Culture

Back in 2010, we shared how artist Luke Jerram had created a wedding ring that can project tiny slide photographs when placed in front of a light source. After seeing that idea, Cambridge-based engineer John Ding decided that he wanted to make something similar for his sweetheart, Becky.

Ding spent the next two years designing a silver pendant that can project a photograph. He ended up creating what he calls the "Projecting Pendant."

"Skywalking" is a photo fad that gained quite a bit of publicity last year, and many of the crazy images were created by thrill-seekers in and around Russia.

A Ukranian daredevil who goes by Mustang Wanted is taking the concept one step further: rather than simply climbing to high locations and photographing his feet on the edge, the 26-year-old man poses for portraits while hanging off edges by his arms and by his legs. The concept could be described as, "skyhanging."

Here's something that might give you a chuckle: it's the invisible friend prank. The video above shows magician Rahat Hussein and prankster Jack Vale teaming up to pull this prank on unsuspecting passersby in Hollywood.

If you're set to get married soon and are in the process of planning for the big day, here's a tip that might save you from some sadness further down the road: don't go cheap on the photography if you can help it. It turns out that spending too little on photography is one of the biggest regrets brides have after their wedding, while spending too much rarely causes remorse.

For a wedding issue that will soon be hitting newsstands, New York Magazine created an infographic titled "What They Would Have Done Differently." The magazine asked one hundred recent brides about what they'd do differently if they could go back in time.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence may be fine with excessive Photoshopping, but advertising regulatory authorities in the United States aren't of the same opinion. We reported back in 2011 that the UK had banned certain advertisements for excessive Photoshop work, and that the US was moving in the same direction.

Photographer Noah Kalina's Everyday project features one photo of his face every day, and has been running since January 11, 2000. Kalina uploaded time-lapse videos created using the photos in 2006 and 2012, and both videos quickly went viral online. Not only did they amass millions of views, but they sparked a new phenomenon as well, as people around the world started snapping daily photos of their own faces and uploading similar videos to the web.

The video above is one that uses the same idea popularized by Kalina, except it's very different from the rest (warning: it's a bit disturbing).

This strange looking vintage camera was created by Guangzhou Art Academy student Hu Shaoming, who spent four months disassembling two cameras from the 1930s and 1940s and rebuilding them with a zipper that reveals the inner mechanical components.

Urban exploration photography has gotten quite a bit of publicity in recent years, with more and more photographers taking their cameras to off-limits and/or abandoned parts of their city in order to see and capture what most people never get a chance to. While it may be a fun pastime of practitioners and one that leads to beautiful images, not everyone is a fan.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) warns that photographs shot by urban explorers could pose a national security risk by aiding terrorists in their surveillance and planning.

Here's a lighthearted dose of humor to get you through the workday: Thumbs & Ammo is a humorous new photo blog with a tagline that says, "Real tough guys don't need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude." Each image in the ongoing blog is a movie still or poster from a famous flick, with the action heroes' guns replaced with thumbs-ups.

The rise of a plethora of fashion blogs has led, almost inevitably, to the rise of a style of fashion photography known as "street style." The all-access blogging medium gave photography enthusiasts who admired what legends like Bill Cunningham do a way to break into the industry and share both their opinions and pictures.

Over the past several years, however, the practice has exploded -- much to the chagrin of big fashion editors and journalists who now have to deal with massive crowds of photogs outside of major fashion shows. GARAGE Magazine's Take My Picture is a short documentary that explores this explosion, and tries to offer both sides of the story.

Here's a startling side-by-side comparison of news photos that has begun floating around on the social web. Both photographs show a large crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of a new pope. The top one was what AP photographer Luca Bruno saw in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was introduced, while the bottom one is what AP photographer Michael Sohn witnessed yesterday at the election of Pope Francis.

Leica's Hermes edition M9-P is a beautiful camera that comes with a steep price of $50,000. If you don't have a spare 50 Gs lying around waiting to be burned, check out this replica created by Halifax, Nova Scotia-based photographer Chris McVeigh using 114 LEGO pieces. Sure, it may not be functional as a camera, but it's a great conversation piece, and one that you can build yourself at home!

Madeleine Corcoran over at Duckrabbit has published a sharp criticism of photojournalist Samuel Aranda's decision to license his most famous conflict photo to Canadian electronic band Crystal Castles for use on their album cover and merchandise.

Template and Photoshop action maker The Shoppe Designs has been making a humorous series of posters called Shoppe Satire. Each graphic pokes fun at some aspect of the photography business, with inside jokes that certain types of photographers will be able to relate quite well with.

Some broadcasters around the world are starting to experiment with a new camera angle: the referee cam. By having refs on the field wear special high-definition cameras on the side of their head, the broadcasters are able to capture intense in-game footage that bring fans into the middle of the action.

