Costco is Closing All Photo Centers
Costco has announced that it will be closing the Photo Centers in all its locations by February 14, 2021. The announcement was made known to Costco Photo Center patrons via email early this morning.
The Process of Colorizing and Animating an 80-Year-Old Photograph
Photo colorizer and restorer Hint of Time has shared an 8-minute video where he shows his process for not only colorizing an 80-year-old black and white photo, but also brings it to life with subtle animation.
Photoshop’s Sky Replacement Makes Photography Something It’s Not
Let me ask you a question. Is this photo real or fake? This might be a difficult question because the answer depends on what you define as real or fake.
Stop Upscaling and Colorizing Photos and Videos, Historians Say
Colorizing and updating photos and footage from the past is becoming more common and much easier thanks to the advancements of AI. We've shared stories and images of colorized images and videos many times over the past decade, and colorists say it is designed to bring the past forward for a modern audience. However, there are some historians who believe the process is doing more harm than good.
Why Pentax is Making the Right Call in Sticking with DSLRs
As the majority of camera manufacturers move away from the SLR type cameras and start producing mirrorless systems, one company continues to hold on to the past. Pentax has now in multiple statements confirmed that it will not be producing a mirrorless camera and will continue to develop SLR cameras.
Instagram Set to Overtake Twitter as a News Source
The photo-centric social media app Instagram looks set to overtake Twitter as a news source, according to a new report on digital news.
Is This the End of Microstock Photography?
For those who are anywhere near the microstock photography industry, you may have noticed that there is a lot of shouting going on at the moment about the latest release from Shutterstock.
How the Kids Are Learning Photography on TikTok
TikTok, the video-based social media app, usually conjures visions of teens mimicking the latest dance craze, but it’s probably better described as short attention span YouTube. In 2017, ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok, acquired the Musical.ly app, which had gained a toehold with an under-18 demographic by becoming a replacement for the comedy-oriented Vine app along with a burgeoning lip-synching community.
2019 CIPA Figures Reveal a Rough End to a Terrible Decade for Camera Makers
CIPA—the Camera & Imaging Products Association—has released their December 2019 sales breakdown, rounding out a devastating decade for the camera industry with the worst overall year for camera sales yet. But while there's plenty of doom and gloom to go around, there's reason to be optimistic, too.
2019: The Year of the Face
It’s been ten years since Instagram launched and not long after, the selfie. It has taken the same amount of time for visual recognition to understand how to read our faces. If anything, 2019 has been the year where faces have taken center stage of visual tech, for good and bad…
Instagram Has Changed Professional Food Photography Forever
Taking a look at popular images featuring food on Instagram, you'll see a pattern. Andrew Scrivani, a New York food photographer veteran puts it bluntly: "They are almost exclusively shooting from the top. Almost everything is a round dish of food and in a square, because Instagram is square, and a lot of it is on white or very light backgrounds, and white or very light plating, and consistently less and less propping."
The Mirrorless Revolution: DSLRs Aren’t Dead, But They’re On Life Support
Last year, during a panel discussion at one of the yearly industry conferences, I said that my hope was for DSLRs to soon vanish... I said this not because I haven’t enjoyed the incredible strides made in photo technology during the era of the DSLR -- both as a camera store owner and a recreational photographer -- but because, despite our attachments, we must embrace a mindset of “out with the old and in with the new.”
Photographers, Instagrammers: Stop Being So D*mn Selfish and Disrespectful
What does it take to push a farmer to this point? The point where, fed up of thousands of disrespectful photographers, wannabe “influencers” and narcissistic tourists, they feel the only way to get them to stop damaging their business and property, is to damage those people’s photographs?
Ricoh Thinks Mirrorless Shooters Will Switch Back to DSLRs in 1-2 Years
Camera brands have been shifting their attention from DSLRs to mirrorless cameras, with Canon even reportedly deciding to focus entirely on launching RF mirrorless lenses in 2019 with zero EF announcements. But Ricoh isn't convinced the trend will last -- it believes some mirrorless shooters will soon return to the DSLR.
The Cameras That Shot the Winning Photos of World Press Photo 2019
World Press Photo just announced the winning photos for the 2019 edition of it's world's most prestigious photojournalism contest. Camera metadata shared alongside the top photos is again providing us with an inside look at what gear the world's top photojournalists are using at the moment.
