"Can you help me with my camera?" I get that a lot, as I'm sure do most camera weenies whose geek credentials are a little too obvious.
And most of the time I'm happy to co-operate. Ideally, I get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing somebody is going to have legible images of a key moment in their lives. At worst, at least there'll be one less uncontrolled on-board flash to blind me.
When I saw the work of photographer "Fiddle Oak" last month, I was so blown away by the level of maturity, boldness, and confidence exuded from his images. He’s 14, people! And according to the story, he’s been creating shooting and manipulating the work since he was 8.
For his project "Ordinary Behavior," illustrator and product designer Kevin Lck wanted to explore the relationship between humans and the technology that is devouring our souls has become such a large part of our lives. To do so, he chose five household objects and set about creating special cardboard replicas.
One of those objects (although it doesn't exactly quality as a "household object") was a Leica M3, and his black and white rendition is impressive even before you turn it around.
If you ever take your camera on a safari to photograph animals in the wild, here's one animal you should be careful around: the giraffe.
Sure, it doesn't have a dangerous reputation like lions or other fierce animals at the top of the food chain, but if you're not careful around the world's tallest terrestrial animal---especially the hormonal ones---you may quickly find yourself in a situation that's strangely similar to a famous scene in the movie Jurassic Park.
Keeping tabs on all of the photos that go up on Facebook and/or Instagram daily is no easy feat. Some 208,300 photos are uploaded to Facebook alone every minute; when you're trying to make sure that each and every one of those complies with the community standards, mistakes are bound to happen.
Photographer Katie DelaVaughn of PhotoRaya and breastfeeding support site The Leaky Boob both recently found themselves on the receiving end of these mistakes.
Time-lapse videos are all the rage these days, but the one above is unlike any that have ever been made. It shows an ancient Egyptian statue spinning around in a glass on its own.
More than 75 years ago, aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared not far from the completion of her record-breaking attempt to circumnavigate the Earth at the equator. The wreckage of her plane was never found, and many believe that what's left of that wreckage is still somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific ocean.
Another theory, however, is that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan made an emergency landing on the reef surrounding the yet uninhabited island known as Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro). And some recently found aerial negatives of that island might hold to key to proving this theory right.
Photographer Christopher Domakis has photographed both sides of the urban coin in China. Through two unrelated photo series, Hutong and Microcosm, he has managed to juxtapose the quiet closeness of the narrow Hutong alley neighborhoods of Beijing with the hustle and bustle of the rapidly growing urban developments in many of China's biggest cities.
If you've gone to a concert or public event or even certain art openings recently, you'll notice that something is amiss. In the past, people would look, enjoy and try their best to experience the moment when they attended such things. Now, many of them are doing their best to craft the most likeable smartphone photo.
The BBC's Newsnight is troubled by this trend, and so they set out to discover if the smartphone photography movement is doing more harm than good.
Most high-end cameras come with diopters that allow photographers to calibrate the viewfinder to match their eyesight. Adjusting the diopter is easy: simply stare through the camera while turning the little dial or knob found next to your viewfinder (the one with the +/-). Once the scene is sharp (assuming the lens is focused), you're done!
Apparently one of the dangers of diopter adjustment---for some camera owners at least---is accidentally stabbing your eyeball with your finger.
Latte art is something that's often the subject of photographs, but have you ever seen an latte artwork that is a photograph?
A coffee business over in Taiwan recently came up with the idea of providing a unique product to customers by having photographs of their faces printed directly onto the foam of the coffee they're ordering!
Hey, professional and aspiring photographers! Are you tired of responding to attractive assignment offers only to find later that compensation for the work consists only of "valuable exposure" for your work? And then you have to explain that you can't feed your family on exposure?
Well fret no more. with the new Exposure Helper™, you can feed your family on exposure, allowing you to accept all the free assignments you want!
VICE Magazine has withdrawn from it Web site a photo series depicting famous female authors committing suicide, after the piece drew widespread criticism for being "breathtakingly tasteless."
Call it female empowerment; call it friendship; call it bonding... Whatever you call it, the newest trend in boudoir photography involves “getting your boudoir on” with your friends. Yes, according to the Today Show, groups of women are now stripping down to next to nothing with their besties for professional group boudoir photos.
A young woman was fatally stabbed last night after photographing homeless men holding offensive signs while begging in Hollywood.
Turns out that driver's license photos are useful for more than acute embarrassment. States, realizing they have a de-facto visual database of most of their residents, are increasingly plugging those photos into facial-recognition software and Facebook to solve crimes -- and worrying privacy advocates in the process.
About a month ago, we shared some stunning footage that showed what London was like all the way back in 1926. The original filming was done by Claude Friese-Greene, whose father William invented the 'Biocolour' technique of capturing color film footage.
