Culture

Photographer Noah Kalina is best known online for his everyday project, in which he took a selfie every day for over a decade. He's also an avid shopper with his Amazon Prime account.

Since February 2014, Kalina has been photographing all of his Prime purchases and documenting them through a Tumblr blog titled Primed. Now, tens of entries in, Kalina is turning the project into a photo book -- one that's available through Amazon Prime.

A new ad campaign in the UK is using interactive posters to inform parents that they can easily check their child for eye cancer using flash photography.

There's no getting around it, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair should have picked a different photo before he and his wife sent out this year's Christmas card (yes... that's their actual card). Sent to us by a reader, this wonderfully awkward image is good for a laugh and perhaps a cringe or two.

It seems as though each decade is defined by a handful of trends, fashion and otherwise, that permanently seal …

We're not sure whether this is funny, tragic, or some combination of both. In this viral Vine from over the holiday weekend, you get to see the effect that takings selfie-after-selfie with adoring fans can have on a man's psyche.

Any travel photographer, or traveller in general, will tell you how important it is that you respect the locations you are exploring. This applies as much for natural environments as it does for sacred manmade spaces, and it's the latter of these that are having to ban photography because of rude tourist photographers who are ignoring this fundamental rule.

As a followup to her popular What If Girls Were Internet Browsers series that blew across the World Wide Web at the end of last year, fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta decided to tackle another similarly pressing question: what if guys were social networks?

As with the first series, she enlisted the help of some high quality stylists/designers and, together, they tried to capture the character of each of the major social networks in a conceptual fashion portrait.

It just started as a cool idea. New Zealand photographer Tom Hollow had a broken couch he needed to get rid of, and so he decided to burn it and take pictures. Then he decided to put a bride on it because, in his words, it "would look cooler with a bride."

It wasn't until after the shoot that he realized the images fit a particular storyline quite well: divorce.

The most poignant revelations often come at the most unlikely of times. That's what happen to photographer Elly Heise, who created the touching project #DaughterDoesMyMakeup, a series of portraits of mothers sporting makeup their young daughters did for them.

Amidst the many photos of hate, anger, sadness and sometimes outright destruction that have flooded the media since a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, sparking riots and protests across the US, there are glimmers of hope and humanity.

One such glimmer was captured by Oregon-based freelance photographer Jonny Nguyen at a Ferguson demonstration in Portland earlier this week.

The South Korean government is threatening selfie stick retailers with fines of up to $27K and jail time over some of the group selfie products they're selling, and it's all because of electromagnetic radiation. Feeling lost yet? Us too.

Editor's note: This video contains NSFW language

It's easy to assume that the whole 'no flash photography' rule at concerts is ignorable, but as the clip above shows, not only can it distract the performer, in some rare cases it might actually be a health hazard.

Is it really "crashing" a photo shoot when the person doing the crashing is more than welcome to stick around as much as they like? We're not sure, but that was certainly the case in Nashville about a week ago when photographer Sarah Bailey had a Christmas family shoot hijacked by a very welcome guest.

Pop star Taylor Swift was jogging in Percy Warner park when she spotted the family and decided to drop in.

Dubai-based photographer Muhammad Hassan is coming out with a tutorial series that teaches basic to advanced photography techniques. To promote the course, he has created a very... interesting teaser video that uses special effects to dazzle the eyes and minds of prospective students.

After the Boston Marathon Bombings in April 2014, both law enforcement and the public turned to photos from bystanders and security cameras to find clues about the perpetrators.

Inspired by this concept of using social media photos to solve crime, game programmer Matt Rix decided to create a game called "Photobomb."

The folks at Lammily are sending a powerful message with their latest advertisement. In the sped up, minute-long video above, they transform their signature realistic doll into a taller, slimmer version that looks a lot more like the Barbies of old... before wiping it all away with a few strokes and a hard-hitting tagline.

Do guys, in general, hate taking pictures? Comedian Robbie Sherrard thinks so, and in this tongue-in-cheek video that's currently going viral he breaks down all of the most awkward reasons why that is.

