There’s no such thing as too many resources when it comes to learning how to take a good photograph. And here to prove this statement is a neat little pseudo-interactive web guide put together by Shutterfly for those among us who are just starting out.
If you've been following PetaPixel for a little while, then you know that the idea of a web app that shrinks down the file size of your images without "noticeable" loss in quality is nothing new. JPEGmini has been doing it for years. So what is it that makes the new Compressor.io web app stand out?
As digital photographs become easier and easier to create, edit, and share, it's also becoming easier to doubt the authenticity of photos. There have been quite a few stories in recent days of photojournalists, news organizations, and contest winners throwing their reputations away by using Photoshop to manipulate the truthfulness of photos.
Izitru (pronounced "is it true") is a new free service that aims to make it easier for honest photographers to prove the authenticity of their images.
It’s probably safe to say many -- if not all -- of us know how to remove a background from an image in order to separate the subject of that image. But, thanks to a convenient website called Background Burner, the process has been simplified for when you need speed more than specificity.
For those of you who already have an Amazon camera gear purchasing infatuation, leading to a slim wallet and empty bank account, this may be NSFL (so turn your head away): Amazon has teamed up with social media giant Twitter for a new feature that allows you to now add items to your Amazon cart directly through the social network.
When it comes to wanting to sell physical prints of your photographs online, there are but a few platforms. And of the platforms that do exist, many of them seem to fall short when it comes to offering everything you need in one, simple workflow.
Seeing this as a ripe opportunity, an incredibly talented team consisting of the co-founders of DNA 11, CanvasPop and dozens others have created an online marketplace that offers an end-to-end platform for artists to leverage. It’s called Crated, and it has the potential to be a game-changer for photographers who want to sell their work online.
Get ready for a whole slew of "Then and Now" photo series featuring Street View images, because Google just turned the entire service into a convenient time machine.
By now you're very familiar with the story of Eliza O'Neill and how the photo community has come together to try and spread the word and help fund her cure. But we're not done yet! Starting today, some big names in photography are teaming up with SmugMug to sell prints and help make sure this little girl lives on to see many more happy and healthy birthdays.
While you can argue that #selfies have nothing to do with photography as an industry, it's safe to say they've become a staple of a generation in which photography is as easily accessible as it's ever been.
Even if you don't mind selfies though, we might have come across a resource that will overwhelm even the most diehard selfie-takers. It's called Selfeed, and it uses the hashtag "#selfie" to stream a real-time feed of the self-portraits shared on Instagram.
Earlier today, 500px officially launched 500px ISO: a story-telling blog consisting of 500px photos and original content created by a team of editors and photographers.
Striving to be "home to the best photo stories on the web," 500px ISO wants to "surface the unique, crazy, and beautiful stories that result in the photos you see on 500px."
We love seeing and hearing about the process of creating an image. The motivation behind a photo combined with a glimpse at how it was shot can be both inspirational and educational, which is a powerful combo.
But while there are plenty of behind the scenes videos and articles dedicated to studio photography, one of the genres you don't get to hear as much about is photojournalism. That's where The Image, Deconstructed website comes in.
In a year already filled with quite a few changes for the social media giant Twitter, two newly announced photo-related features show that the microblogging site is committed to becoming a more visual platform.
Flickr's new "photo experience," which has been in beta for the past few months, is finally live for everyone to see. While this isn't the full-on redesign that we mentioned might be on the way, this update completely overhauls the photo pages in particular -- bringing speed, functionality and aesthetic improvements.
According to a report by Re/code, Yahoo! is getting ready to redesign Flickr yet again. Said to be coming "within the next few weeks," the updates won't be as dramatic as the last revamp, but it's definitely going to bring some welcomed changes that focus on the smaller details.
The overarching goal this time, it seems, is to simplify and unifying the mobile and web browser Flickr experiences.
Just as local, physical storage has since its inception, cloud storage and its accompanying infrastructures are becoming larger, more robust and cheaper as time goes on. Case in point: this past week, Google decided to bring down its Google Drive cloud storage solution pricing to insanely low prices, while increasing capacity at the same time.
Online resources for learning about photography are anything but lacking. But every so often a new one comes around that changes things up a bit -- usually because it's created by a well-known, respected pro.
