Photographers used to spend lifetimes building up their portfolios and networks before their work became widely known to a global audience, but with the advent of the Internet, the fact that anything can "go viral" is completely changing the equation for success.
Here's a documentary film about acclaimed American photographer Richard Avedon that originally aired in 1995. If you have 90 minutes to spare, watching this movie is a great way to peek into the mind of a master and become inspired to improve your own photography.
Here's a simple lesson by Dylan Bennett on what depth of field is, how it works, and how to control it in your photography.
Here's a simple trick for those of you who find yourself always plugging in USB cables the wrong way on your first attempt: pay attention to the seam on the metal tip.
If you're a fan of learning things through Khan Academy, then you might enjoy learning about how ISO works in this similar-styled tutorial by Dylan Bennett. Bennett might not have Salman Khan's soothing voice, but he does his best to break down the magic of digital camera sensors into easy to understand ideas. For a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how things work, check out Cambridge in Colour's excellent tutorials.
Here's a clip from the bodybuilding documentary "Bigger Faster Stronger” in which photographer Rich Schaff spills the beans on some industry secrets for how those unbelievable before-and-after photos promoting bodybuilding products are made. He shows how both shots can be of the same model on the same day, with various tricks and image manipulations used to achieve the drastic differences you see.
Everything is a Remix is a fascinating four-part video series by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson that explores the concept of creativity, and how everything created has some degree of copying, transforming, or combining of old ideas. While the series isn't specifically directed towards photographers, the ideas are quite relevant to the discussion of "original" work.
National Geographic photographers get to do the coolest things. In this video, photographer Carsten Peter takes us along with him on a journey into Son Doong, the world's largest cave located in Vietnam. The biggest chamber in the cave is over 3 miles long and more than four times taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Here's an interesting 12-minute video that offers one explanation into how the world of art works. Even if you don't agree with the philosophy and worldview described in the video, it's still an eye-opening tour of the different things that influence and power the mysterious world of art.
Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch created this helpful diagram showing the relative sizes of various sensors, including the one found inside the Lytro light field camera (a camera that lets you focus after shots are taken). The FCC published photos of the Lytro camera's guts last week, revealing that the sensor inside is roughly 6.5×4.5mm (smaller than our previous estimate). This means that it's slightly larger than the iPhone sensor and slightly smaller than the one in most point-and-shoot …
Captured on April 1, 1995 by the Hubble Telescope, the photograph Pillars of Creation is one of the most famous space images ever made. Here's a crazy fact though: did you know that the "pillars" seen in the photo were already long gone by the time the image was captured? Astronomers have concluded that the pillars -- which measure up to 4 light years in length -- were destroyed about 6,000 years ago by the shock wave from a supernova. Because of how long it takes light to travel across such …
Photography author Ben Long has a thought-provoking article over at CreativePro in which he argues that "all photos are manipulated" and that "there is no such thing as absolute truth in photography": …
After NASA published its latest jaw-dropping "Blue Marble" photograph of Earth last month, many of you wondered how "real" the image was. Here's NASA's explanation on how their images are created: …
Photographer Kenneth Jarecke has written up an interesting article on how Internet culture is hindering the development of people who want to get better at photography: …
Want to see how far DSLRs have come in the past decade? Lee Morris of Fstoppers published these two photos taken at Super Bowl halftime shows. The crop on the left was captured in 2001, possibly with the Nikon D1H at 2.7 megapixels and ISO 800 (state of the art specs at the time). The slice on the right was from this past weekend, and was shot with a Nikon D3s at 12MP and ISO 12,800.
Destin of Smarter Every Day made this helpful video in which he and his daughter explain the basics of light painting and digital camera sensors using "super simple speak".
Here's your interesting photo fact of the day: did you know that sepia toning (when B&W photos are given that distinctive warm tone) is named after the Common Cuttlefish? The scientific name of the species is Sepia officinalis, and the ink produced by the cuttlefish was used for sepia toning when the technique first emerged in the 1880s.
Here's a diagram created by Reddit user GeneralSarsby that shows the effective field of view of lenses of various focal lengths when used on a 1.6x crop factor sensor. You can also download the source svg if you want to edit or build upon it.