Photographer Rick Satureyes shares this tattoo he recently had inked onto his forearm. Rather than a standard design featuring a camera or lens, he chose to go with a cross-section diagram of a lens.

Photographer Jack Turkel was born at around the same time as NASA, and grew up with a fantasies of space exploration as the modern space age was swinging into high gear.

When he began his photography career in the mid 1970s, Turkel decided to combine his two loves by creating a unique, space-themed darkroom.

How much are your principles worth? It's hard to know until you have those principles tested with a dollar figure, and for renowned Catalan photographer Colita, she now has a figure she can hold up: about $37,300.

That's the amount Colita gave up when she declined the top prize at the 2014 Premio Nacional de Fotografía (National Photography Prize) in an unapologetic letter to Spain's culture minister about the unpopular policies he's recently put forth.

Does photography deserve a place in art galleries? Jonathan Jones doesn't think so. The Guardian art columnist has caused quite a stir after writing a piece titled, "Flat, soulless and stupid: why photographs don’t work in art galleries."

While Jones acknowledges that photographs can be "powerful, beautiful, and capture the immediacy of a moment like nothing else," he argues that they are, "poor art when hung on a wall like paintings."

You wouldn't expect lifelogging cameras to be the source of tear-jerking footage, but the folks at Huggies Korea recently launched a heartwarming project that'll get you, as they say, right in the feels.

Many of you have already no-doubt heard of Keira Knightley's recent photoshoot and interview with Interview Magazine [Warning: NSFW], in which she posed topless on the condition they wouldn't Photoshop her body before publishing the final shot.

As Bill Cosby can attest, Kids Say the Darndest Things. To see what kids would say when given a piece of technology from a bit before their time, TheFineBros YouTube channel handed a handful of kids a 35mm film point-and-shoot camera and started recording.

The results are... well... you judge for yourself.

The Impossible Project CEO Creed O’Hanlon dropped quite the statement and statistic in an article on the resurgence of Polaroids by The Guardian.

"Teens," O'Hanlon said, "[are] turning their backs on digital for something more tangible." A fact he says is backed up by explosive growth in their sales to the 18-25 year old demographic.

Memphis Grizzlies guard Tony Allen got a little carried away last week when, after committing his third foul, he decided to take out his frustration by smacking Bo Bradley's camera as he was capturing the action -- an act that is going to cost him.

As photographers, writers, illustrators, actors, musicians... As creatives, we create the world that we exist in, we create the world that the rest of the world sees.

This is a gift, it is our gift and it is the soul of the saying that we “are gifted.” While many are brought up to view doctors and lawyers as having greater intellectual prowess, the truth of the matter is that it takes a VERY strong mind to visualize and then create our art.

But what happens when that mind turns against us?

What if many of iconic photos featured on famous album covers were actually cropped from much stranger images? That's the idea behind "The Bigger Picture," a humorous set of manipulated photographs imagining the "original context" of album cover photos.

A Canadian judge has ordered Google to pay a Montreal woman for the violation of her privacy after she found an embarrassing photograph of herself on Google Street View. Google's automated cameras had captured the woman sitting on her doorstep, leaning forward with a portion of her cleavage exposed.

Back in mid-September, we reported that luxury gadget company Brikk was planning to release a gold covered Nikon Df camera. The camera is now official with more photos and more details.

A UK-based amateur photographer named Bob Riach was stopped outside a shopping center in East Yorkshire last week by a security guard. Riach was attempting to take some nighttime shots of the complex when the guard confronted him and told him that his photography wasn't allowed due to the complex, citing concerns of an attack by ISIS.

This week a group of photographers decided to stage a protest in support of Riach and photographers' rights.

Rap mogul Suge Knight could be facing some serious jail time after stealing a photographer's camera. By "serious," we mean up to 30 years.

