How the 'Blue Marble' Became One of the Most Reproduced Photographs in History

One of the most reproduced photographs of Earth ever made was shot upside down. When an Apollo 17 astronaut framed the fully lit planet through a Hasselblad on December 7, 1972, the South Pole sat at the top and Africa ran sideways, exactly as the crew saw it on the way to the Moon. The version fixed in your memory has been turned a half circle from the original frame.

 

The 14-Inch MacBook Pro and iMac Get Apple's New M6 Chip

Apple's new M6 chip arrived on Tuesday in two Macs at once, the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac, with two more CPU cores and two more GPU cores than before. Both pick up Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and both open for preorder on Wednesday, October 28, ahead of a November 6 release.

 

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We want to see the images that still give you chills

Welcome to the October installment of the Critique the Community! This month's critique theme is going to be "Scary," and we want to see your best photographs that scared you in some way.

Apple's Creator Studio Update Brings Generate Fill to Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro is getting Generate Fill, which lets you circle part of a photo, type the change you want, and have the app rebuild that area to match the light, perspective, and texture around it. It arrives in November as part of a free update to Apple Creator Studio, alongside built-in MotionVFX effects in Final Cut Pro and new AI assistants in Logic Pro, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.

Photography Rules Worth Breaking, and a Few Worth Keeping

Shoot wide open, keep your ISO as low as it will go, and save your landscapes for golden hour. You've heard all of it, and most of it holds up until a client books a noon ceremony or a waterfall starts looking better blurred than frozen.

 

Apple Releases New $1,499 M6 iMac

Apple today announced a new iMac with the M6 chip, starting at $1,499 for a model with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. Pre-orders open tomorrow, October 28, and the first machines arrive Friday, November 6. For photographers, the chip is a real step up, but the screen hasn't changed, and the cheapest model gives up a few things the old one had at the same price. 

The Inverted Mask Trick for Cleaner Skies in Lightroom

A clear blue sky sounds like a gift until you open the file and find a flat, even band of color behind your subject with nothing to hold the eye. Lightroom's AI masks can fix that in a few clicks, and the sky selection most people reach for first isn't always the cleanest one.

 

Why Your Background Blur Doesn't Match the Tutorial

The f-number on your lens tells you how bright your exposure will be, and it says far less about how blurry your background will turn out. If you've ever copied a recommended aperture and ended up with a frame that looked nothing like the example, the gap usually traces back to the size of your sensor and how far you stood from your subject.

 

Can the Sony FS100 Still Handle Real Interview Work?

The Sony FS100 records 1080p to 8-bit files, has no built-in ND filters, and is well over a decade old, yet plenty of filmmakers relied on it for documentaries and corporate interviews. Cheap used cinema cameras like it raise a fair question about how much of a good image comes from the camera and how much comes from the person running it.

 

The New iPad mini Gets a Beautiful OLED Screen

Apple's new iPad mini replaces its LCD with an 8.5-inch OLED display that reaches 1,200 nits on HDR content, in a body 5.4 mm thin with an IP67 rating for water and dust. It's the best screen Apple has ever put in its smallest tablet, with true blacks, a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and HDR highlights that glow in a way the old LCD never could.

 

Why I Take the Chance When Planning a Landscape Photography Trip

Planning a landscape photography trip is something I spend a considerable amount of time doing, and living here in Ireland means that checking the weather is an important part of that process. The conditions can change quickly, and even when you use several weather forecasting apps, there is never a guarantee that things will work out as you hoped.

Sony and Nikon Built the Same Bird Lenses, So Which One Do You Pick?

Sony's new 400mm f/4.5 and 600mm f/6.3 primes come in lighter and cheaper than the Nikon lenses they closely resemble, and that puts a real decision in front of anyone who shoots birds and wildlife. Long glass is usually the most expensive and physically demanding part of a wildlife kit, so a few hundred grams and a four-figure price gap can shape what you carry for years.

 

What a Telephoto Lens Can Do With a Sea of Fog

A telephoto lens pointed at a sea of fog turns one broad, washed-out view into dozens of small pictures: a single ridge, a clump of treetops, a slow waterfall of mist spilling over a hill. Fog shifts by the minute and the best light on it can vanish in seconds, so the decisions you make before anything happens determine whether you come home with frames or just a nice morning.

 

Why Flawless Retouching Now Looks Like AI

For about a decade, glass-smooth skin and spotless frames marked a careful retoucher, and that exact look is now what image generators produce best. If a client scrolling your portfolio can't tell your work from a prompt, they have one less reason to book you.

 

Sony FX5: Do Open Gate, IBIS, and Anamorphic Desqueeze Work Together?

Open gate recording, in-body stabilization, and anamorphic desqueeze have become the most requested features on compact cinema cameras, and the Sony FX5 is the first Sony to offer all three in one body. Whether those features can run at the same time affects how you rig, monitor, and shoot, especially if you work handheld with anamorphic glass.

 

Is Canon Still the Safest Camera Brand for Paid Video Work?

When you pick a camera system for video, you're also picking a lens mount, a color pipeline, and the answer you'll give every time a producer asks what you shoot on. Canon, Sony, Nikon, and Panasonic Lumix all make capable full frame mirrorless bodies, so the choice comes down to how each one holds up on paid jobs and what it costs you over the years.

 

Stop Picking Shutter Speeds at Random

Most people learn to treat shutter speed as the last piece of the exposure puzzle, the number you dial in once aperture and ISO are set and the meter stops complaining. That habit hands one of your most expressive choices to the light meter, since shutter speed decides how motion looks in every frame, from a frozen athlete to a smeared highway at dusk.

 

How to Add Glow to a Sunset Photo in Lightroom

A sunset frame that looked luminous through the viewfinder often opens in Lightroom dark, a little noisy, and short on the warmth you remember. Getting that glow back is mostly a matter of the order you work in and how much room you leave yourself before you start masking.

 

Should You Quit Your Job to Become a Professional Photographer?

Every reason to make photography your full-time job has a flip side, and that flip side usually shows up after you've already left the steady paycheck behind. If you're weighing a jump from shooting on weekends to shooting for a living, the hard part is figuring out which of those tradeoffs you can actually live with.

 

Lexar's SL500 Might Become Part of Your Everyday Kit

Phone-based content creation has moved well past quick behind-the-scenes clips. Photographers are now shooting more polished promo videos with their phones on a regular basis. That workflow shift changes what your phone needs to be capable of, and internal storage and speed are usually the first barriers.