Dear New Photographer…

Dear New Photographer,

I’m writing this post because I was up late last night on a Facebook forum, reading close to 200 comments about new photographers and what slime they are to the industry. How they’re stripping photography of its “art” and destroying any decent business practices. I read every comment, feeling more and more sick to my stomach the further I scrolled down the page.

piccure+ Software Promises to Give Your $300 Lens the Magic of a $3,000 Lens

What's the difference between the results of a $300 consumer lens and a $3,000 top-of-the-line lens? If piccure is to be believed, one answer is "post-processing."

Today, the German computational photography company is releasing a new version of its software called piccure+ that can effortlessly correct the flaws of cheap glass, allowing photographers to obtain high image quality without having to spend a fortune on gear.

Camera51 App Automatically Helps You Compose Better Photos with Your Smartphone

Now that practically every phone on the market has a camera, it’s easy for anyone to become a ‘photographer.’ What isn’t nearly as easy is consistently capturing quality images using those phones, especially if you don’t have any background in photography.

But a new app called Camera51 aims to solve these woes by becoming a little composition instructor on-the-go.

Why Photography is Such a Fun Hobby

It’s a simple question. Why am I taking pictures? What’s so special about photography compared to other visual art forms?

I’m not writing this to give you an answer, but I’m sharing why I love what photography does for me and why I think it’s such a great hobby to integrate into my life, which also resulted to me starting a photography blog site.

Leica Recreates 35 of the Most Iconic Photos Through History in Brilliant 100th Anniversary Ad

Editor's Note: There is one very brief instance of nudity in this ad. Proceed with caution.

The award-winning ad agency behind the moving Leica ad "Soul" from last year have created another masterpiece. It's called "Leica 100," and it celebrates 100 years of Leica photography by paying tribute to 35 of the most iconic photographs of all time in an incredibly creative way.

Video Game Artist Uses Inspiration from His Day Job for His Photography

Seattle-based artist Nicolas Bouvier spends most of his days creating concept art for some of the biggest names in the video game world.

But when he’s not in the office drawing up something for Halo or Assassin’s Creed, he’s out with his camera capturing beautiful photos of landscapes and cityscapes filled with people exploring this Earth of ours.

This 4K Time-Lapse of the Night Sky Focuses on the Sheer Scale of the Milky Way

If you enjoy gazing up at the heavens and being in awe of how expansive the universe is, then here's a time-lapse project you have to check out. It's a beautiful time-lapse of the Milky Way by Greek photographer Konstantinos Vasilakakos (be sure to watch it in high definition).

While it's not radically different from other Milky Way timelapse out there, it does a great job at capturing the scale of the night sky.

ColorChecker: How to Get Perfect Skin Colors With Every Camera

One of the best kept secrets within the fashion and beauty photography is the way to obtain absolutely perfect and flawless skin colors, brightness and texture. That’s an art, absolutely, and often a quite technical challenge.

In this article I will explain how to obtain perfect skin colors, with the help of a ColorChecker. But not just a simple ColorChecker workflow with the standard, bundled software. No, there’s a neat trick which saves a lot of time and a lot of custom color editing (and desaturating) of skin tones.

It’s a quick, transparent automatic workflow, once set up and created. Your camera needs to shoot in RAW.

Photographer Flies Drone So Close to Volcanic Eruption it Melts the Face of His Camera

Drone photography and videographer is allowing image makers to capture footage that would have been impossible to shoot just a few years ago. Case in point: never before could a photographer get so close to a volcanic eruption that the face of his or her gear melted!

But now, if you're brave enough and responsible enough to do it right, you can do just that... and capture some never-before-possible footage in the process.

Snapwire Collaborates with Adobe to Feature New Creative SDK

Snapwire's mission is to make photo selling 'human again,' which is why creative collaboration between image makers and the brands/companies that need those images is at the center of the photo sales platform's model.

Today, the company enters into a creative collaboration of its own with Adobe in order to make sure their users have the most photo editing algorithms on the market at their fingertips.

Powerful Decade-Long Photo Project Retraces the Underground Railroad at Night

Photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales has dedicated the past decade of her life to researching and documenting the historical locations – both known and shrouded in mystery – that made up the historical Underground Railroad.

The resulting photographs make up her ongoing series Through Darkness to Light, and retrace the dark, unpaved path that thousands of slaves were forced to travel.

Cameras Don’t Break Rules, People Break Rules

A portrait session that results in the death of the subject should be called a failure.

As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, a group of photographers and onlookers experienced precisely that level of catastrophic botchery last week in Grand Teton National Park when crowding too close to a moose (not a good idea).

The moose, already agitated by the presence of a nearby bull moose, was scared by the approaching park-visitors and bolted before stumbling over a picnic table and landing on a fire grate. With its hoof caught in the grate, the half-ton animal collapsed and broke its leg so badly that park rangers were forced to put it down.

Intricately Detailed Concrete Recreations of Iconic Film Cameras

Artist Alex Stanton has a thing for photography, but he doesn't actually take any pictures. His obsession with photography is focused on the vintage gear so many of us adore; gear he's decided to preserve in extreme detail using a mix of concrete, bronze, copper, brass, patina, rust, iron, epoxy.

The Entrancing Cinemagraph Creations of Julien Douvier

The cinemagraph genre is one of the most exciting to follow because, unlike almost every other type of "photography" (in quotes since you they aren't photos in the traditional sense of the word), it's not yet oversaturated with phenomenal work.

