Culture

Ever wonder how some of the strangest videos manage to go viral online and generate huge profits for their makers? It all has to do with Buyral, a secret program that serves as the kingmaker behind all viral videos. Simply pay the fee, and Buyral will use its carefully developed worldwide program to ensure that your content gets the millions of clicks it deserves. The humorous satirical advertisement seen above, by Aircastle Films, explains how Buyral works.

"Say cheese." It's an expression that has become so much a part of our culture that everyone understands it to simply mean, "Smile," rather than a command to actually utter the word "cheese." For many people, smiling and posing for casual snapshots go hand-in-hand, but why do people smile for pictures, and when did this practice begin? After all, if you browse portrait photos created in the early days of photography -- or even half a century ago -- you'll find the subjects wearing stoic, humorless expressions on their faces.

A Brazilian model named Nana Gouvea is the latest person to feel the scorn of the Internet. After Hurricane Sandy plowed through New York City this past week, Gouvea decided that the wreckage presented the perfect opportunity to further her career. Going out into the devastation with her husband as a photographer, she posed for a photo shoot amidst downed trees and smashed cars. She then shared the resulting portraits through her Facebook page.

Needless to say, people didn't respond very positively to the pictures. They quickly went viral, but in a bad way.

Well, this can't be good for photographers' rights: An anonymous man over in Seattle, Washington is causing a stir in his area and on the web by walking up to random people in various locations -- both public and private -- and sticking a camera in their faces to film them. When asked to explain his actions, he simply responds in vague statements such as "It's OK, I'm just recording video."

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, an iPhone photo by photographer …

Officials over in the Canadian city of Winnipeg want to reduce gun violence and the number of firearms floating around, so they're turning to... photography? The police department has partnered up with camera store Henry's Photo and camera company Panasonic for a program called "Pixels for Pistols". Through the end of this month, anyone can trade in their gun for a digital camera.

Yesterday we shared a piece by photographer Kenneth Jarecke on why Instagram isn’t fit for photojournalism. Now, …

Roberto Baldwin of Wired writes about how an SF man felt the fury …

In 2008, I had this kooky idea to take my then 4-year-old son out to an abandoned road and throw him into the air, since it seemed most fathers like to do this with their kids. There was this long, abandoned road near my house, so we set up there. After getting my Nikon D200, self-timer, and tripod ready, my son decided that he didn't want to be thrown into the air, so I just held him up instead. I then took another photo of myself looking up with my arms extended.

Happy Halloween y'all! If you're planning on carving up a pumpkin for your doorstep this year and are looking for a challenging design, check out this amazingly detailed pumpkin sent in by reader Dan Savoie.

The debate rages on: should appropriated Google Street View photographs be considered art? There are quite a few artists and photographers out there who think it should be. Photographer Michael Wolf was awarded Honorable Mention for his curated screenshots at the World Press Photo 2011. Photographer Aaron Hobson takes screenshots and turns them into gorgeous panoramic photos. Jon Rafman's screenshots were picked for an exhibition at London's Saatchi Gallery.

Now here's another case that might cause a lot more head-scratching: photographer Doug Rickard's Street View screenshots have been selected for the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The role Twitter played during Arab Spring in early 2011 gave the microblogging service a huge boost in legitimacy and pushed it into the mainstream. Instagram may be having a similar "coming of age" experience through its role in the ongoing coverage of Hurricane Sandy.

A botched Photoshop job or a camera app gone wrong? That's the question being asked of one particular photograph that was recently posted to the official Instagram account of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

A few hours ago, the official Facebook page of the First Army Division East posted the above photograph with the caption:

Soldiers of the 3rd Inf Reg continue to stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, despite the worsening weather conditions surrounding Hurricane Sandy. The tomb has been guarded continuously since 1948.

The powerful photograph instantly attracted tens of thousands of Likes and Shares, and began going viral online.

Earlier this month, we featured an upcoming license plate frame that uses bright flashes of light to prevent traffic enforcement photographs. In the article, we mentioned that the concept could potentially be used by the rich and famous to avoid the constant gaze of paparazzi cameras. Turns out the rich and famous are already one step ahead of us.

Eclipse, the world's largest private yacht owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, already features a high-tech anti-photography system that uses lasers to seek out and deny cameras.

Photographer Richard Esposito has written an interesting …

Check out this geeky Instagram-inspired Halloween costume created by photographer Eric Micotto. What's neat is that it actually "works" as a camera: it's powered by a Nikon D800 snapping photos through the "lens", and has an iPad on the back that acts as the camera's giant LCD screen. Subjects who have their photo taken by the costume can run around to the back to take a peek at how it turned out.

