Historical

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.

The various versions of Tank Man are among the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, having a lasting impact on history to the point that the Chinese State banned the use of the word “Leica” on social media last year. In this short video, Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin discusses how his image came about, and the consequences of its publication.

You'll need 378 4K ultra-high definition screens to display this photo in full size. Imagine being able to see a golf ball from 15 miles away. Its low-light capabilities can also spot objects 100 million times dimmer than what we can see with the human eye.

Light has been fundamental to art for centuries predating the camera. However, utilizing realistic and impactful light — an objective of many photographers and artists today — wasn't always the case.

Though Ansel Adams may have died in 1984, his work and his impact on photography reverberates through the craft to this day. This video essay will explain how and why, in under ten minutes.

The history of photography is long and quite storied and something that almost any photographer would enjoy learning about. This great video will give you a look at the history of photography from its beginnings all the way to the modern digital age and is a great watch for your Sunday afternoon.

If you enjoyed reading about mind-blowing photography facts, here are 10 more that you will find fascinating.

Manufacturing a product range focused upon APS-C and full frame (FF) ILCs is one of those strategic decisions that seems set in stone. If Canon and Nikon think it's a good differentiator for consumers, then it must be an industry standard that is broadly followed by everyone. However, the camera market is more nuanced than this and has some surprising origins. So, what is the best strategy?

The millennium was yet to dawn, but 1999 saw Bill Clinton acquitted, the Columbine massacre, the world's population hit 6 billion, and "The Sopranos" debut. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France, the Euro came in to circulation, Napster was released along with Internet Explorer 5, and "The Phantom Menace" and "The Matrix" were first screened. But why did it also see the birth of the DSLR?

Have you watched any old television shows lately? Have you noticed anything strange about them? In watching an older show recently, I was surprised by just how many shots are blatantly out of focus.

One photographer has been shooting portraits with the aim of recreating well-known portraits of some of history’s most prominent figures, but with an interesting perspective: his subjects are the descendants of said historical figures. For one portrait in particular, he located Thomas Jefferson’s sixth great-grandson,.

The Polaroid SX-70 has got to be one of the most innovative rangefinder cameras ever created. Photographer Willem Verbeeck gives you a short video that explains some of its idiosyncrasies and why you might want to pick up on from your local second-hand camera store.

We need to change. Not only our way of thinking, but our actions. What we buy and who we buy it from is a political decision in itself.

From the weird to the stunningly impressive, here are 10 mind-blowing facts about photography.

After numerous suspensions of her social media accounts, a renowned photo colorist fears she will be permanently blocked from Facebook and Instagram. She says she is hesitant to continue posting new work after the social platforms previously threatened to ban her for posting colorized images of Nazi leaders.

By 2018 Apple was worth $1 trillion, the US-China trade war had intensified, LeBron James reached 30,000 NBA points, and Black Panther starred in the box office. Camera manufacturers finally stopped flogging the dead horse of DSLRs, with 2018 truly the year of mirrorless. But what happened?

The topic of the video is one of the most ground-breaking, disruptive, and commercially successful consumer technology products of the mid-twentieth century. Get a look into the Polaroid backstory, the rise and fall of the company, and the life and career of its co-founder.

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.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to massive shutdowns across the world, with the everyday lives of many people coming to a complete stop. Paris is one such city, with its historic and vibrant streets now standing quiet and devoid of much of the life that normally fills them. This video explores the city and shows just how remarkably different it is due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

Death photography was, at one time, a popular way of preserving a memory of a loved one who has passed. This video discusses the history of it, and suggests that it can still play a role in modern society as a way to cope with grief.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to unprecedented shutdowns, bringing normal life to a complete halt in many places around the world, making for eerie scenes as normally bustling neighborhoods stand empty and quiet. This fascinating video tours the streets of New York City to show how starkly different the world is during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Sending off old negatives can be time-consuming and even a little costly. Here is how you can develop film using just your camera, tripod, and a light source.

