My Last Mocha: An 8×10 Polaroid Passion Project
Brzz, bzzzrrr. The rollers on the vintage Polaroid developer start to suck in the 8×10 Polaroid. Dan Bosman, a Mars Cafe barista of 14 years, and I are chatting just like we always do.
Brzz, bzzzrrr. The rollers on the vintage Polaroid developer start to suck in the 8×10 Polaroid. Dan Bosman, a Mars Cafe barista of 14 years, and I are chatting just like we always do.
This trip has been waiting in the wings ever since I made my first successful daguerreotype in the redwoods two years ago. I actually planned on going as early as August this year, but one project after another kept getting in the way, and for months I kept pushing it back by a couple of weeks.
Toward the end of November, I went back to one of my favorite places in the desert. A spot out in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest significant human population well over an hour drive away.
If there’s a challenge in selecting the best images from a day’s shoot, then that challenge is amplified when it comes to actively curating a huge body of work into something coherent and presentable.
I've always found northern harriers to be a raptor species that stood out from most others. Their hunting method provides ample opportunity for creative photography as they glide over gorgeous marshes and grasslands searching for food. On this particular evening, I visited a new grassland in the middle of New Jersey that I had not visited previously to see if I could capture some photos of these beautiful birds.
It’s a bit like arriving on the set of a nature documentary; watching whales swim around distant icebergs and fresh blueberries underfoot. The key to this passion project was to show the extreme seasonal variations on the incredible island of Greenland. Juxtaposing the summer warmth with the extreme winter cold.
I'm photographer Armando Martinez, and I recently shot what I believe is the first-ever drone hyperlapse taken during an entire "day" from sunrise to sunset. You can see the result above.
Maximilian Heinrich of Analog Insights recently inherited an 85-year-old Leica camera and handed it off to his friend Jules for repair and restoration. This 15-minute video is about the camera's journey from nearly being passed on to a camera store to being brought back to form.
I first came to the hospital back in June, having decided that the stories and experiences of the front line staff shouldn’t be forgotten. We’d all seen inside the Italian hospitals, but when the virus hit the UK, there was nothing coming out of the UK, so I made it my mission to gain access and document the life and death struggles going on behind closed doors.
Photographer Mathieu Stern recently got his hands on a handful of cheap expired film rolls to see what results he could get out of them. You can see his experiment in this 5-minute video.
A photographer in Japan was forced to sell his favorite camera earlier this year after being impacted by the COVID-19 recession. Instead of letting that put a stop to his art, he decided to build his own 4x5 large format camera... using LEGO blocks.
President Trump was golfing on Saturday when most mainstream media outlets called the 2020 presidential election, projecting former Vice President Joe Biden as the winner. A few photojournalists managed to capture photos of Trump by shooting with ultra-telephoto camera lenses from nearly a mile away across the Potomac River.
With the current state of affairs, photographers have been coming up with unique ways to exercise their craft remotely. Photographer Markus Hofstaetter decided he wanted to make a portrait with a friend and came up with a way to do it despite the vast distance between them.
The Seoul gallery Blackmarket recently created a blacklight print of a photo by Seoul-based cyberpunk photographer Noe Alonzo. This 3-minute behind-the-scenes video shows how the print is made using screenprinting.
Photographer Alper Yesiltas has shared a detailed breakdown of how he came up with and executed a photo idea that embodied the idea of both "to read" and "to write." While "to read" came to him quickly, "to write" took considerably more time and effort.
The School of Photography has shared a detailed 19-minute video breakdown that explains how to color grade in both Adobe Photoshop and the latest version of Lightroom, details the differences between the two systems, and talks why you might want to use one or the other.
PiXimperfect is an excellent resource for learning Photoshop techniques and in this 10-minute video, host Unmesh Dinda shows you how to add believable-looking snow to any image using Adobe Photoshop.
In a video series that takes an unusual perspective, photographer Isaac Alvarez lets his model – in this case, Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval – do the talking. For photographers who often talk about their process, this video lets you hear what it's like on the other side of the lens.
Each print that I create is a composite of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of individual photos digitally stitched together. Using a method of macro photography called “photo stacking” it’s possible to create images with an incredible amount of detail, even when printed on a very large scale.
When I started freelancing as a professional photographer, I knew I had to put together a printed portfolio. Unfortunately, I found it very hard to find useful resources on the Internet on how to actually do this. As I had some experience in bookbinding I managed to bind my first book by myself, but after three books I realized that in this stage of my career, I needed to have something a little more flexible.
