Want to see what it was like to work as a photographer at a major newspaper back in 1983? Check out this blast from the past: it's a 20-minute video by photographer Hugh Wesley, who spent 28 years at the Toronto Sun before retiring as the director of photography in 2001.
Vox has published a short 5-minute video that tells the story of how early film stocks in photography were designed with light skin as the ideal skin standard, and therefore sometimes had problems rendering darker skins -- especially in photos that showed both darker and lighter complexions.
The YouTube channel Found Footage Fest scoured thrift stores and purchased old modeling …
Here's an interesting little video showing the various camera rigs that were used to shoot movie scenes back in 1993, from steadicams to RC helicopters.
"Photoshopped" photos may be everywhere these days, but retouching images to make them look nicer has been around since the early days of photography -- it was just done differently through the years as new techniques and technologies emerged.
British photographer Tony Richards owns a number of old plates that were likely made during the age of the albumen print in the mid-to-late 1800s. Close inspection of the plates reveals the retouching that was done to the portraits after they were created.
Want to see how far digital cameras have come over just the past 20 years? Check out this 4-minute clip that CNET released back in 1995, when digital cameras were only just starting to find their way into the hands of serious photographers.
For the past two years, photographer Jordan Liles has been researching the life and work of George Bradford Brainerd, a lesser-known 19th-century photographer who shot 2,500 photos of New York before he died in 1887 at the age of 42.
Starting in 2013, Liles has also been visiting the locations of Brainerd's photos -- some of the oldest surviving images of New York -- recreating the shots to show how New York has changed over the past 140 years.
Here's a collection of camera commercials that have appeared over the past 20 years. No matter your age, there’s probably something here that you’ll remember, and I hope it will bring back a bit of nostalgia. I've also selected what I consider the best commercial of them all.
Here's a photograph of Jessie Tarbox Beals, America's first female photojournalist, with her camera on a street a century ago. While most female photographers of her time shot photos from the peace and safety of photo studios, Beals ventured into the world of photojournalism and made a name for herself through her tenacity, self-promotion, and freelance news photos.
Adobe celebrated Photoshop's 25th birthday yesterday with great fanfare. Since the original Photoshop version 1.0 was launched back on February 19th, 1990, there have been 15 major versions released that have advanced the way we work with (and look at) photographs.
To see how far post-processing has come over the past two-and-a-half decades, here's a closer look at what it was like to use the very first version of Photoshop.
Back in 1887, a photography instructor named Edward M. Estabrooke published a book titled Photography in the Studio and in the Field. It was "a practical manual designed as a companion alike to the professional and the amateur photographer."
Filled with detailed information on how to practice photography with the equipment and technologies of the time, the book also contains interesting passages that describe how the world of photography was changing.
Portland-based Art Director Danielle Delph says she often wonders if her mother and her would have been friends if they had grown up together. And while that question can't be answered in a literal sense (yet... not giving up hope on a time-machine just yet), Delph put her impressive Photoshop skills to use answering it metaphorically.
Here's both a neat picture and a mind-blowing fact for you. What you see above is the IBM Model 350 Disk File from 1956. It weighed over a ton, contained fifty 24-inch disks, and was leased to companies for $3,200 per month. It could hold... 3.75 Megabytes.
That means that it would take 21 of these puppies to hold the largest 14-bit RAW file the Nikon D800 spits out.
In the funny-but-also-sad ad from 2006, Kodak sought to convince the world that it was ready to move to the forefront of the digital revolution that it had given birth to and then ignored for so long. You know... the same one that ended up forcing the company to declare bankruptcy a little more than half a decade later.
In 2004, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took on a burgeoning technology that they saw as a completely nonsensical mix of two things: the camera phone. As Ed Helms puts it in the "digital watch" segment above, the technology "combines the rapid battery depletion of a high-powered digital camera with the image production capability of a phone."
We’ve shared his work before here on PetaPixel, but this time filmmaker Simon Smith has stepped up his game.
