Inspiration

‘Stormlapse’ Photographer Ryan McGinnis Shares His Most Epic Shots of 2014

Ryan McGinnis is a photographer and storm chaser whom we interviewed and featured back in 2011. After years of pointing his camera at newsworthy storms, McGinnis switched things up a bit in 2014 by introducing time-lapses into his repertoire. Although he was still learning, he did manage to capture quite a few amazing sequences showing powerful weather events.

Photographing March Madness 2015: Kentucky Beats Notre Dame

I was in Cleveland photographing the Sweet 16 and the Elite 8 March Madness Rounds for USA Today. This was my 3rd basketball game I covered all season. I am not much of a fan of shooting basketball, but when it’s crunch time and the game is on the line, I love the hustle and determination players put in to try to win the game and move onto the next round.

Mirrored: Photos Show the Parallels of Two Cities on Opposite Sides of the Globe

"Mirrored" is a photo project that was a collaboration between photographers Markus Andersen and Elif Suyabatmaz. It's a series of diptychs showing daily life on opposite ends of the globe: Andersen is based out of Sydney, Australia, and Suyabatmaz is based out of Istanbul, Turkey. In each pair of images, the selected photos "mirror each other in both obvious and subtle ways."

An Automated Slide Film Scanner Built with LEGOs

This is pretty impressive: photographer Pascal Kulcsar needed to digitize some old slide film left behind by his grandfather. Rather than purchase a film scanner, Kulcsar decided to combine his technical ingenuity and love for LEGOs to create a DIY slide film scanner using LEGO pieces.

Testing Out a Rosco Gel Kit for Creative and Colorful Photographic Lighting

I received a Rosco Gel kit a week ago, and after a few tests I can say I really love using all the awesome colors for my photography.

The kit includes 20 individual 30x48cm square sheets for color corrections (e.g. CTO, CTB, ND) and a range of different colors, all of them contained in a protected and resealable packaging.

A Lonely Rain Cloud Giving Water Back to the Sea

Huw Alexander Ogilvie was flying over the Pacific Ocean in 2005 when he shot this peculiar photograph of a lone cloud dumping rain onto the world. After uploading it to Flickr, it quickly became his most popular photo and was even featured recently by NASA in a story about rainfall. You can view a larger version here.

Analyzing a Collection of B&W Street Photos Captured Around the World

Last year I launched a new initiative called the Streettogs Academy, a biweekly challenge for motivating and sharpening the skills of street photographers around the world. Photographers are given 2 weeks to shoot photos for the latest theme and upload 1 to 3 of them to our Facebook page.

I Found Photos by the Man Behind Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ in a London Junk Shop

Peter Fordham was a British photographer best-known for his music work in the 1970s. If you own a copy of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, his second solo album, you’ll be familiar with his work. Fordham was the photographer who took the picture of Lennon, sat at his white piano with a pair of headphones on, at Lennon’s Tittenhurst Park home where the 1971 album was recorded. It’s a classic of rock music photography, Lennon singing into a hard black mic set against a stark white room, and …

A Look at Composition in Documentary Photography

In my mind, there are three important elements of a photograph. Lighting, Composition and Moment. Every picture that I love has these elements, in varying amounts. A great picture may have strength in all three areas, or it may be, for example, such an emotional moment that it overpowers poor composition or light.

A Music Video Shot Live During a Total Solar Eclipse

During the total solar eclipse on March 20th, 2015, the Faroese doom metal band Hamferð took the opportunity to shoot a creative live music video for their song "Deyðir Varðar" from a mountain in the Faroe Islands. It's a 6 minute 36 second video in which the world goes completely dark and the total eclipse can be clearly seen in the background.

A Lucky Photograph of the Solar Eclipse

Beautiful photo compositions generally require a keen eye and a quick shutter finger, but sometimes luck plays a huge role as well. That's what happened today for UK-based photographer Amy Shore, who was photographing the total solar eclipse from her backyard in Leicestershire. A bird flew into Shore's frame as the Moon was passing over the face of the Sun, adding a unique touch to her shot.

Cheap Kit Lenses Are Not Weak Kids’ Lenses

Well known photographer and blogger Scott Kelby recently pointed to the 18-55mm kit lens as a reason why beginners find it difficult to take good shots -- it is neither wide nor long enough to create visual impact, he wrote. I'd like to respectfully disagree.

The Salt of the Earth: A Documentary About the Work of Photographer Sebastião Salgado

The Salt of the Earth is a documentary film released last year by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the son of renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. It explores the work of the elder Salgado, who has traveled the Earth for the past 40 years in order to document our planet and the human condition. Above is the trailer for the film (note: there's a bit of nudity in these clips), which will be hitting theaters in the US starting later this month.

Seeing is the Essence of Photography, And You Can Learn to Do It Better

Photography is an analytic art form. We aim our lenses to specific parts of the world around us to pick a frame because, in our analysis, that particular frame presents the photograph we wish to take. We can certainly raise the camera, lower the camera, rotate it, pitch it, yaw it, aim at a different part and end up photographing something different.

Hundreds of Photos of New York City Turned Into a Flowing Visual Experience

When Israeli freelance artist Ynon Lan visited New York City earlier this year, he wanted to capture the things he saw in a way that conveyed the constant energy he felt as he walked around. He then came up with the idea of taking thousands of still photographs of particular themes and combine them afterward into a video as a flowing visual experience.

Shooting a Portrait of a Man with a Cloud of Falling Lemons

Israeli photographer Ronen Goldman was recently commissioned by UK-based premium luggage manufacturer Redland London to shoot a series of advertising photos promoting an upcoming line of luggage. The company wanted to show the durability of the product and how it helps you "be prepared for anything," so Goldman created a photo of a man protecting himself from a cloud of falling lemons. The video above is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the image was created.

These Space Photos Were Made by Scanning Things Found in a Kitchen

For the past couple of years, photographer Navid Baraty has been experimenting with the idea of creating photographs of the universe without having to leave his home... and without having to point a camera up at the sky. His WANDER Space Probe series of images may resemble photos captured by NASA using its Hubble telescope camera, but the photos were actually created by putting ordinary kitchen items on an Epson flatbed scanner.

Virtual Fracking: Destroying Photos of Rock with the Chemicals of Hydraulic Fracturing

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a much-debated method of obtaining oil or gas from the Earth that involves injective a chemical cocktail at high pressure through deep rock formations in order to create cracks through which things can flow. Artist Grayson Cooke recently came up with his own spin on the subject through a project called "Virtual Fracking." …

The Modernist Houses of Palm Springs Photographed Under a Full Moon

If you do a search for photos of Palm Springs online, the vast majority of the results will show the city basked in the rays of Southern California sunshine. Photographer Tom Blachford wanted to take a different approach. For his project Midnight Modern, Blachford photographed the modernist homes of the resort city under only the light of a full moon.

Guitarist Andy Summers Photographed the Rise and Fall of The Police

English rock band The Police sold over 75 million records over the course of their decade-long career, making them one of the best selling music artists of all time. In addition to being the band's lead guitarist, Andy Summers was also a passionate photographer who captured behind-the-scenes photos of the band at the peak of their popularity.