Four years (and one day) ago, Kevin Systrom posted the first ever photo to Instagram, then a new social network with an uncertain future and exactly one photo of a cute dog in its archives.

We have another location/situation to add to society's collective "places/times I shouldn't take a selfie" list (there's one of those right?): in the middle of the road as hundreds of Tour de France cyclists barrel down towards you.

This might seem like common sense, but hard as it might be to believe, Tour de France cyclists are complaining that fans standing in the middle of the road to take a selfie as the group approaches are "the new pain in the arse" for riders this year.

If you thought surfing in Texas was absurd, then this little video and accompanying feature will truly blow you away. As part of an original SmugMug Film, Photographer Chris Burkard and professional surfers Patrick Millin, Brett Barley, and Chadd Konig fight through frigid temperatures and rough conditions, all to capture the adventure that is surfing in the Arctic Circle.

It's a day heavy with beautiful Leica news. First, we shared the photos and story behind this one-of-a-Kind Leica M4 that you can't have, and now we've caught wind of another iconic Leica that is going up for sale (and is probably just as unattainable for most of us).

What makes this Leica (a Leica III, to be exact) special isn't some particular one-of-a-kind design, it's the fact that this is the actual camera used by photographer Yevgeni Khaldei to take his iconic Raising a Flag Over The Reichstag photograph in 1945.

The World Cup is over. Germany came out victorious over Argentina, with a final that managed to bring in …

Chances are good you've never heard the term Mingi, but if you were born to one of the tribes in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, this age-old tribal tradition might have been your death sentence. These days, however, that is far less likely, and it's due almost entirely to the work of Kara tribesman Lale Labuko and his friend and photographer John Rowe.

Exposure bracketing is the practice of taking several exposures – at least two, usually more – of the same scene. With each exposure taken, the goal is to vary the exposure time, effectively giving you more range to work with in post when all is said and done. Nowadays such capability is implemented into the firmware of cameras, allowing you to automatically set this up and capture all of the exposure with only one press of the shutter.

Besides the dreaded vertical video, the worst thing about capturing video on a smartphone is camera shake, which leaves your video looking rather jerky and chaotic at times. Most stabilization rigs are built with much larger cameras in mind, but ADPLUS Co. is looking to change that with their ‘ultra-small’ Elephant Steady stabilizer for the iPhone.

Nothing like a little bit of gear porn to get you through hump day. But don't worry, it's... like... super classy gear porn. All 'hump day' and 'gear porn' word play jokes aside, this gorgeous one-of-a-kind Leica M4 is truly a work of art... and you can't have it.

Phantom, the company behind some insane high-speed cameras has announced their new flagship camera, the Phantom v2511. Bumping up the specs across the board from their current flagship device, this beast manages to pack in up to 25,600 frames per second at 1280 x 800 resolution (just over 720p).

It's true that the Internet can be a stupid and cruel place -- read any comment section on a controversial news piece for proof of that -- but it can also be a wonderful place that occasionally brings you to tears... in a good way.

This is a story about the best of the Internet: about a grieving father, a heartfelt request, and an overwhelming response.

There are few enough times when the words haunting and portraiture truly go hand-in-hand, but the work of Polish-born, Germany-based fashion photographer Sylwia Makris fits this description perfectly.

Her dreamlike photographs take you into a strange, twisted world full of sculpted subjects under the most mysterious of lights and costumes.

This post was originally published on the Joey L. Blog and is being republished here with permission

It’s been estimated that as many as 880 billion photos will be taken by the close of this year. I’m not quite sure how that statistic could ever be properly calculated, but I think it’s safe to say that with the rise of the digital medium, human beings are taking a s**tload more pictures than ever before.

With all those photos being taken, chances are you and I have at one point accidentally wandered into someone else’s frame. It’s likely, however, that you’ll never really know you’ve photo-bombed someones shot. That’s why I was surprised by a Twitter message that I received out of the blue from a photographer I’ve never met.

The possibilities for photography are endless. That's the thought that crossed our minds earlier today when we stumbled across Vantablack, the new 'darkest material on the planet.'

Created by UK-based Surrey NanoSystems, this nanotube material is designed to reflect back as little radiation as possible... and it's darn good at its job. According to Surrey, the material absorbs 99.96% of all the light that touches it.

While double-exposure photography all started in-camera – most likely by accident – it’s since become an actual style and genre of photography all its own. And while it can still be done in-camera through film or a number of DSLRs that offer the capabilities, it can also be done in Photoshop. Here to show us how is wedding photographer Andrew Klokow, with a quick and efficient workflow for nailing double-exposures in post-production.

