Gannon Burgett

We've seen plenty of RC drone footage and we've most certainly seen plenty of light painting photos. But what happens when you combine the two? You end up with this.

Inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, production studio Fiction hooked up lights to a DJI Phantom RC drone and captured long exposure photographs while flying the drone through the frame in specific patterns. The results are interesting to say the least.

It's no secret retro and vintage cameras have made a come back in the last few years. But, this is getting a bit meta, isn't it?

In an attempt to make retro cameras look even more retro, camera accessories manufacturer Anchors and Anvils is fitting some of the 35mm film shooters they refurbish with wood paneling.

Oftentimes we'll do whatever it takes to get that one particular shot. But what happens when you cross the line, break federal law and don't properly respect the subjects you're trying to photograph? Well, Florida-based wildlife photographer and photography instructor Jim Neiger recently found out.

The DSLR megapixel war has slowed down dramatically over the past few years as companies focus on low-light capabilities and other components of the cameras. But it looks like someone forgot to tell the smartphone market.

After four years in court, the district court of Tokyo has ordered Sigma to pay up for their infringement of Nikon's VR lens-stabilization technology to the tune of 1.5 billion yen -- or about 14.5 million USD.

Do you have half a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and the desire to purchase an extravagant portrait? Well, today is your lucky day, because Platinum Sphere Portraits is just what you're looking for.

No matter who it is you're photographing or where you're taking their picture, it's almost inevitable that in at least a few shots there will be some stray hairs flying across the photo. Usually, the result is an extra hour or so in post-production trying to get the hairs out one-by-one. Cue infomercial guy saying: "There has to be a better way!"

What happens when the concept of graffiti as we know it is flipped on its head? Well, I believe you end up with something like 'Painting with Lights,' a project by French photographer Philippe Echaroux -- something he calls 'Street Art 2.0.'

Led by Captain Robert Scott, a team of scientists and their journey photographer, Herbert Ponting, made a polar expedition to Antarctica in 1911. Currently, The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge (a sub-division of Cambridge) holds all of Ponting's resulting negatives from this journey, as well as a collection of photographic work from the other scientists along for the exploration.

There is still, however, a piece (or pieces, rather) of the collection missing. That piece includes 113 'lost' images taken by expedition leader Captain Scott, with a little bit of camera help from Ponting.

Earlier this week, Egami came across an Olympus patent that (as far as we can tell) is truly one-of-a-kind, utilizing a unique feature that would allow you to get the best exposure possible in any scenario.

What happens when you combine an RC car, some "stick bombs" and more camera gear than you can shake...er...blow up a stick at? You get this insane creation by Subaru.

Looking back at photography from the past is always an incredible experience, and this beautiful collection of color images from the early parts of the 20th century in Russia is no exception.

With 98% of mobile malware being directed towards the Android operating system, it's no surprise that the Google Play Store contains more than a few insidious applications that intend to do you harm.

The most recent of these to make headlines is an app uncovered by AVAST, which hides behind the thin facade of a night vision camera app and does its best to empty out your wallet.

Since its conception almost five years ago, Instagram has single-handedly changed the way individuals and companies represent themselves and interact with clients. Knowing this, and apparently feeling generous, they recently put together five tips for more successful marketing on Instagram that photographers might do well to take note of -- after all, build a solid enough following and you might make $15,000 overnight selling prints...

What's churning away in the rumor mills regarding Nikon? According to Nikon Rumors, it's the impending announcement of the Nikon 1 V3, the 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 PD VR lens, the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR zoom, and a new Nikon 1-series light that may very well be one of the prototype LED lights Nikon revealed at PhotoPlus.

Where do you draw the line between pornography and artistic nudity? Well, if you don't already know you'll have to figure it out fairly soon if you're part of the small percentage of people using Vine to post sexually explicit material.

Every so often, something comes across our desks that makes us do a bit of a double-take. This was one of those moments.

What you see above is a building shaped like a compact camera. What is the building used for? That's where it gets interesting. It's not a camera store or an electronics repair shop, it's a public restroom... seriously.

The past few days seem to be filling up with more and more stock photography drama. From the announcement of Getty's new embedding tool to 500px Prime's change in payment, things keep getting more and more confusing. Well, to add to this confusion, we have yet another piece of news, this time from iStock... a company owned by none other than Getty.

