At 60,000 years old, the Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest, longest-running culture on Earth. Amy Toensing photographed them for National Geographic, lending her intimately deep sense of storytelling to the sad and tragic history of their culture and the bond they share with their land.
"All good things must come to an end." It's a common theme throughout this special by National Geographic in which we follow Steve McCurry on his quest of shooting the last roll of Kodak Kodachrome film ever made. It's a pretty daunting and heavy assignment to be sure - one McCurry is no stranger to. That fact is even more apparent when we learn that it was McCurry who asked for the final roll.
Polish photographer Emil Stankiewicz’s has created a unique, handmade Talbotype camera nicknamed Idlozi, which means “window to your heritage soul.” Each unique image captured by the wooden camera starts as a paper negative which is then rephotographed with the same box camera to yield a positive print. The camera also known as a “street camera” or “á la minute camera” are inspired by Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype, the British inventor who was able to create a paper negative from which positive prints could be contact printed.
In 1985 there were approximately 40 recorded felonies on the New York City subway system. Every single day. It's a wonder how young photographer Chris Morris mustered the courage to set off on to the mean (subterranean) streets and begin months of personal project work documenting the New York subway.
A while ago we wrote about the Kickstarter project aimed at bringing the historic Petzval Lens to modern day 35mm DSLRs. Shortly after another Kickstarter was launched to bring this Petzval to the medium format crowd. While off the shelf options such as these can appeal to the masses there remain a few inventive photographers such as Dr. Dirk HR Spennemann who prefer to mix their passion for photography and history with some good old ingenuity to bring us a project simply called "The Antique Camera Simulator".
Some four thousand custom tintype portraits, countless Polaroids and more than 30 gallery shows but after four years in business, Photobooth San Francisco is closing its doors at the end of March 2014. One of the few commercial studios selling custom hand-made tintypes, Photo Booth, located on Valencia Street, has been a favorite and easy place to have a one-of-a-kind metal portrait made.
A group of conservators restoring one of the century old supply depots established by Robert Falcon Scott during his expedition to the South Pole found more than they bargained for. In the corner of one of the huts lay a solid block of ice containing 22 negatives that have been quite well preserved for an entire century.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Capa, the iconic war photographer and Magnum Photos co-founder whose life, documented in the autobiography Slightly Out of Focus, is the stuff of legend. Capa's centenary has brought with it a number of undiscovered treasures from his life including his only surviving audio interview from October 1947 but also a rich collection of slide film taken on assignment from 1938 until his death in 1954.
The swirly bokeh of fast lenses designed by Joseph Petzval in the mid-19th century is no longer solely available to fine art photographers using view cameras. In July, we profiled a Kickstarter campaign by Lomography to fund the creation of a brass Petzval for Nikon and Canon mounts. Now, a new campaign is hoping to fund the production of an F3.8 120mm lens for medium format cameras with a Pentacon Six and Hasselblad compatible mount.
You don’t have to be into photojournalism or documentary photography to know that Robert Capa was one of the seminal names in 20th century photography. The last few years however, have seen various accusations surface that his iconic photo “Falling Soldier” - apparently showing the moment of death of a Spanish solider - was set up. This week new evidence came to light that might once and for all confirm the true story behind one of the most debated images of all time.
When it comes to architectural photography, there is one that stands above all: Julius Shulman. Not only was he responsible for creating the world's most iconic images of architecture, but he was on the forefront of pushing the boundaries of the art form into what it is today.
Whatever type of photography you focus on, I doubt there are many of us that aren’t mesmerized every time we pick up and thumb through a copy of National Geographic magazine. Over it’s lifetime, it's become synonymous with capturing images of people, places and wildlife that show us the undiscovered or hidden side of our increasingly homogenized world.
The phrase “go big or go home” seems to take on a special significance with photographer Dennis Manarchy. Obsessed with the concept of scale and the possibilities of working with massive negatives to create portrait images more than two stories high, he and his team have created a 35-foot view camera, the world’s largest film camera. The project, nicknamed “Butterflies and Buffalo”, aims to use the traveling view camera as a conduit for documenting more than 50 of the unique cultures in America.
Photographer and historian Marc Hermann has done a beautiful job pulling historic crime scene photos from the New York Daily News archive to blend them with photographs of the same locations today. For those who live in New York now, it may be easy to forget just how rough the city was in the not-too-distant past.
Years ago the only way to print a photo was to make test strips, make a test print, go back and dodge and burn details, make more test strips, another test print and so on and so on until you got the result you were after. In these photos released by Magnum Photos in New York, you can get a closer look at the process followed by their master printer, Pablo Inirio.
