Historical

Is a photo everything it seems and what does it say about why and how it was taken? This image from publishers Lawrence and Houseworth shows a full team on the Sierras, but what is it telling us?

The spelling of “bokeh” to describe out-of-focus areas wasn’t used in relation to photography until as recently as 1997, so how has it come to dominate discussions about the qualities of a lens to the point that manufacturers have to mention it with every new release? This in-depth video explores the use of bokeh over the centuries from 16th-century oil paintings to today’s digital cameras.

Spy agencies have come up with some ingenious means for capturing images in enemy territory and this fascinating interview with a former CIA chief shows how pigeons and fountain pens were useful tools for gathering information through photography.

Shooting a hundred-year-old camera that is also a darkroom is unusual but this fascinating story becomes more remarkable when you consider that the photographer earned a living for decades creating portraits in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. 65 years later, he’s still taking photographs.

The daguerrotype was one of the earliest means of capturing images onto a surface and was the first photographic process available to the public. Using a piece of silver-coated copper and a 35mm film camera, this videos shows you how to make your own.

Many of you will have seen images taken with the famous Kodak Aerochrome film, or more likely in today's photography, you will have seen a digital homage to its created aesthetic. But how did this film come to be, and why was it originally used?

The Contax T2 was a luxury compact rangefinder released in 1991, combing excellent image quality and controls that have since made it a desirable option for film aficionados. Contax no longer exists and T2s now sell for thousands of dollars. Why do they cost so much and are they worth the investment?

The ingenious details that went into the purely mechanical design of early SLR cameras are incredible, and this in-depth video gives you a remarkable insight into how the light metering system functioned inside the legendary Canon F-1.

Every time I think about how much 2020 has fundamentally changed my life and my profession, I am reminded that, while dramatic, this is hardly the only period of change I’ve experienced in the business. So today, I thought I’d have a look back at just some of the changes that have impacted my own career since I first started making money as a professional photographer.

In 1995, Sony released a camera that would go on to dominate skateboarding videos for the next 15 years, revolutionizing the culture in its wake.

Photographers certainly love their bokeh, and not all bokeh is the same, as different lenses can have vastly different character. This neat video shows the kind of crazy bokeh you can get when you put a less common lens on your camera.

Drug and alcohol addiction often go hand in hand with art. Painting has Van Gogh and Pollock, poetry has Coleridge and Ginsburg, music has The Beatles and Jim Morrison, and novels have Burroughs and Welsh. I was, however, surprised by how little information I could find about photographers’ substance abuse. Where are the in-depth books about photographers that were inspired or crushed by their addictions?

In this video you’ll learn about one of the founders of Adobe being taken hostage for $600,000 ransom, and how Steve Jobs once owned 19% of the company before they opened the flood gates to cater for Windows and the mass market of the time.

The TLR camera has long gone the way of the dinosaur, replaced by SLRs, but you can still find used TLRs for purchase, with Rolleiflex models generally being the most sought after. This fun video follows a street photographer as he shoots with a Rolleiflex 2.8F TLR camera.

In 1945, the U.S. government’s Manhattan Project detonated the world's first nuclear explosion. This test was highly confidential and remained so for several years, and yet, Kodak figured out what happened long before the truth became public knowledge.