Great Two-Hour Lectures on How to Use Photoshop and Lightroom

Looking for free lessons on how to get started with using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to post-process your photographs? Look no further than the official YouTube channel of New York City camera shop B&H Photo Video. The store often invites well-known professional photographers to hold lectures on subjects they're knowledgable in and passionate about. The collection of videos aren't as shared as other shorter tutorial videos you'll find online due to their great lengths -- they run up to two hours each -- but they're fantastic resources for learning the ins and outs of photography.

Gallery Drops Photo Artist After Works Found to Be Sourced From Stock

Tim Olsen Gallery, a prestigious art gallery located in Sydney, Australia, has dropped popular Australian photo artist Ben Ali Ong after it was discovered that some of his photo artworks were actually based on uncredited Getty Images. An exhibition featuring Ong's work, which was set to open this week, was canceled, and a number of art buyers will be refunded.

Striking Black and White Portraits of Art Painted on Faces

Moscow-based photographer Alexander Khokhlov has a striking series of portraits of models with various designs painted onto their faces. The faces are either painted completely black or completely white, and then used as a canvas for some kind of artwork (e.g. a Mickey mouse face, a silhouette, a keyhole). Khokhlov calls the series Weird Beauty.

Time-Lapse Videos of Old B&W Photos Being Infused with Color

Earlier this year, we shared some amazing work by Swedish retoucher Sanna Dullaway, who takes historical B&W photographs and colorizes them. YouTube user IColoredItForYou is another master of restoring, retouching, and colorizing, but what's awesome about his work is that he creates behind-the-scenes videos showing how the edits are done. The above time-lapse video shows how he recently used Photoshop to colorize Margaret Bourke-White's famous 1937 photograph, titled "Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky".

Photog Arrested for Chasing Bieber Now Fighting California Anti-Paparazzi Law

Freelance paparazzi photographer Paul Raef was arrested back on July 6th after chasing Justin Bieber on 101 Freeway, becoming the first person charged under a new anti-paparazzi law signed by former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Raef is currently facing four misdemeanors, with two of them being "following another vehicle too closely and reckless driving, with the intent to capture pictures for commercial gain." The punishment is up to one year in jail and $3,500 in fines.

The Los Angeles Times reports that his lawyers are now trying to have the anti-paparazzi law declared as unconstitutional, saying that it specifically and unfairly targets a certain group of news gatherers.

Photograph of a Face Created by Carefully Arranging Food on a Table

The folks at Mexican agency Golpeavisa were recently tasked with creating a portrait of world-renowned Danish chef René Redzepi for a cover of ClasePremier magazine. Instead of doing a digital illustration like they've done before, they decided to flex their creative muscles and try their hand at making a portrait out of food using perspective photography. After a good deal of planning and setting up, the cover above is what resulted.

Linkin Park Browser-Based Music Video Incorporates Your Facebook Photos

Linkin Park has released a new music video that makes creative use of online photos. Visit the website for the song "Lost in the Echo", and you'll be asked to connect with the music video using your Facebook account. Once you provide it with access, it crunches some data, and then starts playing. The video starts out like many other videos, showing a group of people in what appears to be some kind of post-apocalyptic hideout. Then one of the characters pulls out a suitcase with photos, and something catches you eye: personal photos from your Facebook albums are shown inside the video!

Leaked Fujifilm XF1 Video Shows Twist-To-Turn-On Feature

Fujifilm has uploaded a video to its Japanese YouTube account showing its not-yet-announced XF1 (or XP1) retro-styled compact camera. The video shows that there's a twisting feature that's used to turn the camera on and off. Turning on the camera involves twisting the lens to unlock it, pulling it out of the camera until it clicks, and then rotating it some more to open up the lens cover. Turning it off involves doing the same things in reverse.

Bizarre Portraits of People With the Back of Their Heads as Beards

Upside Down (Faces) is a bizarre portrait project by Milano, Italy-based photographer Davide Tremolada. The photos show the front and back sides of individuals digitally blended into a single head, with the backside of the head serving as a giant beard. The resulting look is quite surreal, especially if the subject already had a beard to begin with.

Kirby Ferguson on How Creativity Comes from Without, Not from Within

Try imagining a make-believe creature that has absolutely no basis in reality. Can you? Not really. The truth is, everything imaginary is simply a rehash of things that actually exist... just in a combination that doesn't exist. Aliens are simply strange combinations of humans and other creatures that we know. Unicorns are horses with horns. Bigfoot is some guy that accidentally spilled Rogaine all over his body.

This is the basis for writer Kirby Ferguson's big idea: that "everything is a remix." He created a popular four part video series on this topic over the past year, and recently he was invited by TED to give the condensed, sub-10-minute version of it that's shown above.

