Editorial

As the penny drops with photographers and artists alike that their images have been used to train AI image generators on a monumental scale — the backlash is growing stronger.

PetaPixel has changed a lot in the more than 10 years it has existed, but perhaps no more the case than what we've done over the last two years. Because of this, we thought it best to lay out what we are doing here, why we are doing it, and what you can expect going forward.

Artificial intelligence-powered image generators have exploded into the mainstream. Thanks to support from major stock sites, they are also an approachable route to making money. But as is almost always the case, when money gets involved, the situation quickly becomes far more complicated.

We are proud to announce the second-annual PetaPixel Awards which praise a number of new photography products that our staff has voted as the best in their respective categories.

When a software company wants to increase profits, there really only seems to be one answer: subscription pricing.

Capturing a snow leopard is considered by many to be the holy grail of wildlife photography. But when it comes to manipulating an image of the world's most elusive big cat, how far is too far?

Smartphones have gotten to the level of quality they are at not just because the sensor hardware is improving, but also because software and processing has gotten a whole lot better. So why aren't camera makers taking advantage of this technology?

While some might disagree, I argue it’s never a bad thing to add more features to cameras that make it easier for a photographer to get a great photo.

When news broke on Monday that Miley Cyrus was facing a copyright infringement lawsuit for allegedly posting an image of herself on Instagram without the photographer's permission, it sounded familiar.

Queen Elizabeth II has died today at the age of 96. She was born in 1926, the same year the very first SLR film camera, the Ermanox Reflect, was introduced to the market and found herself in front of one type of camera or another for most of her life.

A photographer's camera bag is the unsung hero of the working professional. Without it, photographers simply could not do their jobs. But for as many good bags out there, there are hundreds of bad ones. Let's sift through that noise.

For the last several years, manufacturers have repeatedly blamed smartphones as the reason the camera market has collapsed so spectacularly, and a recent experience has me now fully understanding this.

TikTok's domination in short-form video is not the only thing Instagram should be worried about. In the time that Instagram has shifted ever further away from its roots as a photo-sharing app, Generation Z has found a new space to post their selfies and photo-dumps -- and that's TikTok.

A few months ago, the US Copyright Office rejected Steven Thaler's request to copyright a picture on behalf of an algorithm he dubbed the Creativity Machine.

A new report from TechInsights confirms that the Nikon Z9 sensor is made by Sony, a fact that does not matter at all.

Renowned American photographer Elliott Erwitt has captured more presidents since Harry Truman than any other photographer. Over the last 70 years, Erwitt has shot iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe, including her famous subway grate pose, the finger-pointing Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate in Moscow, segregated water fountains, a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy, and hundreds of humorous dog images.

Los Angeles Times roving foreign correspondent and photojournalist Marcus Yam was recently awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography "for raw and urgent images of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that capture the human cost of the historic change in the country."

Photographer Bill Hao from Vancouver, Canada, spent two years building a huge oakwood camera. It shoots gigantic wet plate collodion photos measuring 32x48 inches.

Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk has been collecting and archiving photos and negatives that he has found in the Chernobyl exclusion area for the last six years. He has rescued around 15,000 artifacts, which include films, photos, postcards, and letters, but with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has been forced to put his Untitled Project from Chernobyl on hold.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, was being grilled at the Senate confirmation hearings. Her 17-year-old daughter was in attendance and beamed with pride as she watched her mother bravely tackle the often-hostile questioning. This split-second moment between daughter and mother was captured by The New York Times fellow Sarahbeth Maney and went viral.

Actor Will Smith made international headlines when he walked onto the stage at the Oscars and slapped comedian Chris Rock in the face. Reuters photographer Brian Snyder recorded the unexpected moment in 10 frames without even realizing that he had done so, and those photos have since gone viral.

Photographer Mehmet Aslan captured an image in April 2021 of a father and son with amputated limbs in a Turkish refugee camp. His powerful shot went on to tug at heartstrings, win a prestigious international photo competition, go viral online, and completely transform the subjects' lives.

When Lightroom CC originally launched it was woefully behind Classic from a features perspective. Photographers who had come to expect certain tools and performance were greeted with an underpowered CC, and few gave it a second glance after that. But now, nearly five years later, those same photographers might not know that they are nearly identical now. So then, why do we have two versions of the same software?

Leica has historically been known for rangefinder-style cameras but has branched away in recent years. But if there is one thing the company should take away from the praise the new M11 is getting, it's that it should stick with what it's good at.

We're starting a new tradition here at PetaPixel, where our staff gets together to discuss the things they know, not just think, will transpire over the course of the next calendar year. As bold predictions go, we're almost certainly going to get a lot of this wrong.

We are proud to announce the first-ever PetaPixel Awards which praise a number of new photography products that our staff has voted on as the best in their respective categories.