Culture

After the Instagram Terms of Service controversy erupted this past week, Randall Munroe of XKCD published …

If you had any doubts regarding how much of a part of our culture Instagram has become, just take a peek at the public outcry that erupted after Instagram announced changes to its policies yesterday. The controversial edits were reported in media outlets around the world, and legions of die-hard Instagram fans took to social media channels to protest them.

People mainly focused on a section of the document that appears to give Instagram sweeping permissions to sell photos without consent or compensation to third-parties for advertising purposes.

Lens-shaped coffee mugs and vacuum flasks (the proper name for the Thermos) have become a hot novelty item in the world of photography over the past couple of years, and Leica wants a piece of the action. Two weeks ago, a Leica-branded coffee mug was spotted on eBay, and now it appears that the strange product will be hitting store shelves at brick-and-mortar Leica retail locations.

Earlier this year, we wrote about a dangerous new Russian photo fad called "skywalking," in which thrill-seeking climber-photographers seek out the highest man-made structures they can find, climb to the apexes without proper safety equipment, and then shoot photographs of themselves and the view once they're there.

Two of the photographers who have been generating a lot of buzz in this niche are Vitaly Raskalov and Alexander Remnev.

Russian wildlife photographer Igor Shpilenok captured this perfect Kodak moment of another shooter …

Here's a slightly-oldie but a very-goodie: New York University photography professor Fred Ritchin gave this keynote address last year at the "What's Next?" event put on by Foam. He shares his thoughts on the past, present, and future of digital photography and how it impacts the world around us.

We've shared a number of photography-inspired tattoos in the past, but here's a concept we've never seen before. Brunssum, Netherlands-based tattoo artist Helma van der Weide created this optical illusion tattoo for her daughter Lotte van den Acker's forearm. All Lotte needs to do to show off her passion for photography is cover up her eyes with her arm and voila! Instant photography!

Less than a week removed from the train photographer tragedy in Sacramento, California, another sad story has made its way across our desks. A 23-year-old man named Nicholas Wieme died in the pursuit of a "rooftopping" photograph yesterday after he fell into a building's smokestack in Chicago.

When the engineering students and staff of King's College in London gathered together to take a faculty portrait, the photographer used an old camera that panned from left to right in order to capture an extremely long panorama of the entire group in one frame. It worked a bit like the panorama features on modern smartphones: start the exposure on one side of the frame, and then gradually sweep the camera across the scene while everyone in the frame stays as still as possible.

The New York Post sparked a firestorm of controversy last week after publishing a photo of a man about to be struck by a subway train. People around the world were outraged that a photographer decided to photograph what had occurred, that he had sold (or, in the photographer's words, licensed) the photo to a newspaper, and that the paper decided to publish it with a sensationalist front page story.

Check out this unique necklace created by artist Ashley Gilreath last year. Called "I Am Who They Were," the piece is designed to represent Gilreath's memories of climbing up the stairway in her grandparents' house -- a stairway lined with family photographs.

Here's a photo that's currently going viral on the web. As with many other viral photos, it's being shared with all kinds of different descriptions, and people are simply passing it on to family and friends without bothering to verify whether or not the captions are real.

New York City gallery W/------ (pronounced "with") seems to think that art buying has gotten a bit snobby, and that photographers have gotten a bit used to having unlimited chances to capture the perfect shot. Enter their new Disposable Cameras project, currently on display at the NADA art fair in Miami through this weekend. If you visit W/------'s booth at the fair, you'll find a wall of 24 hanging disposable cameras, each with a very hefty price tag.

An anonymous reader emailed us with a complaint about the way Fujifilm is marketing the X-E1 in a non-gender-neutral way.

The saga of anti-virus pioneer John McAfee's run from the law is a strange one, but this much is clear: McAfee wishes geotagging wasn't a feature built into modern cameras. After a month of fleeing from Belizean law enforcement after a neighbor was found murdered, the software tycoon was finally taken into custody this week, largely due to a single photo loaded with GPS data.

Custom photo frame maker Alphabet Photography has scored one of the first big viral marketing wins of this holiday season by releasing the creative video above a couple of weeks ago. In it, they play the popular Christmas tune Carol of the Bells using various objects inside the warehouse in which the company's photo frames are made.

Well, what do you know: upgrading a Fujifilm X-E1 is easy! A photographer named Richard over at Fuji Rumors figured out how to transform his $1,000 X-E1 into a $6,400 Leica M9 digital rangefinder. The upgrade costs just pennies -- it only requires four strategically placed decal stickers.

The New York Post got the whole world talking about it yesterday after publishing a morbid front page photo showing a man about to be struck by a subway train. The photographer behind the image, freelance photojournalist R. Umar Abbasi, has received criticism from people who believe he should have done more to help the victim, or, at the very least, do anything but snap photographs of what was about to happen.

After Polaroid film died off, the The Impossible Project spent years rebooting the factories and breathing new life into old lines of instant film. However, the white-bordered film isn't the only thing Impossible has brought back from the dead. The company has also recreated Polaroid fashion from decades ago, launching the Polaroid Classic Factory Jacket.