SmugMug Pulls a Netflix, Raises Fees for Some Customers by 67%

Back in July of 2011, Netflix announced that it would be separating its movie streaming and DVD rental services into two separate subscriptions, increasing the cost for customers who wanted both by about 60%. The news was met with a massive customer backlash online, and over the next three months, more than 800,000 customers canceled their subscriptions and the stock price took a huge hit. The story became a lesson for corporate executives on how not to do price increases. Apparently SmugMug didn't get the memo.

Behind the Scenes with New York Times Sports Photographer Barton Silverman

This fascinating behind-the-scenes video shows what it's like to work as a sports photographer for the New York Times. It follows around Barton Silverman, a photographer who has been working at the Times since March of 1962. Over the past 50 years, he has covered many a championship game and has photographed many a legendary athlete.

Sigma DP1 Merrill is a Wide-Eyed DP2 Merrill, to Hit Stores Next Month for $999

As far as camera naming conventions go, Sigma's is pretty wacky. First off, we'll start with the news: the company announced today that its new DP1 Merrill compact camera will be available starting mid-September for a street price of $999.

Good, now that that's out of the way, lets talk about the name and the camera. Basically, it's a clone baby of the DP2 Merrill announced back in July, except the DP1 Merrill features a 19mm (28mm in 35mm terms) lens instead of a 30mm (45mm in 35mm terms) one. That's it.

Portraits of 100 People Ages 1 Through 100 Shown in 150 Seconds

How do you capture 5050 years of life in a single 150 second video? By capturing portraits of 100 people representing ages 1 through 100.

In October 2011, Dutch filmmaker Jeroen Wolf began roaming the streets of Amsterdam with a Panasonic GH2, asking strangers if he could film them stating their ages. Wolf's goal was to collect 100 people with every single age between 1 and 100.

Photos Showing the Beauty of Japanese Limestone Mines

Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama has spent the past 25 years documenting man's interaction of nature in factories, quarries, and mines. One particular subject that he has given a great deal of time and attention to is Japanese limestone mining. His beautiful large-scale images show the destructive blasts used to break up the rocks, and the man-made landscapes left behind in their wake.

New Sony A99 and NEX-6 Sightings and Specs, Unveiling on September 12th

Update: We've removed both leaked photos from this post at the request of photographer Michael Yamashita.

Although the two cameras were leaked together, Sony's NEX-5R and NEX-6 mirrorless cameras are being announced separately (the Wi-Fi-equipped 5R was announced this past Wednesday). Now, detailed specs for the NEX-6 are emerging ahead of its September 12th announcement. We're also seeing some "sightings" of a second major camera that'll be announced on the same day: the high-end A99 DSLR.

Gravity-Defying Shots Created Using a Featureless Room

For its 2010 lookbook, Swedish fashion brand Courtrai Apparel created some gravity-defying shots of a guy floating in a featureless room. Rather than use fancy computer trickery, they used the same perspective trick as the Carl Kleiner project we shared a couple days ago.

Sony RX100 Left on Top of Car Leads to Unintentional Teardown

Phil Wright got his hands on the Sony RX100 -- the camera David Pogue was raving about -- shortly after it was released back in June. It didn't survive very long.

Earlier this month, Wright was rushing to work in the darkness of the early morning when he placed his coffee and his black camera bag on top of his car. When he arrived at work 22 miles and 25 minutes later with coffee in hand, he suddenly realized that his camera was nowhere to be found. After panicked call to his wife back home, she made the discovery: camera roadkill 300 yards from their house.

Samsung Galaxy Camera to Come with a Free 50GB Dropbox Account

Samsung's new Galaxy Camera will be the first point-and-shoot to which you can add a 3G or 4G data plan when it arrives on store shelves in October. One of the major benefits of being connected to the Internet all the time is that the camera will be able to take full advantage of cloud-based services. Services like Dropbox.

Adobe Says Retina Support is Coming to Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4

New uber-high-resolution HiDPI displays like Apple's Retina display are amazing to look at, but aren't very useful unless 3rd party software makers optimize their programs to support the technology. If you're a photographer that has already shelled out a few G's on a Retina-equipped Macbook Pro, you're probably disappointed with the fact that Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom aren't optimized for the display. In fact, some photographers are finding the display unusable for professional photo editing due to the difference in detail between apps optimized for Retina and those that aren't.

If that's you, Adobe's announcement today will be music to your ears: Photoshop CS6 will support HiDPI displays in the next few months, and Lightroom 4 support is on the way as well.

Supercut of One-Point Perspective Shots from Stanley Kubrick Films

A one-point perspective photograph is one in which there exists only a single vanishing point. Parallel lines in the scene all converge on that single point, leading away from the viewer. It can be used for interesting compositions, especially if that vanishing point is placed at the intersection points of the rule of thirds.

