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: …
Austrian photographer Andreas Franke chose an interesting photo exhibition location for his project "Vandenberg: Life Below the Surface": a shipwreck 93-feet underwater. It makes sense though -- the project consists of photos Franke took of the wreck last year and subsequently turned into surreal composite photos containing people. The images, encased in 3mm thick plexiglass and mounted on stainless steel, were attached to the ship using magnets that don't damage the ship or affect the sea life.
On Monday we reported that Fujifilm is planning to release a smaller and cheaper version of the popular X100 called the X50. The photo here shows the camera listed in a Promaster catalog, spotted by a person over on the Something Awful forums. The $600 12MP camera is shown to have a fixed f/2 28-112mm (35mm equivalent) manual lens and a "wide and bright optical viewfinder".
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, photographer Alexey Titarenko observed how St. Petersburg streets that used to be lively and filled with joyful people had suddenly turned dark and gloomy, with people confused, malnourished, and worn out. He decided to capture this change by shooting the streets at slow shutter speeds, turning the downtrodden crowds into shadowy figures. He titled the resulting project "City of Shadows".
As technology improves, features that were once limited to expensive professional models often become available to the masses, but will this ever be true for full-frame sensors? Nikon's Senior VP David Lee was recently asked this question in an interview with TWICE, and here's what he said: …
Time-lapse photographer Randy Halverson spent three months hunting thunderstorms at night in central South Dakota using a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 60D, and Canon T2i. Capturing both the storms and the Milky Way in the same shots proved to be a difficult task: …
Lost in the commotion of Sony's awesome camera announcements was the official unveiling of the LA-EA2 A-mount adapter, which we reported on a couple weeks ago. This fancy lens adapter lets you use Sony's Alpha line of DSLR lenses with NEX mirrorless bodies without the loss of autofocus functionality by having a translucent mirror and autofocus system baked into the adapter itself! …
Photo filters that turn ordinary pictures into vintage ones are becoming mainstream. How mainstream, you ask? Well, Facebook is reportedly planning hop onto the bandwagon, adding them to its mobile apps to compete against Instagram. The New York Times writes, …
Have you ever noticed how ridiculous many of the poses seen in fashion and glamor photographs are? Artist Yolanda Dominguez has a project called Poses highlighting how absurd and artificial the poses are by having a group of women do them in public locations and filming the reactions of passersby. It's interesting how something so ridiculous when seen in real life can look so "normal" when done by a model in the context of a fashion photograph.
Last year we featured the work of Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas, two brothers who mounted their Canon DSLR to a remote-controlled car to shoot close-up photographs of dangerous African animals. The behind-the-scenes video above was just published yesterday, and shows the RC DSLR being driven up to different animals, all of which are clearly thinking, "what the heck is this thing"? They should offer these "BeetleCams" for sale. I want one.
When was the last time you came across a photography-related job opening this awesome? The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is looking for a "Senior Photographer" for its Paris station. It pays the equivalent of $100,000 a year tax free, and has great benefits (e.g. 30 days of vacation per year). Check out the opening here.
Scott Kelby, the publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazines, has launched a new iPad-only magazine dedicated to the subject of digital photography lighting called "Light It".
Earlier this year we saw the launch of two search engines -- Stolen Camera Finder and GadgetTrak Serial Search -- that help find stolen cameras by searching photos on the web for the serial numbers. The idea is neat, but no one knew whether it would actually help recover stolen gear or not. Turns out it does work.
Los Angeles-based photographer Amanda Rynda recently did an awesome engagement photo shoot with Juliana Park and Ben Lee, who wanted the photos to show them surviving a zombie attack. Needless to say, it turned out pretty epic.
Sony is serious about this whole "catching up to Canon and Nikon" thing -- the company has announced four new large sensor cameras, and each one is a doozy. The cameras, which hit store shelves in a couple of months, include the NEX-7 and NEX-5N mirrorless cameras and the A77 and A65 SLT (AKA translucent mirror) cameras.
Nikon did launch a new Coolpix camera today -- eight of them, in fact -- but the rumored "Coolpix Pro" mirrorless camera was nowhere to be found. The bevy of compact cameras hits store shelves next month, and includes the P7100 -- a more polished successor to the P7000 announced around this time last year, and Nikon's answer to Canon's G-series line of prosumer compact cameras. The 10.1MP camera features a tilting 3-inch LCD screen on the back, manual controls, 720p video, and RAW capabilities.
Eran Amir created this "stop-motion within a stop-motion" using 1,500 separate photographs and 500 volunteers. The massive amounts of work, creativity, and planning that this project must have required is mind-boggling.
