Photo sharing is big business. Just ask Snapchat's founders. The service (launched in late 2011) has managed to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 million in venture capital funding, an investment that pegs the value of the company at a staggering $800 million.
Back in December, Dropbox acquired the photo storage service Snapjoy, seemingly getting ready to jump head first into the cloud sharing battle. At the time, the announcement on the Snapjoy blog rang with excitement, and even though they weren't going to be accepting new signups, they promised that "your photos are safe!" …
Life magazine believed that pictures could change the world. And so, during the 40s, 50s and 60s, when the United States was at its most dynamic, Life provided the illustrations for the story of America.
The use of social media has become vital for the news-reporting agencies and outlets of the world. Mix that in with the ubiquity of mobile phones, and it means there are cameras virtually everywhere, and organizations like the Associated Press know this.
Earlier this week, we reported on rumors that Facebook was planning to unveil Vine-like video for Instagram on June 20th. Well, if you take a quick look at your calendars, you'll see that the fateful day has arrived, and the expected announcement along with it: Instagram video is now a reality.
Most stock photography websites and agencies work the same way: photographers upload their work, set prices, and let clients browse for what it is they're looking for. If the client wants a photo of a family on the beach, they'd better hope someone came through. And on the other end, the photographer has to hope that they're putting work out there that people will actually want to use.
A handful of groups representing professional photographers are calling for a boycott of a Conde Nast photo contest whose terms they consider exploitative.
When I was a kid, my school had an end of the year event all students were expected to participate in. They called it "Field and Track Day," which was a fancy way of saying, "Okay kids, we've got to kill a mandatory school day, so we're going to ship you all out to a local park, make you run around in the hot May sun for about 6 hours until you feel like passing out or puking, or both, and then send you home. Have fun!"
Battle hardened photographers will tell you that theirs used to be an elite profession, difficult to do, hard to enter, and accorded the proper respect. Now that everyone and their grandmother has a super computer/camera in their pocket or purse or on their face (read: Google Glass), it seems like everybody is sharing their filtered masterpieces with the entire world.
Once upon a time, in the days of old, when photographers still used those light sensitive plastic strips in the back of their large black cameras -- cameras with funny names like Hasselblad and Mamiya -- there were photography workshops. They are not a new invention. They've been around for a very long time. But, back in the days of film and cameras with odd names, these workshops were a little different.
It looks like the ongoing revamp of Flickr isn't limited to additional storage space and a new user interface. Yahoo, the company behind Flickr, has acquired Ghostbird Software for an undisclosed sum in order to beef up Flickr's mobile offerings.
It will probably come as no surprise to many that Kodak is planning to discontinue production of the acetate base, a primary component film, according to a WROC report published Tuesday.
Have you ever wondered why the professional photography industry is dominated by cameras that carry on the design tradition that was started by classic film SLRs?
A pair of British artists has won the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize for a work that combines war images with text. It is the first time the prestigious photography prize -- described as the "biggest" and "most prestigious" photo prize in Europe -- has been awarded to a pair of artists.
I’m not really sure why, but if you want to watch the Fanboys go completely insane, the simplest thing to do it is throw out “your brand is probably going to be out of business in a few years.” But the simple reality is that’s what happens to most companies eventually, especially technology companies. Photography companies, since, oh, about 1850, have basically been technology companies.
Fujifilm and Panasonic have joined forces and created an image sensor that blows everything currently on the market completely out of the water. By using Fuji's patented "organic photoelectric conversion material" to collect light instead of the traditional silicon photodiode, they've created a sensor that nearly doubles the dynamic range of the best sensor currently on the market.
As Apple's WWDC kicks off this week, my thoughts keep coming back to the heated debate with my friends about the future of photography.
Rochester, New York — The cold hits me as soon as I leave the Amtrak station, stepping into a swirl of snow eddies that etch the low streets in black and white.
A few weeks ago, I was perusing my Facebook newsfeed as I usually do first thing in the morning, a cup of hot coffee in one hand, a computer mouse in the other, when I happened upon a post that stopped me dead in my tracks.
Earlier today, we shared the news that SnapChat may be on the way to a $1 billion valuation even as the company moves aggressively towards a monetization scheme. Now, it's Vine's turn to shine, as the 6-second video sharing app proves its worth by blowing past Instagram in total daily Twitter shares.
To say that SnapChat has taken off would be an understatement. When we first wrote about the app in December of last year, we were impressed that the (not entirely) self-destructing photo messaging app had managed to raise over $10 million at a $70 million valuation. Now, if we add a zero to each of those numbers we'd still fall short of what several sources are expecting from the SnapChat's latest round of funding.
Chicago Sun-Times photographers, who lost their jobs in a mass layoff last week, are not going quietly into oblivion.
Back in March, we shared about how realistic computer generated images has been encroaching on the commercial product photography industry and killing photography jobs. More and more of the product photos you see in advertisements and press releases these days did not involve an actual camera and photographer at all, but rather artist, a computer, and 3D rendering software.