Focus Peaking Making Its Way onto More Digital Cameras

One of the interesting technologies Sony introduced into its line of NEX mirrorless cameras last year (starting with the NEX-C3) was "focus peaking", a feature from the video recording world that highlights in-focus areas of an image to aid in manual focusing. You know those colorful pixels that image editing programs use to indicate blown out or underexposed areas of photos? It's like that, except for focus. What's awesome is that you can adjust things like focus, focal length, and aperture, and then see the depth of field adjust on your screen in real time. Check out the 10-second video above for a demo.

Nikon D600 Coming Very Soon, May Offer Full Frame for Just $1500

More details are emerging about Nikon's affordable full frame DSLR, the D600. Nikon Rumors reports that the camera will almost certainly be on display at Photokina next month, which means that the announcement will likely come around the time the show opens on September 18th. The camera is said to offer a full frame sensor at a price previously unseen in the market -- possibly as low as $1500. To put that in comparison, Canon's crop sensor 7D hit the market at $1700 when it was released back in 2009. $1500 for a full frame would be ridiculous and game-changing.

Instagram Power Users Covering the US Open Alongside Press Photographers

It pays to be a top user on Instagram. In addition to having hundreds of thousands of eyes glued to your stream of photos, marketers for the world's top brands are constantly trying to think of ways to incorporate you into their advertising campaigns. Case in point: at the US Open this year, there will be three Insta-celebs covering the event alongside the photojournalists from major national media outlets.

Apple Moves One Step Closer Toward Location-Based Camera Disabling

In June of last year, we reported on an unsettling patent filed by Apple that would allow certain infrared signals to remotely disable the camera on iPhones. It showed the potential downsides of bringing cameras into the world of wireless connectivity, which appears to be the next big thing in the camera industry. Now, a newly published patent is rekindling the fears of those who don't want "Big Brother" controlling their devices.

Photos of Neatly Arranged Outfits Worn by Characters in Famous Movies

Earlier this week we shared a series of photographs by photographer Dinah Fried showing notable meals found in famous novels. It's difficult to catch the meals when reading the books, especially if they're only mentioned once or twice, so major props to you if you recognized more than one or two of the meals.

French photographer Candice Milon's project La Mode en Grand Écran, or "Fashion on the Big Screen", is much more accessible. The series shows famous outfits worn by main characters in well known movies, from the snazzy skater style of Marty McFly in Back to the Future to the droog look worn by characters in The Clockwork Orange. The clothing items are arranged neatly on backgrounds of various colors. See how many you can recognize (answers at the end).

The Light Show on CN Tower is Actually a Subliminal Photo Slideshow

If you've visited the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada anytime during the past five years at night, you've likely enjoyed the dazzling light show that appears on the side of the tower. The 1,330 uber-bright LED lights (which cost a cool $2.5 million) were installed in the elevator shafts back in 2007, and are turned on from dusk every day until 2 the next morning. What you might not have known, however, is that the seemingly random colors that appear are really not so random after all: they're actually pieces of photographs!

Shooting Studio-Lit Portraits of a Dancer in Motion at 14FPS Using a Canon 1D X

The 14 frame per second continuous shooting speed of the Canon 1D X DSLR probably isn't a feature you'd associate with studio-lit portraiture, but that's exactly what Australian fashion photographer Georges Antoni demonstrates in the short clip above. Using the Broncolor Scoro for stobe lighting, Antoni unleashes the full FPS potential of the camera in order to capture a model dancing in as many still frames as possible.

The Kent State Massacre Photo and the Case of the Missing Pole

Recognize this photograph? It shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screaming and kneeling over the body of 20-year-old Jeffrey Miller, shot during the Kent State Massacre. Kent State photojournalism student John Paul Filo -- just 22-years-old at the time -- captured the image, and was later awarded the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

New Leaked Photos of the Fujifilm X-E1 Shows the Flash, Top, and Back

Fujifilm's soon-to-arrive X-E1 mirrorless camera is one slick-looking camera. The more affordable sibling of the X-Pro1 leaked itself some more today. New photos, originally published on Digicam-info, shows the pop-up flash that extends from the top of the camera, as well as clear views of the top plate and back. If you thought the front of the camera was beautiful, the good news is that the beauty extends all the way around.

How the Curiosity Rover’s Photography Decisions Are Made

Earlier this month, when we were exploring why the NASA Curiosity rover's cameras are so lame, we mentioned that the total amount of data the scientists can transfer on a daily basis is only around 31 megabytes. As anyone with a restrictive cell phone dataplan can attest to, having a small data cap makes you think carefully about the data that you choose to download.

