Fourteen years ago I took an interest in street photography. I went looking for resources and information on this amazing genre, unfortunately to no avail, until I came across a great free ebook in 2006 called “Street Photography for the purist” by Chris Weeks.
Back in the Tsarist era, a fad for posing in fake boats, planes, and automobiles resulted in some of Russia’s quaintest portraits.
Through his most famous character’s lips, Arthur Conan Doyle once lamented “There is nothing new under the sun.” But he was wrong. Because I recently saw a photograph that was so utterly unique and awe-inspiring that it instantly froze the Lucky Charms-laden spoon that had been traveling toward my waiting craw. I’d just seen my first milk bath portrait, and never again would I be the same.
Photographer Jenna Martin helped spark a movement back in November 2017 when she did her "Ugly Places, Pretty Portraits" challenge in a Lowe's home improvement store. Since then it has spread to other popular retail chains, include arts and crafts stores. But while the #hobbylobbychallenge is officially against store policy, Michaels is embracing and encouraging the #michaelschallenge.
In the 1850s, photography became much more affordable and accessible for consumers. This sparked a trend in the Victorian era of postmortem photography, where dead loves ones featured among the pages of family albums. Here's a 2-minute video by the HISTORY channel about this creepy fad.
Fast-posing for rapid-fire portrait shoots has been getting quite a bit of attention in recent times -- last week we showed how Chinese models pull of two poses per second for retail fashion photos. Photographer Slater King has a humorous take on the trend: he made the 2-minute parody tutorial above with one of the models who helped pioneer fast posing.
For his bachelor thesis project, titled "notwinstagram," German artist Daniel Reuber decided to flip Instagram fads on their head. Instead of creating picture-perfect Instagram shots that show (or fake) a wonderful life, Reuber decided to show what those same shots would look like for someone with a very sad life.
There's a new viral photo fad that's sweeping the world in the wake of Jurassic World's blockbuster opening. One of the heavily publicized scenes from the film shows actor Chris Pratt with a few dinosaurs inside an enclosure. Now real-life zookeepers (and ordinary folk) at major zoos around the world are doing their best to recreate that shot in humorous parody photos.
Are you looking for a creative new way to photograph your newborn at home AND you like to be part of the newest social media trends? Well you're in luck, because a new thing called "Baby Suiting" is sweeping the Instagram nation right now.
Photo memes don't have much of a shelf life these days. Case in point: the cat beard meme that we shared with you just a couple of weeks ago has already been replaced by the next photo fad to sweep the Instagram nation. This one's called Baby Mugging, and it involves using forced perspective photography to make it look like your baby or toddler is hanging out inside your coffee mug.
Last month, we told you about a fun (and maybe a bit ridiculous) photography fad that had blown up overnight in Japan. The fad was to recreate Japanese anime-style fight scenes, and it has since been named 'Hadouken' photography after the special attack from the Street Fighter series of games and animated movies.
Just in case you've been wanting to jump (literally) into this fad, DigitalRev has put together this silly how-to video that shares a few tips and tricks for doing Hadouken photography right.
There's a humorous new photography meme emerging from Japan. Students in the country are shooting photos that look like they're 'Kamehameha' scenes from the popular manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball.
In each shot, one participant poses as a character exploding with energy, while one or more other subjects pretends to be blown away by the force of the blast. As with all of the popular memes that have emerged in recent years, participants are jumping onboard by shooting their own photos and then sharing them on the web.
Photographer Noah Kalina's Everyday project features one photo of his face every day, and has been running since January 11, 2000. Kalina uploaded time-lapse videos created using the photos in 2006 and 2012, and both videos quickly went viral online. Not only did they amass millions of views, but they sparked a new phenomenon as well, as people around the world started snapping daily photos of their own faces and uploading similar videos to the web.
The video above is one that uses the same idea popularized by Kalina, except it's very different from the rest (warning: it's a bit disturbing).
Earlier this year, we wrote about a dangerous new Russian photo fad called "skywalking," in which thrill-seeking climber-photographers seek out the highest man-made structures they can find, climb to the apexes without proper safety equipment, and then shoot photographs of themselves and the view once they're there.
Two of the photographers who have been generating a lot of buzz in this niche are Vitaly Raskalov and Alexander Remnev.
If you're afraid of heights you may want to look away, and you should certainly never make friends with these daredevil photographers from Russia. We here in the U.S. have memes, young Russian photographers, it seems, have "skywalking": the newest extremely dangerous photography fad to hit the Internet.
Photo fads are themselves growing as a fad -- after "planking" became a worldwide Internet sensation earlier this year, it seems like every week a silly new idea is introduced as "the new planking".
Another week, another strange photo fad. The latest one is "horsemaning", and involves photographing two people to look like one decapitated person (like the headless horseman). Apparently it started in the early 1920s with the photo seen above, and is making a comeback as of late.