Underwater Photos: A Deep Dive Into Prep, Gear, Shooting, and Editing

This article is not about my advice on how to run your photography business with regard to legalities, releases (prop, model, and liability), safety, price, and style, etc. However, it is about what I do, how I prep, and how I take photos underwater. That’s it. Read it and if you get some good ideas and want to try, then go explore and do it safely and legally.

openSX70: Teaching the Old Polaroid SX-70 New Tricks

Polaroid began to market the SX-70 camera in Florida in late 1972, about 46 years ago. The camera was a technology and design icon from day one, the brainchild of Dr. Edwin Land.

KiiPix is a $40 Analog Instax Printer for Smartphone Photos

Holga's recently-announced Holga Printer will let you turn smartphone photos into Instax prints without needing a battery, but that printer will cost at least $48 and won't arrive until after March 2019. KiiPix is a $40 analog printer that's essentially the same, and it's already available.

This Cluster Light is Made of 7 Godox AD200 Flashes

Like most photographers who have been working for many years, I have my favorite, go-to lights. These include the Broncolor Para 88, 133, and 222; the Broncolor 'pre-2006 style' Flooters; the Elinchrom Zoom Spots; and Elinchrom Litemotiv Indirect.

This is Why You Don’t Hire a $0.25 Photo Retoucher

After discovering retouching services being offered on Fiverr, the popular platform that lets freelancers offer ultra-cheap services, photographer Irene Rudnyk recently decided to conduct an experiment to see what kind of results you can get for $10 and less.

4 Simple Tips for Better Landscape Photography Trips

Due to circumstances that are generally out of our control, not all landscape photography trips are a success, but with a bit of planning you can increase the likelihood of having a productive outdoor photo shoot. The soft morning or late afternoon light that all landscape photographers are after is generally a short-lived event and being as prepared as possible will enable you to capture it when the moment is right.

This is Why Lighting Height and Angle Matter in Portraits

How you light your subject is one of the key decisions you'll need to make when shooting portraits. The Koldunov Brothers published this 9-minute tutorial showing the impact the height of a light source makes and some typical mistakes photographers make in placing and angling lights.

5DayDeal’s $2,500+ Photo Bundle for $89 Will Be Gone Forever Tomorrow!

An exclusive photography bundle worth $2,500 has been available for photographers for just $89 since October 11th. The bundle is filled with resources contributed by top names in photography. Each year, it’s highly-anticipated by photographers worldwide, but it only lasts 5 days and on October 16, 2018, at noon PDT, it will be gone forever!

This is the Full Photoshop Coming to the iPad

We learned earlier this year that Adobe is working on bringing a full version of Photoshop to the Apple iPad, and today the company officially announced it: "real" Photoshop power is coming to the popular tablet in 2019.

Magazine Covers Shot with Phones Ain’t No Thang

Scoring a national magazine cover shoot to prove the greatness of a phone’s camera has become part of the standard PR playbook for manufacturers. TIME featured photos taken by Luisa Dörr using an iPhone for a September 2017 cover story entitled “Firsts” about women changing the world.

Zeiss Otus 100mm f/1.4 Photos Leak

Zeiss is gearing up to add a fourth lens to its highly-acclaimed Otus lineup. New leaked photos are giving us a sneak peek at the upcoming Zeiss Otus 100mm f/1.4 lens.

Portrait Lens Shootout: 85mm vs. 105mm vs. 135mm vs. 200mm

Here's a 5-minute video showing a portrait lens shootout I recently did at 85mm f/1.4, 105mm f/1.4, 135mm f/1.8, and 200mm f/2.8. If you are looking for a portrait lens, you can't go wrong with any of these focal lengths. Each focal length serves a specific purpose and will give you a slightly different look/perspective.

A Message from a Spider to Arachnophobes

Hi, my name is Charlie and I’m a giant house spider. I share my house with a human macro photographer named Maxim Piessen. My roomie loves to take photos of insects and other small organisms. We have always been on the same wavelength.

Sony E-mount Wasn’t Designed for Full Frame, Leica Exec Says

As the mirrorless camera wars are heating up, the major players are touting their cameras' designs, features, and specs as being superior to what the competition offers. Leica is firing some shots at Sony, the current market leader in the space: Leica claims that Sony's E-mount wasn't designed for full frame cameras.

