I'm Allen Murabayashi, the co-founder of PhotoShelter. We recently launched our Guide to Photo Contests 2019, an annual look at contests around the world that we think are worth your consideration. Here's an excerpt from this year’s guide that looks at the sometimes controversial world of contests.
London's Gatwick Airport, the second-busiest in the UK, has been shut down after two drones were reportedly spotted flying near the airfield. Over 100,000 passengers and over 750 flights may be affected in just 24 hours, and the military has been called in to support local police in handling the chaos that has ensued.
One of the biggest announcements in the camera industry this year was the Nikon Z Series and its first two cameras, the Z6 and Z7. That's how the camera models are usually spelled out when you see them across the Interwebs, but did you know that they're officially the Z 6 and Z 7? Yes, with a space in the middle.
Facebook revealed today that it discovered a software bug that exposed the unpublished photos of up to 6.8 million users.
After years of running hugely successful Kickstarter campaigns but widely failing to deliver on its promises, net SE (the company behind the revivals of Meyer Optik Görlitz and other vintage brands) filed for bankruptcy this year. Now a German company called OPC Optics has announced that it has acquired the rights to the Meyer Optik Görlitz brand and will be bringing it back to the market.
One of the most viral photos of the past few days has been a side-by-side comparison of two photos that purports to show how photographers covering the Paris protests are misrepresenting the truth.
While the Canon EF and Nikon F lens mount ecosystems are teeming with 3rd-party lenses, the new Canon R and Nikon Z full-frame mirrorless lens mounts completely lacked 3rd-party glass... until now. The Chinese brand KIPON has announced that it's the first out of the gate.
VSCO exploded onto the photography scene back in 2012 with instantly popular Photoshop and Lightroom presets for accurately simulating various film stocks on RAW photos. But now the company is moving away from its origins: it just announced that its desktop presets are being discontinued.
Whenever PetaPixel has published an article about chemical photography in recent months, it has been met with a plethora of malicious, if not even downright hateful, comments. They're left by photographers who claim that only they may decide on how other photographers, their colleagues, or even hobbyists who simply enjoy photography for what it is may pursue photography as their passion or job.
Here's some big news in Europe that hasn't made a big splash in the US and has largely flown under our radar: the very day after Photokina, Tetenal announced that it's in financial turmoil. Tetenal is one of the largest photochemical businesses in the world and produces chemicals for brands like Ilford and Kodak.
After a year of drumming up anticipation and sneak peeks, Skylum today finally announced the availability of Luminar 3. The all-in-one imaging package is both an image editor and library, meaning it's now a direct competitor to Adobe Lightroom.
A short film shot entirely on an iPhone has won the prestigious 2018 Turner Prize in Britain. Established in 1984, the prize is presented every year to a British visual artist, and it's the UK's most publicized art award.
Fujifilm killed off the last peel-apart instant film when it discontinued its FP-100C back in 2016 despite an effort from Impossible founder Florian Kaps to keep it alive. But now, two years later, Kaps has just announced the re-birth and re-invention of peel-apart instant film: it's called ONE INSTANT.
Smartphones are sometimes marketed these days as being capable of shooting "DSLR-quality photos." Samsung went a step further: it was just caught using an actual DSLR photo to fake its smartphone's "portrait mode."
There are two major trends in photography today. The first is the ever-increasing numbers of photos being made. I can't even be bothered to look up how many billions of photos are being uploaded to Instickrbook every minute or every day or every year. It's a lot. This is usually talked about in terms of how many photos there are, and how we are drowning in them.
Alamy announced in an email to contributors today that the commission rate for stock photo sales is being slashed from 50% to 40% starting in February 2019.
The popular blogging platform Tumblr has announced that starting on December 17th, 2018, it will permanently ban all adult content and nudity. That includes artistic nude photos published by professional photographers.
Photokina announced in 2017 that starting in 2018, the previously biennial photography trade fair -- the largest in the world -- would become an annual event. The event is also moving from September to May. Since May 2019 is only just over 7 months after the latest show in September 2018, the organizers have decided to cancel the 2019 show and start the new schedule in 2020.
"The Possession Of Hannah Grace" is a new Hollywood thriller that hit theaters at the end of November 2018. What most theatergoers won't know is that it's the first Hollywood feature film shot start-to-finish on a full-frame mirrorless camera, the Sony a7S II.
There has been much discussion in recent days of how location tagging in social media is harming natural landmarks around the world. And now even authorities are taking a stand: the Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board in Wyoming has launched a new campaign against location tags.
Hasselblad. The company that went to the moon. A company known for producing some of the most iconic cameras in history. Since 1948, when Hasselblad produced its first consumer camera, it has built a strong reputation within the industry. As with many companies, it has had a few bumps in the road, but for the most part, it remains a highly respected organization.
Compared to companies like Canon and Nikon, which produce f/1.2 and even f/1.0 full-frame camera lenses, Sony's E-mount lenses max out at f/1.4. But it's not that Sony can't match the faster lenses on the market -- it just doesn't see a need to.
The American billionaire Koch brothers now own a sizable chunk of Getty Images after the investment arm of Koch Industries agreed to make a $500 million investment in the stock photo agency.
