Miscellaneous

Tutorial: How to Remove Location Info from Your Images in Photoshop

Privacy is a big concern these days, what with the NSA looking over both your shoulders, reading your emails and chiming in on your cell phone conversations. And while you might not be able to "fight the man" as it were, you can protect your privacy a bit by learning how to remove sensitive location information from the photos you post online.

A Beginners Guide to UV Reflectance in Photography

Typical photography exists around the visible spectrum (think of the rainbow), but cameras are also able to pick up other wavelengths of radiation. Ultraviolet radiation, as the name suggests, comes after the violet section of the visible spectrum so is not visible to our eyes. However, some animals (birds, for example) are able to see UV.

UV reflectance photography essentially is recording the UV radiation which is reflected back from a UV source. A UV source emits UV radiation, and this is often referred to as UV light. However UV light does not exist, since light is visible and UV is not! UV reflectance is a fairly involved and arduous process without specialized equipment, however the results can be very rewarding.

How PetaPixel Stacks Up Against Other Top 100 Blogs in Age and Gender

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to direct your attention to an interesting study that was published yesterday by Pingdom. The website tracking company decided to analyze the demographics of the world's top 100 blogs (according to Technorati), sorting them by reader age and gender. It's findings regarding PetaPixel caught our eye.

BTS: Photographing Yasser Arafat for the Cover of Time Magazine

In 2002, photographer Greg Heisler was asked to photograph former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. Now, eleven years later, we get to hear the story behind that photo.

At the time, Heisler was already in Gaza city photographing former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. And even though the photo of Arafat was a very simple shot taken using a wooden four-by-five camera, a black velvet backdrop and a simple soft box, it's still fascinating to hear exactly what went into getting it.

10 Most Popular PetaPixel Posts of 2012

Wowzers. Time flies! As we come to the end of another year of blogging about the wonderful world of photography, here's a roundup of the top 10 most popular posts of the past 12 months. It's a list of advice, inspiration, creativity, and interesting news stories.

PetaPixel Photography Gift Guide 2012

With Christmas and the holiday season just around the corner, here's our annual roundup of the latest, greatest, and phototastic-ist gift ideas. The items are listed by price, so there should be something to fit every budget.

Most Expensive Production Camera and First Leica M Sold at Auction

Back in May, a 1923 Leica O-Series camera became the most expensive camera on the planet after being sold for roughly $2.79 million at a WestLicht auction. That camera was a prototype camera, and just one of 25 made (only 12 of them exist today). If you're wondering what the most expensive non-prototype camera is, look no further than the latest WestLicht auction that was held earlier today. The Leica M3D seen above fetched a staggering €1.68 million, or roughly $2.18 million, becoming "the most expensive camera from a serial production ever."

Be Right Back After a Brief Pause To Our Coverage of Photokina 2012

If you're wondering why PetaPixel's coverage of Photokina 2012 -- the largest photo trade show in the world -- has been so slow, here's the explanation: it isn't intentional. Getting access to the Internet over here hasn't been as easy as I would have hoped -- the Wi-Fi at the hotel I'm at has been down for two days (I hear the same is true for other hotels as well), and there isn't free public Wi-Fi at Photokina.

Photokina 2012: Follow @PetaPixel on Instagram for the Inside Scoop

I'm going to be in Cologne, Germany next week, covering the latest and greatest photo announcements at Photokina 2012. In addition to posts -- and possibly live blogs -- on this website, I'll also be sharing photographs of the products, parties, and press events through our relatively new Instagram account: @petapixel. The photo steam may also be added to the sidebar of this blog. Follow along for the inside scoop!

PetaPixel Cameo in the Documentary Film “Side by Side”

Earlier this month we wrote about a new Keanu Reeves-produced movie titled Side by Side, a documentary about the major shift going on in Hollywood away from film and toward digital. In addition to the interesting subject matter and star studded list of interviewees, here's another thing that makes the movie awesome: PetaPixel makes a cameo.

How NASA’s Curiosity Rover Will Shoot Photos of Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars this morning with much fanfare here on Earth. The photo above is one of the first photographs snapped by the rover and beamed back to Earth. Captured through a fisheye wide-angle lens, the landscape photo hows a gravel field in the foreground and the rim of the Gale Crater (the rover's new home) in the distance.

The Ugly Modeling Agency is Redefining Who Can and Should be a Model

When people think of models they typically think of people like Natasha Poly. Even with her "missing arm" on this month's Vogue Russia, she still fits the stereotype: stunning, skinny and tall. But those aren't the kinds of models UGLY MODELS Modeling Agency is interested in. No, according to the agency's website, UGLY MODELS prefers "a look with true character."

How To Shoot Liquid Flow Photographs

In this tutorial I will share how I shoot "liquid flow" photos -- smoke-like abstracts done by dropping cream colored with food dye into a small tank of water, then rotated 180 degrees.

Fully Automatic Cardboard Photo Booth Yields Timeless Silver Gelatin Photos

Falling somewhere in the "really cool idea" category, this fully-automatic, working photo booth is made entirely out of cardboard. Everything from the outside to the gears, cogs and belts that make up the innards is all cardboard and 100% automatic. To use the machine all you have to do is insert your cardboard token and then sit perfectly still while the box exposes, develops and fixes a silver-gelatin photograph of you and yours.

U.S. Wildfires Photographed From Space

Massive wildfires in the Rockies have destroyed hundreds of homes and scorched tens of thousands of acres over the past week. To get an idea of how massive these fires are, check out this photograph captured by a NASA satellite.

How to Create the Google Logo Using Photos of Tossed Paint

To celebrate Google+'s one year anniversary, photographer Alex Koloskov and retoucher Genia Larionova teamed up on a photo project to recreate the Google logo using photographs of paint. They tossed paint matching the colors of each letter into the air multiple times and picked out the best shapes, which were then combined in Photoshop.

Nokia Already Putting Scalado Acquisition to Work in Camera Extras App

It looks like Nokia wasted no time putting the folks at Scalado to work for them. As we reported a week ago, Nokia is acquiring Scalado's developers, technologies and IP portfolio, and we're already seeing Scalado's well-known "rewind" technology make its way into Nokia's new Camera Extras app.

State of the Blog: A Look Back at 2011

Hope you guys had a good holiday season. Welcome to 2012! As is our tradition, here's our annual "state of the blog" post, in which we'll briefly share on how this blog grew in the past year and where it is now.

Diptychs of Clouds and Cloud Watchers

Before We Begin is a project by photographer Christopher Jonassen (whose frying pan photos we featured here) that consists of diptychs showing clouds and cloud watchers. The images capture peaceful "moments of reflection between thought and action."

PetaPixel Photography Gift Guide 2011

Christmas is almost upon us, and for the second straight year PetaPixel's gift guide comes incredibly late. Think of it as a general guide to nifty photo-related gifts that have emerged over the past year rather than a Christmas gift guide -- after all, gifts are great to receive year-round, right?