We've seen a number camera-shaped pendant necklaces before, but here's one that's a bit different from the rest. It's a camera pendant that doubles as a small clock that hangs around your neck.

If you're ever in Malaysia and notice a large group of children walking around with fancy DSLR cameras, you might be looking at a special new 'Big Brother/Big Sister' program called The World Through Our Eyes. The program is designed to bring joy and healthy relationships to the lives of orphans and underprivileged children by opening their eyes to the joys of photography.

Skin care company Dove is speaking out on the issue of "fake beauty" being promoted in photographs through Photoshopping. Rather than address the issue directly at first, the company decided to speak out directly to those responsible for "fake" images by doing some clever guerrilla marketing. It essentially pranked retouchers through the Web by releasing a fake Photoshop beauty Action that undoes manipulation rather than creates it.

The Harlem Shake meme has taken over the Internet over the past few weeks, and even the world of photography has been invaded. Here's a small roundup of Harlem Shake videos put out by photography and camera enthusiasts.

Artist, swimmer and former Olympian Casey Legler is in the process of adding another line to her resume: male model. As a model for Ford Models, Legler is making headlines over the fact that she models only men's clothing for the agency. In fact, to her knowledge, she is the first woman to ever sign an exclusively-male modeling contract.

Apparently robbers in Northern California are starting to learn that photojournalists typically shoot with pretty expensive gear. The …

Oakland Raiders football player Desmond Bryant was arrested this past weekend and charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief (apparently the 27-year-old show up at a neighbor's house drunk). While it's not uncommon for a famous athlete to find themselves in jail, Bryant's case is attracting quite a bit of attention due to the ridiculous way he posed for his mugshot (seen above) when he was booked at around 9:30 in the morning on Sunday.

In a red carpet interview with Access Hollywood's Billy Bush, Jennifer Lawrence shocked viewers by actually saying that she loves Photoshop "more than anything in the world." The conversation began on the red carpet when Bush showed Lawrence the results of a photo shoot she did for Christian Dior.

The Miss Dior ads she did recently turned out unrealistically stunning. In them she has perfect skin, a long slender neck and incredibly thin arms. Seeing them for the first time on the red carpet, her reaction was a delighted "That doesn't look like me at all!" Followed by the above "I love Photoshop more than anything in the world."

Benedict XVI officially resigned yesterday after eight years as the Pope of the Catholic Church. The Vatican decided to commemorate his papacy by publishing a digital photo album to its website. It's a serious set of photos that marks a serious occasion, but it's attracting attention for the wrong reason: most sites that are reporting on it seem to be focusing on the font selections rather than the images themselves.

The text in the album is Comic Sans and the watermarks on the photos are Papyrus.

It's an unfortunate truth in the world of concert photography that some bands refuse to issue press passes to "small time" local music photographers. The Killers are one such band.

International fashion magazine Numero is raising some eyebrows with its choice of photography for an editorial titled, "African Queen." The piece features 16-year-old Ondria Hardin -- a caucasian model -- with heavily darkened skin.

A couple were visiting a vista point near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco this past Valentine's Day when they came across a black camera bag that had apparently been misplaced. After the owner didn't turn up to recover it, they looked inside and found a wallet with Chinese currency, credit cards, an "expensive-looking" camera and lens... and $11,000 in cash.

Who owns public art illegally placed onto private buildings? That's a question that came up recently after a famous Banksy work in London was ripped out of the side of a building, shipped across the Atlantic, and put up for auction with an estimated final price of over half a million dollars.

If you're a fan of photography and of Bill Watterson's popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, you'll probably love what Oregon-based freelance photographer Michael S. Den Beste has been working on recently. He's using his Photoshoppin' skills to blend Calvin and Hobbes characters into photographs of real world locations that match the settings seen in the comics. The results are magical, beautiful, and oh-so-very-fun.

Want to buy all the camera equipment you need to start a photography business for just $15.35? All you'll need is... a time machine! Reddit user sneeden found this Sears Roebuck and Co. consumer guide for the fall of 1900. Two of the pages inside the catalog are for view camera kits that can help anyone "start in a pleasant and good paying business."

On April 8, 2011, Senator Jon Kyl was quoted on the Senate floor as saying, "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

This is not a post about abortion or Planned Parenthood. This is a discussion about veracity and why it matters in photojournalism. In fact, about 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion-related. When Sen. Kyl was confronted with the facts, his office responded with “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement.”

In the middle of last year, The Economist released rankings for the world's most livable cities, and Hong Kong was found at the top. What many people don't know, however, is that there is a percentage of Hong Kong residents living in rather horrid conditions.

In an attempt to draw attention to the issue, human rights organization Society for Community Organization recently commissioned a series of photographs showing what a number of unacceptable living spaces look like when viewed from directly overhead. (Here's a larger version of the photo above.)

Back in 2010, we humorously reported that chickens have image stabilized heads. Some people took the idea further, turning chickens into organic Steadicams and doing further research into the subject.

