Photography can sometimes become a bit of a gear measuring contest. Who’s got the biggest lens? Which body has the most megapixels?

Since the advent of photography, the craft has completely changed the world — from its profound effects on communication and documentation in practical applications, to being a powerful form of personal expression and a visual art. Now, photography is being used to look into the past and discover significant historical information thought to be lost forever.

Kendrick Lamar's newest music video, "ELEMENT," was released this week. The video is directed by Jonas Lindstroem and The Little Homies (aka Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free) and takes Photographer Gordon Parks' iconic imagery and breathes new life via video. I'm not sure how many of our readers listen to Kendrick Lamar, but you should. He's brilliant, in both lyric and music video direction.

What's the most difficult environment you've ever taken a photo in? The time when you had one chance to get the shot with no opportunity to try again? Does it compare to tumbling around the moon at several miles per second while capturing one of the most iconic images of all-time? Check out this great video that explores the creation of "Earthrise."

Imagine a large resource of historic photos that were collected at a then industrial scale, for commercial use, that lay neatly archived largely unknown about. Well, last week new startup Timepix launched just such an archive in the UK.

I’ve paged through his books at bookshops, and I know he’s done some of the Pirelli Calendar campaigns. But I've looked at his work again since his passing, and it gives insight on how he does it, and what type of person he was.

Look at any photography discussion board or Facebook page, and you’ll quickly run into members obsessed with bokeh, or the quality of out-of-focus elements in a photograph. If you are in the bokeh-obsessed stage of photography, then large format wet plate photography is absolutely for you.

Billy Monk was a bouncer in a club in Cape Town South Africa. It was in the 60s, during Apartheid, where certain rules regarding social dynamics were strongly enforced, and yet, here he was, documenting the people who freed themselves of these rules whenever inside this club called Catacombs.

Talented Magnum Photographer, Christopher Anderson, experienced something that completely changed his life. In June 2000, while traveling in Haiti, he met writer Michael Finkel and together they documented a group of 44 Haitians on their journey to the United States. A few days after they set sail, they realized the handmade boat was sinking. Anderson’s first reaction was to continue taking pictures – even though he knew there was a chance they may never be seen.

He doesn't always know how the second half of the movie will go. He needs to be inspired enough to actually start writing, and if you've seen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, the dialogues of his characters are gripping right through.

If Sony's Imaging Division work by movie quotes then they must be using Highlander: "There can be only one!" Are they The Kurgan to Canon's Connor McLeod? And does that make Nikon, Sunda Kastagir? Welcome to the three biggest camera manufacturers — the so-called immortals.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is hailed in the pantheon of photographers as one of the leading lights of his time. He is also inextricably linked with Leica. If he were shooting today, what brand would he choose and how would he shoot? It would of course be Panasonic and 6K Burst Mode.

The Cottingley Fairies are famous (or infamous) in the history of photography as one of the earlier cases of photo fakery. Perhaps then, it's not surprising that there has been considerable interest in the auction of original prints and a high sale value.

Famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams' Arca-Swiss 4x5 camera that he personally owned and used from 1964 to 1968 will go up for auction at the end of this month via Heritage Auctions in New York. Bidding will open at a staring price of $35,000 on October 27th, so if you have some extra change lying around, you can bid on this one-of-a-kind piece of photographic history.

What will you be doing for World Photography Day? There’s good reason to get on board. Some exciting happenings are going on, including some free live presentations from top-notch photographers.

Believe it or not, it has been 30 years since the release of Photoshop version 1.0, and the application has come quite a long way in those three decades. This fascinating video takes a look at what it was like using version 1.0 of the program all those years ago.

"Earthrise" is by far one of the most famous photographs ever taken, shot by astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, nearly 50 years ago, as he and fellow astronauts orbited the Moon. Using modern data and matching it with that from the mission, this stunning visualization shows what the astronauts saw in 4K.

In what could be some of the most expensive personal photos of all time, over 200 photos from Andy Warhol's three-day trip to China in 1982 will go on auction this April, with an expectation of receiving over $1 million.

As Halloween nears, we are all soon to be bombarded with a litany of images in our social media feeds of our friend’s unwilling pets being forced to don cute/embarrassing outfits picked out by their fawning owners. In fact, it’s highly likely that we have perpetrated this subtle canine fashion abuse ourselves at some point and time in our lives. How can you help it? They’re just so darn cute. But what is far less likely is that any of us will have achieved the rakish heights of the world’s foremost purveyor of canine imagery, William Wegman.

As Black History Month continues, Adorama brought Documentary Photographer and Curator Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, to moderate a panel with New York Times Staff Photojournalist Michelle Agins and Akili Ramsess, Executive Director of the National Press Photographers Association (both Pulitzer Prize winners) to discuss the history of black women in photojournalism.

Thank god for the interwebs right? Not just because it brings us badgers and cat videos but because sometimes it allows us to be places we couldn't other wise go. I'm of course talking about the 2015 Adobe MAX conference that just went down in Los Angeles. If you, like me, were not one of the "5000 most creative minds" fortunate enough to make it, then you may appreciate this glimpse from the conference floor. Adobe set up a display consisting of several mock bedrooms. Each room being representative of a time period and pivotal moment within Photoshop's 25 years.

It's amazing how far camera technology has come in a short time. The Sony Cyber-shot R1, one of the top cameras in its day back in 2005, is a great example of that.

Cooperative of Photography has brought us this slick little video that gives us a taste of the evolution of camera technology from the past 200 years condensed down into a sub-two minute demonstration. Austrian photographer Leo Rosas executes this project with a single model and 11 portraits, each representing a significant milestone in the development of photographic capture tools starting with the pinhole camera obscura, all the way to the modern cell phone.

Capturing the launch of a space shuttle is undoubtedly a tremendous task to take on. Add to that the pressure of capturing the last space shuttle launch and you may have one of the most immense photographic endeavours of your career. In a very passionate and insightful video talk, Dan Winters takes us through the process of accomplishing said task. From his emotional relationship with capturing launches, to diagrams of his camera setups, Winters not only shows us how he captured his incredible photos, but conveys what doing so meant to him as a photographer as well as a human being.

Have you ever run out to a shoot and realized that despite your best laid plans, you left something behind? Packed up, boarded a plane, and realized you left your memory cards or film at home? How far back did you have to go to get it? Imagine realizing that you had to travel 238,900 miles? Or worse, 170 years into the past.

Did you know that before Hasselblad became the official camera of the moon, space exploration was photographed with modified versions of simple drugstore cameras?

Imagine a treasure trove of more than 700,000 images from one of the greatest cities on earth, capturing pre-war architecture in all its glory, and digitally archived for your photographic enjoyment. No, they aren’t professionally shot or technically perfect, but they are a feast for the eyes all the same.

Now available on Netflix, "Shooting Robert King" goes behind the scenes of what it was like to be a documentary war photographer. You always hear and see images from the war but NEVER about what it's like to be thrown into it as a documentary photographer. At just 24, American photojournalist Robert King began his 15 year journey to follow his passion. Originally he set out to win a Pulitzer prize, but in the end found himself with a life changing experience.