No, this article doesn't have anything to do with the current situation in the economy. The decline of 3D movie production and projection started about 10 years ago, and in this documentary, you will learn how history repeats itself over and over again.

For eight years, photographer Pete Souza had my dream job, photographing the president of the United States and being on the front line of the biggest news stories of our time. In his latest IGTV post, Souza talks about some of the gear he used to capture his iconic images.

If, like me, you have a love for history, being able to see footage from Victorian England in 1901 is a real pleasure. Using neural networks, we can now see previously grainy and fuzzy video from the era upscaled to 4k, 60 fps, colorized, and significantly improved image quality.

While we hunker down and practice social distancing, it’s important to remember that there are critical reasons to take the spread of this virus seriously. Call it what you will, Influenza, The Spanish Flu, or H1N1, the 1918 Pandemic killed upwards of 100 million people. Can images from this 100-year-old tragedy help contain the spread of COVID-19 today?

A photographer who discovered a 120-year-old time capsule box in his old family home has developed the images. Deciding on one of the oldest ways to make photography prints, he used Cyanotype to develop the prints and recorded the entire process for this newly released video.

A YouTuber has undertaken the task of upscaling video clips taken in New York City back in 1911. Despite the footage being 109 years old, he managed to upscale the footage to 4K, while also colorizing it and increasing its frame rate to 60fps.

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.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the most important scientific instruments to have ever been deployed, and it has provided countless advancements to the fields of astronomy and cosmology. This fascinating video takes a look at one of the earliest and most important images the telescope took and how it continues to impact science even 25 years later.

Important photographs have changed the world in a number of ways since the camera's inception. This is one of the more somber and chilling uses for a photograph.

When you look at an image, how do you interpret it? Is it able to inform you about what has preceded the events that are depicted and what is about to happen? The ability of an image to "speak" is something John Berger believed lifted it from being ordinarily graphic to providing a visual narrative.

The history surrounding the development and widespread deployment of color television is anything but simple, as it's filled with long fights over technology and standards — fights that took decades to sort out. This great video takes a look at the fascinating history and drama behind color television.

Many of us photographers have a penchant for vintage lenses, but this one might top the lot.

There are many things in life you have a choice over, but your parents are not one of them! You are born and — to a greater or lesser extent — bred, shaping the person you are today. So have you looked at their photographs?

It's Christmas week and the 12 weeks of Christmas reaches its last installment. There had to be a number 1 and what better choice than the most iconic photo of all time?

Ken Heyman, a photographer that’s worked with cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, shot commissions for Life magazine, and collaborated with President Lyndon B. Johnson, died on December 10th in Manhattan at 89 years old. He died at his home of a heart ailment, as reported by his daughter, Jennifer McCarthy.

Those growing up in the States during the 70s and 80s will no doubt remember adverts for Kodak’s various products, especially around Christmas. One year in particular proved disastrous for Kodak, and Azriel Knight and his magnificent beard take us back in time to explain how it happened.

Harry Styles just released his new album with a cover photo taken with a fisheye lens. This video shows how the fisheye lens was created and adopted by musicians and producers in different eras.

It is easy to take for granted how easy it is to preserve our images these days; after all, we can create multiple copies of our photos in multiple locations with just a few clicks of the mouse. It was not always so easy, and as this great video shows, the process of preserving historical photographs can be incredibly delicate and require a highly skilled hand. Check out this great video to see the process in action.

A photographer has restored a “magic lantern” given to his great-great-grandfather 160 years ago. In one of the earliest examples of photography as we know it, decades before the invention of cinema, the Lampascope existed.

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.

KCET’s “Lost LA” does deep dives into the lesser-known history of Southern California. In a recent episode, photography takes center stage as they tell the story behind some of the most famous images from one of the darkest chapters in American history.

As creatives and photographers, it's essential to study imagery for education and inspiration. The national archive is a wealth of archival and historical photos from America's history.