Websites

Then-and-Now Photos of New York City

NYC Grid is a website run by Paul Sahner that explores and documents New York neighborhoods, "street by street and block by block." One of the awesome reoccurring features on the blog is the before-and-after section, which features pairs of photos showing identical locations but shot decades -- or sometimes over a century -- apart.

eBay Unveils ‘My Gadgets’ Feature, Keeps Track of How Much Your Gear is Worth

It seems like new and improved camera gear pops up every couple of weeks these days, leading to an endless cycle of discover, buy, sell and repeat. Well, if you're the kind of person who always wants to have the newest gear around, and you're constantly selling off your old gear on eBay to make it happen, the website has just officially announced a new feature that will make your life much easier.

Called My Gadgets, the new eBay feature can keep track of all of the gear you own and let you know about how much you can expect to make when you sell it, making it that much easier when it comes time to upgrade.

We Are Unlike You is a Modeling Agency that Looks for Characters, Not Models

When the term model is thrown around, there's a fairly typical image that probably comes to mind for most people. In the male department, six-pack abs or a clean-cut look might fit the bill. And the female department more often than not involves the descriptors tall and slender.

Modeling agency We Are Unlike You isn't interested in any of that. Like the UGLY MODELS agency we shared with you a little over a year ago, they are more interested in representing unique "characters."

JPG Mag Co-Founder Launches Weekly Email of Amazing Photography

Heather Champ is a well-known personality in the online photo community. For almost 5 years she served as Director of Community at Flickr, after which she co-founded JPG Magazine with her husband Derek Powazek. Now she's embarked on her next adventure: a weekly email newsletter dubbed "Favorites."

Hey Apple: Regular People Have No Idea How To Manage Photos On Their iPhone

I'm serious, they don't. They don't know that they don't, but they don't. If you grab a co-workers iPhone and they have 2500 photos on the camera roll, then you know they don't. They'll just keep taking photos and assume "the cloud" or whatever is backing it up.

For a time, it is.

Using a Giant Weather Balloon to Create Artificial Moonlight

Earlier this summer I was asked to shoot a campaign for Airwick USA to highlight the many uses for their new color changing candles. It was going to be a summery outdoor shoot involving two distinct ‘looks’ for the images; one with the candles being used at night time, and the other where they were being used during sunset or dusk activities.

Stock Photo Service stock.xchng Down for Days, Users Left in the Dark

There's a slight mystery of sorts taking place in the stock photo community at this time. Stock photo service stock.xchng, reachable at sxc.hu, has been down for days now without reasonable explanation. The website is run by HAAP Media Ltd., a Getty Images subsidiary based in Hungary, and offers free-to-use images and illustrations to the masses.

photographerimage bing 500px

500px Now Powers Bing’s Daily Featured Homepage Picture

Since Microsoft launched their Bing search engine a little over four years ago in mid-2009, one of its characteristics that set it apart from search giant Google was the featuring of a lovely image that changed on a daily basis.

Featured images ranged from landscapes, animals, people, and more. Today, online photography community 500px has announced that they are collaborating with Bing to power the search engine's daily photo display.

Big Print Marketplace: Helping Photogs Trade Prints Through Tumblr

Sure, the vast majority of photos created these days never live beyond a few seconds on an LCD screen. But it's still true that one of the ultimate compliments you can pay to an image is that you'd like to hang it on your wall.

Thinking about that and the steep prices demanded for gallery work, photographer Duncan Wright decided the photography world could use a little more of a sharing ethic. So he created Big Print Marketplace, a Tumblr site that helps photographers trade prints with each other.

Amazon Begins Selling Fine-Art Photos through New Art Marketplace

In what could be called an interesting move, popular online retailer Amazon has announced that they're launching the "Amazon Art" marketplace effective immediately, bringing more than 40,000 artistic works from various dealers and art galleries to you with one click.

More than 4,500 artists' works are in the collection, and featured are scores (almost 6,000 pieces at the time of this writing) of fine-art photographs from the likes of Melvin Sokolsky and even Andy Warhol (priced at a whopping $200,000).

StreamNation: A Cloud Storage Solution Built with Photographers in Mind

There are many cloud storage services out there, some offering a decent amount of space for very little in way of cash. Unfortunately, most aren't built with photographers and other visual junkies in mind. You can upload and store most file types, but viewing them is another matter.

StreamNation is different in that respect. Targeted at photographers and videographers in particular, the site not only lets you upload RAW files, but view and download them on the go as well.

Google’s New ‘Views’ Site Gives Android Users a Place to Share Photo Spheres

The launch of Android 4.2 in October of last year brought with it the ability to create special 360° panoramas called "Photo Spheres." But as cool as these panoramas were, there was no real way to share them with the exception of a widget Google released a few months back.

