For his series titled "Drift", photographer David Burdeny traveled along roads in Canada, France, Japan, England, Belgium, and the USA, and captured the shifting light and color of the diverse landscapes by shooting at slow shutter speeds.
We love sharing about photography-related movies that you might want to add to your "films to watch" list, and today we have a great one: Marwencol. It's a documentary about Mark Hogancamp, a man who was beaten nearly to death back in 2000 outside a bar (leaving him little memory of his previous life), and how he turned to photographing action figures in a miniature world as a form of "art therapy". The photographs -- which you can browse here -- are incredible in their realism and creativity, …
The Art Institutes, one of the nation's largest for-profit school systems where people can receive an education in photography, has come under fire. Last month, the US Department of Justice filed a massive lawsuit against the company behind the schools, Education Management Corporation, accusing it of fraudulently collecting $11 billion in government aid by recruiting low-income students for the purpose of collecting student aid money. Whistleblowers claim that students graduate loaded with …
The photographs in Adam Magyar's Square series appear to show crowds of people bustling about in open town squares, seen from a height that makes them look almost like ants. In reality, each photograph is actually a composite of hundreds of individual photos, and none of the squares actually exist. Magyar photographed strangers walking on sidewalks from only 3-4 meters off the ground, and then blended the photographs together to make them seem like they were captured from a fake height!
It's no secret that Hollywood directors are using DSLRs more and more these days to film scenes that traditional bulky cameras can't, but what's interesting is that the cameras are often used from within the scenes filmed by the main cameras. A Canon 5D Mark II was mounted to the front of Tony Stark's crashing racecar in Iron Man II, and was also attached to moving vehicles in the recent Captain America movie. The cameras are camouflaged to blend into the scene, but keep your eyes peeled (or …
Samsung's DualView feature adds a small LCD screen to the front of compact cameras for self-portraits, but why use a small screen when you can use the screen on the back? Announced today, the company's new MultiView MV800 camera has a large 3-inch touchscreen on the back that can flip up 180-degrees, letting narcissists users view it from the front (or above, or below). No word on when it will be released, but the 16MP camera will be priced at $280 when it is.
Back in 2009 we published a post highlighting 8 video games that feature photography. One of them was Fatal Frame, and an upcoming spin-off of the game will involve using an actual camera during gameplay. Shinrei Shashin, which translates to "Spirit Photo", is being developed for the Nintendo 3DS, and makes heavy use of the portable game system's 3D-capable cameras. Imagine playing the game in a dimly-lit room, and seeing a ghost in your room through the camera -- horror games may soon become a …
Since we wrote about CineSkates last week, the tripod-on-wheels project has already raised nearly $200,000 in preorders -- not bad considering the goal was only $20,000. Today, Emm over at CheesyCam just announced something similar: the Pico Dolly. It's a tiny portable dolly system for your video-capable camera that lets you capture smooth tracking shots without the hassle of big and expensive equipment. Unlike CineSkates, they're already shipping -- $65 will buy you the dolly itself, and $90 …
Between July 1944 and 1946, the U.S. Camera Publishing Company published a comic book titled "Camera Comics" in an attempt to get kids interested in the growing hobby of photography. Covers showed pilots pointing huge cameras out of planes and baddies getting whacked with cameras.
Today, we're excited to introduce our new Camera Stickers: cute little stickers based on the awesome pixel illustrations of designer Billy Brown. The stickers are printed on durable and tear-proof PVC plastic. 91 stickers per sheet, and 3 sheets -- 273 stickers total -- cost just $5 with free shipping within the US! You can buy them over in our store.
Photo-enthusiast etxenike recently won a spool of Verichrome Pan 116 film in an auction, and discovered that it had already been exposed. He had the film developed, and found that five of the eight photographs survived -- not bad for film that has been sitting around since the 50s or 60s!
Samsung has announced its new mirrorless NX200, a year after introducing the NX100. The flat and smooth body has been replaced with a more ergonomic design, which the company reportedly describes as "retro modern". Inside, you'll find a powerful 20.3 megapixel APS-C sensor, which shoots 7fps in burst mode, records 1080p30 HD video, and boasts an ISO range of 100-12800. There's no viewfinder, but on the back you'll find a large 3-inch display.
After countless (and perhaps intentional?) leaks, the not-so-secret Fujifilm FinePix X10 has finally become official. Like the X100, the X10 boasts a sleek retro design and a 12-megapixel sensor -- though the X10 uses a much smaller 2/3-inch sensor rather than APS-C. Instead of a fixed 35mm equivalent lens, the X10 packs a versatile 28-112mm equivalent f/2-2.8 manual lens. Other features include RAW capture, an optical viewfinder, a 2.8-inch LCD screen, a pop-up flash, ISO that goes up to …
This short film, found in Contacts, Volume 1, is a fascinating video in which photographer William Klein takes us beyond his iconic images to discuss the stories revealed in his contact sheets.