One year ago, the haunted house called Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada scored a major marketing win after its candid photographs of horrified guests went viral online. With Halloween 2012 only a week away, Jakob Schiller over at Wired caught up with the house's marketing director Vee Popat for the inside scoop of how the images are shot:

At one point in the attraction [...] the groups come to a spot where they trigger a Nikon D80 camera and flash at the exact moment where they encounter some unknown fright that is so scary it provokes grown men to hide behind their wives and friends to jump into each other’s arms.

The idea for the photos was inspired by photos of people yelling as they ride rollercoasters. Popat says the owner used to actually sit in the haunted house and take the photos himself. Just like amusement parks, attendees at Nightmares can purchase their photos after they’ve recovered from the excitement and the “best of” photos circulate on monitors in the lobby.

Wedding photographers always try to prepare themselves for unexpected events and unplanned photo ops, but there's no way photographer Laura Kelly was expecting what happened this past weekend. While photographing couple Jocelyne Potvin and Patrick Sullivan on their wedding day, an unexpected guest came in to the frame: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Bellamy Hunt over at Japan Camera Hunter has a fascinating account of what …

Should Photoshop play a role in political correctness? Louisiana State University is drawing some criticism this week after it came to light that the university had used Photoshop to erase Christian crosses from the chests of body-painted fans.

There was once a time when you could more easily spot a professional photographer simply by glancing at the camera equipment in a person's hands. Was it a beast of a camera with a gigantic lens attached to it? You're looking at a serious shooter. Is it a dinky pea shooter that is used with arms outstretched? The person is a tourist, newbie, or both.

Photography purists, you might want to look away. For the rest of you: remember that Craiglist listing we shared a couple of months ago posted by a couple looking for Hipstamatic wedding photographers? Among the hoards of enthusiastic Hipstamatic shooters who responded were Keith and Marc, hosts of the iPhoneography podcast TinyShutter. After being chosen for the gig, they drove down to Connecticut from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to capture the wedding with their iPhones.

Photographing wild gorillas is scary. Taking pictures of baby elephant seals? Not so much. In this amazingly cute video, Irish broadcaster Charlie Bird encounters a pair of friendly elephant seal pups while photographing on a beach in Antarctica. Apparently if you lie on the sand near pups, they'll come to you to cuddle and to investigate your DSLR.

You know that beastly Sigma 200-500mm that we've featured twice in the past two days? Turns out it's headed to the World Series to be used for some pretty ground-breaking imagery. A post today by Jakob Schiller over at Wired fills in some interesting details on what the lens will be used for.

Best known for his iconic V-J Day in Times Square image, photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century's most famous faces. LIFE writes that the photographer had an interesting habit: jumping into the frame for self-portraits with his subjects.

Jonathan Dandrow believes that traffic enforcement cameras are "dangerous, invasive, error-prone, and unconstitutional," so he decided to find a way to turn camera technology against those cameras. He ended up creating the noPhoto, a high-tech license plate frame that makes it impossible for a red light or speed trap camera to snap a useable photograph of your plate.

Can you believe the proposal photo above wasn't planned? In fact, the photographer wasn't even aware of what was going on. It was snapped this past Sunday by 20-year-old Sydney University student Michael Keane, who visited Sydney's Bondi Beach early in the morning to capture photographs of the sunrise. After returning home to post-process the images, Keane zoomed into his photos and was surprised to find that he had accidentally captured a very romantic moment happening way in the horizon.

It's seems like many photo enthusiasts are hating on Instagram and retro-filtered photos these days, but not photographer Richard Koci Hernandez. He has written a piece for CNN titled "Photographers, embrace Instagram," in which he explains why he thinks that "Smartphones have ushered in a golden age for photography."

Digital and mobile phone photography have made it easy for parents to document every waking (and non-waking) moment of a child's life, but what effect is this constant picture-taking having on kids? David Zweig has written up an article over at the New York Times arguing that our culture of photography is intruding on the preciousness of youth, and that parents should take fewer photographs of their children.

If you still process your own film in a darkroom, you probably regularly toss empty film canisters into the trash can once you've popped off the cap and retrieved the film inside. The next time you're in there, try saving those canisters: you can upcycle them into neat magnets for displaying photos on your fridge -- perhaps even prints of latent photos that were once in those canisters!