In this episode of the (always) fantastic "Capture," supermodel Helena Christensen and photographic legend Mary Ellen Mark sit down with Mark Seliger and discuss their unique approaches to making their images. Mary Ellen Mark talks about what it was like to photograph Mother Theresa and how every circus in India was more imaginative than the last. Helena Christensen's love of photography began when she hitchhiked around the world as a teenager,
I grew up as part of the generation of photographers that developed film (or had a lab develop it) and mounted photos in family albums. At the time, I would remember thinking it wasn't a particularly special exercise or the photos themselves weren't particularly amazing. But how many of you remember the feeling - often years later - of finding those same 'mundane' shots and nostalgically revisiting the past? Wasn't that a powerful and often wonderful feeling?
In 1983, the BBC aired a documentary series called "Master Photographers" interviewing and showcasing some of the most influential photographers of all time - from Alfred Eisenstaedt to Bill Brandt to Andre Kertesz. In this episode, the great Ansel Adams and his penchant for cowboy hats and bolo ties. Adams was unquestionably brilliant. It's one thing to read his thoughts from a book; it's another thing entirely to hear them.
Photography is the perfect counterpart to road travel. On a mission that seems to blend aspects of Ken Kesey, Robert Frank and Matthew Brady, fine art photographer Anton Orlov is traveling across the United States in a school bus doing wet plate collodion photography. You might’ve seen his Kickstarter video in 2011 that involved retrofitting a school bus into a mobile darkroom nicknamed “The Photo Palace.”
There are many great photography books out there but this is a list of five of my all-time favorites, the ones routinely jockeying for space on my nightstand even though I’ve read or pawed through them numerous times. Each is a continual source of inspiration and provides welcome insight into the thought-process behind successful imagemaking at the highest level.
Since 2008, The Impossible Project has kept the Polaroid flame alive with their line of instant films. Today, in the Apple app store, they've released version 1.2 of an iPhone app designed to integrate mobile photography with analog instant film. The features allow for instant digitization and photo sharing for your Polaroid prints as well as a way of making Polaroid prints from iPhone captures with their soon-to-be-released Instant Lab.
"40 years ago [William Eggleston] dragged color, kicking and screaming, into the world of art photography." In this fascinating documentary from BBC's Imagine, we get a small glimpse at a photographic icon. William Eggleston was born in Tennessee in 1939 and raised in Mississippi. Inspired by Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eggleston is credited with being the first photographer to give serious artistic credibility to color film.
Not since Matthew Brady’s work documenting the Civil War has the tintype photographic process been used on the battlefield. Staff sergeant Ed Drew, an aerial gunner in the California Air National Guard, brought tintype back to the theater of war to photograph his fellow soldiers during his deployment from April to June in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
In this interview, Port Magazine sits down with Swiss photojournalist René Burri, to discuss the unbelievable stories behind six iconic photographs from his career including a very casual portrait Pablo Picasso in Cannes, and the reopening of the Suez Canal.
"Set up in 1936, Life magazine believed that pictures could change the world."
America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine is a fantastic documentary from the BBC about the life of one of the most important magazines in American history. Narrated by acclaimed photographer Rankin, it follows the people who told the 'story of America' through its most dynamic decades - the 40s, 50s and 60s - and documented its growth into a world superpower.
The greatest 20th Century photographer you've never heard of is about to become a household name. Vivian Maier, the reclusive, very private Chicago nanny whose 150,000-image archive proves her to be one of the most talented street photographers of the past century, is about to be immortalized in two separate films.
Miroslav Tichý, was a photographer that constructed his own homemade cameras out of cardboard tubes, tin cans, dress elastic and old camera parts he found. From 1960 to 1985 he used these homemade cameras to snap thousands of images around town often of unsuspecting women. It wasn't till 1981 that one of his friends gathered up prints strewn all over his studio, and organized them to share with the world through photo exhibitions, that Tichý's work would finally be discovered.
In 1927, Claude Frisse-Greene shot a series of film around London based on a color (or colour) technique that his father had experimenting with. His father, William Friese-Greene, was an early pioneer of cinematography. His process was called 'Biocolour' which produced the illusion of color by exposing alternating frames of black and white film with color filters, then staining the film again with red or green.