Almost everywhere you turn you'll find a great street photographer, or landscape photographer, or fine art photographer. But when you stumble across a master at creating cinemagraphs, he or she is one of only a handful. Julien Douvier is one such photographer.

‘No Ad’ App Replaces NYC Subway Ads With Art From the International Center of Photography

In every facet of our lives, we’re bombarded by advertisements: online, while driving, on the radio, everywhere. So much so that they become more noise than anything else. So wouldn't you like to erase some of that noise and replace it with iconic photography? Well, soon you can.

For one month, starting in mid-October, No Ad, an augmented reality application will be overlaying pieces of art from the International Center of Photography over the commercial advertisements seen throughout the New York City subway system.

The Most Expensive Camera Kits Photographers Can Buy for Each Brand (in 2014)

What are the most expensive camera and lens combinations you can buy for each manufacturer? Of course you could spend $2.79 million on a historical 1923 Leica or $165,000 on an ultra-rare Canon 1200mm lens, but what about gear that any photographer can purchase through a normal retail outlet?

We decided to do some research into what the priciest camera kits (a body plus a lens) currently available to photographers are in 2014.

How I Built a Lightbox for $0

I'm 39 weeks into a 52 week project. Every week I go to this Art Prompt Generator for a random prompt and then spend a week taking a photo to match the prompt. This week was "Candy". I wasn't getting great results taking pictures of candy on plates, counters or other mundane surfaces so I thought I'd try a lightbox.

Out of This World Aerial Photographs of Purple Salt Ponds in San Francisco

The colorful pond you see in the above image is not the work of clever post–production; nor is it the result of an accidental leak of hazardous material. In fact, it's 100% natural. What you’re seeing are millions of colorful microorganisms that live and breed in the vibrant salt ponds of San Francisco.

The above image and its accompanying series, titled San Francisco Bay - Purple, was captured by photographer Julieanne Kost as she flew over the ponds, located south of San Francisco.

Behind the Scenes: Hanging Out of Moving Car Windows to Captured Doggy Euphoria

Photographer Lara Jo Regan's photo series/book/calendar Dogs in Cars is a fun, tongues-out survey of the euphoria dogs experience on car rides.

We shared the series with you last year, but if you've been wondering how she managed to get such multi-dimensional images from such unique perspectives, she's put together a great behind the scenes video that reveals both her lighting rig and how was she managed to safely hang out of moving car windows.

Rumor: Sony and Mamiya to Release Medium Format Rangefinder-Style Cameras in 2015

Earlier this year, rumors began spreading of an upcoming Sony Medium Format camera that would be unlike any digital medium format system on the market. The camera would be 'completely different' and reports claimed it would also be the cheapest digital medium format option out there.

Well, if you found that rumor far-fetched, hold on to your hats, because a 'very good source' is reporting that this rangefinder-styled camera is indeed real... and what's more, it will have some competition when it arrives.

A Breathtaking Motion Time-Lapse Tour of Norway

Five months of work, 10,000 miles travelled, several tens of thousands of photographs taken... all of that to create a measly 5 minutes worth of footage. And yet, we would argue it was worth every minute, mile and press of the shutter (or intervalometer, as it were).

Simply titled Norway, the time-lapse above was captured by Morten Rustad of Rustad Media, and it took almost a half-year to get all of the shots he was looking for.

#PictureBelfast Challenges You to Tell the Difference Between a Smartphone Filter and Analog Film

Online content studio Rubber Republic recently created something called #PictureBelfast, a photography-based viral campaign designed to showcase their city on behalf of Tourism Ireland.

But this isn't just a set of pretty pictures -- it's an interactive challenge that wants to see if you can tell the difference between a film photograph, and a filtered wannabe taken with a smartphone.

Adobe Brings Cloud-Based Photoshop Beta to Chromebooks

Adobe has been making moves into the cloud for some time now (it is called Creative Cloud after all), so it doesn't come as a surprise to hear that the long-awaited Chromebook Photoshop beta is finally live and ready for cloud computing early-adopters to start putting through the ringer.

Rumor: Samsung Working on a Black-and-White Only ‘NX Achromatic’

Black and white-only digital photography is, at this point, limited to those who own either a Leica M Monochrom or anybody brave enough to (literally) scrape the bayer array off of their digital sensor. But that might not be the case too much longer.

In July, we shared the rumor that Sony was working on a black-and-white sensor/camera, and now, rumors are beginning to swirl that Samsung is doing the same thing.

‘Where Are They Burning the Bodies’: Documenting the Ebola Outbreak in Liberia

Editor's Note: Be advised, some might find the following photographs disturbing.

On August 27, documentary photographer Kieran Kesner boarded Delta airlines flight 2608 for his first ever international assignment for the Wall Street Journal. Four layovers later, he arrived in Liberia, where he was now tasked with documenting the Ebola outbreak in all its unspeakable horror.

China Blocks Instagram as Hong Kong Protest Photos Roll In

In the wake of the pro-democracy Occupy Central protests rocking Hong Kong, the Chinese government has tightened its already short censorship leash, adding photo sharing site Instagram to the list of sites now unusable in mainland China.

Dream Creatures: Reflected Images of Tree Bark Reveal the Faces Hiding in the Forest

Italian photographer Elido Turco spent four years between 2004 and 2008 exploring a mirrored photography world that remains invisible to most of us. By taking photographs of tree bark and then mirroring the photographs he captured, he discovered a whole society of "Dream Creatures" were watching him each time he would take a stroll through the mountain paths.