Facebook officially filed to become a publicly traded company today and, in doing so, spilled the beans on many of its internal figures and statistics that are normally under wraps. A crazy fact that emerged is that an average of 250 million photographs are uploaded to the service every day. That's equal to 10.4 million per hour, 174,000 per minute, or 3,000 photographs per second. In terms of storage, the photos and videos hosted by the service take up 100 petabytes, or 100 million gigabytes.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced this interesting segment on photographer Yuri Arcurs and how he turned his microstock photography into a million-dollar photography empire. Here's a mind-boggling statistic: on average, Arcurs sells one of his images every 8 seconds.
Early in 2011, there was a brouhaha after newspaper photographer Jay Westcott complained about Lady Gaga's photo release form given to photographers attending her concerts. PDN characterized the story as a "fame monster gobbling up photographers’ copyrights". What you see above is a copy of the actual release form given at concerts. Apparently contracts like this one are pretty standard these days.
Ever wonder why camera manufacturers these days are describing often sensor sizes with fractions instead of millimeters? Roger Cicala of LensRentals explains: …
In a paper published in Science this week, Japanese researchers reported on a discovery that jumping spiders use a method for gauging distance called "image defocus", which no other living organism is known to use. Rather than use focusing and stereoscopic vision like humans or head-wobbling motion parallax like birds, the spiders have two green-detecting layers in their eyes -- one in focus and one not. By comparing the two, the spiders can determine the distance from objects. Scientists …
Earlier today my friend and fellow photographer posted a link to a craigslist ad from a woman in Seattle looking for a wedding photographer. The woman was upset because she thought that $3,000 for a wedding photographer was “wack” because all we do “is hang out at a wedding taking tons of photos and editing them” and that we are “making so much money it's crazy.”
Design director Wayne Ford has written up a great piece on the career of American photographer Arnold Newman, who was in the vanguard of the "environmental portrait" movement that emerged in the early 1940s.
Destin of Smarter Every Day wanted to show how a DSLR shutter works, so he pointed a Phantom high speed camera at a Canon 60D and made this slow motion video showing the magic that happens every time you press the shutter.
PressPausePlay is an award-winning documentary film that poses questions on what the digital revolution has done to various creative industries: …
Curious about where people like to take pictures in your part of the world? Sightsmap is a simple Google Map app that takes geo data from the photos uploaded to Panoramio (now a Google service) and uses it to generate a heatmap.
Here's a video that's fascinating in light of Kodak's bankruptcy announcement today. It was created back in 2006 for the company by partners+napier, and was shown at the All Things Digital Conference in California before Kodak CEO Antonio Perez took the stage to talk about the company's digital transformation. The predictions made in the video are seemingly prophetic, accurately describing the current landscape of digital and mobile photography. It's too bad that Kodak couldn't right its ship, …
Want to know what it's like to cover a football game as the chief photographer of a school's athletic department? Photographer Joel Hawksley created this day-in-the-life time-lapse video after being assigned to cover a football game between Ohio University and Temple University. It starts early in the morning when he pulls out of his driveway, and ends at night when he pulls in. In between we see everything from setting up, shooting, post-processing, and uploading/emailing photographs. Hawksley …
B&H is one of the most popular retailers in the photo world, but most customers haven't set foot inside the physical superstore in New York City, one of the largest photo stores in the world. If you've been wondering what it looks like on the inside, you can take a virtual tour through Google Street View (click the arrow pointing into the building). Starting late last year, Street View started including imagery of the inside of some buildings in addition to its street-level views.
The Economist has a fascinating piece looking at the similarities and differences between Kodak and Fujifilm, two juggernauts of film photography that took different paths when digital photography came around: …
The final nail in the Kodachrome coffin came at the end of 2010 when the last lab that processed the film, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, ceased its support. In Kodachrome's final years, every roll sent to Kodak for processing from around the world was sent to Dwayne's. This mini-documentary created by Xander Robin offers an interesting glimpse into Kodakchrome processing at Dwayne's Photo before it came to an end.
