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Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his "deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States" and for his pioneering use of color in fine art photography. At age 14, he sold three photographs to the Museum of Modern Art, and at 24, he became the second living photographer to do a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this video, Shore talks a little about his work and shares some of his thoughts on photography.

If you're into experimental film photography at all, Lomography is currently offering a $50 voucher towards its website or NYC store for $20 through Groupon (available to people in the US only, sorry!). There's free shipping on orders over $25, so you could get 18 rolls of Lomography color negative film with some change to spare!

Don't want people using photos of your private island without permission? Watermark it! Billionaire Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan had his name carved into the sand of his island in the Persian Gulf. The giant "HAMAD" is two miles long and half a mile tall, is partially filled with water from the Persian Gulf, and can be clearly seen in photographs of the region capture by satellite. Gives new meaning to the term "watermark", eh? …

If you're looking for a fun photography-related way to invest some money, you might want to look into photobook collecting. The Guardian writes that prices have been soaring in recent years, and not just for expensive rare editions: …

We shared a couple weeks ago that it's possible to scan film using an ordinary flatbed scanner and a DIY cardboard adapter, but did you know you can also use a large-screen cell phone or tablet computer to provide the necessary backlighting? All you need is a way to turn a large portion of the screen entirely white (e.g. a "flashlight" app). Simply place the device facedown over the film on the scanner, and scan it with the cover open.

Multi-tools are pretty convenient when you're wandering around the great outdoors, but they've never really been a friend specifically to photographers. That changes with Gerber's new Steady multi-tool, which turns into a mini-tripod using fold-out legs on one side and a fold-out tripod screw on the other. It also has 11 other useful tools to help you get things done. The Steady will be available starting in Spring 2012 for $65.

Update: Looks like the item has sold out.

As Space Shuttle Atlantis left the International Space Station to head back to Earth for the final time, one of the astronauts on the ISS captured this beautiful image of the shuttle's glowing re-entry. Any guesses for what shutter speed this was shot at? …

Photographer Lori Nix spends weeks and months creating extremely detailed miniature scenes -- called dioramas -- and then photographs them using an old fashioned 8x10 large format camera. This video offers a look at what goes on behind-the-scenes at Nix's Brooklyn studio, and how she goes about creating her unique images. You see some of her photos in this post we published a year ago featuring her photography.

Remember the strange boxy cameras that were spotted on Samsung's website a couple months ago? Turns out they were in fact digital medium format cameras, but were developed for "internal purposes" only.

Skott Chandler's House Watch project consists of photographs taken in private living spaces using a pinhole camera fixed to the ceiling.

After reading about the revolutionary "shoot first, focus later" Lytro camera that's currently in development, Canadian fashion model Coco Rocha reached out to the company to ask if they could work with a prototype.

Photographer Mike Mitchell was 18-years-old back in 1964 when he captured The Beatles on their first US tour. After sitting in a box for 45 years, 50 of the photographs were individually sold at a Christie's auction on Wednesday for a whopping $361,938.

PBS is starting a new web-only video series called "Off Book", and the inaugural episode features Patrick Rochon and Aurora Crowley, two photographers dedicated to the art of light painting.

If you ever find yourself with some unwanted negatives on your hands, you can upcycle them into creative film candle holders! All you need is a glass candle holder and some way to fix your negatives to it.

Here's a short clip from the talk show Stossel where American libertarian journalist Radley Balko talks about how cameras -- especially mobile phone ones -- are a powerful weapon against tyranny, and why laws should protect our rights to use them.

How do you get a silverback gorilla to put a GoPro HD camera up to its face? Stuff the case full of raisins, of course!

Here's another nail in the fail coffin for the much-hyped but not-very-popular photo-sharing app Color: TechCrunch reports that Color received a staggering $200 million acquisition offer before it had even launched, but the company turned it down and raised $41 million in venture funding instead. Things haven't been going so hot for Color since then, while Google saved itself $200 million and has a couple photo-sharing apps in development that are generating some buzz.