How I Shot the Falcon 9 Rocket Launch from an Airline Cockpit

“Oakland Center are you talking to that traffic at our 9 o’clock position? We got a yellow light out there and it’s coming up pretty fast.” This unusual radio transmission to Air Traffic Control from a Southwest Airlines jet caught our attention on an otherwise routine flight between New Orleans and San Francisco.

Facebook’s 3D Photos Have Arrived

Facebook announced today that it has begun rolling out 3D photos. Viewable both in the News Feed and with virtual reality headsets, 3D photos bring a scene to life by adding the facets of depth and movement.

5DayDeal 2018: $2,500+ in Tools and Resources by Top Photographers for Just $89

Each year, photographers from around the world look forward to a bundle filled with tools and resources contributed by top names in photography, in a concerted effort to raise money for incredible causes, while providing photographers exclusive digital products discounted as much as 97%.

Neuroaesthetics: Where Science Meets the Art of Photography

Art is something we all enjoy in one way or another. We assume it is a subjective subject, but there may be an objective angle that we can observe art from. Perhaps art isn’t subjective at all? Neuroaesthetics is a scientific approach to art in the way it is both produced and consumed, and this gives us a basis for figuring out what makes art… art!

How Teenage Photographer John Kraus Shoots Rocket Launches

John Kraus is an 18-year-old photographer living on Florida's Space Coast who has captured dazzling photos of major rocket launches over the past few years. VICE News followed Kraus to a recently SpaceX Falcon 9 launch and aired this short segment showing how the photographer works (it starts at 22m01s).

An Instax Camera with a Leica M Lens

Good photos have become commonplace. Smartphones have demystified camera technicalities in the past decade, and its pervasive adoption has democratized photography for mass consumers. Since the first known photograph was made in 1820, camera functions evolved significantly to compensate for human error.

From Lighting Test to Album Cover: The Tale of a Photo in the Social Media Age

As a photographer in 2018, I can’t help but think of my photos as drops in an ocean of imagery. Here are a few quick stats: There are over 60 million photos uploaded to Instagram every day (not to mention Instagram stories). Then there are the photos posted to Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook (some people still use it, right?), blogs, etc, etc.

Samsung Galaxy A9 is the First Quad-Camera Phone

First, there was the megapixel war. Next up: the camera count wars. Less than a month after unveiling the world's first triple-camera smartphone in the Galaxy A7, Samsung has just announced the new Galaxy A9 as the world's first quad-camera phone.

Macro Planet Photos Shot Using Beads from a Bracelet

My name is Can Tunçer, and I'm an amateur photographer based in Izmir, Turkey. Not long ago, my brother brought me a bracelet as a gift. The beads on the bracelet looked almost like planets, so I decided to shoot macro photos of them as "planets."

Make a $10 DIY Disco Light Modifier for Round-Head Flashes

Controlling and modifying light is a lot of what photographing with studio lights and battery-powered strobes is about. Especially when it comes to portraits, I like to work with my lighting setups so they add something that is not perfect or flat.

Here’s the Sony a7 III, Nikon Z7, and Canon EOS R Side-by-Side

The Sony a7 III, Nikon Z7, and Canon EOS R are three of the main cameras battling it out in the full-frame mirrorless camera wars. In case you're wondering how the three cameras compare in size with one another, the Dutch camera store Foto Hans Keuzekamp has shot a set of photos showing them side-by-side.

Long Exposure Photography from the Cockpit of a 747

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how I shoot long-exposure photos from the cockpit of an airliner and how they end up sharp, despite flying at roughly 950kmh/590mph/500kts through the air. I will try to answer that question in more detail, going through the process and challenges step by step. Hopefully it sheds some light (pun intended) on the techniques I use and for the pilot-photographers among us some valuable and easy-to-use tips for your next night-flight.

How a Fun Guy Goes to the Woods and Photographs Glowing Mushrooms

I often hear my students lament about how if only they could travel to the rainforest they would find something really interesting to photograph. I tell students “look around where you live – there are wonderful things to photograph everywhere”. The photographers that work with local species often obtain shots that are unobtainable from casual travels.