Mario Klingemann created this interactive Arduino-powered Facebook Like button. It doesn't do anything besides tally how many times it's been pressed, but with the ubiquity of Facebook, most people will instantly know how to use it. Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a fully-functional Facebook Like button next to every print in a photo exhibition? The buttons would help publicize the exhibition, and would show what visitors think of the photographs. Perhaps it's only a matter of time …
You've probably heard of tossing your camera into the air for abstract light painting photos, but what about for actual photos? Wedding photographer Mike Larson shoots group photos from above -- with himself in the shot -- by throwing a DSLR and fisheye lens into the air and letting the timer trigger the shutter. You can find some examples of photos made using this technique over on Larson's website.
Last friday, Dayton Daily News photo editor Larry Price received instructions to lay off half of his photo staff. Rather than follow through with the order, Price -- a 35-year veteran photojournalist and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in photography -- decided to sacrifice his own job instead, resigning from the post this past Monday. Ginger Christ of the Dayton BizBlog writes, …
For his project "Cloud Collection", photographer Rüdiger Nehmzow went about four miles off the ground and photographed clouds through the open door of the plane. With no glass between Nehmzow and the sky to muddy up the shots, the resulting photographs are absolutely stunning.
Flickr introduced a novel privacy feature yesterday called "geofences", which lets you hide the location data of photos taken in certain locations from the general public. It seems like a great idea, but blogger Thomas Hawk points out that there's a pretty big loophole in the system: …
Here's a super creative video that attempts to capture 100 years of East London fashion, dance, and music in just 100 seconds. Reminds me of Rick Mereki's amazing "Move" short that we featured earlier this month, except this video travels through "time" rather than space.
Photographer Kim Pimmel created this amazing abstract time-lapse using a Nikon D90 and Nikkor 60mm macro lens. What you see is ferrofluid traveling between soap bubbles toward a magnet. No video was used -- every frame of the video was shot as a still photo.
Flickr introduced an innovative location-based privacy feature today called "geofences". It's a way of assigning default privacy settings to certain locations for geotagged photographs. For example, you can assign a geofence with a certain radius around your home, and automatically set those photos' location data to only be visible to your friends and family. Each user can have up to 10 geofences, and existing photographs are automatically updated to new geofence privacy settings.
Photojournalist João Silva lost his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan at the end of last year, but -- after months of intense rehabilitation -- returned to work in July, landing a photo on the front page of the New York Times. On August 2nd, Silva visited the Bronx Documentary Center and gave a talk on his thoughts and experiences.
Photographer Binh Danh observed one summer that there was a difference in color between grass under a water hose and the grass directly exposed to sunlight. He then began to experiment with combining photography with photosynthesis, and came up with what he calls "chlorophyll prints" -- photographs printed onto leaves using the sun.
YouTube user destinw -- the guy behind the chicken steadicam (and worth subscribing to) -- recently met up with photographer Darren Samuelson and his massive homemade large format camera. In this video, we're given another look into how this one-of-a-kind camera works, as Samuelson photographs the Saturn V rocket at the US Space and Rocket Center. Check out some of his amazing ultra-large format photos here.
Rumors about Fujifilm's upcoming "mini-X100" is heating up. The word on the street is that the camera will be announced on Thursday, and that it will officially be called the "X10" rather than the "X50". There were also some new photos of the camera leaked onto the web in addition to the blurry Promaster catalog photo we shared last week.
It's a pretty common question: if you had to choose, would you rather have a top-of-the-line DSLR with a cheap lens or an entry-level body with pro glass? Kai of DigitalRev attempts to answer the question through a hands on experiment in this humorous and educational video.
In 1505, Leonardo da Vinci painted a vast mural in Florence's town hall titled "The Battle of Anghiari" -- believed to be one of his greatest works. After being on display for more than 40 years, the unfinished painting was lost when the hall underwent renovations and new murals by Giorgio Vasari were added. There are no known records explaining what happened to the piece, but many people believe that it is currently hidden behind one particular mural called "Battle of Marciano in Val di …
Boston lawyer Simon Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007 when he used his cell phone to record officers making a drug arrest, and later sued the city and the officers for violating his rights. After the officers tried to having the lawsuit dismissed on the basis of qualified immunity, a Federal Appeals Court denied the motion last week and ruled that filming and photographing police is in fact protected by the First Amendment.
PillowMob is a new service that transforms photos of heads into puffy pillow heads. In addition to human faces, you can also use the face of your beloved pet. They cost $25 each with free shipping -- it's currently available to US residents only, but the company may begin shipping internationally soon.
Apparently Nikon has decide to save some trees (and shipping weight) by no longer including user manuals in some of its digital cameras. Since most people likely never touch the manuals anyway, it's not really a problem, but the company's draconian stance towards downloadable instruction manuals has some customers grumbling.
We've seen DSLR photo booth projects before, but usually they're just simple ways for guests at an event to take self-portraits of themselves. Kevin over at I Dream In Code actually made a fancy photo booth for his brother's wedding that prints out a nice keepsake for guests.
