After a runner taking a selfie caused a "pile-up" at this year's Hong Kong Marathon in February, the marathon's organizers aren't taking any chances. Starting early so as to get the word out, the marathon is banning selfies and urging runners to leave the smartphones on the sidelines.
What happens when you give a bunch of skaters, some photographers and a light painter free reign to create a Street View tour of a French concert venue/cultural hotspot? We'll give you a hint, it's similar to what a French ski shop did for its virtual tour.
In conjunction with the iPhone 5S debut, Apple also announced that the phone -- or more importantly, it's camera -- would be put to the test at luxury fashion house Burberry's London fashion show. And now that the show is over, the duo is sharing photos and videos taken with the phone to whet your appetite for the September 20th release.
Then-and-now photos are always fascinating to see. Historical scenes come to life when blended into or placed side-by-side with modern-day photographs of cities we all know very well. Be it Paris, New York or San Francisco, most of the best-known cities have gotten the then-and-now treatment to great effect by many a photographer.
The most recent Then and Now series we've run across, however, isn't just meant to show how the scenery has changed. When photographer and historian Marc A. Hermann created the images, he purposely used only vintage (Note: and sometimes gruesome) crime scene photos to fill in the "then" part.
Of all the items that can be destroyed in a disaster, few are as valuable or hard to replace as family photo collections. Photographer Brian Peterson saw that first-hand while living and working in Japan two years ago, when an earthquake and even more devastating tsunami swept away everything many families owned.
Sensing that photography could be a way to help them heal, Peterson started the organization Photohoku (named for the Tohoku region devastated by the tsunami) to help families rebuild their photo albums.
You probably already know this if you have older siblings, but a new British study has confirmed it: the first child gets all the camera attention from Mom and Dad.
Sarah Palin is being sued after her political action committee (or PAC) posted an iconic September 11th photo on her Facebook page and website without asking permission from the copyright owner.
Earlier today, Redditor excranz shared a downright horrible set of promo photos that he claims ABC published on its PR site and took down shortly after. Apparently, the photos are for the ABC show "Once Upon a Time," and between the blur, poor lighting and awkward poses, people have a hard time believing these didn't go straight into the "unacceptable" pile.
After recovering from the initial shock and devastation of September 11th in 2001, the city of New York began laying down plans to erect a new World Trade Center complex. A symbol of recovery and strength, the complex consists of 4 main buildings, the One, 2, 3 and 4 World Trade Centers.
It took many years of fits and starts, but the crown jewel of the new complex -- the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center -- is complete, and the time-lapse above shows what almost 9-years of construction has yielded.
Congratulations, new adopters of film photography -- you're now officially a subculture!
The defining point, of course, is having an independent documentary film about your movement, and that's just what mail-order processor Indie Film Lab is doing with "Long Live Film."
Back in the beginning of August, NYC-based camera superstore B&H Photo Video launched a lighthearted contest called "That's Not What It's Meant For!" It asked for videos of photographers and videographers using technology and equipment in unintended ways.
The submission phase ended recently, and now 10 wacky videos have been selected as finalists. Here they are for your enjoyment.
Lost amid the semi-frenzy over Apple's new iPhone models was a provocative photography-related comment made by Apple Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, during Tuesday's announcement.
Update: The rector of Darul Uloom came out to clarify some of the statements included in the original Hindustan Times article quoted in this post. We have included the significant portion of the update at the bottom.
In response to a question by an engineering graduate who wanted to follow his passion for photography, Darul Uloom, India's leading Islamic seminary, issued a fatwa declaring photography and that particular career path "unlawful and a sin."
One of the key challenges in environmental portraiture is finding the right balance between subject and setting. Zoom in too close, and you lose the magic of location. Too wide, and it's not a portrait anymore.
There are times, however, when you have to forget the rules. Like when you're orbiting 150 miles above the Earth and one of your colleagues is about to take the first ever untethered space walk.
Here's an intriguing new potential revenue stream for photographers: turn a favorite shot into a signature fragrance.
That's what Dutch fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin -- known for their work for major design houses and magazines -- are doing with their portrait "Kirsten, 1996."
I was divorced about a week, so it was perhaps understandable that I was already feeling a little shellshocked when I started another day of work as an advertising photographer at Filenes in Boston on September 11, 2001.
There's no denying Instagram is extremely popular, but where some might be thinking (or maybe hoping) that the photo sharing app's growth is slowing down, that doesn't seem to be the case. According to numbers released by the company itself, Instagram just broke the 150 million monthly active user mark.
The convenience of always having a camera with you also comes with some serious liabilities, especially if someone's well-being depends on anonymity. This is probably why more and more judges are banning cameraphones from their courtrooms.
