It doesn’t seem that long ago that we tried to revive wet smartphones by sticking them in a bag of rice and hoping for the best. Now, most modern smartphones are “water-resistant.” If water gets into them, they won’t be destroyed, like in years past. Still, we’re not supposed to dunk them in the water. But try telling that to kids.
Photography is a tech-heavy job. Camera companies do a great job of hyping up new gear and creating a fear of missing out. However, very few professionals that I know actually go and splurge on the latest and greatest equipment.
Right now, there is an 80,000 mile high "plasma tree" bursting from the surface of the Sun and into its atmosphere. This image, captured by photographer Andrew McCarthy, provides a sense of scale to the sheer mass of the Solar System's star.
As with buying anything secondhand, it is a good idea to have a good idea of what to look for when buying a used film camera lest you spend money on one that has major problems. Thankfully, there are some simple ways to check for problems in film cameras and their lenses... including smelling them.
Ahh, NFTs… where do we even begin? What on earth is an NFT and why does that guy at the coffee shop with an ape on his sweater keep smugly talking about them? Does photography, a medium that we traditionally have come to understand as largely physical, have a place in this new format?
A big question every beginning commercial photographer asks themselves is how they should price their work. There is always a wide range of price points in all genres of photography, and they all depend on your level of work. But there is one truth that may apply to most photographers: you can’t apply a simple pricing strategy to your work.
China's Chang'e 5 lunar lander has found the first-ever on-site evidence of water on the Moon's surface. Photos shot by the probe show the Moon rock and surrounding lunar soil that the water was detected in.
Manufacturing silicon is patently not required in order to make cameras -- anyone can put together a pinhole model -- however, the wider point is more pertinent. To be a competitive, global, manufacturer, do you need to make the sensors that actually go into camera bodies?
What kind of lighting do you use as a portrait photographer? Softboxes are great and popular, but that also makes them potentially overused and boring. If you want to spice up your portrait lighting, you can look into expanding your toolbox beyond the softbox and into other kinds of lighting.
One of the most exciting advancements in digital photography over the last several years has been the rapid increase in the ability to shoot and edit RAW photos.
Henri Cartier-Bresson is famously credited with the saying, "Your First 10,000 photos are your worst." Looking back at his first photos, photographer Gordon Laing tends to agree.
As cameras have rapidly evolved over the last decade, so have the requirements to get the most out of them. Specifically, what a photographer should care about when it comes to a computer has gone from simple, to somewhat complicated and often nuanced.
When you're a photographer just starting to work with video, it can seem like color grading is a mystical art. However, it's simply the process of adjusting the colors in your video footage to achieve the final look you want.
The Hakone Shrine in the touristy town of Hakone, Japan, is a popular photo location for Instagrammers. It's also a good "Instagram vs. Reality" example of how what's seen in social media photos often does not tell the whole picture.
If you haven’t joined the resurgence of film photography in the past few years, you might be asking yourself, “Should I start shooting film in 2022?”
As an art form and a technology, photography’s youth is only matched by its blisteringly rapid advancement. This creates something of a paradox for us as enthusiasts and professionals, where the history of the medium we so love can feel both short and overstuffed. Neither condition is conducive to any one camera gaining, let alone maintaining, a sense of permanence or constancy.
A while back, a young man contacted me about a photo digitization and restoration project for his grandfather, who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. They had some photographs from this period in his life—of friends, scenery, and the culture of Vietnam—that they wanted to use for an album.
Amateur astrophotographer Ethan Gone went out recently to shoot a nebula and ended up creating a time-lapse of the newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope flying through space.
Taxonomy was once the domain of white-coated scientists with years of university training. While this expertise is still important, everyday Australians are increasingly helping to identify species through citizen science apps. Rapid advances in smartphone and tablet cameras are helping to popularize this activity.
Umbrellas are perhaps the most under-appreciated light shaping tool around. Due to their low price and wide availability, they are considered by some to be only for those who are beginners. This couldn't be further from the truth.