That particular video was a compilation of snippets that Friese-Greene had filmed in London when he returned form a 2-year journey. He called the final product The Open Road, and it was a 26-part series that took him all over Britain. Fortunately for us, much of it has now been digitized and uploaded bit-by-bit to YouTube by The BFI National Archive.
Need a way to covertly transport your memory card loaded with digital photos from one place to another? You should look into using spy coins.
Covert Coins are a series of coins that have been precision hand-machined from actual coins and can be opened up to reveal a secret compartment.
School portraits don't often make the news for causing controversy, but that's exactly what the class photo above has been doing over in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Parents of the boy seen on the right side of the frame were unhappy after receiving the photo and finding that their son had been set apart from his classmates and teacher due to the fact that he uses a wheelchair.
Sara Hansson and Jens Lennartsson feel that the media at large has painted an unfair and inaccurate picture of children in developing countries. And so, they've founded an organization that seeks to undo this wrong in a unique way.
The organization is called EYE AM, and through it, Hansson and Lennartsson hope to reach out to the children in these countries, teach them the basics of photography, and then help them to tell their own stories.
About a year ago, I was sitting around narcissistically Google-ing myself when I came across the photo above of "Robert C. Paetz + Mother". It was dated 1923 and was being sold for $12 by a man named Paul in Northern California.
I quickly did the math and figured it was my 93-year-old grandfather and my great-grandmother, Matilda (who eventually lived until 102 when I was 16).
It appears that "wedding party running from _____" is at risk of becoming a meme among wedding photographers. After seeing that photo of a wedding party running from a T-Rex that went viral last month, photographers Danielle and Tony Lombardo of Little Blue Lemon decided to do their own remix.
A state-funded museum in Paris is drawing widespread criticism for a new exhibit of photos that show sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Here's yet another reason why it's a bad idea to think reporters outfitted with cameras can replace actual photojournalists -- the reporters apparently are dumb enough to wander into an abandoned insane asylum full of zombies.
(The first thing a real photojournalist would do, of course is ask "Do I get paid mileage?" before refusing to take the gig.)
Mystery solved: Beyonce is so riled up about restricting photographer access because she's hell-bent on projecting an image somewhere between "Photoshopped" and "impossible."
That's the impression from the the pop star's latest ad campaign, in which she sports body proportions that make her look like she stepped straight from a U.N. refugee camp into a Paris couture salon.
I just read the story of everyone's favorite teen idol, Justin Bieber, and his tangle with the paparazzi at a Miami night spot last week. It appears a photographer found disfavor with The Biebs and, as a result, had his camera (and memory card) confiscated by a Bieb Bodyguard.
You've had a rough day, you're bone tired and ready for bed. What would feel better than cuddling up with an image of some anonymous dude in a Superman outfit?
Yeah, I can think of a couple million things, too. But apparently there's a market for body pillows emblazoned with images of comics fans dressing as their favorite characters. The legal and ethical framework for selling them, however, is a different matter.
We're getting more and more accustomed to authorities telling us if and how we can photograph something, so the camera ban enacted for the recent Reno Rodeo isn't all that surprising.
What's different with this one is the intended target of the ban, which animal-rights activists claim is intended to prevent them from exposing abuses.
In a surprising, yet not so surprising bit of news, pop teen sensation Justin Bieber and one of his bodyguards have been sued by a photographer following a brouhaha that took place outside "The Hit Factory" in Miami last week.
Photos of the clash between the Turkish government and the country's people have been trickling down from many sources. Even as news outlets are accused of remaining purposely ignorant of the matter, professional and amateur photographers alike have taken to Facebook and other social media sites to spread the word and show the world what is happening.
But one of those images -- one depicting a "lady in red" non-threateningly holding her ground as she gets blasted with pepper spray by a police officer -- has become more than a mere photo, rising to the status of "symbol."
Charles Emir Richards is only a part-time photographer, but in the industry of photojournalism, being in the right place at the right time can be almost as important as photographic skill. And it's this that Richards has in spades: the right place at the right time.
The protests currently going on in Turkey that have attracted national attention are happening right in Richards' backyard. And as he's amassed more and more photos of the clash between people and police, he's taken to Facebook to share those photos freely, allowing anyone to use them in the name of spreading the word.
Adobe recently came up with a clever and funny way of promoting its Adobe Creative Day event that'll be held next week. The company visited a bus stop in Sweden and pranked people by Photoshopping them in real time into a digital movie poster advertisement displayed next to the bench. The whole thing was documented with hidden cameras and shared in the video above.
