Cameras are expensive. Anyone with a pro body and a few decent lenses won't have much change from $10,000. So how do we go about protecting them?
Imagine a world that, wherever you traveled, you were the first to capture an image. That was the ten year experience of John Thomson, but it was 1862 and he used the wet collodion process with photographic requirements that are about as far removed from today as imaginable. So what were his achievements?
Sometimes, just sometimes, you have the head-slapping moment where you utter the immortal words "Why didn't I think of that?" When it comes to camera systems you might modify that to "Why didn't my camera manufacturer think of that?"
You've used your inkjet to print edge-to-edge A4s and A3s, then wanted to upsize, so you went to an online printer for a canvas or a poster. They get pretty big at 45" by 30". Wanting to go bigger? Try a wall covering!
Imagine pursuing your dream but lacking the funds to do so, then coming across a technology so amazing that you see the opportunity to establish a new business as a market leader, creating a chain of branches. John Plumbe, the Daguerreotype portraitist, did just this in 1840 which led to some of the most enduring photos of Washington D.C.
An image is eye catching when it's extraordinary. So why is it that the ordinary and banal can appear extraordinary? And if that really is the case, how can we go about achieving that?
Three-dimensional models are now widely used in the gaming and movie industries and one of the most common methods for creating them uses computational photography. This, the first of two articles, explains how it works.
The toilet has a humble and immodest history in photography. So, to follow in the footsteps of the greats, I set out to review it's past and recreate my own in the style of Alfred Steiglitz.
This photo is striking. Skimming through the archives at the Library of Congress, I was immediately drawn to this image. But why?
Professional photographer Stacey Oliver had the moment of her career at a routine wedding shoot when this happened....
As a Londoner, New York strikes me as a similarly quintessential city. How then, in this most photographed of places, can a photobook surprise you?
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.
Drone imagery has radically changed the way we photograph the Earth. It is now more common to see this vertical view, however the changed perspective is still new, still mesmerizing, and still has the ability to startle. See one website that gives you a daily fix of the world from above, a long way above!
A book is a beautiful thing, both for what it is and what it offers within it's hallowed pages. Meet a small publisher who cares about beauty both outside and in.
Focal length and maximum aperture are the most common measures for summarizing the principle characteristics of a lens, but are they the best to use? Given the range and proliferation of different camera types, why don't we see field of view used more often?
Imagine a world of no brands — no Wal-Mart, Google, HSBC, or Canon. Is that the sort of world we would want to inhabit?
The camera never lies — it doesn't, it can't, because it's an entirely quantitative device. It counts photons, collecting, recording the number that arrive at the sensor. And for the digital camera, this is an entirely electronic process that is digital end-to-end, producing a number as the final result. It's at that point that we convert it back to analogue (as brightness) for our eyes to interpret. The camera never lies.
I was cycling to catch my train a few weeks ago and after I had folded the bike and stowed it in the luggage area, was pondering the things in life I couldn't live without. It was much to my surprise that, considering this question, I actually decided it was my bike (Joey). I use it for commuting, for shopping, for leisure; it is with me most days of the week, and without it, the impact on my day-to-day life would be dramatic.
We had spent several hours hiking and arrived at the viewpoint. You know the score: unholster the camera and start shooting the bucket images. You've got to go through those inspiringly uninspiring captures to allow you to work the scene, gel with your mates, and see if some of the magic of the setting flows. I try to work towards something a little different; more dramatic, less dramatic, unveiling something new. We came back together as a group in order to compare how three very different photographers imagined the scene. Two of us were shooting Nikon, one Canon. And damn, those Canon images were just singing off the screen.
You've just arrived at a meeting with your prospective wedding clients. Examples of a canvas, acrylic, and aluminum are with you, but first up is a slideshow sequence you've authored as a video. You're there to impress and so whip out the pico projector and plug in the USB stick. This is going to be big — two meters big. You navigate to the video folder which has 30 or 40 files in it. And… they are only vaguely sorted by name. Where the heck is the file you are looking for?
