Cape Town is the most dangerous city in South Africa and one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Freelance photojournalist Leon Knipe follows the police to crime scenes and works to document as many murders as he can. The 5-minute video above by Shaun Swingler is about Knipe's life and work (warning: it contains graphic photos of horrific crime scenes).
Discussions of many photography topics have the potential to veer deep into complex technical territory that may appeal more to scientists than to artists, and color theory is certainly one of those topics that can become rather arcane quite easily. What follows is a guide for landscape photographers who are more artistically inclined, those who are primarily interested in applying color theory to achieve creative goals.
The United States' U-2 spy plane first took to the skies back in 1955 during the heyday of film photography. But even as cameras these days have largely shifted to digital, the U-2 continues to shoot its spy photos on film. The Wall Street Journal made this 19-minute documentary on the U-2 that offers a closer look at the U-2's photography.
Between the 1940s and 1970s, a number of camera manufacturers designed lenses employing thoriated glass in one or more elements. Incorporating as much as 40% thorium dioxide (ThO2) in the glass mixture increases the index of refraction of the glass while maintaining low dispersion. Thoriated glass elements allowed lenses to deliver low levels of aberration and distortion with relatively simple and easy to manufacture designs.
The most recent version of the Copyright Law of the United States (December 2016) weighs in at a whopping 354 pages. And while there are areas of ambiguity, the basics and benefits of copyright registration for photographers are well-documented. Unfortunately, well-documented doesn’t mean well-understood, so we asked attorney (and former photo rep) Leslie Burns to weigh in on a number of common copyright misconceptions that still persist, and why you should register your copyright.
Instagram experience major user backlash after it abandoned its reverse chronological feed back in 2016, and many users these days are still wishing for its return. If you're one of them, here's an interesting factoid that may change your mind: the chronological feed was making users miss 50% of their friends' posts.
The simple act of capturing a photo of something impairs your memory of it, even if you don't plan on keeping the photo. That's what a new psychological study has found, but the reasons behind this are still unknown.
Photographer and Nikon Ambassador Charmi Patel Peña ordered four $60 128GB SanDisk SDXC memory cards from Amazon last month. Things seemed fine... until the cards started constantly stopping her camera. Peña then examined the cards more closely and realized that all of the cards were counterfeit.
It is often warned that lithium ion batteries can pose a safety risk by catching fire unexpectedly. Norwegian photographer Vidar A. Bøen recently experienced that first hand when one of the batteries used in his Nikon DSLR burst into flames.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, chemists Robert Bunsen and Henry Roscoe and showed that burning magnesium produces artificial light that's similar to daylight. A man named Edward Sonstadt then brought the technology into the world of photography, and thus the idea for the photographic flash was born.
Did you know that before it became the most dominant photo editing program on Earth, Photoshop was first sold as "Barneyscan XP"?
Infrared photos and videos have an instantly recognizable look to them that you're probably familiar with. But do you know the reasons things look the way they do? Here's an interesting 4-minute video that explores the subject through infrared views of the "invisible" side of London.
Here's an enlightening 7-minute video by Fstoppers that explains why "lens compression" is a misconception that's actually "perspective distortion".
Photographers often reminisce about the glory days of magazines, when they were given huge budgets, freedoms, and paychecks to create images. Here's one crazy example of what things were like then: People magazine once paid $10,000 for exclusive rights to a photo it didn't even want... just to keep it away from competitors.
Here's a 6-minute educational video by Shutterstock in which filmmaker Todd Blankenship discusses the basics of diffusing light and introduces three cheap options for doing so... including a $5 shower curtain.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to “sunbursts” in photos – those points of light with rays streaking out of them – people often have polarizing views. Optical diffraction is the physical property that causes this effect. The appearance of sunbursts is more technically described as “diffraction spikes,” and it’s caused by the bending (sometimes referred to as spreading) of light around an object like the edges of your camera’s aperture.
In the 1950s, early color photography was widely scorned. Now it’s the default. What happened?
Photographer Markus Hofstaetter often gets asked about how he acquires the plates he uses for wet plate collodion photography. To answer that question, Hofstaetter made this 7-minute video showing how he has them custom cut on a 75-year-old machine.
Congratulations! You just got hired to travel for your photography/video services! The question now becomes: how do you get your batteries on the airplane? Does TSA have anything to say about it?
There are about 1,200 moving parts inside a Leica M rangefinder. In this 3.5-minute video, Tamarkin Camera in Chicago disassembles a Leica M give show what goes on inside the famous red dot cameras.
If you're looking to get into shooting medium format film but aren't sure which film stock to start with, check out this helpful 16-minute video by The Slanted Lens. Photographer Jay P. Morgan purchased all the B&W and color 120 film rolls he could get his hands on and did a shootout to compare the different looks and qualities.
When you take your camera to some of the coldest places on Earth, you'll face a unique set of challenges that most photographers never have to worry about. Here's an interesting 9-minute video in which filmmaker and photographer Anthony Powell shares some of his top tips for shooting in the extreme cold.
Photographer Irene Rudnyk often receives questions about film photography, including from people who wonder why it's even worth doing when you can slap a VSCO filter onto digital images these days. To answer these questions, Rudnyk made this 6.5-minute video comparing film vs digital through a portrait shoot.
Fossils can tell us a lot about the history of living things. Photographer Kent Krugh is creating a "fossil record" of sorts for cameras. His project Speciation is a series of X-ray photos of cameras that provides a brief history of photography, as told through the evolution of the camera.