Mikki the chimpanzee is now the de facto king of the ape photography world. A selection of photographs by (and of) him fetched a whopping £50,000 (~$78,000) at auction this past week at Sotheby’s Auction House in London.
Olympus isn't the only camera manufacturer finding ways to cut costs by getting rid of their low-end camera offerings. Tokyo-based Fujifilm is expected to dramatically slim down their compact camera line by fifty percent in the near future.
Yahoo's recent Flickr redesign has been met with mixed reviews. After the release, a large number of users took to the Flickr Help forum and tore into everything from the look and feel to the team responsible.
It wasn't very long ago that Leica began teasing its Mini M camera on the homepage of their website. Purported leaks of Mini M began to surface, including photographs and specifications.
When the Chicago Sun-Times unexpectedly laid off its entire team of photojournalists last week, Al Podgorski was one of the photographers hearing the bad news at the meeting. Having worked for the paper since 1984, Podgorski's image-making instincts kicked in, and he shot the photograph above showing his colleagues learning that they were being laid off.
(I'm not saying this is how the conversation went down at the Chicago Sun-Times last week, but I'm saying it could have.) …
Each year, hundreds of hackers developers descend on Berlin for EyeEm's hackathon Photo Hack Day in hopes of walking away with the top prize and moving the world of photography forward. In 24-hours, developers have to take a swing at prototyping a brand new photo app and presenting it in front of their peers.
Hey, recently fired Chicago Sun-Times photographers -- want some insult to go with that injury? …
In case you thought Instagram was just about faux-antiquing images, au contraire. They're not even a photography company, co-founder Kevin Systrom (shown above) clarified during a recent discussion at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club.
The Chicago Sun-Times has raised quite a furor talking after unexpectedly laying off its entire photography staff yesterday. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, with some commentators calling it "a sign of the times," while others are wondering whether the newspaper is trying to pull "a union-busting move." …
Europe's largest annual photo expo, Focus on Imaging, has been terminated, according to organizer Mary Walker Exhibitions. Focus on Imaging's last show was in March of this year, following years of exhibitions.
"Do you like selling?" …
The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune. Twenty full-time staffers received the grave news at a meeting on Thursday morning, leaving them jobless.
Olympus is slated to begin developing and supplying Sony with lens parts and lens units in the near future as part of what has been called a "mutual parts supply". The news comes months following a formed alliance between the two companies in September 2012.
Flickr's recent transition to a "spectacular" new design and account structure has been anything but "spectacular" thus far. While some photographers have come out in support of the new design, reaction from the photographic community seems to be more negative than positive.
Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion today, but that's not the only major move the company announced. Today Flickr users were also treated to a "spectacular" redesign. The service has been upgraded in major ways, and has been given a brand new look and feel.
A few weeks ago, we reported that Sony may be in the process of dropping its unique pellicle mirror SLT technology. The rumor claimed that the company would be saying goodbye to the translucent mirror in favor a fully mirrorless A-Mount line. Well, if patents are to be trusted, that rumor has been confirmed just as another exciting Sony rumor hits the mill.
Shoppers will soon have a tough time trying to pick up a cheap Olympus point-and-shoot compact camera. The company has said it is planning to do away with its V lineup of low-cost compact cameras, priced just under $200 at various retailers.
Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, the majority shareholder and chairman of Leica, has apparently purchased a 25.1% stake in photo sharing and contest website I-SHOT-IT, reports Leica Rumors.
Want to see how the prices of various compact and mirrorless cameras stack up against each other? 1001 Noisy Cameras created this handy chart showing the prices of RAW-capable compact cameras on the market.
"Your darkroom is now a datacenter." That's the thought and slogan behind a huge update that Google+ Photos is rolling out over the next week. Many people already considered Google+ the photographer's social network because of the many features Google has built into the system over the years -- this announcement is another giant leap in that direction.
The company LUMA Partners has gotten in the habit of occasionally mapping out various industry landscapes to show how a product or service gets from Point A (i.e. the creators, marketers, businesses, etc.) to Point Z (i.e. the buyers, brands and publishers), going through the rest of the alphabet in between.
Back in early 2010, we received an e-mail asking us to join an up-and-coming photography blog that was trying to bring all of the best contributors, content creators and experts from the world of photography under one roof. It was described as a "photography website that should have been around for the last five years or more" and it was called Pixiq.
The Google+ Photos team along with photographers Thomas Hawk, Trey Ratcliff and Robert Scoble are organizing what they think may turn out to be the biggest photowalk in the history of, well, photowalking. Set for next Tuesday May 14th, the event already has almost 700 confirmed guests via Google+.
Adobe caused quite an outcry from the photography community yesterday after announcing that its future software offerings will only be available through subscription plans to its Creative Cloud service. The main gripe was that the $50/month cost for all the programs in the CC suite--or $20/month for just Photoshop--didn't make financial sense for independent photographers and smaller photo studios.
Eposure, a UK company that brings commercial photographers together with the companies that need them, recently released the results of a survey they conducted about the day rates of UK and U.S.-based photographers. And even though some might expect that the vast majority are charging a pittance in our photography-saturated world, the outlook isn't as grim as you may think.