Image stacking is a technique used in astrophotography to reduce noise and recover signal. It means taking multiple shots of object (usually long exposures) and combining them to create a cleaner image.
If you're curious about what changes to expect in the menu between the Nikon Z7 and Z7 II or Z6 and Z6 II cameras, Youtuber Ricci goes over everything that he's noticed in this 17-minute video.
Photographer Dustin Dolby is back with a new no-frills product photography tutorials that his viewers have been asking him to do for ages: whiskey. In this walkthrough video, he takes you step-by-step through the entire process of capturing and editing together a professional whiskey bottle product shot using only one light.
There are certain subjects in the macro world, which are so fascinating and absorbing that almost every macro photographer will point a camera at them at some point. No matter how many photos you take or see of these subjects, their charm does not seem to wear off.
As I am a professional photographer and known mainly for my images with wide angle lenses, here is something new. It's been raining here for weeks already—not the greatest conditions for landscape photography—so I took out my macro lens to photograph some mushrooms in the forest. The great thing about this is that you can do this with any kind of light at any moment of the day.
After making a fairly straightforward thermal modification to his new Canon EOS R5, maker/tinkerer Yifan Gu was able to get the camera to record unlimited 8K without having to resort to various timer resetting "hacks." All he had to do was swap out the thermal pads and add a couple more.
Want to see what a workday is like as an official photographer of an NFL football team? The NY Giants released this 4.5-minute video that follows along with team photographer Matthew Swensen on a game day.
As recently as the early 1900s, astronomers believed the Milky Way was all that existed in the universe. That view persisted until 1923, when Edwin Hubble used glass plate photographs of the Andromeda galaxy (then still thought to be just a nebula) to discover that the universe was unimaginably larger. His discovery was so significant that NASA’s first space telescope was given his name.
Photographer Calvin Grier is a master of the alternative photography process known as carbon transfer printing, but for the past few months, he has been taking things to a new level. Grier is creating full color photographic prints using dirt.
I'm having a go at converting my Mavic 2 remote controller from two thumbsticks to a more Aircraft style controller where a whole hand joystick controls Pitch, Roll, and Yaw, and the left stick only controls Throttle/Altitude.
Electrical engineering student Sam Zeloof recently created something really cool. Using his ample do-it-yourself skills and engineering knowledge, he retrofitted an old Polaroid camera with a Raspberri Pi and thermal printer, turning it into an instant digital camera that prints photos on receipt paper.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Insight Investment 2020 Astrophotographer of the Year, Nicolas Lefaudeux, has revealed his technique and the simple DIY adapter that made his award-winning image of the Andromeda galaxy possible.
My name is Howard Lao, and I'm a freelance sports photographer based in Portland, Oregon. Over the past five years, I’ve covered dozens of track meets. From the 2016 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, and the World Track Championships in London and Portland, to meets between the University of Washington and Washington State, I’ve filed and edited photos in a media workroom, surrounded by my fellow photographers.
There is always that time on a shoot… Everything has been going really well up until that point. You’re explaining the next shot to the client and they stare back at you, not sure if you’re trying to be funny.
Has COVID-19 impacted the look of ad campaigns? Maybe, but probably not by as much as you might think. What is impacted, however, is the way that a commercial photography set operates for the foreseeable future.
Japanese tinkerer Sanasol has just released a detailed, step-by-step "blueprint" video that shows you exactly how he was able to transform his classic Nikon FM film SLR into a digital camera without harming the film camera at all. If you have a few bucks to spend and a 3D printer handy, you can even follow along.
I’ve been enjoying bird photography from my custom-made floating hide for 3 years now. Being in the water with a variety of birds from waterfowl to wading birds and even Black Skimmers flying by my head has been an amazing experience. It becomes a much more connecting experience both to the natural areas I am in as well as my subject.
LensRentals recently got back a $10,000 Fujinon GFX100 medium format mirrorless camera from a customer who used it in dive housing and reported that it "suddenly died for no reason." After Fuji declared repair impossible and insurance claims were paid, LensRentals decided to take the camera apart and look inside.
NYC-based photographer Dani Diamond took a V-Flat and his portrait skills out to the Jersey Shore and shot fashion photos of complete strangers he ran into. You can see the project and results in this 6.5-minute video by AdoramaTV.
Over my past 7 years as a professional photographer, I have received many questions from startups and amateurs who are worried about the considerable investment they thought they had to make on cutting-edge equipment. Luckily, I am able to suggest more affordable alternatives while keeping quality as high as possible.