One of the most famous Chinese photojournalists has gone missing in China, and there are reports that he was arrested by government security officers.
Beware: instant cameras that produce Zink photos may not be a good option for preserving memories long term.
Instagram is rolling out a redesign to its profile view. The goal is to make it "easier and cleaner to use," but the new look will also deemphasize follower counts.
For some time now, my favourite portrait lens has been the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 art. This lens, as many of you may know, is simply incredible when it comes to performance. Even the price of this lens isn’t unreasonable when you compare it to some alternatives currently available.
Reuters is combining its photography and video news staff into a single team of visual journalists. The international news agency is also expected to cut jobs in the process of combining the operations.
An old wedding advice article has resurfaced, gone viral, and riled up a lot of photographers and non-photographers alike.
One of the cardinal rules of documentary wildlife photography and filmmaking is to not interfere with the natural course of events in the scenes and situations you're trying to capture on camera. A BBC wildlife film crew decided to break that rule by coming to the rescue of trapped penguins.
Instagram influence is worth big money these days, and many users have turned to third-party services to gain fake followers and likes. If you're one such user, here's some bad news: Instagram is now wiping out the artificial numbers that you may have paid money to get.
Iconic spots in Kansas City, Missouri, are banning photographers from their property due to photo shoots getting out of control. Professional photographers argue the trouble is being caused by "a few bad apples" that aren't representative of the whole industry.
500px has unveiled a redesigned Home Feed that's designed to show more photos and provide more exposure. The "cleaner and more contemporary design" was inspired by photobooks.
Adobe is being sued by a commercial photographer and videographer who claims that he lost $250,000 worth of work when a bug in Premiere Pro permanently deleted a huge number of his photo and video files.
2018 has been the year the mirrorless camera war exploded, with Canon, Nikon, and even Panasonic unveiling new full-frame mirrorless cameras to compete against the current champ Sony. Canon and Nikon have already taken a chunk out of Sony's lead, but Nikon has much loftier ambitions: it believes it can become #1 in full-frame cameras "quite soon."
After years of owning a near 100% share of the full-frame mirrorless camera market in Japan, Sony's monopoly is finally under attack. The latest sales numbers show that Canon has already jumped to a 22% share after the launch of its EOS R system.
Flickr announced a controversial decision this month to limit free accounts to 1,000 photos and delete extra existing photos of users who are already over the limit. Many people immediately wondered whether countless Creative Commons photos would be trashed. Today, Flickr reassured the photo community by promising that CC photos aren't going anywhere.
People often ask me, given the improvement and ubiquity of cell phones, whether DSLRs survive. This actually entails two slightly different questions: will standalone large-ish cameras survive, and will the particular reflex design (the R in DSLR) survive? I am cautiously optimistic about the former and very pessimistic about the latter. In this piece, I will discuss DSLR vs. mirrorless.
Fotolia has announced that it will be shutting down its website on November 5, 2019, 14.5 years after its birth in 2005 and 5 years after it was acquired by Adobe for $800 million in cash in 2014.
I'm going to do one of my end-of-year assessments a little earlier this year. Many of you will be struggling with buying decisions this holiday season because of all the higher-end mirrorless cameras that appeared in and around Photokina. I've now had the chance to use virtually every new camera—some for less time than others, obviously—and I am ready to deliver a quick assessment of The State of the ILC.
I'm Johnnie Behiri, the co-owner of cinema5D. Adobe is a well-known company in the filmmaking and photography industries (and beyond). But for me personally, it was time to ask what lies behind just the name, so I reached out with the request to visit some of their facilities in the United States, intending to “create a face”, asking who this huge company actually is.
A new startup company called Catalog has raised $1.5 million to drop the cost of advertising photos for businesses from hundreds or thousands of dollars to just tens of dollars per photo. As you might expect, many working professional photographers aren't happy with the business model.
Yesterday Flickr made their first big restructuring announcement since recently being purchased by SmugMug. Beginning next year on January 8th, Flickr will limit free accounts to 1,000 photos. The previously offered free 1 terabyte of storage goes away.
An Australian photographer has sparked a bit of a controversy after one of his photos featured by a major media outlet drew accusations of Photoshop manipulation. The photographer responded by denying that he cloned the main subject of his photo, but his untouched photo seems to tell a different story.
After Verizon-owned Yahoo sold Flickr to SmugMug in April of this year, it seemed likely that changes would be coming to the service due to new ownership. Today the first major changes just took place: Flickr has downgraded its free plan and upgraded its pro plan.
Guess who's planning to join the mirrorless camera war? Yongnuo, the Chinese company best known for creating cheap clones of popular Canon and Nikon lenses.
An artificial intelligence-generated portrait has sold for a staggering $432,000 at auction. It was the first listing of its kind by a major auction house.
Lexar has abandoned the XQD memory card format and is now focusing its attention on pushing for CFexpress as the future standard.
Last month, the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) published an article and video showing what happens when a drone collides with an airplane wing at high speeds. The Chinese drone juggernaut DJI wasn't pleased with the study: it's demanding that UDRI withdraw the video and article, calling it "misleading."
If you've been hoping and praying that Fujifilm will launch a full-frame mirrorless camera, get ready to have your dreams dashed: the company is now saying that it will "never go full-frame."