There are certain photographs subjects that you often find while browsing the photo sharing service Instagram. Examples might include feet, the foam art in cups of coffee, old doors, and duck-face self-portraits shot using a bathroom mirror. CollegeHumor released a parody music video yesterday that collects a whole bunch of these stereotypes into song.

If you happen to catch a glance of the New York Post's cover today, the above photo is what you'll see. It's an attention grabbing image, showing a man who is moments away from being struck and killed by an oncoming subway train in New York City. It's also a controversial image, not just because of the morbid moment it captures, but because of the fact that it even exists.

If you've been following the news, you might have heard that a man John McAfee is on the run from police who want to question him about a murder. Not just any ol' John McAfee, but the John McAfee, the once-ultra-rich founder of anti-virus software company McAfee. Well, a photograph published to the web today may have revealed the exact location McAfee is was hiding.

Canon started quite a fad back in 2010 by handing out novelty lens mugs at the Vancouver Olympic games. Within two years, it seems like everyone is making and selling lens-shaped coffee mugs now. If you thought Leica had stayed out of the craze, think again. Leica Rumors spotted the pen and coffee cup above being sold on eBay last week. The luxury Caran d'Ache pen carries the familiar red dot, while the cup features Noctilux lens markings.

Check out this brilliant marketing idea: to promote its professional sling-style camera backpacks, Kata designed a carnival/arcade-style game called Shootout. It's live contest that has been held in various store locations and trade shows around the world. Basically, participants engage a virtual cowboy photographer in a duel. Once the timer starts, one must swing their camera bag around, "unholster it", and snap a photo of the screen. If the time captured in your photo is less than the time achieved by Mr. Cowboy Photog (and faster than other participants), you win a pretty pricey camera bag.

A few weeks ago we shared a custom-built workspace by a photographer named Tom Brinckman. This week we have a glimpse into photographer Dan Jahn's dream studio, a 2800-square-foot space in downtown Denver, Colorado that Jahn designed every inch of himself.

Candid snapshots that go viral online are often spread because they show people doing something embarrassing or stupid, so it's refreshing to see a photo of a different sort taking the web by storm. The photo in question is of a police officer's random act of kindness, snapped by an Arizona woman named Jennifer Foster when she was visting New York City back on November 14th.

Supercuts of movies are all the rage these days; here's one that'll be of interest to photography and camera enthusiasts. Simply titled "Photographers," the video was created by English artists Mishka Henner and David Oates, who spent hours upon hours watching more than 100 movies. The duo extracted short snippets from each one and spent months turning them into the giant whirlwind tour seen in the video above (warning: there's a dash of language, violence, and risqué business).

Photography satirist Missy Mwac of the web series MWACattack (whose tongue-in-cheek advice videos made the rounds last year) created this monopoly board that imagines what the board game would be like if it had originally been designed to reflect the life journey of photographers.

Of all the photography-related novelty products we've seen so far, this one has to be one of the most bizarre. It's a hand-held vacuum cleaner designed to look just like a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR lens. The device can draw its power from either the cigarette lighter socker in your car or the USB port on your computer.

There are plenty of options to choose from if you're in the market for a new photography-themed T-shirt, but an unexpected player entered that market today: Flickr. The photo-sharing service announced that it has partnered with BustedTees to launch its very own T-shirt collection.

Atlanta-based photographer Ed Hetherington makes a living photographing weddings, but earlier this month he traveled to Zimbabwe for a wildlife photography adventure. While there, he had a unique experience he won't soon forget: a lion stole his camera.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based photographer Lukas Renlund recently came up with a neat way of drumming up some excitement over his photographs. He held a public photo exhibition called "Steal My Photograph!" that turned out to be possibly the world's shortest show. After hanging up 40 framed photographs on a wall outdoors, Renlund invited passersby to take any single photograph they desired, with one condition: they had to hang it up, photograph it, and then email the photo and description to Renlund.

Jordan Drake of Canadian camera shop The Camera Store just published this great hands-on field test of the Canon EOS M. Even if you don't have 10 minutes to watch the entire review, you've got to check out the two short stop-motion animations that start at about 21s and 7m50s. They're a hilarious (and accurate) sketches that poke fun at how "the Canon EOS M is a little bit late to the mirrorless party" and how the camera has a pretty shoddy autofocus system.

One of the big stories in the tech world at the moment is Facebook's effort to do away with its public voting system for approving changes to the service's policies (yup, Facebook is a democracy). Pranksters are taking advantage of the controversy to stir up some FUD among Facebook users. One of the things that has been circulating over the past few days is a bogus "chain letter" that people are posting as status updates, believing that their photograph copyrights are at risk. The message is spreading like wildfire -- many of you have likely seen it already -- but there's one big problem: it's all a complete hoax.