Back in September of last year, we told you about an incredibly rare Leica M Rangefinder that was being created by Apple design guru Jony Ive. The emphasis there was on incredibly rare, because only one of these puppies is ever going to get made.
At the time we knew the camera would be auctioned off for charity, but it wasn't until today that we found out the specific event. So if you were banking on trying to buy this uber-special Leica, have your black AMEX at the ready: the date is set for September 23rd.
Although there's no shortage of accounts on Instagram where you can see some great space photography courtesy of NASA, the space agency just upped the ante by officially joining the social photo sharing platform itself.
Benny Winfield Jr, perhaps better known as mrpimpgoodgame, has almost 36,000 followers on Instagram and plans to put his face on a T-Shirt that will likely sell pretty well if he does. What did the Huston, TX resident do to earn this kind of Internet fame and recognition? Why, he took selfies of course.
Remember back in early July, when we shared a breathtaking POV parkour video shot by athlete James Kingston of the Ampisound team? Many compared that video to the parkour-influenced first person video game Mirror's Edge, and Ampisound was quick to mention that any resemblance was totally and completely intentional.
The team took it to another level in their newest video, however, by dressing team member Neil Cointet up in the same clothes as the game's protagonist Faith Connors and having him go on a little jaunt with a camera attached to his head.
Agence France Presse is drawing fire from other journalists for withdrawing what one rival described as a "village idiot photo" of French President Francois Hollande.
It's not just Facebook that is eager to unleash the money-making capabilities of Instagram, many companies use the service regularly to connect with their clients and build a brand presence. Heineken's recent Crack the US Open competition is a great example.
Attention amateur concert photographers: are you really being as annoying and disruptive as you could be? Because an attendee at a Major League Baseball game may have just set a new high/low at a recent Tampa Bay Rays home game.
In an ongoing effort to control the squirming beast that is social media, Instagram recently updated its service to ban even more hashtags.
Photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan is perhaps best known for his photos of the Civil War, which include his famous "Harvest of Death" photo. But after covering the war, O'Sullivan decided to strike out West, and when he came back, he brought with him some of the earliest photos of the (quite literally) "wild" American West.
If you've been to a play or other event put on by your child's elementary school recently, you might have experienced something similar to what the Nokia ad above depicts. Meant to tout the prowess of the Lumia 1020, it does a better job at showing just how close we've gotten to ridiculous when it comes to smartphone photography.
We've had precious few chances to get a glimpse into the secretive country of North Korea. With the exception of a few AP photographers working out of the DPRK who have taken to Instagram to share their work, photos of the people of North Korea are rare. It's not like your friends' Flickr streams often fill up with photos from their recent North Korean vacation.
That's exactly why Stockholm-based photographer Simon Röder wanted so badly to go there. And after some planning and a few obstacles, the street photographer was able to turn the trip into a reality, and come back with the photos to prove it.
Photojournalism can be a dangerous profession, especially for those photojournalists who are drawn to conflict photography. Once such photojournalist is Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic, who has been putting his life on the line in war zones for over 20 years.
There have been several stories lately of musicians banning photography and asking fans to keep their cell phones in their pockets and enjoy the show. Most recently, Prince's "purple rules" had security guards at The City Winery in NYC snatching phones in mid-air and kicking people out.
The Unsound music festival taking a larger scale (though less aggressive) approach: festival organizers have banned photography and filming festival-wide, and are asking that festival attendees be the ones to do the enforcing.
For those art enthusiasts who just don't have the millions of dollars required to purchase their own original Van Gogh painting, Fujifilm has a solution for you. After seven years of development, the company's "Reliefography" 3D scanning and printing technique is ready to create near-flawless replicas of great works of art, which will be available to the public for tens of thousands instead of tens of millions.
When the BBC first captured the non-stop train ride from London to Brighton in 1953, it was simply because they wanted to show how the magic of time-lapse photography could get a Londoner to the seaside in only four minutes.
When 1983 came along, they decided to re-capture the journey to see the differences. And now, in 2013, it only seemed appropriate to continue the every-30-years tradition and capture the trip once again.
San Francisco-based interactive artist and freelance creative Ivan Cash recently had a neat idea: go out on the streets of San Francisco and ask random people to share the story behind the most recent photo on their phone (note: there is one racy photo and a few curse words dropped by some of the interviewees).
If you thought you had a problem with Gear Acquisition Syndrome (or GAS) think again, you've got nothing on Mumbai-based photojournalist Dilish Parekh. The Guinness Book World Record holder for the largest camera collection smashed his own record earlier this month when he revealed that he now owns 4,425 cameras.
Hong Kong's tourism industry brings in about $37 billion in revenue for the city each year, and many of the tourists who contribute want to get a picture with the beautiful Hong Kong skyline and Victoria Harbor in the background while they're there.