Last week we told you about Zack Arias' new site DEDPXL, and this week we have yet another educational resource to share. Joey Lawrence (affectionately known as Joey L), one of my personal favorite photographers, has put out his own aptly titled resource: Learn From Joey L.
Almost a year after Zack Arias first announced that he was working on an educational project called DEDPXL (pronounced dead pixel), the project has gone live on the web and is ready for you take a look at.
If the idea hadn't been around for so long, we'd call 'In My Bag' type websites the flavor of the month. First there was InMyBag, which we shared with you at the beginning of last week, and now we have ShotKit, the latest 'in my bag' site turning heads online.
As was inevitable, the more common and generic top level domains (e.g. .com, .net, and even .co) are becoming scarce as more and more domains are registered each day.
Knowing this moment in time would come, ICANN, the authority in charge of managing domain names, has been putting out more and more top level domains in hopes of opening up more options for those looking to grab their own piece of the web -- and photographers are benefiting more directly than most.
Here's something that'll help you start off the week with a grin (or a grimace, if you harbor an aversion to beards). Will it Beard is a fun photo experiment of sorts created by art director Pierce Thiot and his photographer wife Stacy Thiot.
They wanted to determine what household items 'will beard' -- meaning what random objects they could successfully pack into Mr. Thiot's beard -- and got a fun, viral photo series for their troubles.
'What's in Your Bag' posts are popular on major photography websites. National Geographic's PROOF blog even does a unique version where they focus on those things that have meaning, but aren't necessarily gear.
But what about the rest of us? If you're not expecting a call from Nat Geo asking you to reveal the contents of your camera bag any time soon, the website InMyBag gives you a chance to share that with the world and pique your gear envy at the same time.
At first, The Atlantic's profile of the duo behind the mega-popular @HistoryInPics Twitter feed reads like your standard "young geniuses find lucrative economic niche in this crazy new media world" piece.
Photojournalism jobs may be disappearing in real life, but they're thriving in at least one corner of the Interwebs. A handful of participants in the online version of "Grand Theft Auto" have decided it's more fun to document virtual felonies than commit them and have formed a team of street photographers.
The filmmakers behind a BBC nature show got more than they bargained for when they came up with the idea of encasing a video camera in a fake egg to gather surreptitious footage of a penguin colony on the Falkland Islands.
With a name like SelfiePolice and a tagline like 'you owe humanity a dollar,' we have a feeling the charitable organization Selfie Police is going to go far -- in fact, we really hope it does.
In a move that will be popular with many bloggers and, perhaps, less popular with many photographers, Google …
You know, it used to be even photography thieves had to put some work in if they wanted to get a bit of dishonest business, but a new project by the name of Pro-folio shows that just a little bit of code can make stealing photos and creating a whole fake portfolio a one-click affair.
Maybe you thought year-end 'best-of' lists were only for desperate journalists trying to survive the holiday news doldrums or news agencies looking to wow you with the photographs they compiled over the course of the year. Au contraire.
Once you've gotten to a certain level of proficiency as a photographer, it's easy to forget how rough things looked when you first started out. Of course, that forgetfulness might be a good thing, but there's a site out there that wants you to relive those moment by sharing them with the world.
Those who see iPhoneography as some kind of barbarian invasion may want to give their DSLRs an extra hug after hearing this: The venerable British Journal of Photography has launched a new e-magazine all about smartphone photography and available only as an iPhone app.
News flash: You can't believe everything you see on Twitter. We know, we were shocked too.
Such was the case with this striking sepia-toned image that started lighting up the mediasphere yesterday billed as "the Earliest Photograph Taken of New York City - Broadway, May 1850." (And immediately started attracting comments in the vein of: "And they haven't fixed the potholes since!")
Yesterday night, Yahoo! took yet another step forward in the Flickr renaissance, although we doubt all photographers will see it this way. In a bid to make the service more share-friendly, Yahoo! has introduced new, cleaner embedding capability to the photo sharing site.
Being "journalists" more or less restricted to "facts," we can only look with awe and envy at New Camera News: a blog that tells the truth about the photography industry by making up witty, insider satire in the mode of The Onion
Rejoice, all ye illustrators and designers, at least if your work involves antiquarian subjects. The British Library has just posted more than a million copyright-free images to its Flickr photostream, and the pickings are choice if you need to illustrate anything from phrenology to 17th century geological theories.
