If you've always dreamed of taking pictures of the northern lights, the video above will give you a small taste of what it's like. Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand captured the behind-the-scenes footage recently when he drove out into the wilderness in the dead of night to chase auroras.
70 years ago today, photographer Joe Rosenthal captured a photograph of six US soldiers raising a flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. That photo (shown above), became an instant iconic image -- these days we would say it "went viral" -- and was published in thousands of publications around the world.
It went on to became the only photo to win a Pulitzer Prize in the same year it was published, and the image is now one of the most republished and recognizable photos of all time.
Apple aired a new iPad commercial during the Oscars ceremony last night. The ad touts the iPad as a tool that anyone can use for creating films. What viewers may not have known while watching the spot, however, was that the commercial itself was filmed entirely on an iPad.
Photographer and Lightroom expert Jeff Hirsch created this 1-minute photo essay titled "Moments in Time" about the ephemeral nature of our daily lives, and the task of capturing fleeting moments with your camera as a photographer. It's a combination of 99 words and 550 photos in 60 seconds.
Garry Winogrand was one of the most notable and prolific American street photographers of the 20th century. He is known for capturing a vast record of what American life was like during the decades following World War II; in addition to his published works, thousands of his undeveloped and unseen rolls of film were discovered when he passed away in 1984.
In 1977, Winogrand was invited to speak to Rice Students about photography. Over the course of two hours, the photographer answered all kinds of questions and discussed a wide range of topics regarding photography, his work, and his thoughts.
In my work, the concept and the pre-visualization of the images are the key issues. It's all about fresh ideas and trying to achieve something that has never been seen when trying to create original pieces of art.
Erik Johansson is a Swedish photographer and retoucher based in Berlin who is well known on the Internet for his amazing surreal photo manipulations that show everyday scenes with major twists. A number of his works are optical illusions created by manipulating and combining images in creative ways.
The image above is one of Johansson's more recent works. It's titled "The Architect" and shows a man searching for inspiration in an impossible house.
A murmuration of starlings is a beautiful sight to behold, as giant flocks of birds float through the air like a dark cloud with a mind of its own. French photographer Alain Delorme captured this beauty in his project Murmurations, but instead of birds and wildlife photography, Delorme's images were created through plastic bags and Photoshop.
Rooftopping: we have all seen the dozens of media articles and blogs about this, so this one surely is not the first, it won’t be the last, and it is not going to be the best.
Romanian photographer Noroc Mihaela is on a mission to photograph women from every single country on Earth in order to show that beauty is found everywhere. Her project is titled "The Atlas of Beauty."
My name is Martin Szabo and I am commercial and portrait photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was recently doing volunteer work for a charity event in Vancouver and wanted to bring little twist and fun to the party. I ended up creating a photo booth to shoot portraits of people while their faces were being blasted by 240 mph wind coming from a leaf blower.
Growing up in a surfing family in Hawaii, The Endless Summer was a rite of passage. As a young boy, not only did that surf film give me a love of the ocean and adventure, the image of the cover was burned into my memory (Even Vanity Fair applauds the world renowned portrait).
Mike Cook of Negative4 Productions created the above time-lapse video showing the passage …
Time-lapse photographer Rob Whitworth has taken the idea of hyperlapses to the next level with his latest video, "Dubai Flow Motion" (shown above).
It offers a tour of Dubai through the lens of Whitworth's camera as it does seemingly impossible zooms through various perspectives, from the ground, into an airplane, to the top of the tallest building in the world, and then down to the bottom through the floors.
It was 30 years ago that Reuters launched its Pictures service that plays a key role in distributing powerful photojournalism to publications around the world. To celebrate this anniversary, the agency has selected a collection of photographs that represent "key images" from its massive archives -- photographs that have changed the way we see the world.
Videographer Paul Parker created the experimental video above, titled "Seagull Skytrails," which reveals the flight path of birds with clever post-processing.
"Invasions" is a quirky photo project by French photographer Charles Pétillon, who used huge clouds of white balloons as a metaphor for various things in life. The images may look like they use CGI renderings of white orbs, but there's no digital manipulation involved: Pétillon actually introduced physical balloons to shoot each shot.