We don't know Ohio couple Sarah and Josh personally, but we like the way they think. Because when wedding planning got to be a bit too much and they decided to elope in Iceland, they cancelled all things but one: their photographer.

They brought wedding photographer Gabe McClintock along to capture their elopement, and the photographs he left them with leave no doubt at the wisdom of their decision.

What was it like to browse Flickr back in 1989? We don’t know, because Flickr didn’t exist then. However, …

At the young age of six-months-old, Hessy Taft became the poster-child for the Nazis. Chosen as the image most resembling the ideal Aryan baby, the Nazis plastered it across propaganda. What the Nazis didn’t know is that this child was Jewish.

Have you ever come across an artist’s work and thought, "Wow, I would love to work with them!" Well, that is exactly what went through Benjamin Von Wong’s mind after seeing Michael Rosner’s work.

Fast forward two years and Von Wong finally got his wish, creating some beautiful and inspiring untraviolet photographs in the process.

It’s not about the camera, it’s about the light. Here to prove that is photographer Miguel Quiles. In the above video, Quiles proves you don’t need the best camera or lens to capture amazing results. You only need to understand how important light is and learn how to use it to your advantage.

Earlier this year, a New York judge ruled that US search warrants applied to digital data, even if the data wasn’t stored domestically. The ruling came about after Microsoft was asked to hand over the user information and contested the warrant because the info was stored on servers located in Dublin, Ireland.

In the ongoing battle to protect users’s privacy, Microsoft has made their stance very clear. But so has the government with a brief filed last week.

Film blogger, Tony Zhou, recently published a video breakdown of Michael Bay’s signature style, which he hilariously refers to as ”Bayhem.” As a lover of cinema, I watched with rapt attention as Zhou broke down the technical elements that characterize films like Transformers – rotating shots, multiple moving elements, low angles, etc.

He’s not a fan because Bay’s belief that more is more runs counter to his own tastes. Bay doesn’t just rotate the camera around the subject. He has the subject counter rotate while standing up from a crouched position to emphasize movement and epic-ness. Creating an epic shot without reason (other than “because I can”) leaves us with a story devoid of substance and meaning. The piece had me nodding the whole time, but it wasn’t until 7:21 where things really clicked for me.

Photo bogs are always speculating what the next 'megapixel war' will be. For high-end cameras, it seems the answer to that question is the high ISO war, but for the entry-level shooters, an argument could be made for a 'burst mode war.'

Case in point, Ricoh just debuted the Pentax XG-1: a new entry-level superzoom that packs in some serious speed and reach, while hobbling the camera in other areas.

Photographer and animal lover Dale Frink was on a whale watching trip earlier this month when something scary happened: two lunge feeding blue whales popped up right behind the whale watching boat he was on, capsizing it and sending Frink and all his stuff into the frigid water.

And yet, he still got the shot.

Drone photography is still new enough that we haven't really seen the true potential of this new media unlocked -- yet.

While the FAA and others bicker about privacy and regulation, some photographers are out there exploring the boundaries of this new technology... and all of them seem to have shown up for the first Drone Photography Competition put together by Dronestagram with help from Nat Geo France, GoPro and a few others.

Since 2003 astronauts have been snapping up photographs of our beautiful planet from the International Space Station. All of these photographs have been archived together into a resource called The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. It’s through the utilization of this resource, as well as a database compiled by Spanish Astrophysicists that a little project called Cities at Night exists.

If you've been following the torrent of rumors surrounding the upcoming Canon 7D replacement, you know that one of the major pieces of info floating around is that the Mark II will sport 'revolutionary' sensor technology.

What that is, however, is still a mystery -- for most of us, anyway.

Erik Kim is one of the best-known street photographers out there, today. In his continues efforts to shoot and share, Kim has put out the full presentation he used in his Introduction to Composition for Street Photography talk at Gulf Photo Plus 2014.

This short inspirational video by the folks at video production company Fidelity Format …

Once you've been shooting for a while (and becoming good at it) someone will inevitably ask you if you are interested in shooting something for a fee, either for a commercial or editorial job (but for the sake of discussion I am labeling any paid shoot as a commercial shoot).

Your first paid assignment will certainly be very exciting, but there are a few things you should know before saying yes.

Although details are still scarce, New York City fire officials say six people suffered minor burns when a piece of unknown camera equipment caught fire on the observation deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

In the world of analogue photography, the larger you go in format, the more time, discipline and resources it typically takes to capture and develop your photographs. And while the age-old technique of developing film takes due diligence no matter the format, large format photography in particular has a certain quality to the process that makes it stand out from the rest.