When 500px announced that it was introducing its own photo licensing feature, 500px Prime, the company received a lot of backlash from photographers who thought a 30% cut was far too little.

Well, it looks like 500px was listening. Because Prime went live yesterday with a significantly more favorable payment breakdown.

With the rise in popularity and drop in price of high speed cameras, more and more incredible footage is getting captured of events our human brain would otherwise be unable to see in such detail.

And today, we have yet another one of those events, the protagonist being a Goshawk and the victim being a water balloon baited with a piece of the soon-to-be-dinner that, we'll be honest, never stood a chance.

The saying goes, "your cell phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launched a bird into pigs."

Thankfully, in addition to launching furious balls of feathers into evil swine, we also use our phones for taking photographs. And just as our phones have more computing power than all of NASA in 1969, our phones also have better imaging capabilities than many of the astrophotography endeavors of the past.

Almost a year after Zack Arias first announced that he was working on an educational project called DEDPXL (pronounced dead pixel), the project has gone live on the web and is ready for you take a look at.

Although there was plenty to be happy about for us photographers last year, 2013 was statistically a very bad year when it comes to camera sales. And now, thanks to an infographic and accompanying video put together by LensVid, we get to look back and find out exactly why that is.

No matter how long you've been shooting or what level you're at in your photography endeavors, there will always be those moments where you walk away from a shoot unsatisfied with how some of the images turned out. It happens to the best of us.

Thankfully, photographer and retoucher Glyn Dewis has created a great tutorial that shows you how to turn an OK -- or even bad -- shot into an awesome one with the help of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

Although it is a niche market to say the least, the world of super telephoto lenses is a rather demanding one, with both sports and wildlife photographers depending on this massive and expensive glass to capture crisp images from far away.

Canon users seem to get a bit better treatment in this department than most, with prime glass ranging from their $11,000 400mm f/2.8L IS II to their $13,200 800mm f/5.6L IS. However, today's point of interest is going to be the glass that falls smack dab between those two, the 600mm range.

At a time when digital production workflows are becoming more and more ubiquitous within Hollywood, the news of a director utilizing an analogue workflow on a big production always seems to strike a chord with those who appreciate the aesthetic and feel of film.

Thankfully, for those of you who do enjoy such news (myself included), two major directors are choosing film over even the highest-of-res digital for their upcoming (and already released) blockbusters.

It's a sad day for the Internet... according to Trend Micro's security analysts, it's been discovered that photographs of both sunsets and -- even more heartbreaking -- cats being shared across the web contain malware capable of getting into your bank accounts.

From NYC-based filmmaker Paul Trillo, whose work we've featured a couple of times before here on PetaPixel, comes a new visual journey in collaboration with Los Angeles-based soul-folk duo The Peach Kings.

To the world of lens mount adapters comes a new creation by Adaptist. Called the Pentax K+ Multi-Mount, this adapter takes a unique approach to the mounting system allowing you to attach Nikon F-mount, Olympus OM-mount, Contax/Yashica C/Y-mount and Konica AR-mount lenses (in addition to the standard K-mount, of course) to your Pentax DSLR, all within this one integrated solution.

Quietly announced alongside the Nikon D4s is a new pair of accessories from Nikon. Partnering with BlackRapid's Ron Henry, Nikon has created a series of "Quick-Draw Straps" that the company hopes will blow away the standard straps that come with most DSLRs.

Just over a year ago, we featured an awesome project by photographer John Deprisco called The Photo Bus. Combining his passion for vintage vehicles (particularly VWs) and photography, Deprisco created quite an incredible combination that put a photo booth inside of a VW bus.

In Google's continuing effort to take over visually document the entire world, they've teamed up with Polar Bears International and taken Street View cameras to Churchill, Manitoba, more commonly referred to as the "Polar Bear capital of the world."

We've seen milk used as a prop in photoshoots before, but never quite like how Paris-based photographer Alexander JE Bradley goes about using it. Profiled in the latest The Weekly Flickr installment, Alexander goes around splashing people with milk and capturing silly, moo-ving images in the process.

In the (slightly paraphrased) words of rapper and former Pimp My Ride host Xzibit, "Yo dawgs, we heard you liked the Nikon D4s, so here's a video about the D4s, shot on a D4s".

