Ross Bernards left Vail, Colorado, in June of 2018 to live the #VanLife full time to provide flexibility and more opportunity to "explore the most photogenic and best-kept secrets of North America" and its iconic landscapes. He feels most at home and a tremendous sense of peace with his feet firmly planted under the stars.
AI is the #1 buzzword in the digital photography world. Skylum, which has ridden the AI photo editing craze better than any company, is about to release Luminar AI. ON1 now offers ON1 Portrait AI. DxO announced DxO DeepPRIME, which it describes as “an artificial intelligence technology dedicated to editing photos in RAW format.”
Just the other day, a tall metal “monolith” was discovered in the Utah desert. From what I have learned, this tower of shiny metal was placed in a very out-of-the-way location sometime in 2016 (based on its sudden appearance in Google Earth images in that time frame.) In the ensuing week, this object has created quite a public stir and generated even more theories about its origin.
Let me ask you a question. Is this photo real or fake? This might be a difficult question because the answer depends on what you define as real or fake.
Late last week, Apple unveiled its most consequential product in at least a decade. 10 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days after Steve Jobs took the stage to unveil the first iPad, Tim Cook announced the release of three new Macs powered by Apple's own M1 system on a chip (SOC)... changing the industry forever.
Instead of giving users an edit button, Twitter instead today rolled out a new feature called Fleets. Fleets are a knockoff of Instagram Stories, which are of course a knockoff of Snapchat Stories. Time is a flat circle.
The New York Daily News recently published an opinion piece by a writer named Jean Son titled “When your photograph harms me: New York should look to curb unconsensual photography of women” and I would like to address it here.
I recently watched a video on YouTube by the very popular landscape photographer Thomas Heaton. The video was titled "AI editing will ruin photography as we know it" where Thomas discusses a new photo editing program soon to be released by Skylum: Luminar AI.
Dear camera manufacturers, I am deeply annoyed that my phone often takes better pictures than my DSLR (or any mirrorless) straight out of the camera.
When I was young, I had a vivid imagination but no real inclination towards art and creativity. I distinctly remember having trouble keeping my crayons within the lines of any coloring book I attempted. Fast forward to today and I’m 35 and have been a full-time professional photographer for seven years and a shooter for 13 years.
Audience: a broad term, of course. Evokes all kinds of responses. Since this is a photoblog I am referencing the audience that sees our work. In this very odd and terrible of times, I find that having no audience for my photographs is very difficult.
Face tuning apps have thrived for years in the mobile phone ecosystem, allowing users to make subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) changes to their appearance for a selfie-obsessed generation.
An opinion piece in the NY Daily News has sparked outrage among street photographers after the author called photography "a vehicle of gender-based violence in public places." The author believes that all candid—or "unconsentual"—photography of women should be outlawed, and is taking steps to encourage such a law in New York City.
Do you want to switch from Canon to Sony? From Sony to Nikon? From Nikon to Panasonic? From Panasonic to Fujifilm? Well, I’m going to ask you to stop, take a deep breath, and consider doing the most boring thing: absolutely nothing. Instead of switching camera brands, you should probably stick with what you have.
Color is complex. Achieving great color can be cumbersome, both in analog and digital workflows, and developing and researching it has been as hard as rocket science.
What a strange year this has been, right? Yet, curiously, this has also been a year in which I have probably taken the greatest leaps in my photography for some time. Because when you are doing something new, or have been pushed into a new way of life, you can either freeze and panic... or you can use it as an opportunity to try new things. To innovate.
On the 14th of October, Nikon is set to announce its latest cameras. These are due to be updates to the Z 7 and Z 6 mirrorless cameras. There are a lot of expectations, but the biggest expected update for these cameras is... the second card slot.
Social media is always an uproar, there's no way around it. Photography social media is much the same, and mostly it's mostly harmless fun. I want to draw attention to two recent episodes that were not harmless fun, and which I worry point toward a larger trend.
Over the last few years, several companies have been actively producing accessories for smartphones. The majority of these accessories have been for iPhones and for the most part the accessories haven’t been overly significant devices. What I mean is that the accessories most manufacturers produced have been small LED flashes or add-on lenses. This seems to be changing with what Profoto has done and I wonder if this is the right direction for the market.
What’s happened has happened. But I just kind of want to rant so that maybe, if some future brides/grooms see this, they'll understand the perspective of a photographer who may also be their friend.
Last week, in the span of slightly over 19 hours, news broke that the Whitney Museum had 1) acquired images from a charity print sale by Black photographers to mount a show entitled Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change, 2) offered the photographers a lifetime pass to the museum for their unsanctioned participation, and 3) canceled the show following a tweetstorm of outrage over the exploitative move.
As a photographer, wishing for the departure or death of a camera company is like a musician getting excited to have one less guitar to choose from. In many ways, it is the most self-destructive thing that one can hope for their art.
While teaching a recent workshop, I joked that street photography was the only genre where people would buy $3,000 worth of cameras and lenses and then deliberately use them to make out of focus, grainy, imperfect images. This led to a pretty interesting discussion about the merits to imperfection.
A new op-ed published by the Deputy Editor of the Nikkei Asian Review in Japan is making waves in the industry today. The article strikes an ominous tone, foreshadowing difficult times ahead for the camera giants and blaming "excessive competition" for their financial woes.
