Ice Crystals Captured in a Wet Plate Portrait

New York photographer Justin Borucki has been documenting his city with a pop-up tintype studio out of the back of his car. While shooting a portrait for a client recently, Borucki unexpectedly captured a beautiful leaf-like pattern across the photo due to the frigid wind chill causing ice crystals to form.

7 Easy Portrait Lighting Setups

Here’s a simple breakdown of 7 different lighting techniques you can implement next time you shoot portraits with studio lighting. For these examples, we used continuous lights to better illustrate it, but you can strobes as well, of course.

Shooting Overhead Action Photos of Tennessee Basketball

If you've followed Tennessee basketball, chances are you've seen one of those really cool overhead photos. That top-down, bird's eye view is something you don't see every day, and only very few have access to capturing this unique angle.

This Site Ranks the Attractiveness of AI-Generated Faces

NVIDIA's mind-blowing AI that generates faces of people who don't exist recently led to an unofficial website called thispersondoesnotexist.com that lets anyone generate a new random face in an instant. Creative director Mike Solomon has built upon the idea with a new website called Judge Fake People that experiments with letting the public rank the attractiveness of AI-generated faces.

We Are Known By What We Leave Behind

100 years from now, no one is going to care who I am. I know this. I don’t mean that in a bad way and I don’t say it in the hopes someone will contradict me and shower me with praise; this is not said as compliment bait.

Kodak’s Kodakit Asks Photographers to Give Up the ‘Entire Copyright’

Kodak launched an on-demand photography service called Kodakit back in January 2017 that aims to connect photographers to brands looking for photography. But there's something all photographers need to know about this "Uber of photography," as it's been called: it demands that you sign over the "entire copyright" to the photos you shoot.

A Comparison of PhotoShelter and Squarespace for E-commerce

I recently I canceled my PhotoShelter account after being with the service for 8 years, and I wanted to provide a better understanding of the pros and cons of PhotoShelter and Squarespace. I currently use Squarespace and while I wouldn’t say the service is without its faults, I do believe that it is a better service for my needs.

Every Best Cinematography Oscar Winner from 1929 to 2019

The 2019 Oscars are just a day away now. If you'd like a dose of visual inspiration, check out this 10-minute video by Burger Fiction. It steps through every single film that won the "Best Cinematography" Oscar over the past 90 years, from 1929 to 2018 (and 2019 nominees as well).

Pictionary Air is Light-Painting Turned Into a Game

The classic charades-inspired word-guessing drawing game Pictionary is entering the digital age, and light-painting photographers will feel right at home. If you need some fun practice before you head out with your camera, the upcoming Pictionary Air involves drawing in the air with a light pen.

Pro vs. Amateur Photographer Using $30 and $7,200 Cameras

When it comes to photography, it can be easy to blame our bad images on our gear (or lack of it). The truth is, while gear can make your job easier, there is no substitute for the time and effort spent on learning to perfect your craft.

Ep. 313: Lenses, Lenses, and More Lenses! – and more


Episode 313 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Sports Photographer, Johany Jutras

On Rules in Photography

I very often have this strong negative reaction when a newsletter arrives in my inbox or I see an online article where the heading reads: “5 rules to follow when composing an image” — or something to that effect.

UV Portraits That Reveal What’s Beyond the Visible

For my latest project, titled RAW, I shot a series of UV portraits revealing the true appearance beyond the visible. Composed of twenty photographs divided into ten diptychs, the series illustrates the raw and natural character of the human being, revealed by the technique of ultraviolet photography.