What do you do when you're in Israel with Benjamin Von Wong, Rebecca Litchfield, Simon Pollock, Mike Kelly and Adam Lerner and Jared Polin, and you have some free time on your hands. Why, you think up and plan a crazy photography challenge of course!

It was just over a year ago that we told you about Pics.io, a platform that promised to bring the RAW editing and photo organization capabilities of programs like Lightroom to your browser.

Well, after a year spent mostly under wraps and unusable, Pics.io is officially in public beta and ready for the world take it for a spin.

If you follow PetaPixel, you're already familiar with the haunting portrait archive of Costica Acsinte. For decades after the end of World War I, Acsinte was possibly the only professional photographer in all of Romania, and the over 5,000 glass plate negatives he left behind are now being painstakingly digitized so that they don't succumb to the ravages of time.

And as these photographic treasures are digitized, one photographer is plying her retouching skill to turn the black-and-white, somber images into fantasy fine art portraits.

Cop pulled a gun on me tonight for asking a question. #ferguson— raffephoto (@raffephoto) August 20, 2014

By now we all know that the stories of media/police confrontation from Ferguson, MO have two sides. On the one hand, seemingly unnecessary arrests of major photojournalists had even the President of the United States condemning that officers' actions. On the other, a photojournalist on the ground explained why he was embarrassed by the way the media is acting in the area.

And yet, it's hard to imagine there being a good reason why, on a relatively peaceful protest day, a police officer answered a journalist's seemingly innocent question by pulling and pointing a gun at him.

It starts with photos. A lot of photos. Photos of birds, bugs, plants and any other nature-y things that Australian artist Andy Thomas can get his hands on. And once he's got those, he somehow manages to turn them into a birdsong you can 'see.'

Most sling-style straps today have a problem: the mounting point. They all use a rather bulky connector or plate screwed into your camera’s tripod mount, so if you’re using a pro body or a battery grip on your camera, these straps make it uncomfortable, if not impossible, to take advantage of shooting portrait style.

To solve that problem, a designer and an engineer have teamed up to create CAMS, a pro sling strap, camera plate and lens plate that are built with the aforementioned problem in mind.

National Geographic's Vincent J Musi will quite literally do whatever it takes to get the animal portrait he's looking for, including kneeling in urine while singing Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat?" to a growling Snow Leopard... hand gestures included.

Fortunately, the trick works (was it the hand gestures? he wonders), "mesmerized and captivated by [his] theatrical prowess and virtuosit," the Snow Leoppard stops and stares at the yummi, camera-wielding steak. One down, seven to go.

Leica has officially unleashed their next M-series camera, the Leica M-P. Almost identical to the Leica M in its design and functionality, a number of significant improvements have been made that focus on bringing robustness and longevity to the M-System product line-up.

Oh, and one more thing -- the signature ‘red dot’ is missing.

Kodak recently issued an official statement confirming the discontinuation of yet another film stock: the much-loved, fine grain, chromogenic black & white film BW400CN.

More than two years after being arrested, injured and strip-searched after taking pictures of two NYPD police officers performing a stop and frisk, a Brooklyn man has been awarded a nice legal pay day to the tune of $125K.

How's this for a strange rumor? According to the folks over at Leica Rumors, several sources have been tipping them off to the existence of a Leica digital rangefinder without an LCD -- a limited edition camera that will supposedly arrive at Photokina.

Photoshopped fantasy wedding photos have gotten quite trendy over the past couple of years, and often involve the wedding party running away from large and scary things (e.g. dinosaurs and AT-ATs). Louisville, Kentucky-based wedding photographer Shane Elliott recently took the concept to the next level with a set of wacky groomsman photos.

One of Denmark’s most photographed attractions, a Little Mermaid statue, comes with a strange caveat: it can’t be photographed. Or rather, a photograph of it can't be used in a publication of any sort, even for journalistic purposes, without a big fat invoice finding its way to your door.

Kuddle isn't your typical photo sharing app. Designed for children, this "Instagram for kids" doesn't just offer a safe environment where the youngins can share photos and become future cappuccino photographers, it actually teaches them about proper online behavior, or 'netiquette', at the same time.

There are precious metals and gems all around us. But have you ever wondered just how much metal comes from the mines we dig to extract the ore from which the final product is made? Maybe not... but one photographer did, and he created the photo series For What It’s Worth to share his findings with you.