The purpose of this article is to have a discussion about the current online photography community, flame wars about hardware, and some toxic behavior I see, all while trying to be as impartial as possible.
The Leica SL2 replaces the SL typ 601 and represents the very best performance and image quality that Leica can produce. It’s the flagship. While maintaining iconic colours and shooting experience, this camera is one of the best pieces of equipment I have ever had the pleasure of using.
When a few days past, the news circulated that Kodak Alaris had sold its paper division to Hong Kong-based Chinese company Sino Promise, reactions were mixed and ranged from disinterest over protectionist outrage to the fear that analog photography would finally meet its demise.
During the global lockdown, many landscape photographers who would normally be traveling the world and leading workshops have found themselves cooped up at home. Away from their element on location and with an abundance of free time, they’ve joined the online circuit of photography webinars, panels and interviews.
When Sony first started producing full-frame mirrorless cameras, the leading manufacturers at the time pretty much sneered at it. Ricoh, for example, still seemingly believes that DSLRs are due to make a comeback and that mirrorless cameras are just a fad. With how the industry has been progressing, it’s clear that mirrorless is the future and Canon is probably the company to rule.
The photography industry has been shrinking and the COVID-19 pandemic has not made things any better. This smaller market is being shared by the same number of companies, which could mean some huge changes for the industry. As formats go, Micro Four Thirds isn’t looking strong through this time.
Why do I do landscape photography? I've been trying to conceptualize an answer to this question as I delve deeper into my self-expression through creating imagery.
Okay, I know the title of this article sounds a bit clickbaity -- and to be honest, it is. Proclaiming anything to “be dead” always sounds alarmist. But really, I don’t see a bright future for the medium I love.
For those who are anywhere near the microstock photography industry, you may have noticed that there is a lot of shouting going on at the moment about the latest release from Shutterstock.
There are many things about the photography industry that need to change to include our black community. One huge thing is a button on every strobe, light pack, and flash unit made in the photo industry called "slave" mode.
Any event photographer gets tons of requests from people asking for specific photos from an event. Sometimes they will acquiesce, but often not. Don't nag them if they don't get back to you or say no. Here's why.
I look at hundreds of photographs everyday and I’ve noticed that how people take photos is in direct correlation to how they live their day to day lives. This may not sound like a startlingly profound fact but, put simply: your personality can create the biggest barrier to achieving interesting and unique photographs.
After nine years covering the photography industry, today marks the end of that long journey across multiple outlets, ending with my time here at PetaPixel. I'm not leaving journalism, but I am switching things up a bit. After a short break, I'll be working in a new segment at a new outlet.
One of the most hotly debated questions for landscape photographers is how to answer the age-old question, “Where did you shoot that?” While the question is simple enough, whether to answer (and how to answer) is an internal question many shooters contend with in the age of Instagram.
Should your photograph have a name? If not, why not? If so, then why? And does anyone really care? I’m of the opinion that it should always have a name, an identity, a personality. Well, all of mine at least. What you do with yours is entirely up to you. And as it should be.
I don't normally rant, but this has been bothering me for quite some time. I try not to worry about what gets written on the Internet because I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions and it's healthy to have many different opinions for others to pick and choose what works for them. Let's face it, there is no hard and fast rule that photographers must abide by.
I'm not one to generally heap praise on camera products that one, I haven't tested or two, haven't even been fully announced yet let alone released. But given what we know about Canon's upcoming EOS R5, I have to change precedents, sit back and just clap.
A few months ago, I was hired as an on-court, fixed broadcast camera operator for an Association of Tennis Professionals event as an independent contractor. While we were not broadcast live on a network, we were broadcasting throughout the stadium and event village as well as being taped for the network.
In many parts of the U.S. the reality of social distancing policies have only been in place for about a month. Yet during that time and the few weeks that preceded it, photographers have already churned through a number of phases to document and depict the outbreak.
One of the byproducts of the new-wave approach to street photography, which champions anonymity, mystery, and a cinematic aesthetic, is that there is an absolute abundance of images featuring silhouetted figures and shadow play. These are the kind of images I started off creating, and there are some fantastic artists who have utilized this style over the years, my favorite of these being Fan Ho, one of the classic progenitors of this style.
The past few years have made it abundantly clear that platforms hold disproportionate power in the online sphere – from Uber to Grubhub to Amazon. Online success is predicated on building both utility as well as a critical mass of users, and for that, platforms should be congratulated.
I’m a wildlife photojournalist, my work and my personal project focus on stories related to wildlife conservation. I’ve seen first-hand the destruction left behind by the horrific illegal wildlife trade.
If you haven’t heard about this following situation, then you might just lose your temper now.
Since mid-March, various policies have been implemented at the state and federal level in the U.S. to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19.
I have sometimes been critical when landscape photographers combine two or more photos not taken at the same time to make one great photo -- adding northern lights or beautiful skies to a photo that did not have them, for example -- and then making people believe it was something that really happened.
I don’t remember the first time I became aware of my family photo album, but from a very young age I always found looking at those photos a time absorbing, and totally enthralling pastime. I would sit for long periods of time staring at those familiar faces, all those captured moments of times gone by, and lose myself in a world of wonder.