“These new ways might be found by men who could abandon their allegiance to traditional pictorial standards—or by the artistically ignorant, who had no old allegiances to break. There have been many of the latter sort. Since its earliest days, photography has been practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training, who were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a science, an art, a trade, or an entertainment, and who were often unaware of each other's work…
Released on May 21, 1980, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back has become over the years one of the most epic space films ever. The Star Wars series has resulted in a cultural phenomenon and made a tremendous effect on the film industry. Photos have surfaced showing the behind the scenes action including old tricks used to pull of some of the "mind-blowing" effects we watched as kids. You have got to see these.
The boom for shipbuilding occurred in the early part of the 20th century, fueled by the demand for warships and ship repair yards. It was also the only method of intercontinental travel. But the 1920's gave it its steepest decline - with unemployment reaching almost 40% by the end of the decade. It wasn't uncommon for communnites based almost enetirely around shipbuilding to have nearly three-quarters of its entire city in unemployment.
National Geographic has been the pinnacle of photography for 125 years now. They have continued to set the standard for inspiring the world with their photographs. For the longest time Nat Geo was one of the only ways the world was able to visually share each others cultures. Its fascinating to see how society has changed over the century. Here we look back these beautiful shots from the past 125 years. Thank you Nat Geo for revolutionizing photography.
I have been absolutely fascinated by wetplate processes for a while now: I find the medium absolutely unlike anything else in the world of art and photography, and the one-of-a-kind results from this hand-crafted process are simply beautiful. When I learned that there was a studio in San Francisco that specialized in taking collodion (tintypes, specifically) portraits of clients, I absolutely had to have one done.
Annie Leibovitz is, in my opinion, one of the only photographers that has managed to become a household name. She is so iconic that even people that don't care about photography seem to know who she is. That's why this video is so cool. In it we get to hear a young version of the 63 year old icon talk about her hopes for the future.
Sarah Moon is an icon, without a doubt. Her work has been an inspiration to me from the beginning of my career. She's a soulful and deep artist and has certainly earned her spot as one of the top "100 most influential photographers." That's why hearing her explain the chaos of her mind while she shoots is such an amazing experience for me. It's the very same chaos that I experience, and I bet you do too.
I have always been fascinated by space travel. Back in college a friend showed me a documentary that proposed that the moon landing is a hoax. The arguments were based on photography, videography, and lighting tricks and I remember thinking "wow could this really have been staged?" Mr. SG Collins makes a pretty compelling argument claiming that neither NASA nor Stanley Kubrick were actually technologically capable of producing a video that could stand up to modern scrutiny. Collin's photographic argument should put a final nail in the conspiracists' theory for good.
When I bought my first DSLR 4 years ago, I offered a very enthusiastic "SAYONARA!" to the film era. This wasn't because I'm not grateful for the journey that photography has endured to end up where it is, but because my ADHD spark plug of a mind needed a process that was faster and more efficient than it's film and darkroom roots. Even with the mindset that I have towards the film era and the process of early photography, this video is pretty cool and goes through a brief history of photography via the paradigm of a chemist. Enjoy!
I'm a big fan of the mission and idea behind websites like Kickstarter. I appreciate creating a community of people from all over the world who help each other pursue their dreams. On Indieagogo, a site similar to Kickstarter, I came across this cool project on photographer, Fred Lyons.
Inspiration comes from a variety of sources, but I'm guessing that seeing the works of others has always been big for you. Seeing someone else's work probably is what got you interested in photography to begin with. So what gets your creativity flowing? For me, though my work in photography resides in the Advertising / Editorial realm, inspiration for my work comes in the form of photojournalism.
As Fstoppers' resident aviation dork and lone Angeleno, I'd be making a huge mistake not to share this incredible timelapse of Endeavour's final journey. Filmed over a sleepless weekend by an all-star timelapse team, the video chronicles Endeavour's slow, delicate, and surreal journey (which made for the perfect timelapse subject) from Los Angeles International Airport to its final resting place at the California Science Center.
We've featured Ian Ruhter before: his Silver and Light series was an incredible display of talent, ingenuity and originality. I'm glad to say that he's back at it again, this time criss-crossing the country, telling the stories of inspiring people with his portable darkroom setup. Watch as Ian shoots Madison, a young girl who overcame some serious setbacks, and creates a series of incredible portraits using his custom made (very large format) camera which is built into the back of a box van.
It's incredibly easy to fake photos these days with a few minutes in Photoshop, but it wasn't always that easy. Take a look at these 10 photo hoaxes throughout history, from the first one in 1830 to some more modern ones.
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.
Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) portrayed working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The Library of Congress' National Child Labor Committee Collection includes more than 5,100 photographs that came with the records of the organization. Many of the pictures are familiar, but others are relatively unexplored.
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.