Los Angeles-based photographer Dave Hill created this video showing all 11 photographs in his Adventure series deconstructed, giving us a glimpse of how they were put together. Hill lights and shoots different portions of his photographs separately, then combines them all into a single image using crazy Photoshop skills. Reminds me of Disney's amazing multi-plane camera.

If you look at the Top 100 Movies chart in the iTunes Store, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but one of the movies (#43) is actually a no budget film shot using a single Canon 5D Mark II. For Lovers Only" is a romance filmed by Mark Polish and Michael Polish -- known as the Polish brothers -- over the course of just 12 days with a single actress (Mark himself played the male lead). The film has already generated over $200,000 in profits after being spread through word of …

This photo that allegedly shows the mount and sensor on Nikon's upcoming mirrorless camera was just leaked onto the Chinese forum Xitek. My initial reaction was, "wow, that sensor looks small!". However, the camera is in fact rumored to have a relatively small 2.6x crop sensor (by comparison, the new Pentax Q has a 5.7x crop sensor).

Having a hard time getting a kid to smile? Children's photographer Jennifer Tonetti-Spellman suggests botching children's songs on purpose to draw out natural smiles and laughs: …

Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

You know you're ballin' as a photographer when you can use your lens collection to play a giant game of chess.

"Vector Portraits" is a series of candid portraits of passing motorists shot by photographer Andrew Bush between 1989 and 1997 in the Los Angeles area. After making 66 of these portraits, he published a photo book with them titled "Drive".

The North Korean government is the latest to get caught trying to feed a poorly Photoshopped photo to the media. This past weekend the Korean Central News Agency -- a state-run organization -- released a photo of citizens trying to wade through floodwaters in Pyongyang, saying that heavy rains flooded farmlands, destroyed homes, and caused deaths. After initially passing the image onto its members, the AP decided to issue a "kill notice" (yup, that's what it's called) a day later to withdraw …

The WVIL concept camera that made the rounds on the Internet featured a lens that could operate separately from the camera body, but Or Leviteh's MMI camera is even simpler: it's a small screen-less camera that uses a smartphone as its "camera body".

Check out this mummified camera used by Reuters photographer Jo Yong-Hak. Yong-Hak was assigned to cover the popular Boryeong Mud Festival this year in South Korea, and decided to protect his gear with some good ol' fashioned plastic wrap.

For the first time ever, an Adobe program is available through the Mac App Store. Yesterday, Adobe began selling Photoshop Elements 9 there for $80, a generous 20% off the regular $100 price for the boxed version. It's a pretty big deal, because Adobe -- along with Microsoft -- is a company that would love to keep its software out of Apple's App Store. It generates significant profits by selling its popular programs in the traditional boxed format, while businesses that sell through the Mac App …

Lv Sisi created this music video, titled "Digital Analogue", using only sounds recorded from a collection of antique cameras and 6,000 individual photographs carefully shot and edited together into an artistic stop-motion video.

Here's an awesome tutorial that teaches you how to create beautiful light painting sparkler photos. The materials are pretty cheap: all you need is some steel wool, an egg whisk, and a rope or cable. Simply place the steel wool inside the whisk, light it on fire using a lighter (or 9V battery), and swing it around at the end of the cable while your camera snaps a long-exposure photo. Just be careful not to start a fire!

Here's a couple images of Sony's upcoming A77 translucent mirror camera (with a battery grip attached), which is expected to be announced in late August. It's rumored to have a 24-megapixel sensor, HD-video recording, and a $1,000 price tag. It's unknown whether or not it packs the crazy double translucent lens hybrid viewfinder that was talked about late last year.

On June 21, 2011, non-profit organization Shoot Experience sent out six photographers to various parts of London to see the current state of photographers' rights.

A study conducted by market research firm J.D. Power and Associates has found that "Nikon Pro Series" DSLRs rank highest in customer satisfaction. The company surveyed 4,500 verified online DSLR buyers to find out their satisfaction across five factors: image quality, durability, features, ease of use, and responsiveness.