You've probably read plenty of articles touting the benefits of Sony's translucent mirror technology (e.g. high fps, AF for video, quietness, etc...), but what about the cons? One of the main downsides to having a translucent mirror is that the light hitting the sensor passes through an additional layer (the translucent mirror), which reduces the amount of light and the image quality.
Here's a pretty inspiring video that poses a simple question: "how bad do you want it"? It's from motivational speaker Eric Thomas' "Secrets to Success" talk, meant to help people accomplish their goals, whether it's "academically, financially, relationally", etc... Definitely applicable to those passionate about improving their photography as well.
Marc Levoy, the Stanford professor behind the "Frankencamera" project, teaches a course on digital photography called CS 178. The class website is a treasure trove for anyone looking for some great free education in photography: …
Here's a behind-the-scenes video showing Chinese photographer ERIC getting up close and personal with strangers on the streets of Hong Kong and Mainland China. He uses a Mamiya 7II and a large Metz flash, chewing through medium format film as though he was shooting digital. It's interesting to see how people in China seem less defensive about this kind of photography compared to people in New York, Derby, or Hollywood.
While looking into the new compression service JPEGmini yesterday, the following statement caught my eye in an interview they did with Megapixel: …
Photo sharing is proving to be one of the main battlegrounds in the social networking war between Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Facebook launched another counterattack today by increasing the resolution of displayed photos yet again from 720px to 960px, a 33% increase (last year they increased by 20% from 604px to 720px). Furthermore, the company claims that photos now load twice as fast as before.
Today Panasonic unveiled a new line of Lumix X lenses for Micro Four Thirds cameras, introducing two new zoom lenses: the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and the 45-175mm f/4-5.6. What's unique about them is that they're both power zoom lenses, meaning the focal length is controlled electronically using a rocker on the side of the lens. The 45-175mm also has standard zoom and focus rings, but these are electronic controls as well.
You might want to skip this post if you're squeamish. A filmmaker named Rob Spence has successfully become a cyborg by replacing an eye he lost through a childhood accident with a wireless camera that transmits everything he sees to a computer. Spence believes that technology may soon reach the point where are be tempted to swap out their body parts for superior prosthetics. No word on when he'll be able to apply Instagram filters to his eye camera photos.
Forget model airplanes... This Plamodel snap model kit is the one to buy if you're a photo-enthusiast (or want to make your kid one). Created by Japanese design house superheadz, it uses simple snap-together parts that allow even the "not-so-mechanically inclined" to assemble their own 35mm camera. There's 44 individual parts, and an instruction manual for building the camera is available online. You can check out some sample photos in this Flickr group pool, and buy one for $17 over on Amazon.
While we're on the subject of photos of Earth, did you know that the first photo showing the entire planet was captured by an unmanned NASA orbiter from the moon back in 1966? To accomplish this, they had to come up with a camera that could expose, process, scan, and transmit film photographs -- something "akin to a flying television station and photographic mini-lab".
As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, NASA has published a satellite photograph of Earth to its Flickr stream in which the storm is clearly visible. The storm has a diameter of 510 miles -- roughly 1/3 the length of the East Coast -- so it could probably be seen very clearly from someone standing on the moon. President Obama is warning Americans that the hurricane could be of "historic proportions".
Lomo shooter wn7ant came up with a neat way of turning instant film photos into one-of-a-kind business cards. After printing out his business card design onto a transparency, he cuts it out and sticks it onto an Instax film cartridge. To create a new card, he simply takes a picture -- the contact information on the transparency is printed onto every photograph!
Well, that was fast. Just a week after opening up its Photovine photo sharing app to the public, Google is now planning to kill it off, along with its second -- and not-yet-launched -- app Pool Party. Google is planning to focus its photo-sharing efforts on Google+, and will be shutting down Slide, the company behind the apps, which Google acquired last August for $200 million. The Slide employees were developing the apps independently, which explains why they were being made for iOS initially …
In the future, after you print photos onto paper using your camera, you'll be able to scan them and share them on Flickr using your mouse. At CES earlier this year, LG showed off an amazing new mouse that lets you quickly scan images and documents by simply waving the mouse over them. Now it's available -- if you live in the UK, you can buy one from Dabs for £90 (~$150).
Photographer Murray Fredericks took sixteen solo trips over eight years to the center of Lake Eyre in Australia, the largest lake in the country and one that forms salt flats every year when the water evaporates. These salt flats provide a perfectly flat, featureless landscape that extends to infinity in every direction, and allow for beautiful abstract photographs.
We may soon live in a world where the photographs in newspapers and magazines move like they do in Harry Potter -- that is, if newspapers and magazines are still around in a few years.
Photographer Mitchell Feinberg wanted to continue shooting 8×10 large format once his Polaroid stockpile runs out, so he decided to create his own 8x10 digital back. He spent over a year looking for a manufacturer and designing the back, and shelled out enough money to buy a good-sized house: …
JPEGmini is a new image compression service that can magically reduce the file size of your JPEG photos by up to 5 times without any visible loss in quality. ICVT, the Israeli company behind the service, explains how the technology works in an interview with Megapixel: …