Shooting a photo every day and then sharing it online improves your well-being. That's what scientists found after studying a group of people who have committed themselves to photo-a-day projects (often referred to as "Project365").
In the era of the “selfie”, of the relentless click-and-publish images on social media, of the mega sensors replete with megapixels, we are witnessing an unpredictable resurgence of many ancient photographic devices and techniques.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was deployed on April 25, 1990, so this week marked the 28th anniversary of the telescope providing humankind with breathtaking photos of deep space. To celebrate, NASA released this 30-second video that zooms into the Milky Way's central bulge to a new photo just released of the Lagoon Nebula over 4,000 light years away.
Canon recently released this incredibly dramatic 5-minute video to showcase its latest CMOS sensor technologies. The opening question, set to moving music, is: "Have you ever seen a rainbow in the light of the moon?"
The Hasselblad H6D-100c is a 100-megapixel medium format DSLR that costs $33,000 without a lens. Throw in a Hasselblad H lens and the resulting camera kit can easily cost over $40,000, or more than the average car. Here's a 5-minute video by photographer Tyler Stalman that explores why a single camera can be worth this much.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying on Capitol Hill this week regarding his company's use of users' personal data. Zuckerberg denied secretly listening to users through microphones for ad targeting, but the company is able to quietly collect quite a bit of data from a single uploaded photo.
Just as vinyl records have made a comeback as of late, film photography has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Film is Still Alive is a 10-minute miniature documentary that explores why film photographers these days are still in love with their medium despite the camera industry moving to digital.
I've been seeing lots of cherry blossom photos from many friends who are visiting Japan or Korea for their beautiful and famous cherry blossoms. I’m sitting here at home in the Netherlands for a change and figured I’d show how I don’t need to travel halfway across the globe to get these shots.
The folks over at Negative Feedback recently paid a visit to one of the hallowed grounds of film photography: Kodak's sprawling headquarters and film factory in Rochester, New York. In the 12.5-minute video above, photographer George Muncey and his crew take us along on the private tour they were given.
Did you know that the worse you are at photography, the more likely it is that you think you're great at it? It's a cognitive bias in psychology called the Dunning–Kruger effect. Here's an inspiring 9-minute video by photographer Jamie Windsor on how you can avoid falling into this common mental trap and actually become a better photographer.
Back in 2010, Canon was challenged by German wildlife filmmaker Ivo Norenberg create an extreme, "impossible" lens. Canon accepted the challenge, and this 7-minute video is the fascinating story of how the $70,000 Canon CINE-SERVO 50-1000mm T5.0-8.9 EF-mount cinema lens came to be.
If you've never learned the technical details of what "middle gray" and "18% gray" are, check out this 6-minute video by Filmmaker IQ. John Hess shares the math and science behind the concepts to demystify them.
As a spiritual symbol of Japan, Mt. Fuji is one of only three sacred mountains of the country and its tallest at 3,776 meters. Its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site further exemplifies its importance to not only the people of Japan but to the world as well.
Marques Brownlee (AKA MKBHD) recently paid a visit to the company Motorized Precision in Portland, Oregon, to check out the company's high-speed camera robots. In this 8.5-minute video, Brownlee shares the beautiful camera moves that are made possible by this "dope" technology.
If you're ever buying a Nikon camera or lens and the seller tells you they purchased it brand new, there's a very easy way to see at a glance whether it was actually factory refurbished. Simply glance at the serial number and look for a "secret code."
Just as people are right- or left-handed, everyone generally prefers the input of one particular eye, something called "ocular dominance" or "eyedness." Most people rely on their dominant eye for things like aiming, and a person's dominant eye actually has more neural connections to the brain than the other eye.
You've probably learned about the exposure triangle countless times by now. If you want a deeper understanding of the science of exposure, though, check out this 30-minute video by Filmmaker IQ.
The rise of smartphone selfies is causing big changes in how people see themselves. Here's a 2-minute video by Vox that explains why selfies usually make our noses look bigger.
Here's an interesting little factoid: did you know that the iPhone's shutter sound was originally recorded from a Canon camera?
Here's a strange photography hack that may sound stupid and unbelievable... but it can actually work: if you have a filter that's hopelessly stuck to the front of your camera lens, try lightly tapping it with your finger. The Koldunov Brothers show how it's done in the 1-minute video above.
Want to see what it looks like to stare through the viewfinder of the new Sony a7 III? Photographer Manny Ortiz made this 5-minute video that shows viewfinder views of an urban photo shoot he did.
Trying to choose between a full frame camera and a crop sensor one? Here's a 10-minute video by photographer Sheldon Evans, who talks about the differences between the two and shares why he went from full frame to crop and then back again.
Figuring out how much to charge clients is a struggle shared by many photographers, particularly if you're trying live off the fruits of your craft. In this 30-minute episode of their Picture This Podcast, photographers Tony and Chelsea Northrup spend half an hour discussing this topic and sharing advice.
In 2016, I made a video comparing the Profoto B1 and Godox AD600. Since then both models have had an updated release and Broncolor has also released the Siros 800 and 400. I decided to put all three models head to head to help people decide which is the best option.
Here's a curious little 43-second video by Japanese artist Kensuke Koike that's going viral. Titled "Top Breeder," it shows how you can duplicate a photo of a dog by putting the print through a pasta cutter and distributing the slices into new photos. One picture can "magically" turn into four.
I don't usually go the negative Nellie with anything photo related, sometimes it's best to keep your mouth firmly shut. But I'm not going to take it anymore, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm going to lean right out the window and shout it to the world, enough, I'm done with rubbish samples of film technology on the Web.