NYC-based creative agency OKFocus has created a brilliant interactive music video for the song "Not The Same" by Tanlines. The experimental video is styled after Photoshop's workspace.

Online dating websites are a multi-billion dollar business nowadays, and more and more single-and-looking people turn to the Interwebs to find their soul mates. Photographers Patrick Eggert and Sophie Ellis met through the Web as well, but not through a matchmaking site: their relationship started through a Flickr comment.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey this week that sheds light on social media use among Americans. One of the networks they asked participants about was Instagram.

After surveying 1,802 Internet users in late 2012, the study found that 13% of Internet users use the mobile photo sharing service. It also found that the service is "especially appealing" to "Adults ages 18-29, African-Americans, Latinos, women, [and] urban residents."

One of the major international news stories today is the fact that a meteorite streak across the sky in central Russian today, causing an explosion and shock wave that injured over 1,000 people. It was the largest meteor reported since 1908. The event was well documented, as many Russian drivers had dashcams rolling as the event unfolded.

Award-winning photographer Michael Wolf is raising some eyebrows with a new photo project titled "Window Watching." The series features photographs of high-rise apartment windows in Hong Kong, offering glimpses into the lives of people living inside the private residences. Basically, Wolf pointed a telephoto lens at open windows to photograph people going about their day-to-day-lives, without their knowledge and consent.

Los Angeles-based musician Paz Dylan recently pulled a pretty funny prank on the Grammy Museum in LA. He made a series of informational wall display pieces featuring strange descriptions and photographs of himself eating tacos, and then hung them up on the walls of the museum next to the real pieces. That's pretty clever, but get this: no one noticed, and the pieces stayed up for a month.

The photograph above is a piece he made for the "Wall of Fame."

In December of 2008, as I was getting ready for a vacation trip to Brussels, I posted the above self-portrait of myself sporting my new winter coat to my Flickr account. I didn’t think much of it after posting it and I’d pretty much forgotten about it over the years.

Today, as I was reading some discussions about people having their photos used to create fake online identities I decided to use Google Image Search to see if any of my self portraits could be found anywhere on the vast Internet.

If you've been closely following the story of Instagram and its role in the world of casual photography, you might enjoy this humorous short film by photographer Grant McGuire. It's titled "Filter My Life."

Check out this DSLR Paparazzi lamp, created by Spanish design studio Monoculo Design Studio. It's a wooden hanging lamp that's shaped like a gigantic Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 camera lens.

Heads up, celebrities: nothing is too personal for the lenses of money- and star-hungry paparazzi photographers. Actress Evan Rachel Wood found out the hard way today after The Daily Mail published paparazzi photographs of her leaving a hospital with an ultrasound scan image clutched in her hands. The article was titled, "Baby's first picture! Pregnant Evan Rachel Wood can't stop smiling as she emerges with ultrasound scan." Understandably, Wood was furious.

Here's another curious photography-related novelty item for those of you looking to fill your house with them (i.e. those of you who purchased the lens shaped vacuum cleaner and lens-shaped humidifier that we featured recently): it's a lens shaped pepper mill.

Mug shots and airbrushing are both photography-related, but they aren't commonly found together in stories. Not so with some ongoing controversy over in Greece, though. The police there may soon be under investigation after releasing a number of mug shots that appear to have been Photoshopped.

Why would they 'shop photos of suspected criminals, you ask? The claim is that the images were edited to hide injuries that were inflicted by officers during (or after) the arrests.

When we run into issues regarding photo usage, the photographer is typically involved in one way or another. A company may be trying to use their work without paying, or they might find derivative works of their photography in an art show.

But in this case, neither of the two people involved actually took the photo in question, they were in it. David Bowie is leaning on EMI UK to change the cover art on the re-release of Morrissey's 1989 single The Last of the Famous International Playboys, because it features a previously un-seen candid photo of the two musicians hanging out in New York.

Chrysler hit a home run this past Super Bowl with its photographic "God Made a Farmer" commercial... so let the spoofs begin. Photo backup service Mosaic create the parody above titled "God Made a Photographer."

Want a perfect example of the Streisand effect in action? Look no further than what happened this week involving Beyonce's publicist, some unflattering Super Bowl performance photos, and a single email requesting that photos be taken offline.

Drive across the west end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and you're bound to see the iconic Portland, Oregon sign, commonly known as the "White Stag sign." It's an oft-photographed sign that was named a historic landmark back in 1977.

If you were planning on featuring it in a photo shoot, however, you'll now want to bring your checkbook in addition to your camera -- the city of Portland is now charging fees for anyone who would like to use images of the sign commercially.

Behold, the coolest photography-related toy we've seen so far this year: War Journalist: Battlefield Hero. It's a 1/6-scale Toymaster-brand action figure that lets kids play make believe with their very own conflict photographer!