There's a critically endangered species in the world of photography businesses: the one-hour photo shop. With the decline of film developing and photo printing, the one-hour photo niche has become the single fastest-dying business in the United States.
NASA's MESSENGER mission came to an end yesterday after the space probe slammed into Mercury's surface at about 8,750 mph. The photo above is the last photo that was sent back to scientists on Earth before impact.
Want to see how the world's biggest fashion and beauty magazines retouch their photos? Here's a set of time-lapse videos that show many hours of retouching compressed into a matter of minutes.
NPR's Radiolab recorded this 30-minute podcast episode titled "Sight Unseen" that explores current issues in conflict photography. We hear war photographer Lynsey Addario share about one particular experience she had with photographing a gravely wounded marine (The images can be see in this slideshow).
Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey recently gave this inspiring 18-minute talk at TEDxVerona titled "Life is Art." He shares the story of his own journey in photography starting from when he was diagnosed with polio at 6 years old, and had only a small window as his viewfinder into the world during months of solitary confinement.
Brave New Camera is an upcoming documentary film that looks at how recent developments in cameras -- things like Internet-connectivity, near-infinite storage, and powerful algorithms -- has changed and is changing the world we live in.
Mervyn O'Gorman was an English engineer whose artistic interests turned him into one of the early pioneers of color photography. Using the Autochrome Lumière process that was launched in 1907, O'Gorman shot images that are now regularly featured in exhibitions of early color photos.
Going a do-it-yourself (DIY) route is popular among photographers who want the benefits of a certain product without having to shell out money in order to buy the actual thing. Here's something you might not have considered though: building a DIY version of something that's patented can actually constitute patent infringement, and sharing those designs with others can land you in even deeper trouble.
Here's a helpful little infographic that has been floating around the Web. It's a simple look at how the "exposure triangle" -- aperture, shutter speed, and ISO -- affect the outcome of photographs. It's not a complete picture, of course (for example, it doesn't say why you'd ever choose a higher ISO versus a lower one), but it could be a nice illustrated reference for those just starting out in photography.
In addition to the megapixel war, major camera companies are also engaging in a new superzoom war with their latest compact cameras. We recently shared the incredible reach of the 64x zoom on the Canon SX60 and the 83x zoom on the Nikon P900. If we ever somehow get to the point of 343x zooms appearing in cameras, the video above shows what that would be like.
Long gone are the days in which being a travel photographer simply meant you shot photography for a certain travel magazine or newspaper. The world isn't that simple anymore, and the level of competition in the photography world has never been higher. But still, I'm fairly sure there are more “travel photographers” on the planet now than there ever were -- just check your Instagram feeds.
The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and photography was invented in the 1820s and 1830s, so most of the veterans of the war didn't live long enough to have their portraits made. A handful of them did.
Did you know that when you capture a natural light photo, it took those photons about 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to your camera? Light feels like it travels quickly for us here on Earth -- so quickly that when we take a picture on our planet, it basically captures things the moment they happen. But in the vast distances of space, it can take light quite a bit of time to get from one place to another.
Ted Forbes of the popular YouTube channel The Art of Photography just posted a short 8-minute video in which he discusses the oft-debated question: "Should I work for free?" …
An Ontario-based vegan who goes by the name Vegetable Police recently released the video above and then began warning photographers with it in online photo forums. He claims that modern digital cameras "output high levels of radiation" and that people should be careful not to have the camera in their hands or against their faces for long periods of time.
Did you know that the selfie stick was actually invented back in the 1980s? The concept didn't take off until Bluetooth-enabled smartphone cameras in recent years, but the concept has been around for decades now.
How have the designs of cameras changed over the past 100 years? The team over at eBay Deals wants to show you. They've created a series of animated GIFs showing how the cameras produced by major brands have evolved over the years as styles and technologies changed.
What are the most common cameras used by stock photographers? While we don't have the data across all stock services, Shutterstock has provided us with some numbers that may be somewhat representative for the industry.
It's often recommended that photographers keep their gear with them when flying rather than checking it in. If the risk of theft and careless baggage handlers aren't enough to deter you, check out the video above. It shows one particular baggage pusher system that's used in an international airport to direct bags onto conveyor belts. As you can see, gentle handling isn't exactly the goal.
The following is a collection of some of the earliest known images of people smiling, starting with a pair of soldiers in the Mexican American War in 1847 and up to a group of soldiers near the end of the Civil War.
After a nine year journey towards the outer edge of our solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back its first color photo of Pluto and its largest moon Charon. The photo above, captured "just" 71 million miles away from the dwarf planet, is the closest color photo ever made of Pluto.
Did you know that a single unknown photographer helped change the course of history for Yosemite with his photos back in 1861? The video above tells the story of Carleton Watkins, a man whose photos of Yosemite made their way to President Abraham Lincoln and helped influence the decision to turn the area into a National Park.
The photograph above has been called the most famous tabloid photo of the 1920s. It's the first photo showing an execution by electric chair, and was captured by photographer Tom Howard at the execution of Ruth Snyder back on January 12, 1928.
Nick Marsh has been a forensic photographer for over two decades over the UK, and he offers his forensic imaging consulting services to the London MET police. He has even written a book about the subject, titled "Forensic Photography: A Practitioner's Guide."
A few months ago, we shared a chart showing how sales the camera market have changed between 1947 and 2014. The data shows that after a large spike in the late 2000s, the sales of dedicated cameras have been shrinking by double digit figures each of the following years. Mix in data for smartphone sales, and the chart can shed some more light on the state of the industry.
Hyperlapses, or timelapses with the camera traveling great distances, have become all the rage these days, but have you ever wondered how far back the technique goes? The short film above, titled "Pacer," was captured back in 1995 using a Bolex 16mm film camera. It is being called the world's oldest hyperlapse.
