American and European regulations generally prohibit pilots from taking pictures while flying planes, and for good reason: sometimes the camera does get in the way of safe flight -- literally.

An investigation in the UK has found that a military airliner took a terrifying 4,400 foot nosedive last year after the pilot's DSLR got stuck next to the plane's joystick.

The world of photography lost one of its own this week. Photographic lighting pioneer Paul C. Buff has passed away at the age of 78. Among his many contributions to photography were White Lightning, AlienBees, Einstein flash units; the CyberSync radio remote system; and the Vagabond power system.

If you're just getting started in learning how to light your shot with flashes, you may be confused about the terms "high speed sync" and "flash duration." Here's a helpful 6-minute primer in which photographer Daniel Norton explains what these two concepts are, how they differ, and which situations they come in handy for.

I recently stopped into the Costco in Mountain View, California with 164 rolls of Kodak Portra 400. You should’ve seen the look of the staff -- it was a look of confusion, awe, and amazement.

They were surprised that all that film I brought in was all shot by me. They were also partly worried that they would have to process all of it. I reassured them by telling them to take their time. I wasn’t in a rush. After all, I had been sitting on my film and letting them “marinate” for nearly a full year.

In my mind, there are three important elements of a photograph. Lighting, Composition and Moment. Every picture that I love has these elements, in varying amounts. A great picture may have strength in all three areas, or it may be, for example, such an emotional moment that it overpowers poor composition or light.

But for this article I want to take a quick look at composition, and how photographers will be subconsciously considering many compositional elements when making pictures as well as editing and post processing later.

Today Instagram unveiled its new Layout. No, it's not a redesign of the company's website or app, but rather a new official app for easily combining multiple photos into single images that can quickly be shared.

Product design is the notion of transforming an idea into a tangible object that has a purpose. Solving problems with products is what I like to do -- it's how I try to give something back to the world. Adaptalux is something I created recently to give photographers a portable macro studio wherever they go.

NASA is a government agency, so the photographs it creates are released to the public domain and can be used by anyone for any purpose. Now that private companies such as SpaceX are getting involved in space exploration and collaborating with NASA, the copyright of mission photos becomes a little more murky.

All that cleared up in a big way this past weekend: SpaceX is following NASA's lead and will now be releasing photos to the public domain.

Here's an idea for a fun weekend project and/or personalized gift: make some custom candles that feature your photographs. It's actually incredibly easy, and you may already have the necessary materials lying around at home.

If you've always dreamed of seeing your cat share photos of its life on Instagram, there's now a camera being developed that may make your dream a reality. It's called Catstacam, and is a wearable collar camera that automatically posts photographs to an Instagram account you set up for your cat.

Here’s a short 10-minute profile by The Learning Connexion on photographer Peter Black, …

DigitalRev TV‘s latest episode examines this question: “What’s the difference between how we …

A few years ago, we wrote about how phones can be used as negative film strip viewers by simply inverting the screens. Swedish photographer Adam af Ekenstam took the idea a step further by using an iPad and iPhone together as a simple yet powerful negative viewing station.

Nikon has announced a new product called the Nikon ASC-01, a new stainless steel insert for your camera's hot shoe mount. It slides right into the mount when it's not in use, giving your camera a shinier and more "complete" look.

We photographers do love our catch-phrases, but what do they all mean? Here’s my not-so-serious and very tongue-in-cheek rundown of some of the more commonly used terms and their meanings. And yes, I’m as guilty as the next guy:

UK-based glamour photographer Markp created this short video tutorial on how he sharpens …

Say hello to drone pinhole photography. A photography class at the Rochester Institute of Technology has successfully created what appears to be the first documented case of a pinhole photograph captured from a drone.

During the total solar eclipse on March 20th, 2015, the Faroese doom metal band Hamferð took the opportunity to …

Here's a behind-the-scenes video by photographer David Iliyn showing how he recently did an outdoor photo shoot with a musician with 12 separate off-camera flashes.

Texas House of Representatives lawmaker Jason Villalba sparked quite a controversy earlier this month after proposing a bill that would make it illegal to photograph a police officer from within 25 feet. People were so angered by the idea that Villalba has received death threats from angry members of the public.

When Peter Lik sold a print to a collector for $6.5 million last year, people balked at the news. Lik is known to be a savvy businessman who has raked in over $440 million by churning out and selling his "collectible" prints to deep-pocketed people who want to invest in his art, so why should his prints be worth so much?

The Internet media channel LifeHunters recently did a social experiment that explores how people perceive and value art. They placed a $10 IKEA print in the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and asked "art experts" what they thought about it.

Photographer David Noton was chosen by Canon to be the first landscape photographer in the world to experience a preproduction model of the new 50.6 megapixel Canon 5DS, the world's highest resolution full frame DSLR. In this video, Noton, a Canon Explorer, shares his thoughts about the 5DS.

The Filter Pocket Toddy is a microfiber lens cloth designed for photographers on the go. When not in use, the product folds up into a small built-in pocket and can be attached to keychains, backpacks, purses, and bags.

MinutePhysics just released this interesting (and somewhat math-y) explanation of how cameras and computers deal with the concept of color. The video is titled "Computer Color is Broken."

"Photography Made Difficult" is a 1989 documentary about the career of renowned photojournalist William Eugene Smith, a man who helped to pioneer the concept of the photo essay. It runs 1 hour and 40 minutes long.

Renowned Magnum photographer Alec Soth is experimenting with a new way of delivering photos to art buyers and a new way for art buyers to experience photos. One of his latest projects takes a page from Snapchat's book, using the social photo sharing service to sell photos that disappear after just 10 seconds of viewing.