If you’re wondering how to be the best photographer in the world, look no further than Chris Bauer. He’s …

Fair warning: your brain's buffer might have a hard time processing this one. Following in the multi-shot heritage of the old CCD H5D-200MS, Hasselblad has released a CMOS version of the multi-shot behemoth. And like its older brother, it can spit out gargantuan 200MP files thanks to Hassy's proprietary Multi-Shot technology that combines as many as 6 shots into one.

I’ve spent the past week down in Ferguson, MO covering the protests and police response. What I never expect was to find myself embarrassed to photograph but it happened on Tuesday 8/19/14.

Over the past week, the #ALSIceBucketChallenge has gone above and beyond viral, bringing people from all over the world together to support and raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Ever wonder what it's like to fly with the Blue Angels? Well, this photograph, taken from inside one of the planes during the Blue Angles' practice last Thursday in Chicago, should give you some idea.

American freelance photojournalist James Foley was allegedly executed yesterday, an atrocity that was revealed in a horrifying video released by the militant group ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria).

270 photographs and a total exposure time of two hours and fifteen minutes went into creating this stunning composite photograph of an Indonesian landscape complete with an erupting volcano, a steaming caldera, a meteor, copious amounts of fog and beautiful light trails created by cars traveling below the fog.

You know what they say: see a need, fill a need. Or, in the case of Sony's upcoming perfume bottle-shaped selfie camera, "see a fad, create a product." We assume that's written somewhere in the internal memo that first gave life to the camera you see above, a seemingly very real and definitely very strange camera that trusted sources tell Sony Alpha Rumors will be one of the first to feature Sony's revolutionary curved sensor.

It’s no secret now that modern cameras have taken photographers to new heights with their ability to shoot at and above ISO 1600. Personally, I can now shoot in situations where previously, I ‘had no choice’ but to use flash or put the camera down, so it’s no surprise many photographers are taking advantage of high ISO to be able to shoot in poor existing light.

The Photo Society, a website run by a collection of National Geographic photographers, took the time a while back to put together a wonderful little tribute to photographer Wes Skiles, who passed away doing the work that he loved.

In tribute, the photographers compiled a 'Reality Check' list of all the crazy, strange and sometimes horrifying things that have happened to them on the job.

GIF YouTube is the YouTube-to-GIF converter we've all been waiting for... well, GIF lovers at any rate. It uses the ‘do one thing well’ mentality to very easily and effectively turn any YouTube video into an animated GIF of your choosing.

Photographer Lukas Gawenda has been a landscape lover since he was 10 years old. And even though he's photographed everything from US National Parks, to his home country of Germany, to the tiny worlds of macro photography, none of them quite match the majesty he captures when he takes to the skies over Iceland.

Google’s Photo Sphere has been one of the glowing capabilities of Android phones since its release just over a year ago, but the reign of exclusivity is now over for the Android faithful. As of earlier today, Google has officially brought its Photo Sphere capabilities to iOS though the Photo Sphere Camera app.

Outdoor brand Mammut recently teamed up with avid climbers Dani Arnold and Stephan Siegrist to document and create an incredible interactive 360º climb up the side of Eiger: a 13,000-foot tall mountain in the Alps.

An interesting new app called Looksee is adding a Tinder-like element to the world of mobile photography. Basically, when two users ‘like’ one another’s photos, their profiles become visible to each other, giving them the option to add the other as a personal connection and get more insight into their work or chat back-and-forth within the app.

Nothing like a good T-Shirt to spruce up a mugshot right? Well, maybe not, but in the case of 19-year-old Robert Burt of Pittsfield, Maine the shirt definitely did add something to what would otherwise be your standard booking shot.

That's because the T-Shirt, you'll notice if you look closely, features Burt's previous mugshot from the selfsame Somerset County Jail.

Nikon just can't catch a break on the advisories and service issues. Just weeks after it was revealed that they were settling class action lawsuits over the D600 sensor spot issue by handing out free D610s, a fresh service advisory (USA, EU and Japan) has been issued, this time for the recently-released D810.

If you've been on any form of social media recently, you've no doubt heard of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Chances are actually pretty good that you've been challenged to do it yourself, and while most people document their challenge in video form, photographer Adrian Murray decided to document his by capturing a burst of 10 photographs that show every cringe-worthy, 'refreshing' moment.

Getty Images photographer arrested #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/ScOaHO8bjY— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 18, 2014

The photograph above, tweeted out by Huffington Post justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly, shows Getty photographer Scott Olson being taken into custody by Ferguson police while covering the ongoing protests and riots sparked by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American man who was shot and killed by police on August 9th.