Whereas his previous collaboration compared 1920s footage of London to footage he captured present day side-by-side, his newest then-and-now piece overlays the two, creating a throwback to the London of 1924 by placing the scenes inside of modern-day London.
In 1939, British Pathé -- whose fascinating photography-related old videos we've shared before -- covered something truly amazing: 100 years of photography. It had been 100 years since the camera was invented and so, they took a look back at how those years had changed and refined the art of capturing images using a light-tight box and whatever light-sensitive material you happen to have at hand.
It's #throwbackthursday, right? Good, because we have a rather interesting piece of photography history to share with you, courtesy of NASA, Nikon and Kodak.
This is pretty cool, and might just give you a good laugh at the same time. Go back in time and see what a photography 'holiday camp' (read: photography workshop) was like back in 1961, as what look to be a bunch of very amateur photographers try and learn to better compose and set up shots of beautiful women.
There's something awesome about vintage ads. This rings especially true for photography ads, because while technology ads of the past for things like computers or other gadgets might seem comically archaic, the text in something like this Leica M4 ad could very well be seen in the next Pure Photography-like campaign.
Photography has a rich history that is really fun to peer back into once in a while when you have a spare minute to stop oogling over the next piece of gear (*cough* NEX full-frame *cough*) that'll steal your heart and most of the funds in your bank account.
On that note, check out this awesome old review of the Pentax Spotmatic. It was written in 1965 by the late Fred Springer-Miller, and it might make you think twice before you take today's technology for granted.
Sure, the 1980s isn't quite so far in the past as, say, the first photo, but the commercial above is classic nonetheless. It shows off the Nimslo 35mm 3D camera, the first consumer level 3D lenticular camera of the 80s and, if you believe the commercial, "the most important new camera of your lifetime."
One month ago today, the Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera -- a camera that TIME's own Harry McCracken called "the greatest gadget of all time" -- celebrated its 41st birthday. When it came out it was absolutely revolutionary, and to get the word out, Polaroid put together a few ads to show off the instant shooter.
You might not know this, but there was metadata before there was, well, metadata. Way back in 1914, Kodak introduced the Autographic system, a combination of autographic cameras and film that allowed you to permanently sign, date and title your negatives as you shot them.
In the past, we've had occasion to share some great color film footage that showed London and the UK as a whole all the way back in the 1920s. We've even shown you some stateside footage shot by a French tourist in the 1930s.
The latest bit of historical footage we've come across isn't in color (unfortunately), but it does show a New York City staple right after it was first built: The New York City Subway System.
These days, it's easy to take for granted what the magic of the Internet, wireless technology, and fiber optic cables have made possible, but there was a time when sending a photograph a long distance in a short time wasn't quite that easy.
For instance, in 1926, someone on an oceanliner called the S.S. President Roosevelt snapped the above photo of the S.S. Antinoe during a rescue attempt. When that photo was sent almost instantly from London to New York City, it was such a big deal that the April 1926 issue of Science and Invention printed a huge infographic to show its readers how this miracle was achieved.
Back in 1985, TIME magazine was determined to get more subscribers. We know this because of the special TV offer you see above. If you happen to be around when this commercial aired, all you needed to do was call the number to get a TIME magazine subscription for 40% off, and a free 35mm camera!
When cutting edge technology translates into RAW video, 14fps burst capabilities and smartphone megapixel counts in the 40's, it's easy to take it for granted and forget where digital photography started.
So here's a little reminder of what digital photography looked like a couple of decades ago in the form of a Canon ad that boasts the capabilities of its still video systems, the digital camera before digital cameras.
What you see above is an ultra-high resolution aerial photograph of San Francisco as it looked in 1938. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection put the image together using 164 large format black-and-white photos of SF that were shot in 1938. When viewed through a zoomable image viewer, the composite photo is pretty much a 1938 version of Google Earth's satellite view.
In 1951, a diesel-powered US Navy submarine called the U.S.S. Catfish passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and did a short tour of San Francisco Bay. While there, the crew decided to snap some photographs of San Francisco... through its periscope.