Emotional Breakdown is a cool new web app that attempts to gauge the mood of the world every day by analyzing the photographs found on The Guardian's 24 hours in pictures. Using facial recognition technology to find happy, sad, angry, surprised or neutral faces in the images, the app creates a colorful pie chart breaking down the emotions. From the chart above, we see that the world was mostly neutral, surprised, and happy today.
CineSkates are new patent-pending wheels that attach to JOBY's GorillaPod Focus tripod, allowing you to capture fluid, stabilized video with your DSLR without bulky or expensive equipment.
Ever wonder how and why copyright law came about? This interesting video will bring you up to speed. It's pretty biased against certain aspects of copyright law, but is interesting nonetheless.
Twitter, Google+, and Facebook are one step closer to becoming clones of each other (at least when it comes to photo sharing) -- Twitter has rolled out photo galleries that display the 100 most recent images Tweeted by users in chronological order.
The Long Beach Police Department's hunt for photos with "no apparent esthetic value" quickly became national news last week. Here's a news segment in which Alyona Minkovski of RT speaks out against the erosion of photographers' rights in the United States.
This comment posted (and deleted) by Reddit user WonkoTheLucid shows why photographers need to make sure their websites are secured properly: …
There hasn't been much activity in the PetaPixel Store since we launched the Leica Look-Alike skins in September 2010, but today that changes -- we're pleased to announce the new Polaroid Picture Frame and Mirror! It's an awesome picture frame for your desk that looks just like Polaroid 600 instant film, and when there isn't a photo inside it doubles as a mirror.
Here's an interesting video in which Jack White -- singer and guitarist of The White Stripes -- shares some thoughts on work ethic and restriction, and how they relate to creativity: …
University of Oregon student and photography-enthusiast Jeremy Blanchard shot this creative engagement photo for two of his long-time friends.
You've probably seen (and taken) forced perspective photos before, but South Korean artist June Bum Park goes one step further, using footage from cameras in high places to control cars, pedestrians, and other things in the scene as if playing with a miniature world.
Fujifilm's retro-tastic X100 has been selling like hotcakes since hitting shelves earlier this year, and the company is reportedly primed for another big announcement: the X50. According to rumors swirling around the web, the X50 will be a smaller and cheaper relative of the X100 that uses the same sleek design.
When the sunlight is right, you can shoot a photograph of a couple holding hands while they form a heart with their shadows! Bonus points if you can catch the sunlight with an engagement ring and make it sparkle.
Most cameras designed for young children have kid-friendly designs, but eye-numbingly bad image quality. On the other hand, a cheaper point-and-shoot camera shoots better photos but probably won't last very long in the hands of a child. A way to make a cheap digital camera more kid-friendly and durable is to use Sugru, a special kind of silicone that resembles modeling clay. Strategically cover the camera with pieces of it, and you'll have a camera that even the most reckless child will have a …
Here's what a Leica M4 rangefinder camera looks like when taken apart. It's crazy how so many small parts can work together so seamlessly and reliably.
Developer Boris Smus came up with this super minimalist way of sharing his email address, Twitter username, and website URL. He writes, …
A Pennsylvania photographer named Jennifer McKendrick has caused quite a stir by canceling senior portrait sessions with a group of high school girls after discovering evidence of bullying by the teens on Facebook.
Hayashi Natsumi's levitation photos have received a lot of publicity as of late (check out her blog here), prompting Kai over at DigitalRev to create this short video tutorial teaching the technique. Could be a fun weekend project if you're looking for something to shoot.
Have a bunch of film canisters lying around and not sure what to do with them? You could use them to geekify your Christmas lights by punching a hole in the caps and sticking the lights in.
Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
You've probably photographed your own reflection in sunglasses before, but have you ever captured a reflection of yourself shooting the photograph in the same shot? Reddit user Jon Little shot this trippy Inception-esque photo at the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago.
A neat way to reuse film canisters is to poke holes in the lids and turn them into salt shakers, but some people argue that this may expose you to the harmful chemicals that leak out of film and into the plastic of the canister. It's actually a question that Kodak has received a lot over the years, and they say it shouldn't be a problem as long as you wash it out first: …
Photographer Mike Rosinski created this amazing image showing light trails from both fireflies and stars by stacking over 370 photos shot over 2 hours from his backyard in Hartland, Michigan. He used a Canon T1i and 15-85mm lens at 15mm with 20 second exposures. The stacking was done with StarStaX, a free program geared towards star trail photography. You can find more about Mike Rosinski's work (prints, licensing fees, etc) by contacting him here.
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.
Here's a creative self-portrait by Dutch photographer Joeri Bosma. It's neat how the waterline on his shirt makes him look like he's transparent.
Rather than being built from scratch with new designs, new camera lenses are designed by taking existing lens designs that work well and then improving on them. As a result, virtually every lens design can be traced back to one of six basic lens designs developed in the early 1900s (shown above). Roger Cicala of LensRentals writes, …
