Here's a fun photo project you can do with any small kid (preferably not a stranger's): spinning shots. All you have to do is set the self timer on your camera to automatically take a shot while it's hanging around your neck. While it's counting down, grab the child by the arms and spin them around. If luck is on your side, the photograph will show a clear subject, happy face, and motion-blurred background.
We're now one step closer to being able to take photographs with our minds. Scientists at UC Berkeley have come up with a way to reconstruct what the human brain sees: …
"The City" is a beautiful time-lapse video that gives you a taste of what San Francisco is like. Between June 2010 and August 2011, photographer Wesley Townsend Kitten visited various locations in the city, capturing 85 different shots comprising roughly 28,000 photographs. He used a Canon 5D, Canon 5D Mark II, 15mm fisheye, 16-35mm, and 70-200mm for the shots, which were subsequently tweaked in Lightroom. Everything was then brought together into this time-lapse video using Final Cut Pro.
Ex-Magnum and current National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols first launched his website back in 2001 but left it untouched until last year, when he finally decided to update it with new work. After spending a considerable about of energy towards the update, he suddenly decided to change course: …
Some photographers prefer using ordinary bags with padded inserts to carry their camera gear, both for aesthetic reason and to prevent theft. Instead of buying an insert, you can also make a custom one with some foam, fabric, and velcro. Abi over at vanilla & lace made one to turn her purse into a camera bag after finding that purse-style camera bags can cost up to $300. She also wrote up a helpful tutorial on how you can do the same.
Color -- the much-hyped but largely ignored photo sharing app -- is back, and this time it's built entirely around Facebook. One of the main reasons for the app's failure the first time around was the fact that the photo sharing relied on proximity, a huge problem for new users when no one around is using it. Now, founder Bill Nguyen is trying to avoid the "ghost town" problem by harnessing the power of Facebook's social graph.
Here's an educational time-lapse tutorial by Los Angeles-based architectural photographer Mike Kelley in which he walks through how he goes about photographing buildings. His technique might be described "manual HDR" -- after shooting the building over a longish period of time to capture different lightings, he then enters the scene and lights different areas of the building using two Canon 430EX Speedlites. Afterward, he loads the stills into Photoshop and selects different portions of the …
Remember the tiny Chobi Cam One "DSLR" that was introduced in Japan at the beginning of the year? Well the camera has found a distributor in the US and is generating some media buzz again after being marketed as "the world's smallest camera". While it certainly isn't the world's smallest camera, you probably won't find an interchangeable lens digital camera that's smaller. You can buy the video-capable 2-megapixel camera over at Hammacher Schlemmer for $100, though it doesn't appear to come …
Want a DSLR viewfinder but don't want to pay big bucks for a professional one? Photojojo has a tutorial on how you can build your own DIY version using a lens from a pair of magnifying reading glasses and some plastic/foam board. It'll definitely draw some weird looks but hey, it works! …
Allen Murabayashi is the co-founder and CEO of PhotoShelter.
If Apple ever got into the photo printer business, this SWYP ("See What You Print") printer might be similar to what they'd come up with. It's a brilliant concept photo printer design by Artefact, the same design group that dreamed up the WVIL concept camera. Instead of having to send photos to the printer from a computer, users use a giant touchscreen interface that shows you exactly what's going to pop out of the bottom. Come on SWYP, hurry up and exist!
What has the world come to? Apparently the prestigious Magnum Photos has partnered with Nintendo to promote the Nintendo 3DS as a camera. Photographers Martin Parr, Thomas Dworzak and Gueorgui Pinkhassov used the handheld gaming device to shoot a series of 3D photos that were then put on display in an exhibition held at the Magnum Gallery in Paris.
Cut Out + Keep member Myam made this awesome Leica-style messenger bag for a photography-lovin' friend. Sadly there's no tutorial for this bag, but she says that the process is identical to what's seen in this guitar bag tutorial she wrote. A padded insert can also be added to make the bag more suitable for holding cameras. This bag could definitely make for a fun weekend project and photography gift.
Warco -- short for War Correspondent -- is an upcoming video game in which the player takes on the role of a journalist named Jesse DeMarco. Despite being classified as a first person shooter, the objective is to shoot people with a camera rather than a gun. After venturing into dangerous conflicts and risking your life to snag some footage, you're given the task of editing the video into a compelling news story. It almost seems like a Pokemon Snap game for adults. If they went a step further …
Is it your dream to become a professional photographer? Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson says you should focus more on the word "photographer" than the word "professional": …
Here's a neat productivity tip for those of you who regularly buy stuff online (e.g. obsessive photo gear buyers): you can track most packages by simply searching for the tracking number with Google! The search engine automatically figures out which service the number belongs to, and provides you with a direct link to the droids page you're looking for. Since some shipping companies don't have bookmarkable tracking pages, this tip can help you avoid having to go through those companies' …
Japanese Gift Market sells these camera-shaped wooden pencil sharpeners that can conveniently be carried around on your keychain. They ship from within the US, and cost $10 each.