Three Seconds of Pleasant Geometry
Back in the day, a compelling photograph could be taken in a fraction of a second and considered for years, even decades. The small world of street photography was dominated by photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who said, “Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
Costco Closing (Some) In-Store Photo Depts., Cites Plummeting Printing
Costco's wholesale warehouse stores used to be an ultra-affordable place to get film developed, as it charged less than $2 a roll while competitors often charged several times as much. But film processing started disappearing from Costco locations a few years ago (to the dismay of many). Now the entire in-store photo departments may be the next to go.
The High Cost of Perfection
Walking past booth after booth at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York, I often heard camera company presenters explaining to their uncomfortably-seated, yet nonetheless-enraptured, audiences how they shot the “perfect” photo.
Photography: AI Everywhere
There are two major trends in photography today. The first is the ever-increasing numbers of photos being made. I can't even be bothered to look up how many billions of photos are being uploaded to Instickrbook every minute or every day or every year. It's a lot. This is usually talked about in terms of how many photos there are, and how we are drowning in them.
Social Media is Ruining Photography
In the U.S. and most industrialized nations, we have a collective infatuation with technology but a poor understanding of its effects – both intended and unintended. We love asking Siri to play our favorite song, but don’t fully consider the privacy implications of allowing the device to persistently listen to us.
The DSLR Will Likely Die: Are Mirrorless the Future of Big Standalone Cameras?
People often ask me, given the improvement and ubiquity of cell phones, whether DSLRs survive. This actually entails two slightly different questions: will standalone large-ish cameras survive, and will the particular reflex design (the R in DSLR) survive? I am cautiously optimistic about the former and very pessimistic about the latter. In this piece, I will discuss DSLR vs. mirrorless.
Magazine Covers Shot with Phones Ain’t No Thang
Scoring a national magazine cover shoot to prove the greatness of a phone’s camera has become part of the standard PR playbook for manufacturers. TIME featured photos taken by Luisa Dörr using an iPhone for a September 2017 cover story entitled “Firsts” about women changing the world.
Dear Sony: Thank You For the Mirrorless Camera Revolution
The mirrorless camera industry is about to blow up and we have Sony mirrorless to thank for this. This is how they achieved their massive success.
‘Great Photos! You Must Have a Great Camera!’
"Great photos! You must have a great camera!" If you take your craft seriously, the odds of having heard these words are quite high. Audiences associate good images with great cameras, and for the longest time this (almost) accusation has bothered photographers who felt their skills were downplayed. But the interesting bit is that we’re walking towards making the “great cameras = great photos” equation true! And they fit in your pocket.
How Tech Disrupted Photography and Made Things ‘Awful’ for News Photogs
The photojournalism industry has undergone seismic shifts over the past couple of decades with photography's move to digital and the rise of the smartphone camera. The business intelligence firm L2 recently sat down with veteran photojournalist Rick Smolan to chat about how tech has disrupted photography.
The Death of DSLRs is Near
Two decades ago, DSLRs were introduced to replace film cameras. With only a few megapixels, very short battery life, and an overall low quality, it was only natural that most photographers were very skeptical at first. It took a few generations until digital cameras were fully accepted and analog photography was left to the enthusiasts rather than the professionals.
Photography Never Died
Lately, the photography sphere has been inundated, not with the gazillions of photos everyone is talking about, but with article after article proclaiming that photography is dead/over/irrelevant/trash.
50% of All Flickr Photos Are Shot with Smartphones Now — Mostly iPhones
The rise of smartphone photography just hit another milestone: for the first time in Flickr's history, half of all photos being uploaded to the photo-sharing service were shot with a smartphone in 2017.
Google Trends Expands to Include Image Search Trends
You can now research the popularity of what photographers are searching for through the Google Images search engine. Google Trends has expanded to include more "lenses", and one of those is Images.
Fine Art Prices Are Falling, but Photo Prices Are Rising
If you've been thinking about starting a fine art photography collection, now may not be a bad time to start that investment. While most types of fine art are seeing prices plunge, photography is actually growing in clout among art collectors and investors.