If you're just starting out in post-processing digital photos, you may feel overwhelmed with all the different terms and concepts involved in tweaking your shots. To help make things easier to understand, the browser-based photo editing service Polarr has created a helpful interactive website that explains common jargon with interactive demos.
Here's a colorized 1912 photograph of freelance photographers Bill and Joseph James riding a motorcycle in Toronto. Their father was William James, who's often referred to as Canada's first photojournalist. The James family created a huge photographic record of Toronto that spanned decades starting in 1909.
If you don't mind shelling out $880 on a single memory card and putting all your eggs in one basket, you can buy Lexar's 512GB CF card (or SanDisk's 512GB SD card for $600). To give you a better idea of just how massive these capacities are, photographer Jared Polin stuck his 512GB card into his Nikon D4s and documented it in the video above.
A while back I got my hands on my first tilt-shift lens. Since then I have carried it with me nearly every day, grocery shopping and subway riding – you name it. It’s quite a special and fascinating piece of glass even having aged 43 years.
In 2012, Olympus launched a new 5-axis sensor-shift image stabilization system in the retro OM-D E-M5 mirrorless camera. If you'd like a better idea of how the system works, check out the video above, which shows the technology in action.
The Internet is teeming with photographs and videos of the starry night sky that dazzle the eyes and tickle the imagination, but have you ever wondered how the imagery compares to what photographer's naked eye actually saw while the camera was taking a picture? …
Want to see how much our ability to photograph space has improved over the past 135 years or so? Just check out the side-by-side comparison above. On the left is a photo of Jupiter from back in 1879 as it appeared in the book "A History of Astronomy in the 19th Century" by Agnes Clerk. On the right is a photo NASA shot in 2014.
Stanley Kubrick is famous as a filmmaker, but he actually started out his creative career as a photographer. Last year we shared a glimpse into his still photography career.
Several times a year, Portland-based photographer Duncan Davidson is called upon by TED to shoot portraits of the notable speakers while they're giving their presentations. Some months ago, Davidson himself stepped onto the stage and gave a talk at TEDxBeaconStreet about finding things to photograph right before your eyes.
If you're out shooting on a sunny day and suddenly find that you need to start a fire, your lens may be able to do the trick. The video above shows how a photographer named Mohammad recently used his Carl Zeiss 45mm f/2 lens to light his cigarette while out hiking with friends. You could also use this handy little trick to light a fire if you're out camping -- as long as you have some direct sunlight to focus to a point.
Professional photographer Leif Norman recently gave a talk at TEDxManitoba titled "The Past and Future of Photography." Norman spent 18 minutes giving the audience a brief history of photography and sharing Gladys, a large format view camera he built to experiment with older processes.
A 87-year-old grandmother in Texas has sold a rare and valuable collection of more than 500 Civil War-era photographs to the Library of Congress after building her personal collection for four decades.
This 'Just the Lenses' article will take advantage of a Trioptics Imagemaster optical bench to compare lenses from different camera mounts with no camera involved. Why is that different? Because all other forms of testing (DxO, Imatest, or even photography) tests the camera-lens combination.
Earlier this month, we shared a video showing the incredible reach of the Canon SX60, a superzoom compact camera with a 65x lens. If you thought that video was crazy, check out this one featuring the new Nikon P900, which packs an even longer 83x optical zoom lens -- the equivalent of a 24-2000mm lens in 35mm terms.
Three year old children can make sense of what they see in photos and describe them to us, but even the most advanced computers have historically had difficulties with that same task. That's quickly changing though, as computer scientists are developing powerful new ways to have computers identify what a photograph is showing.
Did you know that the Hubble Space Telescope is only able to capture black-and-white photos? In order to capture a maximum amount of information in their space photos, NASA captures multiple black-and-white images using different filters in the camera. These images are then combined in post to create the iconic color photographs that you see published by the space agency.
In February 2014, Leica moved its headquarters to the newly constructed Leitz Park Wetzlar, a state-of-the-art campus for its management and manufacturing. Here's a look at what the beautiful campus is like from the outside and inside the buildings.
If you're just getting started in learning how to light your shot with flashes, you may be confused about the terms "high speed sync" and "flash duration." Here's a helpful 6-minute primer in which photographer Daniel Norton explains what these two concepts are, how they differ, and which situations they come in handy for.
Photographer David Noton was chosen by Canon to be the first landscape photographer in the world to experience a preproduction model of the new 50.6 megapixel Canon 5DS, the world's highest resolution full frame DSLR. In this video, Noton, a Canon Explorer, shares his thoughts about the 5DS.
MinutePhysics just released this interesting (and somewhat math-y) explanation of how cameras and computers deal with the concept of color. The video is titled "Computer Color is Broken."
"Photography Made Difficult" is a 1989 documentary about the career of renowned photojournalist William Eugene Smith, a man who helped to pioneer the concept of the photo essay. It runs 1 hour and 40 minutes long.
The New York Times has published an in-depth feature in its business section that looks at how Kodak, at one time a juggernaut in the photo industry, is working to reinvent itself after missing the boat when the camera world shifted to digital.
The Ganges river in India and Bangladesh is the holiest river in Hinduism. Every day, hundreds of dead bodies are brought to the banks of the river by family members and cremated ceremonially on a flaming pyre. On hand to document these rituals for loved ones are death photographers -- young men who make a living by shooting last images of the deceased for a fee.
Want to understand the concept of depth of field better? Polish photographer and programmer Michael Bemowski has created a fantastic and feature-rich online depth of field calculator and bokeh simulator that can help you wrap your mind around what's going on when you change things like focal length and aperture.
