Industry

In the digital age, there is a demand for instant gratification; however, is it possible that the perfect solution for the modern individual is an analog one? Instant film was a product introduced during the late 1940s and remains a popular option for instant physical prints to this day. Hold up your camera, press a button, and minutes later you have a fully processed physical image. And to think that it all started with a little girl’s simple question…

Ann S. Moore is one of the most powerful women in the world according to Forbes and Fortune Magazine. Graduating from Vanderbilt University in 1978, Moore climbed the career ladder leading exciting positions including being the publisher of Sports Illustrated for Kids and People Magazine. She was crowned People Magazine’s president in 1993 and become the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Time Inc. in 2002.

On the heels of Flickr's major redesign, Instagram has launched a new look of its own. The photo-sharing social network has revamped its website, replacing its old style with one that's simple and sparse.

Canadian photography retailer Blacks is pulling out of the brick-and-mortar store business. The company announced today that it will be closing all of its 59 stores in Canada on August 8th, 2015, citing an inability to make them profitable in the digital age.

Last month Flickr proudly announced major new features, a slick new redesign, and 112 million members, but the service may have rolled out a disappointing change as well: increased compression that reduces the quality of photos.

HTC today unveiled a new limited edition 24-karat gold version of the HTC One M9 smartphone. Unfortunately for HTC, there was just one small (and rather embarrassing) problem: one of the promo photos was taken with an iPhone.

If you're a Nikon photographer using iOS devices, you may be in for a treat in the near future. Rumor has it that Nikon and Apple are currently collaborating on a secret new iOS app for Nikon cameras.

If you're looking to learn to program, there are free interactive online courses such as Codecademy and CodeSchool you can use. Programmer and photographer Cody Meyer wanted to give the photography world a similar kind of resource, so he created Camera Instructor. It's a new web-based photography school that aims to teach photography skills for free through interactive videos and exercises.

Legendary photojournalist Steve McCurry's assistant has been arrested in connection with the theft of prints, books, and items from McCurry's studio worth a whopping $654,358.

There is currently a scam targeting photographers nationwide. It begins with a threat of false negative reviews if a business owner doesn't pay a "reputation management fee". Whether the business responds or not, the scammers will post many negative reviews then offer to have them removed or pushed down the search results... For a fee, of course.

If you've downloaded a copy of GIMP for Windows from SourceForge in recent days, you may want to double check to make sure you didn't get other programs installed as well. Some copies of the "open source Photoshop" were apparently being offered with for-profit adware bundled with the installer.

Richard Prince has caused quite a commotion over the past week after it came to light that he has been selling other people's Instagram photos for upwards of $100,000. Now, one of the people he took from is responding in a clever way: she's reselling Prince's artwork for $90 instead of $90,000.

Google today announced its new and long awaited Photos service, a standalone service that's separate from Google+. It's "a single, private place to keep a lifetime of memories, and access them from any device," Google says.

In the world of photography, every once in a while an anniversary comes around that is worth recognizing. Today, Canon is celebrating the ten-year anniversary of its EOS 5D camera line, which was originally announced on August 22nd, 2005. The original 5D represented a significant evolution in the digital photography market by lowering the bar of entry for photographers interested in full-frame DSLR cameras.

GoPro is officially getting into the camera drone industry. After rumors had been swirling since late last year, GoPro founder and CEO Nick Woodman announced yesterday that the company is building its own quadcopter, and that the drone is set to launch in the first half of 2016.

A Seattle-based fine art photographer is suing Pinterest for infringing upon his copyrights and other intellectual property rights. Christopher Boffoli claims that his photographs have been posted over 5,000 times on the public site, and that Pinterest isn’t doing enough to “protect photographers and their work”.

Have you ever found yourself in the following situation? You are researching wedding photographers, either as a prospective client or as a photographer scoping out the competition, and encounter the following:

There are many people who have studied and understand the art world better than me. But there is one thing that I’m sure of: Richard Prince is a jerk.

There's some very sad news in the world of photography today: renowned American photographer Mary Ellen Mark passed away yesterday in New York City at the age of 75.

France's Ministry of Culture and Communication has published a new report on the state of the photography industry in the country. The study contains numbers that offer an idea of how professional photography has changed over recent years.

After a three year run, Adobe is retiring Photoshop Touch, its current horse in the mobile photo editing race. The company announced today that the iOS and Android app will be removed from app stores on May 28th. The software will still be usable on your device if you've downloaded it already, of course, but there will be no further updates.

Artist Richard Prince is notorious in the art world for taking other people's work, "appropriating" them as his own with various changes, and then selling them for large amounts of dough. His latest endeavor is once again raising eyebrows: Prince is selling other people's Instagram photos for up to $100,000 each.

It has been rumored for months now that Google is planning to separate its Google+ Photos service from the social network as a standalone offering. That new service may be very near, and some first details about it are starting to emerge.

Olympus has launched a bizarre and humorous new ad campaign to promote its mirrorless cameras at the expense of "heavy DSLRs." The ads feature a made up medical condition called DSL-ARM: "the affliction of having your arm stretched by using a heavy DSLR." Check out the 30-second ad above.

There was a time in which anyone who could light a photo well was of value, but those people are of no value anymore, says artist rep Maren Levinson. In the 5-minute interview above, Levinson offers some great insights into how the photography industry has changed over the past several years and what photographers need to do to stay relevant and needed.

