historical

Fully Loaded: The Complex Connection Between Guns and Cameras

“Why are guns and cameras so closely connected?” This is what I set out to explore and investigate recently through my own experience in film. Between starting the production and finishing it, one major event made this connection a lot darker.

A vintage photo of colonial explorers in the Australian wilderness

How Landscape Photographers Reinvented the Colonial Project in Australia

Colonial history overflows with commodities. From the early 1800s, wool generated extraordinary wealth for squatters and pastoralists and substantial investment in the Australian colonies. In the 1850s, gold motivated tens of thousands of people to work the earth or service the diggings. Coal, copper, tin, wheat, barley, and cotton all assumed importance at different times.

This Was ‘Instagram vs Reality’ in 1909

If you're tired of the unrealistic beauty standards set by all the edited pictures on Instagram and long for a return to "the good old days," here is some bad news: people have been "Photoshopping" portraits for just about as long as photography has been around.

The 10 Hottest 35mm Cameras You Could Buy in 1991

1991. What a great time to be alive. Seeing movies like Robin Hood and Hook in the theatres, and hearing hits like "Joyride" by Roxette or "Losing My Religion" by REM are some of my favorite pop culture memories of that time. Not to mention watching TV shows like Home Improvement, America’s Funniest Home Videos, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Spider-Man’s Cameras: A Look at What Peter Parker Shoots With

I’m sure photographers out there are one of two minds. One is that Peter Parker being both a photographer and a superhero is amazing and that we wish we could get those crazy angles. The second is that by taking pictures of himself for money, he is a total scam artist that raised the bar on pictures of Spider-Man no one could hope to accomplish.

Smithsonian Buys Rare Photos From First African American Studios

A collection of early American photography from Larry J. West has been acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, transforming the museum’s holdings. West’s collection includes 286 pieces from the 1840s, when daguerreotypes started to show up in the US, to about 1925.

The Crazy Inventions of Two Wildlife Photography Pioneers

Throughout photography history, determined, creative, and brave photographers have gone to extreme lengths to capture the perfect shot. Here's a curious photo from the 1890s that shows a crazy tripod setup used by wildlife photography pioneers in the 1890s.

A Brief History of Ground Glass Focusing Loupes

This article is dedicated to a very helpful yet often-overlooked photographic accessory. After scouring the Web, I have only been able to find few brief entries dedicated to those devices, so I hope my writing will be found helpful by inquisitive minds interested in the history of photo equipment.

Helsinki Has a Website of 65,000 Free Photos Anyone Can Use

The Finnish capital city of Helsinki is the country's central hub of politics, education, finance, and culture. If you'd like a window into the history of the city, check out Helsinkiphotos.fi -- it's an online database of over 65,000 free photos that anyone can view and use.

Judge Rules Images of Enslaved Are Property of Harvard, Not Descendant

A Massachusetts judge has dismissed a woman's lawsuit claiming that she is the rightful owner of the images of an enslaved father and daughter and not Harvard, the New York Times reports. The judge cites common law that the content of an image cannot be used to claim ownership of that image, regardless of the subject.

Who Should Own Photos of Enslaved People?

In 1976 while rummaging through an attic of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in search of old museum publications, editorial assistant Lorna Condon opened a drawer in a wooden cabinet. Inside, she found a number of flat leather cases which contained a series of daguerreotypes of partially and fully nude Black people.

Hands-On with the Weird Fotosnaiper Soviet Sniper Camera

Photographer Mathieu Stern was browsing a flea market when he came across a Zenit Fotosnaiper, a Soviet-era camera rig that looks and feels more like a rifle. Stern jumped at the opportunity to have a copy of his own and to go hands-on with the camera.

Behind the Scenes of How Kodak Film is Made

Curious how Kodak manufactures its film? In this 8-minute video, Studio C-41 shows the process from making the original giant rolls of plastic that eventually becomes film, to the finished product found on store shelves around the world.

This Online Quiz Shows How Color Can Trick You when Guessing a Photo’s Age

Photographers know better than most: how you edit a photograph can totally chance the perception of that photo for the viewer. But a new online photo history quiz wants to make this explicit, showing how converting a photo to black-and-white can trick us into thinking a photo is much older than it really is.

Prototype Nikon L Rangefinder Auctions for Record-Setting $468,850

The second annual Wetzlar Camera Auctions (WCA) that focuses on historical cameras occurred on October 10th with a total of 254 items up for sale, the majority of which were Leica cameras. Among the group was a prototype Nikon L Rangefinder with a Leica screw mount that became the focus of a bidding war, ending at a record-setting sale of €397,000 (~$468,850).