Mike Rugnetta over on PBS's Idea Channel asked an interesting question in last Wednesday's episode: Is a tagged Instagram photo more than just a photo? Or, if you will, do hashtags add something (context, meaning, the ability to connect to a community) to photographs, thereby transforming the photo as we know it into a "different entity?"
It's hard to fathom the effect that Photoshop and digital retouching has had on our world. Limitations placed on artists and photographers in particular have systematically been stripped away as terms like "'shopped" made their way into our vernacular.
In this short video, PBS Arts examines that effect. From the artist, to the photographer, to the everyday citizen who has something to say, nobody has been left unaltered by Photoshop.
One of the stereotypes that has become associated with Instagram users (and smartphone shooters in general) is that they're obsessed with snapping photos of their food. YouTube channel Hungry decided to see how people would react when this obsession is taken too far. They sent a Instagram photographer to random strangers and had him ask if he could photograph their food. Cameras were placed nearby to document their reactions to the strange request.
Remember how Usain Bolt grabbed a photographer's DSLR last year during the London Olympics and started snapping photos of his fellow athletes? A similar thing happened today in an NBA basketball game between the Chicago Bulls and Toronto Raptors.
Here's a bit of silly humor as we're winding down the workweek: if you're a photography enthusiast who has fond memories of playing Pokemon Snap during the days of the Nintendo 64, then you might enjoy this humorous fake trailer by Gritty Reboots, which takes popular movies, TV shows, video games and turns them into cinematic trailers.
This one imagines what a live-action Pokemon Snap movie would be like.
If you're set to get married soon and are in the process of planning for the big day, here's a tip that might save you from some sadness further down the road: don't go cheap on the photography if you can help it. It turns out that spending too little on photography is one of the biggest regrets brides have after their wedding, while spending too much rarely causes remorse.
For a wedding issue that will soon be hitting newsstands, New York Magazine created an infographic titled "What They Would Have Done Differently." The magazine asked one hundred recent brides about what they'd do differently if they could go back in time.
Here's a startling side-by-side comparison of news photos that has begun floating around on the social web. Both photographs show a large crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of a new pope. The top one was what AP photographer Luca Bruno saw in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was introduced, while the bottom one is what AP photographer Michael Sohn witnessed yesterday at the election of Pope Francis.
Tom Carter may have seen more of China, its lands, and its people than any other Westerner on record. The American photographer spent two years backpacking across all 33 provinces of China, traveling over 35,000 miles, seeing 56 different cultures, and shooting over 10,000 portraits of the people he met.
The Harlem Shake meme has taken over the Internet over the past few weeks, and even the world of photography has been invaded. Here's a small roundup of Harlem Shake videos put out by photography and camera enthusiasts.
Bureaucratics is a project by photographer Jan Banning that consists of 50 portraits captured in 8 countries on 5 continents around the world. The goal: to offer a comparative look at the culture, rituals, and symbols of state civil administrations. Basically, Banning wanted to document the face of bureaucracy by capturing portraits of government workers at their posts.
New trend alert: Eric Wilson of the New York Times reports that fashion …
Behold, the coolest photography-related toy we've seen so far this year: War Journalist: Battlefield Hero. It's a 1/6-scale Toymaster-brand action figure that lets kids play make believe with their very own conflict photographer!
Paparazzi photography is a topic that has come up quite a bit in recent days, with most …
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has become one of the hottest stars in Hollywood in recent years, appearing in a number of major blockbuster movies (e.g. Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln). Back in 2006, as he was still a smaller name in the industry, Gordon-Levitt had a run-in with a couple of paparazzi photographers.
Having a video camera with him, Gordon-Levitt decided to turn the camera lens on the two men to capture a glimpse into the world of celebrity photography. The encounter can be seen in the video above, titled "Pictures of A**holes," which Gordon-Levitt uploaded to YouTube (Warning: there's some strong language).
After sharing that short feature yesterday on the last roll of Kodachrome, it seems appropriate to share this once-super-popular song written about the same film.