If you've always wanted your photography prominently displayed in New York City's Times Square, Google can help make it happen -- as long as you're okay with adding some text to your picture and participating in a marketing effort. To show that its new line of Chromebook laptops is designed for all kinds of users, the Mountain View-based company has launched a new campaign called For Everyone. It's a giant photo gallery that invites the world to upload photos that answer the question, "who are Chromebooks for?"

Are photo-sharing website content policies based on indecency or the mere appearance of indecency? That's what visual web magazine Theories of the deep understanding of things decided to test out yesterday. It uploaded an innocent -- but seemingly risqué -- photo of a woman sitting in a bathtub with her elbow resting on the edge (warning: it looks inappropriate). Lo and behold, the social network quickly took the photo down for violating the service's terms.

Here's a humorous and lighthearted 5-minute video titled, "Fafa's Photoshop Tutorial." Created by the comedy series Glove and Boots, it's a short and sweet introduction to using layers in Photoshop... taught by puppets. Think Sesame Street meets Scott Kelby.

People who collect Leica M rangefinders or use them as luxury fashion accessories take great care to keep their cameras in pristine condition. Photographer Blake Andrews is not one of those people. He has been doing film photography since 1993, and his trusty M6 has plenty of battle scars from seeing heavy use over the years.

If you want to see what a Leica can look like when it's used as a camera rather than an accessory, Andrews has published a series of interesting graphics in which he treats his M6 as an artifact, pointing out various features that you definitely wouldn't see on a babied camera body.

After the 2011 Tsunami in Japan, there emerged volunteer efforts to find, restore, and return precious photos swept away by the waters. CNN writes of a similar effort being done in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Fujifilm is selling a cool Instax Mini instant camera kit over in Japan that makes it easy for new parents to do a 365-day photo project documenting the first year of their child's life. Called the Fujifilm Baby Box, the package includes an Instax Mini 25 camera (in either pink or blue), a photo album for holding the prints, a 5-pack of Instax film containing 50 shots, and a sheet containing 365 round stickers with hearts containing the numbers 1 through 365.

Over the course of a year (and a little over 6 additional packs of film), parents can snap daily pictures and label the instant prints with the day it was taken on by sticking a heart to it.

If you were watching the Thanksgiving Day NFL football games on TV today, you may have seen the above commercial promoting the Canon Rebel T4i entry-level DSLR. It's a humorous ad that asks "When was the last time something inspired you to be creative?" and shows a number of photographers putting themselves in uncomfortable (and unsafe) situations in order to capture the photograph they have in their minds eye.

Stephen Dowling of BBC News has an interesting piece that tells the story of the Lomography movement and how it may be instrumental in saving film photography.

Last October, Jennifer Lopez made headlines around the world after showing up at a Chanel fashion show in Paris with her 4-year-old daughter (wearing $2,400 in jewelry) and 25-year-old boyfriend in tow. Photographs of the trio sitting in the front row quickly made their way to the front pages of major newspapers and websites.

Although the photos appear to show Lopez and co. peacefully sitting around, the environment created by the photographers there was anything but peaceful. Sébastien Bauer was sitting a few rows back at the time, and captured the above video showing what it's like to have frenzied paparazzi breathing down your neck as they look to score a widely-published shot.

It's a story that's becoming more and more common: someone uploads tactless photos to the Internet, the Internet disapproves and collectively pounces on the person. It happened after Hurricane Sandy when a Brazilian model decided to do a photo shoot amidst the devastation, and it has happened again. The target of the Internet's fury this time is a woman named Lindsey Stone, who posted the above photograph to her Facebook page.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and even people who don’t ordinary take pictures are likely dusting off their …

Product photos for clothing lines typically feature generic, attractive models, since the point of the images is to make the clothes accessible and desirable to consumers. Yuekou, an online clothing store in China, has found great success by using a different approach: its photos for teen girl outfits feature a 72-year-old man.

Sony is continuing its campaign against the mindless use of DSLRs. After releasing a series of viral videos poking fun at inept DSLR users, Sony is now turning to facts and hard evidence (in addition to humor). The company recently did a survey of 1012 non-professional DSLR users, and the results are pretty interesting.

The Onion has published a humorous tongue-in-cheek news article on how a college student named Arielle Stevens finally uploaded 12 million photos from a 6-day vacation to her Facebook account:

Here's an oldie but goodie: Scofield Editorial released this tongue-in-cheek video back in 2009 titled, "The Vendor Client relationship in real world situations." It pokes fun at how clients try to bargain with creative professionals in ways that they would never do in "real world" situations (e.g. eating at a restaurant, buying a movie, getting a haircut).

Wedding photographers are supposed to stealthily document unique moments, not become part of them. Unfortunately, the latter is what photographer Jacki Bruniquel did last month while photographing a wedding in South Africa. As the bride walked down the aisle with her father, a wedding photographer's worst nightmare unfolded for Bruniquel: her head got too close to a burning candle, kindling a small blaze in her hair. In a few short seconds, the entire room was staring and gasping at Bruniquel rather than the bride.