Mold is something people usually don't want to see, especially on their food, but it's something that attracted the eye of Russian photographer Nick Lariontsev. He created the fascinating time-lapse video above showing strange beauty of mold when seen up close.
"Gotham City SF" is a time-lapse and photo project by San Francisco-based photographer Toby Harriman that offers a black-and-white view of The City by the Bay that's inspired by Gotham City, the fictional home of Batman.
Archie and Sansan of the Manila, Philippines-based wedding videography service Alt X Videos …
Photographer Alex Chacón recently traveled on a road trip through Veracruz, Mexico. He documented the trip by combining his passions for selfies and drones to create "dronies." Each memorable location was captured by drone with the camera first zoomed in on Chacón and then flown high into the air for a wide-angle view of the area.
Last year I stumbled upon an online video showing a man dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow, and decided that this is the one guy I want to take photos of and make some movie-style posters. I love everything about the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, especially the movie posters of the whole series.
For the past two years, British photographer Paul Thompson has been trying to push the boundaries of night photography with his large format film camera. His images of landscapes and seascapes are captured under moonlight and require exposure times of up to two hours. The resulting project is aptly titled "Moonlight."
Photographer Tim Mantoani is the man behind one of the great photo projects and books of our time. Called "Behind Photographs", the series is a giant collection of giant 20x24 Polaroid pictures of some of the world's most famous photographers holding their most iconic photos.
Photography enthusiasts Diego Veríssimo and Ana Magalhães (seen in the portrait above) recently shot a series of portraits using a gigantic camera they built using a room and about $10 in materials.
Danish photographer Mads Nissen has just been awarded World Press Photo of the Year 2014 for his photograph showing an intimate moment between a gay Russian couple. The selection was made after a whopping 20% of finalists were disqualified from the contest for altering their photos in a way that broke the post-processing rules.
Lynsey Addario is a 41-year-old photojournalist who has taken her camera into virtually ever major theater of war in the 21st century. She has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo, Haiti, and Libya (she was one of the four NYTimes journalist kidnapped in Libya in 2011).
In addition to documenting wars for the world to see, Addario is passionate about human rights and the topic of women's roles in traditional societies.
Danish photographer Thomas Bangsted sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from "spray and pray" photography. The Brooklyn-based artist often spends months or years completing individual pictures through researching, traveling, shooting, and post-processing. The 7-minute video above offers a glimpse into how Bangsted creates his art.
Want to see what a 10K time-lapse video looks like? Look no further than the video above. Titled "10328x7760: A 10K Timelapse Demo," it was created by Los Angeles-based photographer Joe Capra, a guy who specializes in ultra-high-definition time-lapse photography.
If you don't have a 10K display handy, don't worry: the video zooms in to show you the level of quality the video has.
Just weeks after photographing New York City from 7,500 feet, photographer Vincent Laforet traveled west and captured the city of Las Vegas from an even higher perspective. Shot at almost 9,000 feet, the photos are part of a new series titled "Sin City".
The 3.5-minute music video above was captured in a span of 5 seconds. French filmmaker Guillaume Panariello tells us he did this "shortest shoot ever" using a Phantom 4K camera snapping 1000 frames per second. When slowed down, those 5 seconds of real time turn into three-and-a-half minutes of slow-mo craziness. The song is "Unconditional Rebel" by Siska.
Want to see what it's like to photograph skiers in the backcountry? Sports photographer Christoph Oberschneider recently did a 3-day ski shoot with good friends in the mountains of Austria. He brought along a GoPro to capture what the adventure looked like from his point of view, creating the 2.5-minute video seen above.
To mark the 60th anniversary of its M line of rangefinder cameras, Leica recently interviewed 10 well known photographers about their experience with the camera and their favorite photos captured with it.
Starting back in May of 2014, I finally put my first foot forward in the making of a 16x20 inch bellows camera. The idea to build a camera was nothing new to me, but I was always hesitant to begin construction since I am the type of person that prefers to work off a set of blue prints and directions. Unfortunately, since my drawing skills aren't amazing, it was pretty difficult to visualize and plan a solid blueprint of the project - which ultimately forced me to bite the bullet and simply begin construction of the camera and problem solve along the way.
