Do you know who the most photographed American of the 19th century was? It's not George Custer (155 photos) or Walt Whitman or Abraham Lincoln (130 each). The person with the most portraits made of them in the 1800s was Frederick Douglass, the African-American abolitionist, speaker, writer, and statesman.
A photographer in Louisiana recently shot a baby photo that was a lot more magical than she had planned. In the middle of the outdoor photo shoot, a curious deer decided to wander into the shot to see what was going on. The photobomb resulted in a remarkable and memorable portrait.
The rise of virtual reality photojournalism will get a huge boost this weekend thanks to the New York Times. The newspaper's Sunday bundle for print subscribers will include a free Google Cardboard viewer for experiencing immersive photo and video content. Over 1 million units will be shipping with the paper, and another 300,000 will be sent to digital subscribers as well.
Self-balancing scooters have become all the rage over the past couple of years, and you can now buy a small handle-less Segway-esque device for yourself for around $300 to $400. In addition to gliding around and attracting curious looks on the street, you can also use the "hoverboards" to shoot stable photos and videos.
Here's an interesting blast from the past: in 1965, the US Army released the 25-minute film above to teach the basics of photography (for military police purposes).
Paris-based photographer Mathieu Stern released this short and sweet video showing how he took a 105-year-old folding camera lens from 1910 and mounted it to a Sony a7II mirrorless camera using bellows for focusing.
"The lens is incredibly sharp for a 105 year old lady... but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy," Stern says. The video contains some sample footage shot using the lens.
Episode 17 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Music photographer Adam Elmakias
Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, with millions of immigrants arrived in the United States via the island by boat.
Amateur photographer Augustus Sherman was the Ellis Island Chief Registry Clerk for a number of years in the early 1900s, and he used his special access to shoot portraits of many of the immigrants who passed through the station.
When shooting in colder environments, one of the things that can plague your photography is condensation forming on your gear. Photographer Mark Peter Thorpe has a cheap and simple hack for avoiding this problem: heated hand warming packs.
How do the shutter sounds of popular camera brands compare with one another? Which cameras are loud, and which …
When you're just starting out in photography, you may not have a lot of money to invest in putting together a high-end arsenal of studio lighting equipment. By being resourceful, however, you can do a lot with a little.
In the 23-minute video by the lighting brand Sekonic, photographer Tony Corbell demonstrates how you can create 10 completely different lighting scenarios in the studio for products and portraits with a single large softbox.
Ringo Starr is best known as the rock star drummer of the Beatles, but he was also a passionate …
Want to make some realistic fake blood for a creepy Halloween photo shoot? Here’s a short video tutorial by …
Warning: This comic contains some explicit language.
Cartoonist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal struck a chord with photographers and other creatives a couple of days ago by published a new comic titled "You're Doing it for the Exposure."
We all know Uncle Bob: the man, the myth, the photobombing, shot-blocking, wedding-wrecking legend! Turns out, when he purchased his first digital camera back in 2001, he also launched a blog!
For your enjoyment and inspiration, here are a few excerpts from the personal blog of Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob’s Camera.
This past May, photographer Grant Mallory and his girlfriend Maria celebrated Maria's college graduation by embarking on an epic road trip around the United States. Mallory wanted to capture each National Park's scenic locations in a unique way, so he brought along an LED hula hoop and had Maria pose for light painting portraits.
picsbuffet is a new visual image browsing system that lets you explore and search millions of photographs through an interface that feels like Google Maps.
Want to see a super early example of a photo being faked through compositing? Look no further than this circa 1902 photo, titled "General Grant at City Point." It appears to show General Ulysses S. Grant posing on a horse with a large number of soldiers in the background, but it's actually the combination of three different photos.
If you want to view the color spectrum of a light source in your studio, there's actually a super cheap and easy way to do so: an ordinary CD or DVD can do the trick. Simply allow the light to reflect from the surface of the disc into your eye -- it acts as a diffraction grating, allowing you to see the different color bands in the light.
LumoPro surprised the photographic community in 2013 with the release of the LP180 speedlight. This successor to the LP160 offers amazing performance for a relatively low price compared to competitors. With a guide number of 110, the LP180 is powerful enough to use outdoors for portraiture, and even automotive photography.
If the LP180 was a game changer for many people due to its accessibility and performance, LumoPro has outdone itself with the new LP180R.
Matt and Heather Koehler got married in Michigan back on September 12th. Shortly before walking down the aisle, the couple was devastated to find that their wedding photographer was a no-show. The "professional" they had hired to document their special day was nowhere to be found, so the couple was forced to go through with the wedding without the official photos they had planned and paid for.
OS X El Capitan added some major features to the operating system when the update was released at the end of September 2015, but it appears that there was a pretty significant one that didn't receive as much fanfare: 10-bit color.
If you want to see an example of a photographer "killing it" in the Internet era, just look at Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York. In the short span of 5 years, Stanton's portraits and interviews of strangers have grown into a global phenomenon with tens of millions of faithful fans.
In addition to having 15+ million followers on Facebook and 4+ million on Instagram, Stanton will be the man behind two New York Times bestsellers after this weekend.
Over the past two years, photographer Ho Hai Tran has traveled over 14,000 km (~8700 miles) to capture old and iconic Pizza Hut restaurants that have since been turned into something new.
If you thought the idea of a smartphone selfie stick was peculiar, get this: photographer Jesse Chehak has created a gigantic selfie stick for his large format camera, and it actually works.
Sitting for long periods of time has been shown to be bad for your health, leading more and more people to adopt other positions for working at a computer. If you've always dreamed of being able to stand, sit, and lie down at the same workstation while post-processing mountains of photos, the new $5,900 Altwork Station is for you.
Here's a strange case of someone being a little too obsessed with photography. A woman who recently filed for divorce in Taiwan cited her husband's obsession with photography as one of the main things that broke their marriage.
Photographer Shaina Fishman and stylist Ryen Blaschke recently collaborated on a project to help rescue cats get adopted. The lighthearted series "Cats in Hats" features shelter cats and kittens wearing Halloween hats and accessories fashioned by Blaschke.
16-year-old photographer Leroy Bellet recently turned an idea he had into a series of epic surf photos that landed on the covers of international magazines. He followed behind surfers in giant barrel waves and photographed them in action with a Nikon DSLR and an external flash.
The photo filter company VSCO today announced DSCO (pronounced "disco"), a new app for creating and sharing animated GIFs of your life's moments.