If you've always wanted your own military-grade portable darkroom, today's your lucky day! There's a used US Army one for sale on eBay with the starting price of $4,500. The 4,500LB shelter contains 3 rooms with 614 cubic feet of space, and comes with all the darkroom equipment you need, including a fridge, film drying cabinet, film processors, sink, storage spaces, and an escape door! It even packs its own temperate water control system and heating/AC unit. You can find more photos here.
This is what the new Nikon D4 looks like when stripped down to its rugged magnesium alloy frame.
The folks over at Triposo wanted to know when people around the world take pictures, so they harvested the timestamps and geolocation data from photos shared on the Internet and created this beautiful visualization showing one year of photos taken around the world (be sure to watch it full screen and in HD). It's neat seeing certain parts of the world light up with photo activity on special days.
Ever wonder how the photographs found on the pages of National Geographic come together? Here's a fascinating behind-the-scenes video showing how the images of the 1992 cover story titled "The Sense Of Sight" -- photographed by Joe McNally -- were shot, edited, and arranged. McNally writes, …
Ever wonder how the US government managed to capture spy photos with satellites during the Cold War without the help of digital cameras, computers, or wireless transmission? The Atlantic has a fascinating article on the various techniques that were used: …
Curious as to what Sony's A77 pellicle mirror looks like on the inside? Here's an interesting look at the camera broken down into its main components.
Here's a quick and simple tip for better portraits by Reddit user rmx_: …
Back in the spring of 1980, Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson began to photograph the subway system in NYC for his project titled Subway. NYRBlog has published an interesting essay -- an excerpt from the introduction of Davidson's book -- in which the photographer talks about his experience: …
Earlier this month we shared some advice from an anonymous airline baggage handler, who revealed that hard-sided “spinners” suitcases are safest if you must transport valuables (e.g. camera gear) in checked baggage. To see why, check out the video above by Delta Airlines. They drilled holes into a hardcase and installed six outward-facing cameras to document what a bag goes through after it disappears behind those black rubber flaps and before it emerges onto the conveyor belt in the …
This photo shows what 5MB of hard drive storage looked like in 1956. The IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk was state of the art, weighed just shy of a ton, required a forklift to be carried around, and was composed of 50 separate 24-inch discs that occupied 16 square feet. The annual cost of using it was a staggering $35,000 -- steep even in today's money. Nowadays most RAW photos outweigh the storage capabilities of that behemoth of an external hard drive...
Over the past year, there have been a number of jaw-dropping (and viral) time-lapse videos created from the amazing photos captured from the International Space Station by astronaut Mike Fossum. The video above provides an interesting behind-the-scenes look into how the images are captured.
Here's an interesting video in which acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (the guy who directed The Fog of War) talks about the issue of truth in photography, and how he thinks we've forgotten that there's a connection between photos to the physical world.
What would you pack if you were assigned to cover a war from the inside? The photo above shows what photographer Umit Bektas decided to pack in his camera bag for his embed with a US military unit in Afghanistan.
Gav of The Slow Mo Guys made this interesting video comparing different high-speed camera frame rates. Using a Phantom HD camera, he films coffee mugs shattering on pavement at 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, and 10000 frames per second.
Now here's an absolutely bizarre statistic if it's actually true: 76 percent of Facebook photos with tagged Britons show the subjects in some state of drunkenness. Photo book service MyMemory.com surveyed 1,781 Britons over the age of 18, asking them to estimate the percentage of their pics that showed them under the influence of alcohol. A quarter of those respondents also said that their privacy settings allowed the general public to view their tagged images.
You probably already know that it's not a good idea to include your expensive camera gear with check in luggage, but what if you have no choice? If you must, then putting your gear inside a hard-sided "spinner" suitcase with four wheels is your best bet. The Huffington Post has published an interesting interview with an anonymous baggage handler, who gives the following advice: …
Bill Gates' image licensing company Corbis has collection of more than 100 million photographs, including some of history's most iconic images. CBS was recently given a rare peek inside the company's photo preservation facility at Iron Mountain -- a maximum security cold storage facility in a mine deep underground.