GIMP is Now a Self-Contained Native App for Mac OS X

GIMP, the image editing program that's a popular open-source alternative to Photoshop, is now easier than ever for Mac users to start using. Though it was completely free, installing it has long required that X11 also be installed -- a major pain in the butt. That changes with the latest version of GIMP: the app is now a self-contained native app that's a breeze to install. It's as simple as dragging and dropping.

Minimalist Gravity-Defying Photos Using String and Perspective

Photographer Carl Kleiner, the man behind IKEA's beautiful baking recipe and kitchen item photographs, has a delightful new series of images that features things neatly arranged in mid-air instead of on a table. More specifically, each of the shots uses simply trickery to make household objects look like they're floating in a blue room.

Samsung Galaxy Camera Unveiled, More Phonecamera Than Cameraphone

Well, that's one leaked camera certainly didn't take long to become a reality. Less than half an hour after we shared the first leaked photos of the Samsung Galaxy Camera, the camera was officially announced over in Berlin. Here's the basic spec lowdown: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 16 megapixel 1/2.3" BSI CMOS sensor, a 21x f/2.8-5.9 23-480mm (35mm equiv.) lens, a 4.8-inch HD LCD screen, a minimal smartphone-esque design, a 1.4Ghz quad core processor, 8GB of internal storage, ISO of up to 3200, and 3G/Wi-Fi or 4G/Wi-Fi.

Samsung Galaxy Camera Photos, Specs, and Details Leak

Want a phonecamera instead of a cameraphone? It's something that we were joking around about just months ago, but it might soon become a reality. It has only been two days since rumors of a Samsung Galaxy-based camera emerged, but now photos, specs, and details about the camera have been leaked. Portable gadget blog Pocketnow somehow got its hands on a press kit, revealing details about the compact camera that the web has been itching to find out.

Win One of Three Boxed Copies of Adobe Lightroom 4 Worth $150 Each

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

For our "giveaway o' the week" this week, we're giving away three copies of Adobe Lightroom 4 worth $150 each. If you went on vacation this past summer and have a boatload of photographs that you need to organize and post-process, this program can help you do it.

Sony NEX-5R Announced, Features Wi-Fi and Downloadable Apps

After weeks of leakage on the Internet, the Sony NEX-5R mirrorless camera was finally announced today. As the rumors said, the camera features both Wi-Fi and downloadable apps -- two things that look to be huge trends in the camera world this year.

The basic specs for the camera are as follows: it features a 16.1 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor, a hybrid autofocus that combines phase and contrast detection (a first for the NEX lineup), a max ISO of 25,600, 10 frame per second continuous shooting, 1080/60p HD video recording, and a 3-inch tilting LCD touchscreen.

How I Confronted a Newspaper and Got Paid as a Result

Not too long ago, I was approached by a newspaper (Journal Le Droit, a large daily newspaper distributing print in the Ottawa-Hull area) asking if I would allow them to print a few of my pictures in an upcoming special feature on a nearby town, Rockland, Ontario. Having photographed much of Rockland in the past three years, I gladly accepted and figured that I could somewhat benefit from some exposure.

Just to make sure, I asked if they were offering monetary compensation. They responded that a photo-credit would be placed at the bottom of the image in lieu of payment. Why not?

Photoshopped Photos From Before the Days of Photoshop

Although Adobe Photoshop's introduction in 1990 spawned the term "Photoshopping", the manipulation of photos has been around pretty much as long as photography itself. To show this fact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will be holding an exhibition titled, "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop." The show will feature 200 'shopped photographs created between the 1840s and the 1990s, providing a glimpse into how photographers of old use their work to humor and deceive.

Why Five Star Ratings Aren’t Very Helpful When Buying Camera Gear Online

XKCD recently published this humorous comic explaining how you should interpret star ratings online. These are the ratings you come across when browsing online stores (e.g. Amazon) and customer review websites -- ratings that supposedly provide an accurate glimpse at how consumers feel about the product. Do they, though?

As the comic shows, the answer is: yes and no.

Sony A99 Specs Leak: Full Frame 24MP Sensor and Lightweight

The veil of secrecy is starting to lift from Sony's upcoming high-end full frame DSLR. sonyalpharumors has published a detailed list of specs that give a pretty complete picture of what we'll be seeing in a few weeks. The camera features a 24.3 megapixel full frame CMOS sensor and Sony's Single-Lens Translucent (SLT) technology.

A Facebook Timeline Showing the History of the Photograph

If the photograph was a living person, what would his Facebook timeline look like? Photo aggregation service Pixable decided to answer this question, creating a giant infographic on the history of the photograph with the layout of a Facebook timeline. It all starts at the very bottom of the timeline, with the photograph's birth at around 1000 AD. Over the years, we see the marriage he has with Kodak, the Kodachrome process born to the couple a few decades later, and a subsequent relationship she has with Digital Camera.