Not exactly a reliable scientific study, a recent Craigslist rant by one "Busy NYC Restaurant" that describes itself as "a popular restaurant for both locals and tourists" has gotten a lot of press time for drawing attention to a troubling intersection of food service and photography.

Posted in the rants and raves section of the online classifieds site, the restaurant supposedly compared security footage from 2004 with that from 2014 and found that taking cell phone photos and other smartphone shenanigans have added nearly an hour to the average table time at the restaurant.

When it comes to headshots, Peter Hurley is one of the best in the business. It’s his meticulous attention to detail and process of directing the subject that has led him to where he is now. Sharing some of his insight, he has taken the time to speak with Frank Doorhof, for his 25th episode of his YouTube series.

This isn't your standard 'take a selfie every day' time-lapse. The typical photo-a-day creation is meant to show subtle changes in appearance happen quickly enough for us to notice them, but there's nothing subtle about what happen to the gentleman in this video.

There are times when you lose all hope in humankind. We may be the most intelligent of all creatures, but just because our brains are the most developed of any mammal doesn’t mean we all use them. Case in point is the viral hilarity surrounding the image above.

The Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens first debuted in 1998... 1998! In November that'll be sixteen years on the market without a replacement, and while lenses aren't typically replaced as frequently as camera bodies, hope that Canon would manufacture a 'sequel' to the trusty old lens still runs strong.

Well, those hopeful hearts now have something to rejoice about, because the Canon Rumors has received a concrete tip that the 100-400mm followup will indeed be arriving alongside the 7D Mark II just in time for Photokina in September.

If you enjoyed the sanding stop-motion video we featured this past week, this creation is going to be right up your alley.

Called Waves of Grain, this experimental short film by Keith Skretch follows the mesmerizing patterns created by the grain in a block of wood as it's slowly stripped away layer-by-layer using a planer.

Timelessness is a quality we all strive for in our images. It's a quality earned, not given, through the time and effort put into conceptualizing, visualizing and capturing an image.

And when it is earned, the results are phenomenal... oftentimes winding back the clock or making time seem almost irrelevant to the image. Such is the case for the work of Michael Crouser, a Minnesota-based photographer who has spent the past eight years documenting cattle ranching families in Colorado.

Forget sunrises... what we need to see more of on Instagram and our Facebook newsfeeds is Earthrises. Of course, they're a bit harder to capture, but spectacular footage like this high-definition video shot by the Japanese Lunar Orbiter can give even the most beautiful beach sunrise a run for its money.

The American Civil Liberties Union is helping four individuals take the United States Government to court over something called the Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative.

The program has received wide criticism recently, led in large part by a photographer who made the FBI's suspicious activity list for taking pictures of a piece of public art called the Rainbow Swash.

Surfing in Texas might sound like a paradox. But, as unusual as it sounds, it's a very real thing as surfer and photographer Kenny Braun shows us with the beautiful collection of images in his photo book Surf Texas.

Despite the early sunrises, late sunsets and harsh daytime sunlight of summer it’s still one of our favorite times for photography. Being outside with your camera in the warmer months just feels so good.

If you’re struggling to come up with creative ideas during summer, however, we’ve got a few tips that might help.

When we order camera gear, it's expected that it will be packed and handled with care... but this is just absurd.

Uploaded to YouTube by user Ottar Gislason, the ready-made DHL commercial above shows how the shipping company decided to send this camera store a single Nikon MH65 battery charger in its box... that was taped to the bottom of another box... that was very securely strapped down onto its very own wooden palette.

When it comes to well-designed camera accessories, one company that is continuously at the top of their game is Peak Design. You probably know them for their popular Peak Capture Camera clip, but soon you’ll know them for a new piece of gear: The Peak Slide and Clutch.

We've seen spectacular city tour hyperlapses, and creative hyperlapses created using Google Street View images, but until today, we had never seen a trans-Pacific hyperlapse that put us right in the driver's seat (pilot's seat?) of a Boeing 747.

Digital photo frames never really gained the attention of the masses. Due to issues like sub-par hardware and complicated, proprietary software, the photo frame of the digital age never quite took off.

If you enjoy strange and experimental photography, Nathaniel Stern's work should delight you.

For the past ten years, Stern has been creating experimental image-capturing devices using a conglomeration of hacked-together desktop scanners, battery packs and other various computer components. Once created, he straps these machines to his body and takes them from location to location capturing images unlike any other camera out there.

Receiving a lot of praise today is musician Colbie Caillat, who is using her newest EP and music video to speak out against the undue pressure that Photoshopped and make-up-made perfection puts on all women.

The folks over at Constant Contact recently put together a handy little infographic that will help you better manage and properly 'dress up' your the growing collection of social media accounts.