But what are they supposed to do if their only chance to get that shot is on a hazy/smoggy day in Hong Kong? The government has the answer: giant fake skyline banners.
After watching the movie "The Last Samurai" at a theater back home in Southern California (where I'm originally from), my curiosity for Japan inspired me to go and discover what it's like. I took a couple of vacation trips out there and met a lot of good people before I found a job that sponsored my working visa to officially let me move out to Japan in 2005.
Last year, Berlin-based photographer Jen Osborne got a chance to photograph some therapy animals who were brought in to help cheer up the patients at the Bellingham Health and Rehabilitation Center in Washington.
That in and of itself would be pretty cool, but what made this assignment all the more interesting was the animals she was asked to photograph: two therapy Llamas that go by the names of Marisco and N.H. Flight of the Eagle.
Photography can be a wonderful source of growth, healing and hope. Programs like this one at the VA in Palo Alto have helped PTSD-afflicted veterans cope with their condition, while the EYE AM program was trying to have children tell their stories on an international level.
EYE AM never raised the funding it needed, but another program devoted to helping children through photography has been going strong for a couple of years now, making a difference for children in need all over the United States. This program is called Pictures of Hope.
Sports games and medals are often won and lost at the hands of the referees. Be it an offside call that might have turned into a goal or the line judge that just doesn't want to give those last 6-inches your team needs for the first down, there's good reason cameras are becoming standard backup for refs who might have missed something.
German shot putter David Storl has a particularly good reason to be thankful for cameras these days, since a photo that was almost deleted managed to overturn an erroneous foul call and win him the gold in the IAAF World Championship Men's Shot Put Finals last week.
Google has made sure that the couch potato in all of us has ample opportunity to see the world by adding everything from the world's tallest peaks to an extensive tour of the Grand Canyon to its Street View repertoire. But of course, that's not to say the search giant is anywhere near done.
The company's most recent update, which went live yesterday, added a long list of world-renowned zoos to the list, allowing users to skip the lines and see some lions, giraffes and pandas in their not-so-natural habitats.
Two new photo booth systems have appeared in a rather unlikely location: the New York Public Library. The library system (which, by the way, is the second largest public library in the US) recently installed the booths to allow visitors to capture moments from their library visits and share them with friends and family.
Instagram can be a force for good. For example, the hashtag and Instagram account #litterati has encouraged thousands to pick up trash they find on the street. But as with most tools, it can also do harm, and a couple of day care workers in Virginia recently used the service to those ends, losing their jobs in the process.
Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, often referred to these days as Royal Baby George, had his first photo shoot recently. But if you expected the future British king to get his pick of professional photographers when it comes to his first official family portraits, you'd be wrong.
The photos -- which have been called everything from "intimate" and "cozy" to "not really what you want" and "just bad" -- were actually taken by the Duchess of Cambridge's father, Michael Middleton.
Vermont senator Patrick Leahy is a lot of things: an expert marksman, the most senior senator on Capitol Hill, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and third line for the presidency, just to name a few. But even though he's had as successful of a political career as a Senator might ever hope to have, if you ask him what he would like to do full-time, he'll tell you photography.
For years now, the aging senator has made a name for himself as the senator who you never see without his camera. And although we've shown you his work in the past, in the video above, Leahy himself weighs in on his work and photography in general.
Last Thursday, we told you about the newest anti-paparazzi bill to hit the California State Assembly. Focused on expanding the definition of harassment, SB 606 was drafted for the specific purpose of protecting the children of celebrities -- some hollywood actresses have already spoken out in support of the bill.
As with many a legal mater, however, not everyone is in favor of the bill. While most would agree that protecting children from being harassed by paparazzi is a worthy goal, the NPPA is now officially speaking out against SB 606, warning the public that this bill's vague wording "threatens first amendment rights."
The crowd surfing blow up ball at a concert isn't a new idea, but late last year HP and Almap BBDO took it in a new direction. As part of HPs "Making Memories Last" campaign, the company fit one of the massive concert beach balls with a high-definition camera and WiFi antenna.
The world of photography is awash with gear and accessories for an eager public. But not every invention is worthy of merit as seen by this glorious collection of “WTF were they thinking?”.
There will soon be one more road in the United States named after a famous photographer. The city council in Tulsa, Oklahoma has voted to change the namesake of its "Brady street" from Wyatt Tate Brady to Mathew B. Brady.
Wyatt Tate was the founder of Tulsa, but also a racist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Matthew B. was one of the best known 19th century American photographers who documented the American Civil War.
Looking to incorporate drone photography and videography into your wedding photo packages? Make sure you're a pro at flying the drone before getting it anywhere near your clients.
The video above is an example of what can happen if you're not.