Photographer Linden Gledhill is a photographer who uses his background in biochemistry to capture gorgeous abstract images of the world at a microscopic level. His images are of various substances and chemical reactions, captured with high-tech microscope cameras that create focused stacked photos of extremely high resolutions.

Here’s a time-lapse showing the total solar eclipse today (March 20th, 2015), as seen by …

Beautiful photo compositions generally require a keen eye and a quick shutter finger, but sometimes luck plays a huge role as well. That's what happened today for UK-based photographer Amy Shore, who was photographing the total solar eclipse from her backyard in Leicestershire. A bird flew into Shore's frame as the Moon was passing over the face of the Sun, adding a unique touch to her shot.

Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery offers this short Photoshop tutorial on how you …

Impossible launched its first lines of instant film in 2010 after acquiring Polaroid manufacturing machines and leasing an old Polaroid production plant. Although its efforts did bring "Polaroid pictures" back from the dead, its initial offerings suffered from poor image quality and slow development times.

There will soon be a great leap forward, though. Impossible is announcing today that it is launching Generation 2.0 film that promises to be better in speed, sharpness, and tonality.

The New York Times has published an in-depth feature in its business section …

Photo editing apps for smartphones are a dime a dozen these days, but today there's a new one that hopes to stand above its competitors with a couple of innovative filter-centric features. It's called Priime, and is a free app for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) that's currently being featured as a "best new app" in Apple's App Store.

Tired of having eyeballs with fixed focal lengths? Scientists have developed new telescopic contact lenses and glasses that can give your eyes 2.8x zoom with a simple wink of the eye.

Another rare Nikon 6mm f/2.8 fisheye lens is for sale, and this time in a rather unusual place: Craigslist. That's right, someone around London is selling one of the rarest Nikon lenses through a simple classified listing spotted by one of our readers.

In an age in which pageviews are supreme, blogs and other online publications often ignore copyright laws, publishing viral photographs without permission in order to attract clicks and eyeballs. While much of the time this type of behavior flies under the radar, sometimes the unethical behavior comes back to bite the publishers hard when photographers do notice and take action.

Here's one of the latest examples: photojournalist Peter Menzel has filed a lawsuit against the blog EliteDaily for sharing his photos in a viral post without permission.

The Photographic Dictionary is a project dedicated to defining English words "through the literal, figurative, and personal meanings found in each photograph." Each word and definition in the dictionary is accompanied by a photographer-submitted image that illustrates it in some way.

I was in kindergarten when this photo was taken.

It was the night of my first ballet recital. First and last, actually. I decided I didn’t have the patience for ballet, nor ballet for me. The photo was taken right before we headed out the door to a ballet performance on par with a train wreck.

Why do we make photographs? Why do we desire to make photographs so much that we can think of little else? For me it is simply because I have to make photographs. It is part of my DNA, and I love looking at other peoples' images as well. Galleries are like spiritual sanctuaries of visual goodness. When I visit people I am endlessly fascinated by the images on their walls.

FoCal today announced Version 2 of its automated camera calibration software that helps photographers calibrate the microfocus adjustment on their cameras. The new update will allow users of the software compare their autofocus test results with other users and see previous tests you've run to better see how your gear is performing.

The first one I ever saw was "Chicks Who Click." It was years ago and the photography industry was predominantly male. I didn't think too much of it, but wondered (aloud at times) the wisdom of not only creating a gender based photography group, but giving it a cutesy name like "Chicks Who Click."

By naming it that, I felt they had downplayed the seriousness and professionalism of their chosen profession. They seemed to have devalued themselves from "professional photographers" to, well... "Chicks Who Click."

Flickr's photo search engine is getting a makeover and a boost in power. Starting earlier this month, Flickr has been rolling out a powerful new unified search interface to its users. Instead of a simple search feature for photos that match keywords, the new search will contain additional image search parameters and will be able to look up people and groups.

People come up with all kinds of ways to capture photos and videos of themselves popping the big question, from hiring a photographer, to recruiting a friend, to hiding a camera themselves. For those who want a more direct way to shoot a proposal, there's new product called the Ring Cam. It's an engagement ring box with a built-in camera that captures your big moment from the ring's point of view.

The Ganges river in India and Bangladesh is the holiest river in Hinduism. Every day, hundreds of dead bodies …

If you enjoy random bits of inspiration throughout your day, Flickr has a new Chrome extension just for you. Called Flickr Tab, it's a simple little browser add-on that shows you a popular photograph from Flickr every time you open up a new blank tab.

Photographs help us remember important moments in our lives, but what happens when they capture things we'd rather forget? Sometimes photos are so painful that their owners can't bear to live with them, and that's the premise behind photographer Jason Lazarus' project THTK, short for "Too Hard to Keep". Since 2010, Lazarus has been collecting photos that people deem "too painful to live with any longer."

Some couples are naturals when it comes to posing gracefully for the camera, while others may be more awkward …

Since 2013, photographer Kathy Shorr has been shooting portraits of subjects who have been shot by guns -- the victims and survivors of gun violence from around the United States. The ongoing project is titled "SHOT" and now contains over 50 portraits.

So I recently had this crazy idea in my head and some free time. The idea was to have myself falling over in the kitchen with tea and biscuits flying everywhere. Here's a walkthrough showing how I created the image with carefully shot photos and Photoshop.

Canon Australia and National Geographic are joining forces to create a six part television series titled Tales by Light. It will follow five world class photographers from Australia as they venture into "some of the world's most extreme and fascinating environments" in pursuit of beautiful images that tell stories.