himself one for just $20 using built himself a makeshift ring light using eight cheap compact fluorescent light bulbs. The lights are pretty dim and have a horrible color rendering index, but are fun to play around with if you're just looking for something to experiment with.

Major camera makers including Olympus, Samsung and Sony have all filed patents in recent days for liquid lens technology. Unlike traditional glass lenses, liquid lenses don't have any moving parts. Instead, liquid is used to focus light, and different voltages are applied to the liquid to change the shape of the liquid, thereby controlling the image. In the video above, techie Ben Krasnow introduces the technology, and then shows off a device he made by ripping a liquid lens out of a USB webcam.

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John Sypal of Tokyo Camera Style spotted a photographer on the streets of Tokyo using this homemade lens created out of a potato chip tube. It captures photos that show the world in a glass-like sphere, with everything else blurred.