Taiwanese illustrator nagee drew this comic showing …

To celebrate Halloween, Adobe has been running an interactive murder mystery event this week. The company has released complex PSD files of photos that hold clues to the fictional mystery. Only those with Photoshop and sleuthing skills will be able to solve the case.

This just in: running up to bears and snapping selfies with them is a bad idea. That's according to a US Forest Service spokesperson who says that tourists are becoming more and more bold with approaching the creature for memorable snapshots.

On September 27th, 2014, Mount Ontake in Japan erupted and began spewing ash. A popular destination for tourists and beginning hikers, several hundred people were reportedly on the volcano at the time. At least 56 of them didn't make it off.

Now, in the aftermath of the disaster, damaged cameras and phones are yielding photos that offer a glimpse into what things were like on the slopes just moments before the rumbling began.

Freelance filmmaker Franck Matellini recently created a clever time-lapse that shows the similarities that defy the 3,363 miles separating Paris and New York City. Using diptych video and brilliant editing, Matellini ties the two towns together using the objects and architecture that define both destinations.

Reminiscent of the Tumblr Blog We Never Look Up, London street photographer Babycakes Romero's series The Death of Conversation focuses on our obsession connection with our smartphones.

But where the anonymous photographer behind We Never Look Up focused on anyone and everyone with their eyes glued to that little screen, Romero's series is all about highlighting the digital wall that smartphones have created between people often sitting so close to each other they're touching.

If you have a hard time making sure everyone’s looking at you when capturing a group photo, perhaps you …

Looking for a personalized photo-related gag to pull for Halloween this year? Look no further than this head-in-a-jar prank. It's quite easy to pull off and doesn't require too much time or money.

French photography magazine Selektor recently found itself embroiled in a controversy when it posted a list of 100 photographers to follow on its Tumblr blog -- a lineup that included only 8 women.

A strange story from over in Florida: the Tampa Bay Times reports that …

This photograph of Chinese President Xi Jinping is more than a snapshot captured in the rain: today it was awarded China's highest photojournalism prize, the National News Award. The award is known as China's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

What would you do if you found your photograph misused, not by a celebrity or a company, but by the head of government of a country? That's the question facing Cambridge, Massachusetts-based photographer Bimal Nepal.

Nepal, a photojournalist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, recently found his photograph shared without permission by the prime minister of India.

A photographer's notebook from over a century ago has been discovered in Antarctica. It belonged to British explorer and photographer George Murray Levick, who was part of Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition to the continent from 1910 to 1913.

At the height of AIDS hysteria in the 1980s, when some people still wondered if the disease could be passed to others through day-to-day contact, photographer Sage Sohier was going into same-sex couples' homes and photographing them for a series and photo book that came to be known as At Home With Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980s America.

The project captured an intimate portrait of the gay community that was at odds with the headlines of the day, and made all the more poignant by the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic against which it was created.

Traditional Sikh men are immediately identifiable by their characteristic beards and turbans, but that doesn't mean that each Sikh man is the same. With over 30 million Sikhs in the world, there is an incredible amount of diversity within the community, and the Singh portrait project by London-based photographers Amit and Naroop is all about highlighting the diversity of these men who all share a common faith.

One of the stranger stories that occurred in the world of photography this past weekend was when Oklahoma football player Sterling Shepard crash landed on a Canon telephoto lens, snapping it into two pieces.

Now that the dust is settled, the photographer has come forward with his account of the incident and an apology to the player.

To celebrate its 20th birthday, Old Navy has created what it's calling a #Selfiebration machine. What is a Selfiebration machine you ask? Why, it’s a 15 foot contraption that turns Twitter selfies into ephemeral pieces of balloon art, à la halftone stylization.

During her time in Malaysia, roughly 3,500 miles away from her home in Iran, photographer Nafise Motlaq was troubled by the way people would talk about her country's culture. Partially perpetuated by the media, she saw people making judgements without any first-hand knowledge of the country's actual culture.

It was this frustration with misrepresentation that, once she was home, inspired Motlaq to pick up her camera and begin an intimate series of photographs exploring the father-daughter relationship in Iran.