Turns out the giant hand sculptures that popped up all over the world over the past few days were indeed part of a marketing stunt for Nikon's new mirrorless cameras. thebighands.com is now an "I AM Nikon 1" website. Our guess yesterday turned out to be true as well: the hands are now holding giant Nikon mirrorless cameras!
Photographer Nathan Seabrook made this creative stop-motion music video for the band Yuba Diamond. Despite what your eyes might tell you to believe, no computer trickery was used. Instead, Seabrook used roughly 1700 separate prints and some old fashioned techniques (e.g. fishing line and projecting scenes onto the background) for all the animations and effects seen in the video.
At Levi's Photo Workshop in New York City last year there was a large collection of cameras sitting on shelves and available for anyone to use. To keep track of what was missing, labels and outlines were drawn on the wall to "carve out" little homes for the cameras. If you have a sizable camera collection, labeling your walls could be a neat way to both organize them and show them off! …
Nikon's long-awaited mirrorless camera system has arrived. Today Nikon announced the new J1 and V1 mirrorless cameras and four new Nikon "1 System" lenses. The two cameras have nearly identical specs: a 10.1 megapixel CX-format (13.2mmx8.8mm) CMOS sensor with 2.7x crop factor, a 3-inch LCD screen, 10fps shooting, 1080/30p HD video recording, 1200fps slow-motion recording at 320x120, simultaneous video/still capture, 73-point hybrid autofocus, and 12-bit RAW files.
Want to adorn a wall with a giant print using your own photography? Here's a great video in which photographer Lee Morris shares how he shot, printed, and framed a massive 5-foot-wide panoramic print for less than $150 -- super cheap compared to the $1,000+ you might pay to have it professionally done. After shooting multiple photos on a bridge in Rome, he merged the images using Photoshop, had a metallic print made by Bay Photo Labs, and then framed it using a large mirror he found at Bed Bath …
While on vacation in Ireland five years ago and browsing a street fair, photographer Tom Storm captured a few shots of bubbles floating past. After reviewing the photos and discovering that a whole world was captured in the bubbles, he began to intentionally photograph bubbles while visiting landmarks around the world.
Want a challenging photography project? Try capturing an analemma in a single shot. "Analemma" is the name given to the figure-eight shape traced by the sun if photographed at the same time of day over the course of a year. To capture it, you'll need to leave your camera in a fixed position and shoot photos at exactly the same time of day for all of the shots.
All signs point to a Nikon mirrorless camera announcement at midnight tonight and, after Nikon's strange "I AM COMING" proclamation yesterday, another strange teaser has emerged that appears to be related to the camera. People in Europe have received postcards with the words "THE BIG HANDS", and a link to the website thebighands.com.
Of all the camera lenses offered on Amazon, the $26,000 35-pound giant green Sigma 200-500mm f/2.8 probably has the funniest customer reviews and images.
Today Instagram released version 2.0 of its wildly popular iPhone app, which will soon see its 10 millionth user. The base technology has been completely overhauled to bring speed to the app -- filters now apply 200x faster, tilt-shift applies 100x faster, and both can be viewed live while shooting. Four new filters have been introduced (seen above), and borders on filters are now optional. Finally, the resolution of photos saved to the iPhone 4 has been increased from 612x612 to 1936x1936 (the …
Flickr user Alex12Ga turned his Canon 5D Mark II into a DIY digital view camera by mounting a Novar-Anastigmat 75mm f/3.5 lens from 1949 with its original bellows. He mounted the bellows to his camera using an aluminum plate and an EOS mount ring that he salvaged from a broken Sigma lens.
Canon has long offered its telephoto L lenses in white in order to keep the lens cooler under sunlight, but did you know that certain Nikon lenses can be found in "white" as well? The lenses were officially called "light gray", and can be purchased for pretty reasonable prices on eBay -- the AF-S ED 70-200 f/2.8G VR seen above was sold a couple days ago by eBay seller shrewd25 for $1,999.
Real estate agents make it a point to have homes look attractive in photographs, knowing that good photography can make a huge difference, but the people at animal rescue shelters often settle for second-rate photographs of the dogs they're trying to find homes for. Professional pet photographer Teresa Berg of Dallas, Texas realized that countless dogs are likely euthanized each year simply due to bad photography, and decided to make a difference. Several years ago she started doing shoots for …
Why sell an old photo as something historical when you can market it as something mythical? A few days ago someone listed an old civil war photograph on eBay with the description: …
Last Friday, Olympus partnered with JetBlue for an Oprah-style giveaway: each of the 1000+ passengers traveling on Flight #001 from New York to Fort Lauderdale was given a newly-announced PEN E-PM1 Micro Four Thirds camera. The company documented the event using its own PEN cameras, and simply asked that everyone upload 20 of their favorite images captured to this website.