Starting a global movement using a photography app is no small task, but that's what Jeff Kirschner has done this last year. Using the hashtag #litterati, he's managed to start a world-wide Instagram campaign that is helping to stop pollution and clean up the environment one piece of trash at a time.
Mikki the chimpanzee is now the de facto king of the ape photography world. A selection of photographs by (and of) him fetched a whopping £50,000 (~$78,000) at auction this past week at Sotheby’s Auction House in London.
(Today is National Doughnut Day. I am of the opinion it should be a National Holiday, but other people in my studio don't share the belief. They would be wrong.)
(The DH stands for "darling husband," although in light of the following conversation that took place upon entering the studio this morning, I am doing away with that adjective.)
DH: "Hey, last minute change this afternoon. Got a shoot for two bodybuilders, so I need your help."
In a short segment titled "Photojournalists vs. iPhones" on The Colbert Report yesterday, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the Chicago Sun-Times' decision to lay off its entire photography department.
I was a kid in the early 90s and my brother would often drive me around. One day, on the radio, a song came on by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. My brother turned to me and asked, “Can you believe how popular this song is?” I didn’t understand what he was asking. “I like this song,” I said. “Yeah fine, but it sounds like it’s from the 40’s.” This was one of the first times in my life that I had become aware of time.
Not time, like wristwatch time. The grand idea of time. That long incomprehensible string that was here before me and that’d be here after I’ve gone. A pretty heavy concept to be born from listening to a Squirrel Nut Zippers song.
Sometimes getting access to shoot concerts or major concert events can be tricky. Dealing with publicists, event planners, and even security. But one band is making it super simple to get into the pit with your camera in hopes of capturing great shots -- for a fee.
Well-known American rock band Hawthorne Heights has posted an advertisement of sorts on their website, selling anyone the chance to take photos of them at this year's Warped Tour.
We can think of a lot of worse things to call a photograph than "gothic," but that label was enough to really tick off the owner of a Kansas photo studio.
There has been a series of devastating tornados in the American Midwest recently, and one of the emerging trends -- especially in this social media era -- is the hunt for dramatic photographs and videos. Earlier this week we wrote about how one particular filmmaker created a tornado-proof vehicle to capture footage from directly inside funnels.
That filmmaker is backed by the Discovery Channel and has the funds and know-how to do things correctly (i.e. "safely"). On the other hand, there is also a new generation of storm chasers who are getting closer and closer to the storms in ordinary vehicles; the video above is one example of when people take their cameras too close.
Ben High of Marion, Iowa has two big passions: making jewelry and making photographs. When he's not designing jewelry at Philip's Diamond Shop, High loves tinkering with old cameras and shooting instant film photographs.
The two talents sometimes come together for some pretty fantastic results; a number of rings High has created are inspired by camera lenses.
The Chicago Sun-Times has raised quite a furor talking after unexpectedly laying off its entire photography staff yesterday. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, with some commentators calling it "a sign of the times," while others are wondering whether the newspaper is trying to pull "a union-busting move."
Los Angeles-based writer and comedian Jason Sereno decided to weigh in a different way: he created a tongue-in-cheek Craigslist job listing in Chicago.
When Wellington, New Zealand-based photographer Brady Dyer proposed to his then-girlfriend Emma in …
When New York City-based photographer Jerrit Pruyn recently asked his girlfriend of 2 years to marry him, he did so in quite a photo-tastic way. Pruyn popped the question through the viewfinder of his old vintage SLR!
Here's an interesting photo trivia question: can you name any major world currencies that feature an image of a camera?
Answer: the old five hundred peso bill over in the Philippines. On the back of the original series is an image of a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera!
If you're ever photographing a group of people on a dock or pier, be sure the structure can support the full weight of your subjects. The video above shows what happened to newlyweds Frank and Tricia Fearon and their 29-member wedding party a couple of weekends ago after they decided to pose on a dock for a photo.
"Please turn off or silence your cell phones, and absolutely no photography."
The request at the beginning of Tony Bennett's (Yes, I'm old and I like jazz. Deal with it.) rapturously received concert last week at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall was standard stuff. What happened afterward was far from standard, however.
Professional birth photography is a growing niche, as more and more expectant mothers are hiring photographers to document the first first few moments of their new child's life. Miami, Florida-based photographer Emily Robinson offers birth photography services, and is accustomed to photographing deliveries as they happen in hospitals and homes.
A huge anti-gay-marriage protest in Paris turned …
Want to have some fun as you're learning how to use Photoshop for image editing? Try creating a "Photoshop Chimera." In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous creature composed of three different animals: the lion, snake, and goat. The term "chimera" has since come to describe any imaginary creature that's the mashup of two or more real animals.
Reddit user Arne Olav has attracted some attention as of late for his humorous chimeras created by compositing two different photographs of animals.