Yesterday, all of that changed when Google announced a brand new Google Maps website called Views, built from the ground up for the Android community and their many un-shared Photo Spheres.

Picfair Screen 1

Journalist Quits Job, Becomes Coder, and Develops Simplistic Stock Photo Site

There's something to say about the curious nature of journalists. Some spend all of their hours researching a particular subject, others go out into the field to experience first-hand, and some others quit their job and take up coding classes.

Wait -- what?

It's true. Just ask Benji Lanyado. This once full-time Guardian writer and contributor to other publications decided to quite literally quit his day job to pursue building what he thinks is the next big thing in stock photo buying and selling.

SmugMug Launches a Major Redesign to Wage War Against Flickr and 500px

As higher resolution photography (and photography in general) has become ubiquitous, photo sharing and storage websites have had to adjust to keep up. From increasing storage capacity and file-size limitations to launching "spectacular" redesigns that offer beautiful browsing experiences, everybody is adjusting in their own way.

The latest player in the photography sharing game to make some big changes is SmugMug, who announced and launched a major overhaul earlier today.

Flickr Redesigns Groups Pages to Match the Site’s New Look

When Yahoo! launched the new Flickr at the end of May, not every part of the website got the "spectacular" treatment. One of the sections of the site that has been lagging behind the rest were the Groups pages, and Flickr has finally decided to bring them up to speed.

Photographer Gets a Second Chance at Life, Embarks on a 100 Portrait Journey

In 2011, photographer Giles Duley stepped on a land mine while working in Afghanistan. Originally a celebrity portrait photographer who had been turned off to celebrity culture by the people he was photographing, he had always hoped to return to portraiture.

That's why, during his 46-day fight for his life in intensive care, it was to portraiture that his mind turned, and a project took shape.

Chief White House Photog Pete Souza is Now an Instagrammer

How do you take the next step after rising from humble newspaper shooter to chief official photographer for the White House? You start sharing pictures of your lunch, of course.

At least that's the strategy for Oval Office documentarian Pete Souza, who opened his new Instagram account Wednesday with an image of healthy snacks aboard Air Force One.

Lenstag Now Has Disposable Verification Links for Used Camera Gear Sales

Lenstag generated quite a bit of buzz last week by introducing a service that aims to crack down on gear theft by making it easier to track and report stolen gear. The service is now getting a new feature that will further add trust to the used gear buying process: disposable verification links for individual items.

LensRentals Launches LensAuthority as a Used Gear Outlet

LensRentals is at the height of its popularity and still growing. About a week ago, we shared some stats that more than proved this, showing how a company started by one man and $5,500 dollars in 2006 is now a 42 person operation on track to bring in $13 million this year.

But if you think that LensRentals has reached a point where it is content to rest on its laurels, you would be wrong. The company has just launched a brand new site, LensAuthority, where it will sell off the used gear it is constantly turning over through the main website.

Dronestagr.am: The Social Photo-Sharing Network for Drone Photographers

Although drone photography might lead you onto some sticky legal ground in some states, it is nonetheless often quite beautiful. It makes sense that those who have spent good money on drones are eager to put that money to use, and now they have an Instagram-like social network on which to share their results.

Portraits of People Holding Their School Pictures from Awkward Years

Do you always laugh and squirm when you look back at official school pictures from "awkward years"? You're not alone -- take a peek at the Awkward Years Project and you'll see what we mean. The project was started by a Utah-based graphic designer and photography enthusiast named Merilee, who's collecting then-and-now portraits to show people who have blossomed since their awkward teen days.

Shloosl Will Make a Copy of Your House Key Using Only a Couple of Photos

Photography has made inroads into all sorts of industries. For instance, the Snap Fashion app we shared a couple of weeks ago lets you take photos of clothes and then shows you where to buy them. But the most recent interesting application we've run across comes to us via a company named Shloosl, who will copy your house key for you using nothing more than a couple of smartphone photos.

500px Redesigns Photo Page, Integrates a ‘Stunning Full Screen Experience’

It wasn't long ago that Flickr rolled out its massive redesign -- met by both boos and cheers -- that entirely changed the way you experience the photos sharing site. Now it's 500px turn. The premium photo sharing platform just announced its own redesign, focused around larger photos and a Focus Viewer feature that offers a "stunning full screen experience."

DPReview is Hoping to Convert Its Review Prowess Into Sales with GearShop

After a couple of months in beta, the photography review site DPReview is finally announcing the official launch of an online store that bears the website's stamp of approval. Named GearShop, it's a specialty camera store that will stock its shelves with only DPReview recommended and approved products.