Nikon has set up a teaser page titled "I AM COMING", with a countdown that ends on Wednesday September 21. With all the rumors that have been floating around, it would be pretty shocking if this wasn't the company's mirrorless camera announcement. Looks like Nikon couldn't snag the domain name "iamcoming.com", though -- the teaser is at iamcomings.com.
The giant "GRIT" seen in this photograph wasn't added in post-processing. The secret? Blue painters tape.
Teenage photographers Vanessa Hollander and Wilson Philippe embarked on a ten-day motorcycle trip across Mongolia this past summer on a mission to give instant photo portraits to Native Mongolians who had never seen a photo before. They also made the above video documenting the reactions of a few of their subjects: …
Have you ever wondered whether hall of fame athletes from decades ago would still find success if the played their sports today? How about the same question, but applied to photographers? Would the historical greats of photography be brilliant across all ages, or were they simply pioneers and ahead of the curve in their generation? If they were just starting out today, which of the famous photographers throughout history do you think would still become renowned in the present day, and which …
Over the weekend, Japanese blog ktf__design published this image of what appears to be the new mirrorless camera Nikon will reportedly announce on Wednesday. If it's just some fan-made mockup, they did a great job -- the mount and sensor section looks identical almost identical to the photo that leaked back in July.
Line up an array of digital cameras and you'll have yourself a setup that can take Matrix-style bullet-time shots. Artist Sam Blanchard created a similar rig, but went with Polaroid cameras instead of digital ones. The project, titled Polaroid Matrix, consists of 20 Polaroid cameras arranged in a circle and modified to be triggered remotely. After the cameras are triggered to simultaneously capture photos of the subject in the center, the Polaroid pictures are arranged and turned into a …
Last year Canon announced the world's largest CMOS sensor -- an 8-inch chip that's 40 times the size of those found in Canon's full frame cameras. Now, a year later, the sensor is finally being put to good use, having found its way into the Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo's Kiso Observatory. The extreme-sensitivity of the sensor has allowed astronomers to detect more faint meteors during a 1 minute period than could previously be seen during an entire year, and has the ability to …
This incredible time-lapse video was created using photos captured from the International Space Station at night.
tokyo camera style by John Sypal (see our interview with him) is a popular website documenting the analog camera culture in Tokyo, Japan by sharing photographs of cameras being used on the streets -- it's like The Sartorialist except for cameras instead of fashion. If you're a fan of the site and love browsing photos of old school cameras people use, you'll be happy to know that there's a number of similar websites for other cities and places around the world.
Philosopher and Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost gave this short talk recently on the photography of renowned American street photographer Garry Winogrand, specifically focused on Winogrand's famous quote in which he says, …
If you're the proud owner of a Sony NEX-5N but have been pulling out your hair due to strange clicking noises ruining your videos, here's some good news: it's not just your camera. Frustrated camera owners have taken to the Internet to complain about the faint clicking noise that can be heard from inside the camera when moving it around, a problem that was found in every NEX-5N that Engadget tested. 1080/60p video recording is one of the highly touted features on the camera, so Sony could be in …
Photo fads are themselves growing as a fad -- after "planking" became a worldwide Internet sensation earlier this year, it seems like every week a silly new idea is introduced as "the new planking".
Since photography emerged in the early 1800s, the number of photographs created every year has grown exponentially. A dramatic shift occurred around the year 2000 though: …
Here are the recordings of all the "Is Photography Over?" panel sessions hosted by SFMOMA that we referred to earlier today: …
Google Street View is neat in that it allows you to step into far away places through street-level photographs, but it's missing the fourth dimension: time. WhatWasThere is an awesome project that aims to combine the element of time with a photographic map of the world. The map includes both modern day and historical imagery, and users can contribute their photographs by tagging them with a date and a time. The site even lets you switch to Google's Street View and overlay historical photos onto …
In April of last year, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a two day summit on the topic of "Is Photography Over?". The panel discussions from the summit featured some pretty notable names from the industry, and generated quite a bit of discussion once they were shared online. In response, Conscientious editor Jörg Colberg made this humorous tongue-in-cheek video introducing a new color coded threat level advisory system as a quick and easy way of staying up to date with how over …
Facebook is by far the world's largest photo service, but how does its massive image collection compare with other website and photo libraries? 1000memories created this interesting graphic showing the relative sizes of the world's largest photo libraries.
You've probably seen videos showing the rolling shutter effect turning airplane propellers into boomerangs, but what if the camera was attached to the spinning object rather than pointed at it? mguw of Helidigital decided to find out by attaching a small camera to the rotorhead of an RC helicopter, synchronizing the RPM of the rotor to the scan rate of the camera. The result is an uber-trippy video in which reality is bended through the rolling shutter effect.
