At the ripe old age of 103, New Englander Conrad Heyer, a veteran of the American Revolution, sat down to have his portrait taken. Maybe he knew this at the time, or maybe he didn't, but the gruff, stern man staring defiantly out of the portrait above is believed to be the earliest born human ever photographed.
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.
There is little doubt that auteur Stanley Kubrick looms large as a director able to distinctively bring his films to life through his vision. He has left his mark across the motion picture landscape.
He also happens to be responsible for some very interesting technical results in the realm of photography as well (including owning 3 of the 10 Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 ever made).
Any words I write here about him will pale in comparison to the reams of scholarly works already published. And so, instead, I give you a couple of fascinating pieces of Shining/Kubrick trivia that you can whip out the next time there's a lull in conversation.
Even if you've never heard of Peter and David Turnley, you've likely seen at least one of their photographs at some point in your life. The identical twins are two of the most renowned photojournalists to have covered world events over the past few decades. The video above is a fascinating 13-minute-long feature titled "Double Exposure," which aired on 60 Minutes back in 1996 (warning: there are some strong images of violence).
Bellamy Hunt over at Japan Camera Hunter has a fascinating account of what …
Unless you only shoot in monochrome, color likely plays a huge part in the experience of viewing your photographs. You may be aware of how you use them, but do you know how the colors in your images affect the people that look at them? PBS Off Book put out this fascinating video today that explores just how powerful colors are.
Steward Magazine has published a fascinating interview with photographer Anton Kusters, who spent two years documenting a yakuza gang in Tokyo, capturing highly intimate glimpses into what life is like in the criminal underworld. When asked what he felt like when the project was just starting out, Kusters states,
I was extremely nervous. Since they are gangsters, I thought I should be very careful, in case I shot something I wasn’t supposed to see. But this actually upset the gang. They saw my nervousness as disrespectful. I remember one time early on this guy pulled me aside and said, “You are here to take pictures. Act like a professional.” It turned out they respected me if I was really aggressive about getting a certain shot. To not take photos was a sign of weakness.
As his surname suggests, Kusters is not from Japan (he's from Belgium). It took 10 months of negotiations before he and his brother were given an unprecedented access into the closed world of Japanese organized crime.
Earlier this month, when we were exploring why the NASA Curiosity rover’s cameras are so lame, we …
Vince Devlin over at the University of Montana has the fascinating story of …
Here's an oldie but goodie: back in September 2009, photographer Chris Weeks released this documentary about street photography titled Documenting the Human Condition. It's occasionally preachy and at times feels like a stealthy Leica advertisement, but should be interesting to you if you're at all interested in the practice of street photography.
YouTube user Roy Prol created this fascinating animation that imagines what Earth would …
Captured on April 1, 1995 by the Hubble Telescope, the photograph Pillars of Creation is one of the most …
Design director Wayne Ford has written up a great piece on the career of American photographer Arnold Newman, who was in the vanguard of the "environmental portrait" movement that emerged in the early 1940s.
Ever wonder how the photographs found on the pages of National Geographic come together? Here’s a fascinating behind-the-scenes video …
The London Evening Standard has published a fascinating article on a photograph captured …
Here’s a simple yet brilliant stop-motion video showing a person sitting at a table plays with shapes. Instead of …
Ever wonder what National Geographic photographers go through to get the beautiful shots that appear in the yellow-bordered magazine? …
German photographer Andreas Gursky is one of the most successful artists of our …
If you think about it, there are many parallels between Apple and Polaroid: both companies introduced innovative products that …
Update: It looks like the video was taken down by the uploader. Sorry guys.
Color is simply how our brains respond to different wavelengths of light, and wavelengths outside the spectrum of visible light are invisible and colorless to us simply because our eyes can't detect them. Since colors are created in our brains, what if we all see colors differently from one another? BBC created a fascinating program called "Do You See What I See?" that explores this question, and the findings are pretty startling.
With the rise of sites like YouTube, the Internet is teeming with digital videos (two days worth are uploaded …
In 1839, a year after the first photo containing a human being was made, photography pioneer …
Harry McCracken over at Technologizer wrote a …
Time lapse photography allows us to view ordinary things in unordinary ways, whether it's the clouds passing overhead or plants shooting up out of the ground. I recently came across these two videos that I found pretty interesting. They show the decomposition of food over many days and how mold and maggots do their thing. Don't watch while eating.
The Geotaggers’ World Atlas is an interesting series of images by …