German photographers Marion and Dieter were visiting the Nuremberg Zoo earlier this month when they came across an odd sight: one of the polar bears named Felix was chomping on a $2,100+ Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS telephoto lens. Apparently another lady was trying to change lenses while standing at the edge of the enclosure, and accidentally let the 70-200mm slip out of her grasp and into Felix's territory.

Musician Lauren White recently came across a "gold mine" at a flea market in Saugus, California; she discovered 23 candid never-before-seen photographs of the Rolling Stones captured in 1965 while the band was enjoying a road trip.

Photographer Michel “Mijonju” Jones just sent us this humorous parody music video that …

Mobile apps with retro filters such as Instagram and Hisptamatic have been very polarizing in the photo industry, but the latest member of the anti-Instagram camp has many people scratching their heads. The NCAA has banned college coaches from using Instagram filters while recruiting prospective athletes.

The Nikon D4 that Usain Bolt used at the London Olympics has been auctioned off for charity. The final price? Just $7,300.

Watermarks are commonly used by photographers these days to protect their work from unauthorized use and distribution. However, they're not very popular among photo viewers, since they do a lot to detract from the content of the photographs.

The Associated Press caused a stir this week after publishing the above photograph of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

If you suffer from gear envy, you might want to skip over this post. Apparently children from wealthy Chinese families these days are traveling with fancy DSLR cameras while on vacation. A person named Liu Li Yang recently published a series of photos over on Chinese social networking service Renren that show a group of tourist children clutching expensive Canon and Nikon DSLRs and lenses.

A Swedish photography company called Skolfoto Norden received some embarrassing press this week after a girl discovered that she had three eyes in the official class portrait it shot.

Auckland, New Zealand-based street photographer Sim Ahmed of Aucklandia recently decided to spread the love of photography by displaying and offering his work for free on the streets of his city. After printing out 500 digital prints for 9 cents each three weeks ago, he began framing them, revisiting the locations where they were shot, and sticking them on buildings there.

The next time you're photographing clouds, make sure those clouds aren't hovering over a location that's considered "sensitive". National Weather Service volunteer Michael Galindo learned this lesson last month after pulling over to the side of the road near Houston to snap a photo of storm clouds brewing in the distance (shown above). Problem was, between Galindo and the clouds sat the Lyondell Refinery.

If you're forever alone and want to photograph yourself locked in a warm embrace in a doorway, check out this article by Japanese website Daily Portal -- one of the strangest photography tutorials we've ever seen.

A number of years ago, a TSA agent named Pythias Brown accidentally left a camera out of some luggage he was screening. Not wanting to be reprimanded for his mistake, he decided to avoid any problems by secretly taking the camera home. This event opened his eyes to how easy it was to pocket passengers' belongings, and he began to steal more and more items in increasingly brazen thefts.

Here's the amazing official trailer for the upcoming documentary film Chasing Ice, which follows one man as he embarks on an epic photo project around the world:

Well, that was abrupt. On Tuesday, we wrote that the Nikon D4 that Usain Bolt had famously used after winning an Olympic gold medal was up for auction on eBay, with the proceeds going toward educational and cancer research charities. After the story was reported worldwide, the high bid quickly rose until it hit $11,600 today. Then suddenly, it was gone.

Nikon published a news post recently boasting that its D4 and D800 DSLRs had "become the first DSLR cameras to pass the very elaborate European Broadcasting Union (EBU) test, commonly referred to as the BBC Test."

We don't know how they do it, but College Humor's sketch videos often have famous celebrities making fools of themselves in the name of comedy. Above is a parody infomercial they released today featuring actor Patrick Wilson. He states that prior to his acting career, he worked as a stock photography model and was featured in over 133,000 stock images.

IKEA received a lot of bad press around the world earlier this week after it came to light that the company had Photoshopped women out of its Saudia Arabian catalog. The company has since apologized, but the Internet isn't planning to let the story die down without poking some fun at IKEA's expense.

Over the past month, there have been violent anti-Japanese protests across China over disputed islands between the two nations. Japanese businesses and manufacturing plants have been besieged, leading companies like Canon and Panasonic to suspend their operations and evacuate their premises.

In the midst of all this chaos, a tricky problem presents itself: how does a Chinese photographer go about documenting the rioting? As you know, Japan is the motherland of most major digital camera companies, while China doesn't have much of a role in this industry besides manufacturing the cameras at the request of those corporations. The answer: flags and tape.