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

In a bit of contrast to the RAW Beauty Talks portraits featured yesterday, today we have an interesting before and after Photoshop comparison of the hosts of the TODAY show

With the help (if you can call it that) of Cosmopolitan's "Photoshop experts," Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Natalie Morales were given a substantial post-production makeover.

Almost a year to date after the digging up and opening of Oklahoma City's Century Chest, researchers are getting a rare glimpse at early 20th century Oklahoma City thanks to the help of a Kodak Vest Pocket Camera and eight negatives found in "pristine condition" buried inside the time capsule.

Created by Polaroid in 1976, the 20x24-inch instant camera is one of the most unusual and massive pieces of photographic history you can get your hands on (if you're lucky enough... or have the dough). Fortunately for those of you who want to see the cam in action, photographer Chuck Close managed to do just that in a series of images for Vanity Fair's 20th Hollywood issue.

I'm all for a little monkey business when it comes to taking photos and playing around with your gear, but this guy here might've taken it a bit too far...

A reader over at Gizmodo sent a tip their way yesterday pointing to an embarrassing situation involving PayPal's use of a certain stock photograph.

Although it has since been removed, a photo of a small pocket watch over on PayPal's Political Campaigns page with a "donate" button located over it was found bearing a rather obvious iStock watermark... oops.

Here at PetaPixel we enjoy the crunching of numbers. So, naturally, when Mosaic told us about a blog post they had done recently that broke down some Lightroom catalog statistics, we were intrigued.

With "tens of thousands" of Lightroom catalogs synched to their service, they sampled a random 3,000 of those to come up with the average size of a Lightroom catalog. And in the end, they were actually quite surprised by the results.

As part of a new campaign, Profoto has teamed up with photography pair Justin and Mary Marantz to create a twenty-part video series aimed at educating (and promoting) how best to capture the vital moments of a wedding using TTL lighting.

What happens when you pit Nikon's $3,000 D800E up against a $30,000 Hasselblad H5D? Well, photographer Benjamin Von Wong -- whose work we've featured quite a bit here on PetaPixel -- got to do just that in a friendly comparison.

Back at it again, the team over at Lomography has created a new "Super Kit" edition for one of their best-selling creations: the original DIY Konstruktor Camera.

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

One of the biggest battles currently going on in the world of photography is DSLRs versus mirrorless cameras. There's no doubt that DSLRs are still on top in terms of numbers, but as more and more companies put their faith in the mirrorless market, they continue to tempt consumers of all levels to give this five-year-old system a chance.

We spend all day staring at pixels, but really, just how good is our vision when it comes to noticing the small details in photographs? Well, I can't speak on behalf of everyone, but using the tricky images below, you can get a good idea for yourself.

German artist Simon Menner created an interesting photo series that features military snipers hiding in various landscapes. The photos show just how well these highly trained individuals can blend into their surroundings, which vary from empty fields to rocky valleys.

Living smack in the middle of the information age, we're well acquainted with the incredible amount of data and statistics gathered and thrown around on a daily basis. And with the advent of social networking, the amount of publicly available data about society has only increased.

These networks are a treasure trove of information for better understanding the underlying trends and habits of people. Trends that would otherwise go unseen. One research project in particular, called Phototrails, is trying to spot these trends by gathering insights from that photography-oriented social media site many of us love to hate: Instagram.

It can often be a challenge explaining to others what we do as photographers, whatever genre of work we may be in. But where we often struggle to explain our vocation to friends or family, in wedding photographer Chris Thornton's case, it was his 3-year-old son whose understanding of what his dad did as a wedding photographer wasn't quite pieced together.

And so, he decided to put his creativity and photographic abilities to use and do what any good father would do: he put it into terms his son would not only understand, but appreciate.

Continuing to uphold the "gold standard" of film emulation, Visual Supply Co. has released its fifth series of film emulation presets. Called VSCO Film 05: The Archetype Films Collection, this emulation palette is based on some of the film stocks that defined the consumer analogue photography market of the past two decades.

In a rather interesting development that was somewhat overshadowed by the announcement of the Nikon D4s, Nikon has unveiled a new piece of photo editing software made specifically for processing images from Nikon cameras.

It was in the early part of 2013 when Trent Bell, a commercial photographer known for his architectural photos, received the shocking news that a friend of his had been sentenced to thirty-six years in prison for some trouble he got himself into.