LensRentals has released a great list of the most popular new photography gear of 2015, as well as some of their staff favorites. The post provides great insight into what cameras, lenses, and other gear photographers used this year. It also gives a snapshot of an industry that saw a lot of evolution in the past 12 months.
I have a confession: I don't like a lot of photographers. I see unfounded vitriol and unearned authority slung carelessly and without reason. It makes me weary, and in a field in which it's hard enough to succeed without unnecessary negativity, I simply don't have time for it.
I love math. So do the folks at MIT. They've created a remarkable algorithm that can analyze a photo, assigning it a memorability score and analyzing exactly which parts of it are most memorable. And now, you can try it for yourself.
As photographers, we're used to being behind the camera, contorting and squishing our faces against the viewfinder to get the shot. Wondering what we looked like behind all of that, Richard Johnson used his latest project, "Behind the Mask," to capture the moment when photographers capture a moment.
Users of the immensely popular GoPro line of rugged cameras will be pleased to know that the company has updated its app with new features, including Apple Watch integration that gives users the ability to control the camera right from their wrist.
We've become quite accustomed to unpermitted retouching damaging the reputation of photography competitions. In particular, press photography is especially susceptible to this. Strict rules on maintaining the sanctity of reality combined with environments in which outside factors frequently affect the ability to achieve clean and pleasing competition often beget a strong temptation for photographers to doctor images. However, such manipulation has now become an issue in a genre in which one normally does have the luxury of time and compositional choice: architecture.
In a move sure to delight photographers everywhere, Instagram has begun testing support for multiple accounts within the app. The ability to post and interact using separate accounts without having to resort to third-party solutions or logging in and out of the app has been highly requested for years. If this comes to fruition, it will represent a paradigm change in workflow for many mobile photographers.
As the legal situation involving drones continues to evolve and registration becomes an inevitability, many "drone registration" firms have begun to spring up. The FAA has made it a point to note that drone owners do not need to jump the gun, as registration is likely to be a simple and straightforward process, easily completable without outside assistance.
Lightroom users everywhere have reason to celebrate! Today, Adobe released version 6.3/2015.3, which in addition to bug fixes and a slew of updated lens and camera profiles, brings back the much-missed features of the old Import dialogue.
We can argue back and forth for days about if guests should have the right to take photos as they please at weddings, but when it comes down to it, if the happy couple can't experience their special day without a guest interfering, haven't we gone too far? Photographer Thomas Stewart thinks so.
Vsauce is one of my favorite YouTube channels. Their quirky, engaging videos make understanding some tricky scientific ideas straightforward and fun. If you've ever wondered about rolling shutter or love learning about all the funky properties of light (which is the main ingredient of photography, after all), this is the video for you.
Sony A-Mount users have reason to rejoice, as the company has announced the α68, featuring a 24MP APS-C Exmor sensor, OLED viewfinder with 100% coverage, and what Sony calls "4D FOCUS."
The use and misuse of composite photography is a story we hear about quite often. Long before the days of Photoshop and digital manipulation, though, composite photography existed. Here's the story of one of the earliest controversies surrounding a composite.
With approximately 3.4 million cats entering animal shelters every year in the U.S. alone, the need for adoption is stronger than ever. That's why Fashion Stylist Ryen Blaschke and Commercial Photographer Shaina Fishman teamed up for "Cats in Hats," a wonderful series featuring rescue cats and kittens that are currently up for adoption.
Keith Ellenbogen is an underwater photographer whose work centers on marine conservation, while Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist whose work revolves around fluid dynamics inside black holes. When they met at a party in 2013, they realized they could combine their talents to produce gorgeous video of some of nature's most interesting marine life.
On Thursday, Visual Supply Company (makers of the immensely popular editing app, VSCO) announced the release of DSCO, their new app for creating short, GIF-like clips. I downloaded the app and spent some time with it today.
Just months after America's largest railroad launched a campaign to get people off the tracks, Britain's rail provider, Network Rail, is doing the same, after one disturbing day showed eight incidents at a single rural crossing. With 6,100 total crossings in their purview, Network Rail is seriously concerned about the safety of its users, particularly as the older crossings do not have many of the modern safety features newer ones do, allowing people to generally walk directly onto the tracks, or as the videos show, even sit on them.
Snapseed, Google's ridiculously powerful and popular image editing smartphone app, just got a major upgrade for its Android users. Following up on the introduction of raw file capabilities in Android 5 last year, the app now supports editing of those files right on your phone, greatly increasing the capabilities of photographers on the go.
As third-quarter profit reports came out, it's now known Canon assessed a 16 percent loss in net income, largely attributed to smartphones and mirrorless cameras, unsurprisingly. Nonetheless, the popular manufacturer is optimistic for future growth.
As London Street Photographer Michael Boyd puts it: "Why should you trust this guy for advice on how to avoid getting beaten up? Well, that's because I got really badly beaten up." Check out how he used a horrible encounter to revamp his shooting style and offer advice to others.