Photographer Jean Luis De Heeckeren recently visited a pool in Austria to shoot underwater portraits of kayaker Viktoria Wolffhardt. Above is a short 2-minute behind-the-scenes video that shows the project's planning, setup, and execution.
Scientific photographer Neil Bromhall of Right Plants 4 Me created this time-lapse showing the birth of an oak tree. It reveals how an acorn turns into an oak seedling over the course of 8 months from September through April.
Photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey received a Lifetime Achievement Award this past Monday from the American Society of Magazine Editors. The 3.5-minute video above is his acceptance speech in which he talks about the power of photojournalists to create positive change in the world.
Here's a strange portrait showing what you get when you fire an off-camera flash that's shoved into your subject's mouth. Certain parts of the human face are more translucent than others, resulting in a creepy skull-like appearance.
24-year-old Belgian visual artist Stijn Eeckhout tell us he shot the photo after he was curious about what the effect would look like.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would begin 2015 by shooting a Super Bowl commercial. Even further removed from the unlikeliness of shooting said commercial is... well... shooting said commercial in seven images. Not seven scenarios or seven videos -- seven photos.
Gilles Alonso is a 43-year-old professional architectural photographer based in Lyon, France. For his recent project "Symétrie du Spectacle" ("Symmetry Show"), Alonso visited a large number of grand theaters and photographed the hall from center stage. The images capture the beautiful symmetry and grandeur of these spaces.
Here's a fascinating video about how photographer Michael Paul Smith creates and photographs Elgin Park, a 20th century town created through miniature 1/24th-scale models. Smith creates incredibly realistic photos by capturing the detailed dioramas with an ordinary compact camera, and his images have gone viral in recent years on the Internet (the project has over 70 million views on Flickr).
Here's a short 2-minute behind-the-scenes video showing how Getty's Chief Entertainment Photographer Larry Busacca shot celebrity portraits at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Busacca had to shoot all the portraits in the same tiny, green-walled tent studio, so he had to get creative with posing to shoot unique portraits of the actors.
For his projects Affinity I and Affinity II, Santa Fe, New Mexico-based photographer Brad Wilson captured beautiful studio portraits of all kinds of wild animals, from birds to primates to the diverse wildlife of the African safari.
Of the 65 animal species featured, 12 of them are different types of owls. Wilson's detailed images capture the nobility and personalities of the nocturnal birds of prey.
Photographer Carl Pendle created this clever stop-motion titled "The Cut" that offers an interesting perspective into different fruits and vegetables.
Underwater photographer Aaron Gekoski was recently on an outing to photograph one of the largest migrations in the world's oceans, but the project was hampered by unfavorable conditions. Instead of writing the trip off as a failure, however, Gekoski and his buddy decided to tackle a different photo project instead: selfies with sharks.
Here's a 4.5-minute profile of street photographer Travis Jensen, a man who documents life on the sidewalks of San Francisco. It's a look at how Jensen approaches his photography and people on the streets. (Warning: there's some strong language.)
Anita Anti is a photographer based in Ukraine who uses elaborate costumes, props, and makeup to create magical portraits that are often inspired by fairy tales.
The photograph above is the "Queen of Hearts" from Alice in Wonderland.
Photographer Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York has become one of the most influential photo projects in the world since it launched back in November 2010. Tens of millions of people follow Stanton as he shoots portraits of people on the street and shares the images online with their stories.
Here's a great example of how powerful his photos have become: a single photo posted earlier this month has raised more than $1 million for a school in Brooklyn to help send students to college.
Here's an interesting 1-minute behind-the-scenes video showing how the racing team The Racer's Group (TRG) recently did a photo shoot that involved two Aston Martins zipping around the Daytona International Speedway.
Self promotion has been one of the most difficult things for me to overcome as a photographer. I constantly ask myself "Who cares?", "Is this relevant?", and "Do I sound like a douche bag?". I’ve decided to get over myself this year and just put the work out there and let the chips fall as they may.
To that end, I started this year with a new promotional piece that focuses exclusively on my sports and fitness work. Here is a look at my simple new promotional material.