Culture

Photography is about far more than capturing an image. How photos are shared and what social issues are impacting the profession are just as important. PetaPixel regularly covers the stories around the culture of photography, how it affects society, and what cultural changes affect the art.
Michael Zhang

Delicious Canon Rebel XT Cookies

Check out these Canon Rebel XT cookies made by CookieJan's Creations. They're 3D, with 67mm "zoom" lenses attached, and are tasty for both the mouth and the eyes.

Jessica Lum

Collector Claims Discovery of Chopin Photograph

A Polish collector claims he's found an extremely rare daguerrotype of composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin, taken in his final repose in 1849.

If the image is authentic, it would be one of only three photographs of the composer, including the image of him alive in 1846, above. And it would be the only known original daguerrotype in existence -- all other images are duplicates.

Michael Zhang

Egyptian Blogger Has Photos Deleted by Flickr, Enlists the Help of Anonymous

After several Egyptian secret police buildings were raided recently by protestors, Egyptian blogger Hossam (AKA 3arabawy) stayed awake for two days organizing and uploading photographs of members of Egypt's secret police who have been accused of brutality and torture. The problem was, Hossam was uploading the images to Flickr, and Flickr wasn't happy about the fact that he didn't shoot them. Flickr soon vaporized the photographs and emailed him a warning for copyright violation.

Michael Zhang

Roll of Film Lost During NYC Blizzard Returned to Owners

At the beginning of the year, a guy named Todd Bieber was skiing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park when he came across a lost roll of film. After he had the pictures developed, he discovered some pretty nice photographs, and created a video to find the owners. The video went viral, and amassed over 1 million views.

Michael Zhang

Press This Cat’s Butt and 3-megapixel Photographs Come Out

The Necono Digital Camera is a funky cat-shaped digital camera out of Japan that might make it easier for you to take smiling baby photos. It's a 3 megapixel camera that doesn't have any LCD screen embedded for you to review your shots -- you have to connect it to a "Monitor Ground" base that includes an LCD or transfer the images to your computer via USB. The cat has a shutter button on its butt, the camera and a self-timer LED in its eyes, and magnetic feet that allow you to stick it in random places.

Like many novelty cameras, the Necono doesn't exactly come cheap... It'll run you a whopping ¥15,750 ($192). At least you can be the only one among your friends to take pictures with a cat.

Michael Zhang

Ed Helms Introduces Digital Cameras on The Daily Show

Here's a fun blast from the past: in the early 2000s The Daily Show ran this short segment in which Ed Helms (now known for playing Andy Bernard on The Office) introduces viewers to digital cameras. It's an interesting glimpse at how some people felt about the emergence of digital photography as it was starting to become popular.

Michael Zhang

Famous Films Compressed into Barcodes

What you see here is every still frame of the famous 1939 film The Wizard of Oz compressed into a single frame, creating a colorful "barcode" for the movie. moviebarcode is a neat blog that publishes these images for a wide range of famous movies.

Michael Zhang

Panasonic Lumix FX77 Can Whiten Teeth and Apply Makeup to Faces

Panasonic wants to move portrait retouching off of computers and directly into cameras. Their Lumix FX77 compact camera released last week has a "Beauty Retouch Mode" that allows users to make all kinds of edits to faces immediately after capturing the photo:

The Beauty Retouch Mode makes it possible to virtually makeup the faces. In Esthetic Mode, various effects can be applied to the face including clearing the skin texture, whitening of teeth and so on. In the Make-up Mode, you can choose the color of foundation, lips, cheeks or eye-shadow. [#]

The photoshopping capabilities aren't limited to what can be done naturally -- users can also do chin lifts and eye enlargements!

Michael Zhang

Polaroid Camera Models Made with Paper

Mel Stringer (aka girliepains on Etsy) keeps dreaming up cooler and cooler camera papercraft decorations. Her latest creation is a Polaroid model that include fake Polaroids to stick in the slot.

Michael Zhang

MI5 Failed at Cropping Intelligence Photo of London Suicide Bombers

MI5 might have missed a golden opportunity to prevent the 7 July 2005 London bombings back in 2004 when they cropped a photograph of two of the terrorists badly before sending it to the FBI. The photograph was of two of the bombers -- Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan -- and was shot by an undercover agent at a motorway service station. For some reason, MI5 decided to desaturate the photo, crop Khan (the ringleader) out, and make Tanweer look hardly human with blurry facial features and a blob-like profile.

Michael Zhang

This Camera Van Has Rolling Shutters

In 1993, a guy named Harrod Blank had a dream in which he drove around in a camera-covered car taking pictures of people staring at his camera-mobile. When he woke up, he decided to make the car a reality, and spent the next two years designing and building the thing. In 1995 he completed the Camera Van complete with a working camera to capture the expressions of onlookers.

Michael Zhang

“We Just Click” Valentines Day Card

It's a little to late to get this card in time for Valentine's Day this year, but maybe this can give you some inspiration if you're looking to create one by hand for a special photography-lover in your life. This "We Just Click" card sells for $4.50 from dudeandchick's Etsy store.