Yesterday we shared how one photographer was surprised when a casual request to "share" her Facebook photo turned out to be a request to use it in a national TV ad. Unfortunately for photographers, it seems more and more companies are requesting photos in similarly subtle ways.

A restaurant and winery in Israel made headlines recently after designing special plates specifically for diners to shoot Instagram photos. It seems restaurants in the US are jumping into this trend as well.

It might be old news that Leica opened a store in Los Angeles back in 2013, but nonetheless, it’s still a place that will be an important photography destination for years to come and definitely worth a visit if you’re in L.A.

Truth Facts posted this simple tongue-in-cheek infographic showing how smartphone cameras have impacted the way people take and view photos. It's a then-and-now comparison of three simple measures: pictures taken, pictures developed, and pictures looked at.

Flickr is basking in a fresh wave of press after launching a revamp of its website and mobile apps, but the leader that oversaw Flickr 4.0 won't be around to see whether it pans out. Bernardo Hernandez, chief of the photo sharing service since 2013, has left his position at Yahoo.

Sony Australia has launched a new "Move to Mirrorless" advertising campaign that aims to lure people away from DSLRs and to the Alpha line of mirrorless cameras. To get its point across, Sony released the 60-second video above showing large mirrors shattering into little pieces in the desert in order to make way for "a new era in photography."

Smartphone photography is becoming one of the main ways people share visual stories with the world, and Getty Images wants to help bankroll powerful mobile photo projects. The company is teaming up with Instagram to launch a new photography grant that will hand out $30,000 to help Instagram users tell important stories.

The world's largest drone maker is quickly becoming one of China's most powerful homegrown companies. DJI announced today that it has raised another $75 million in venture capital funding, and recent talks with investors have reportedly pegged the value of the company at a whopping $10 billion.

If you can't help but snap a smartphone photo before eating a meal, there's a restaurant in Israel that has a new concept designed just for you. The Tel Aviv restaurant Catit and Carmel Winery have teamed up for a new project called Foodography. It's a new meal experience that features newly designed plates that help you shoot quality food photos with your smartphone.

This week it was discovered that Samsung has been using Sony image sensors in some of its S6 smartphone cameras, but Samsung sensors in others. Some publications guessed that the decision may have been due to a shortage of Sony-made sensors, which have been increasingly popular in recent years. That theory is now being bolstered by a new report that Sony is indeed struggling to keep up with surging demand.

You've probably seen star trail photos before, but how about a "moon trail?" A Finnish photographer named Janne shot this beautiful photo earlier this week as the rising moon streaked across the sky. Janne was shooting with a Nikon D800 and 100-300mm lens at 300mm, f/8, and ISO 100. The trick behind the shot was a 10-stop neutral density filter, which greatly cut down the amount of light hitting the sensor and allowed Janne to shoot a 2258-second exposure -- that's a whopping 37.6 minutes!

Motorola Mobility has been ordered by a court ruling to fork over $10.2 million to Fujifilm for violating one of the Japanese company's camera patents in its mobile phones.

Sony may not make the world's most popular smartphones or cameras, but it's playing a bigger role in those industries than what meets the eye: the company's image sensor business has been booming in recent years. In 2014, Sony was the company that made 40% of all the sensors sold across the globe.

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.

HTC is doing a lot to beef up the camera in its One M9 smartphone after the initial release was somewhat underwhelming. Less than a month after improving image quality with a software update, the company has released a new version of the phone's camera app that adds RAW functionality.

Note: This article is written for commercial photographers, not consumer photographers. A consumer shooter has a different list of challenges, and since I am not a consumer photographer, I won’t be addressing them.

This past Monday, GoPro announced that it has acquired Kolor, a French company that's pioneering the use of 360-degree cameras for immersive virtual reality.

A court in Spain has ordered that a photographer pay €8,000 (~$8,800) to a newly-married couple after he lost their wedding photos and couldn't deliver what they paid for.

Visual Supply Co., better known as VSCO, is becoming a juggernaut in the photo world. After raising an impressive $40 million from investors last May in order to build out its photo community, the Oakland-based retro preset company has just raised another $30 million.

America's largest newspaper publisher has laid off a large number of employees in recent days, but things appear to be quite rosy at the top. An internal team-building video has surfaced that's raising quite a few eyebrows: it's a parody of the LEGO Movie song "Everything is Awesome," featuring company CEO Gracia Martore as the band leader.

American Photo Magazine has sent out its last issue and says that its ceasing publication. This marks the end of the road for a notable photography magazine that spanned decades.

Canon Europe has acquired a London-based startup company called Lifecake, which builds a photo-sharing app that's marketed toward parents of young kids. The service, which launched back in 2013, claims to offer "time travel for parents."

The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today, and the photographers that were awarded with journalism's highest honor were freelance photographer Daniel Berehulak of the New York Times and the photography staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Well-known lighting gear manufacturer Photoflex may live on after all. No, its original April 1st announcement that it was closing shop wasn't an ill-conceived April Fool's Joke or a bizarre marketing stunt -- the struggling company is reportedly working on a deal that will allow the brand to live on.

A white police officer in South Carolina is facing murder charges after shooting an unarmed black man in the back and killing him as he ran away. A bystander named Feidin Santana witnessed the whole incident on April 4th and managed to capture cell phone footage, which then became widely seen around the world and sparked fresh new outrage about police brutality.