Simply titled, "Kodachrome," it was written by American musician Paul Simon after the first breakup of Simon & Garfunkel.
For those of you who can't stand what paparazzi photographers do with their cameras, know this: it's not just the professional celebrity photographers who do such things. When a celebrity is spotted in public, ordinary people all around pull out their cameras and do exactly the same thing.
The video above shows what happened recently when Tom Cruise and his daughter Suri tried to watch a show at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida.
A week before Christmas last month, Leica launched a contest to spread some holiday cheer. Instead of asking its fans to make photographs, however, the company asked them to bake cookies and cakes.
For her project Sworn Virgins of Albania, photographer Jill Peters visited to the mountain villages of northern Albania to capture portraits of "burneshas," or females who have lived their lives as men for reasons related to their culture and society.
Here's a slightly-oldie but a very-goodie: New York University photography professor Fred Ritchin gave this keynote address last year at the "What's Next?" event put on by Foam. He shares his thoughts on the past, present, and future of digital photography and how it impacts the world around us.
Since the moment I walked into Milford Photo looking to buy a professional camera in the winter of 2011, I have been exposed to constant judgment for being a rich, stupid and spoiled 13-year-old who wanted an expensive camera to take “artsy” pictures that I didn’t know how to take.
Contrary to society’s beliefs, I do not fit into that stereotype in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately, I am associated with this stereotype because that is the view society chooses to observe and overplay.
Sony is continuing its campaign against the mindless use of DSLRs. After releasing a series of viral videos poking fun at inept DSLR users, Sony is now turning to facts and hard evidence (in addition to humor). The company recently did a survey of 1012 non-professional DSLR users, and the results are pretty interesting.
Between 2001 and 2005, photographer Richard Hooker visited various bus stops across London and shot film photographs of the people waiting for their rides to arrive. The 136 photographs he captured show the city's incredible cultural diversity, explore how people relate to one another in confined spaces, and offer small peeks into personal lives.
Roberto Baldwin of Wired writes about how an SF man felt the fury …
In 2008, I had this kooky idea to take my then 4-year-old son out to an abandoned road and throw him into the air, since it seemed most fathers like to do this with their kids. There was this long, abandoned road near my house, so we set up there. After getting my Nikon D200, self-timer, and tripod ready, my son decided that he didn't want to be thrown into the air, so I just held him up instead. I then took another photo of myself looking up with my arms extended.
Portrait is a new 20-minute documentary film by Columbus, Ohio-based filmmaker Andy Newman that explores the question, "In the age of Instagram, what sets a professional photographer apart?" Newman compares the lives and work of two people who are both crazy about photography, but who have chosen very different careers and mediums.
Photographer Richard Esposito has written an interesting …
There was once a time when you could more easily spot a professional photographer simply by glancing at the camera equipment in a person's hands. Was it a beast of a camera with a gigantic lens attached to it? You're looking at a serious shooter. Is it a dinky pea shooter that is used with arms outstretched? The person is a tourist, newbie, or both.
Photography purists, you might want to look away. For the rest of you: remember that Craiglist listing we shared a couple of months ago posted by a couple looking for Hipstamatic wedding photographers? Among the hoards of enthusiastic Hipstamatic shooters who responded were Keith and Marc, hosts of the iPhoneography podcast TinyShutter. After being chosen for the gig, they drove down to Connecticut from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to capture the wedding with their iPhones.
Photographer Michael Wolf began his career as a photojournalist in Hong Kong working for a German magazine. In the early 2000s, he turned to non-editorial photography with an unusual project called Bastard Chairs. Wolf had noticed that all over China, there were makeshift chairs that had been put together using whatever materials the owners could get their hands on. He began documenting these strange pieces of furniture, showing the creative ideas people in China had for sitting down.
Digital and mobile phone photography have made it easy for parents to document every waking (and non-waking) moment of a child's life, but what effect is this constant picture-taking having on kids? David Zweig has written up an article over at the New York Times arguing that our culture of photography is intruding on the preciousness of youth, and that parents should take fewer photographs of their children.