The tech world is full of 'wars,' all of them over the attention of that flighty creature known as 'the consumer.' And one of the wars being raged most furiously is between the major social networks: the established behemoths Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; that stubborn network loved by photogs, Google+; and the new kid on the block that has everybody's undergarments in a bunch: Snapchat.
Well, Facebook has had its go at stealing some of Snapchat's market (both literally and through acquisition) and has been ultimately unsuccessful on all counts. Now it's Twitter's turn.
The key to creating a good photo-based service is to fill a need that isn't being filled by any other app or website -- a task increasingly difficult as more and more players enter the market. Still, once in a while someone stumbles on an idea that is just the right mix of concepts to create a service really worth your while, and Exposure seems to be just that.
So emergency workers are all over the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to talk down a suicidal man poised to jump. Media people are everywhere, doing their usual sensitive storytelling. A big chunk of the city is holding its breath, waiting to see how the life-and-death drama plays out.
Perfect time for a selfie, right?
What do you do when you're not busy destroying rebel planets, choking out generals and dealing with traumatizing father issues? Why, you grab a quality selfie and upload it to Instagram of course.
In the past, before resumes, interviews and portfolios, there was the master/apprentice relationship. If you wanted to learn a trade, craft or skill, you sought out a master of that skill and humbly asked for their tutelage.
That system has all but disappeared where most professions are concerned, but photographer Trey Ratcliff wants to bring it back into the world of the arts, and he's doing it through a newly-formed online "Magical Academy for the Mastery of the Arts" that he's calling "The Arcanum."
Here's a new way to be violated in the social media era: Post a photo of yourself on Instagram, then wait for somebody you don't know and didn't authorize to repost an edited version that looks vaguely like you, except shinier and with a lot more makeup.
This might just be one of those services both the loves and haters of Instagram will like. Because while other services print your Instagram shots on magnets or postcards, Boomf prints them on... marshmallows.
So, you see, if you like Instagram you get to turn your favorite photos into edible confections, and if you don't, you get to eat all of those pretentious selfies, food shots and cappuccino pictures you so despise. As Michael Scott would say: "win win win."
You might have found yourself in this situation before: you're in the middle of a photo shoot and you find that you badly need to set up a shot or lighting that is, in fact, impossible to do 'professionally' given the gear you have on hand.
So what do you do? You go all MacGyver of course! You put together an off-the-top-of-your-head DIY fix that gets the job done (even if it doesn't look all that good doing it). The Tumblr blog Shitty Rigs is dedicated to showing off those brilliant, if a bit silly, creations.
Just in time for the Holidays, Yahoo! is introducing a new service for printing custom photo books through Flickr, touting automatic features and a "clean, stunning design" that the company hopes will encourage Flickr users to take advantage of the new feature instead of going elsewhere for their photo book needs.
Google has agreed to replace a Google Maps satellite image of a Richmond, California railroad yard that may show the body of a murdered teenager.
Instagram may be home to a wealth of aesthetic and legal offenses, but it can also be a tool for promoting our better instincts, as a recent movement involving relief for victims of typhoon Haiyan attests to.
The idea isn't entirely new. At one point, photographer Allen Murabayashi experimented with re-imagining famous photos as if they had been taken with Instagram to dispel the thought that filters and a square crop often somehow "improve" a photo.
The website Histagrams is similar, only it takes it a step further and lends a comedic edge to the whole experiment. Site creators Gusto NYC and Gavin Alaoen imagine how historically significant moments might have been shared if the people behind them had had Instagram at their disposal.
A popular iOS and Android app that promised to generate torrents of Instagram likes and followers for its users also swiped thousands of passwords for the service, and is now being called a massive scam.
Back in July, we shared a viral "Dance-Lapse" video put together by former Microsoft exec Karen Cheng that showed the amazing progress she made learning to dance in one year.
Since that video came out, she's received countless requests to help others create similar video time-lapses of their own journey towards personal goals. And so she decided to start a website dedicated to that very thing.
If you're Maroon 5 or the like, you get to commission photo shoots for your album covers and boost Terry Richardson's bankroll.
Smaller-scale musicians need to DIY it, however, and now music-sharing service SoundCloud has made it easy by partnering with Instagram.
No doubt feeling pressure from certain other social media sites raking in the dough, Google announced Wednesday a slew of new features for Google+ intended to enhance the way users share, organize and tweak photos.