We've known for a couple of weeks that there is a new Nikon full-frame in the pipeline; a camera recent reports claimed would be an action/sports camera. And now, Nikon Rumors "can confirm" that the upcoming shooter will be called the D750.

Do you have dreams of being an outspoken reviewer of photography books? Certain provinces of Iran might not be the best place for you to launch that career. A pair of Iran photographers were recently sentenced to a total of 75 lashes for publishing negative reviews about an official's photography book.

According to reports from Mexican news outlets, a woman named Soledad Félix has filed an official complaints with the Juárez City Human Rights Commission after finding a photo of herself being used as a warning label for packs of cigarettes. The picture was taken while she was hospitalized after suffering a heart attack, and was used -- without her knowledge or permission -- by a number of tobacco companies as part of their mandated warning against the use of tobacco.

Now there's a selfie you don't see every day. Rooftopping photographers Andrew Tso and Daniel Lau recently climbed to the very top of The Center, the fifth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong. While at the top, Lau pulled out his "selfie stick" (AKA a retractable handheld monopod) and captured the crazy shot above.

Update: Major changes have been made after learning a majority of the online coverage of this updated was incorrect.

Tumblr users post approximately 130 million photos every day. And starting this week, they will begin to sort through every single one of them for various brands and items, with the help of Ditto Labs.

One of the most versatile tools any photographer can have in their arsenal is a diffusion panel. It can be used in both natural and artificial light and for artificial light it works equally as well in both continuous and strobe lighting. However, if you’re going online to look for a diffusion panel, they’re often a bit expensive for what is essentially a white sheet spread over a frame.

So, to help you cut costs without cutting quality, Tony Roslund has put together a convenient little DIY tutorial that details how to make a rather large diffusion panel for only $30.

I was under the spell of mirrorless ILCs from their birth in 2009 when Panasonic and Olympus literally tore up the rule book and started from scratch. Their debut models, the G1 and EP1, may have been a little rough around the edges, but I was immediately smitten: these were the future of cameras, at least as far as I was concerned.

At last an interchangeable lens camera with a sensor big enough to deliver high quality images, but a body small enough that I'd never leave it at home; the lens selection grew quickly and as for the full-time electronic composition, I embraced the positives, sold my full-frame DSLR and never looked back.

Make-up can be a pain on photo shoots, can’t it? Well, imagine if you didn’t need make-up on a shoot to alter the look of a model’s skin. Now stop imagining, because it’s a reality, thanks to this interesting real-time face tracking and projection mapping technology.

It's one thing to visualize different layers of gasses in the Earth's atmosphere and see drawings and models in a book or online... it's another thing entirely to capture it on camera. But of course, that's one of the perks of being an astronaut on the International Space Station, you get to do a whole lot of things that are "another thing entirely."

The photograph above was taken by astronaut Reid Wiseman and uploaded to his Twitter feed early this morning. It's a 3-second exposure, and we know this because he captioned the photo "3 second shutter exposure at night shows how crazy our #atmosphere really is."

NASA needs our help. Unfortunately it doesn’t involve leaving the Earth’s atmosphere or otherwise experiencing space as astronauts do. It does however involve hundreds of thousands of photographs astronauts have taken while circumnavigating the Earth.

Filmmaker Richard Michalak has spent over 30 years behind the camera, and in the video above by Hugh Fenton he condenses all of that knowledge into a set of tips, techniques and concepts that will prove to be incredibly useful whether or not your interests involve moving pictures.

For those of you using Google Chrome as your main browser, here’s a neat little trick to help create a custom Chrome search for all your favorite photo sharing sites.

Over the weekend, photographer and big Flickr advocate Thomas Hawk posted two revealing screenshots on his blog. The first was taken a couple of months pre-Marissa Mayer and shows the Flickr staff page in April of 2012. The second was shows that same page yesterday.

Sick of the standard Disney World pics? Blaine Gibson of Austin-based production studio Rooster Teeth sure was... so he did something about it. During his recent trip to the park, he surprised no less than 5 of the Disney Princesses (and one surprise) there by dropping down on one knee and proffering a fake engagement ring from WalMart while one of his friends capture their reaction.

In their most recent episode of the video series "About a Photograph," the folks over at Think Tank Photo decided to pay tribute to the late, great Robin Williams in their own way, speaking with a photographer who was fortunate enough to capture the comic genius on film.

It's official, it's powerful, it's lightning quick and it's exactly what we expected... it's Sony's a5100. Leaked yesterday alongside a full (and fully accurate) list of specs, the a5100 got the official announcement treatment from Sony late last night, confirming that the company pretty much decided to pack an a6000 into a cheaper body.