Photographer Mark Menjivar captured some interesting portraits of people across the United States by photographing the insides of their fridges. He spent three years travelling the country, gathering individual stories from people, and assembling the unique portraits in his project, titled "You Are What You Eat".

In 1839, a year after the first photo containing a human being was made, photography pioneer Robert Cornelius made the first ever portrait of a human being. The Daily recently published an interesting piece on Cornelius' story: …

Here's how Urban Dictionary defines 'photographer'.

A compact camera probably isn't the first thing someone would grab when looking to make a photo with an extremely shallow depth-of-field, since the small aperture and small sensor limit it in this regard. That might soon be different: a recently published patent application by Samsung shows that the company is looking into producing achieving shallow depth of fields with compact cameras by using a second lens to create a depth map for each photo.

You can now create instant photo books with your favorite Instagram (AKA two-minute noodle) photos using Blurb. After logging into the page with your Instagram account, your most "liked" photo is used for the cover and the rest of the pages are filled with your most recent images (they can be changed, of course). A 40-photo, 20-page book starts at $11.

Here's a fun photo project you can try: recreate each of Calvin's funny face photographs from Calvin and Hobbes. A version of this project done by a cute Asian boy was a popular viral photo a couple years ago. You can download the original Calvin montage here.

Here's an update to the whole monkey copyright story that's been swirling around the blogosphere as of late: TechDirt points out that works that aren't the product of human authorship cannot support a copyright claim. Section 503.03 of Compendium II of Copyright Office Practices published by the US Copyright Office reads: …

In the middle of last year, Google finally gave users the option of customizing its homepage with a photograph. Microsoft's Bing search engine, however, has featured photography ever since it launched in 2009. Fast Company has an interesting article about how the photographs are an integral part of the strategy for stealing users from Google: …

Ken Murphy created this time-lapse showing an entire 360-degree view overlooking San Francisco using only a single camera: …

Here's another ad from Olympus' Get a Real Camera campaign spotted by Mark Matthews in Australia. Pretty funny, though it might not be the best ad for college students who live on instant noodles (and love it).

Here's a quick tip for making Photoshop faster: change Preferences->File Handling->Image Previews to Never Save. This keeps image preview data from being stored in the file every time you save, and gives you smaller files for uploading to the web!

What does four hours of a toddler playing look like when compressed into 2.5 minutes? Photographer Francis Vachon found out by creating this neat time-lapse video of his 9-month-old son Charles-Edward playing in the dining room. It's a fun idea for a photo project to try if you have a toddler of your own causing chaos in your house.

You might soon be able to control Nikon DSLRs using only your emotions. A patent published recently shows that the company is looking into building biological detectors into its cameras, allowing the camera to automatically change settings and trigger the shutter based on things like heart rate and blood pressure. For example, at a sporting event, the sensors could be used to trigger the shutter when something significant happens and the photographer's reflexes are too slow. The camera could …

If your photographs ever include the faces of strangers, you might not want to move to Slovenia. Boštjan Burger, a Slovenian photographer that shoots immersive 360° panoramas, has been ordered by the government there to take down roughly 11,000 photo from his website and delete them from his backups because they violate privacy laws. His crime? Showing faces, street addresses, and license plates in his panoramas taken in public locations. Rather than face a year in jail and a €12,000 …

When viewing other people's photographs online, more often than not there's a way to comment and share your thoughts. While photo-sharing sites seem to have nicer commenters than a site like YouTube, there are still plenty of people who seem intent on putting people down and filling the Interwebs with vitriol. If that's you, then here's a video you definitely need to see.

One of the things you've likely seen when looking at product or review pages for lenses is an MTF chart, used by manufacturers to give consumers an idea of how sharp a particular lens is. If you've never gotten around to learning how to interpret these charts, here's a helpful 10-minute video tutorial on the subject. Luminous Landscape and Cambridge in Colour have great tutorials on this as well if you're more comfortable with text-based tutorials.