Articles from Andrew Strother

Back in June, I reviewed the Hawkesmill Jermyn Street Camera Bag, which I continue to love to this day. I have used it every day for the past nine months, easily swapping in panels for when I need to carry camera gear and removing them when I just need an awesome daily bag. I mentioned in that review that Hawkesmill would soon be releasing smaller versions of their luxury bags geared specifically towards mirrorless camera users. I’ve been using the smaller version from my first review for the past several months and am ready to kick off the new year with some of my thoughts regarding this bag.

Think Tank has long been regarded as one of the go-to companies for bags for the working photographer, and their line of Airport and Airport Security bags in particular are considered by many to be the gold standard of rolling photo bags. The newly released Think Tank Photo Airport Security V3.0 adds some small improvements to an already fantastic bag, helping ensure its continued reign as the king of this category.

Kirk Mastin and Mastin Labs are the creators of some of the better known (and more highly regarded) sets of develop presets for digital images to emulate the look of film. Kirk has been working on a mobile app to achieve similar results on the go for a while now, and that app has finally been released. Meet Filmborn.

If you spend any time on the Internet, then you’ve probably seen by now that Apple announced their long-awaited updates to the MacBook Pro during an event at their campus in Cupertino. Spend a little more time on the Internet and you’re sure to see the plethora of articles pointing out how Apple seems to become less and less innovative as years go by, many even pointing to Microsoft as a great example of innovation with their really fantastic Surface Pro line of portable computers and the newly announced Surface Studio. Microsoft more innovative and creative than Apple? Let’s dig in and figure out what happened.

Depth of field fakers rejoice, Apple has just released the official build of iOS 10.1. This update notably includes the heretofore beta Portrait Mode for owners of the iPhone 7 Plus, allowing users to simulate depth of field effects on photos taken with the 7 Plus' new secondary camera. The update is available now via over-the-air download or by updating your phone via iTunes.

Snapchat is no more. Long live Snap Inc. Snapchat pulled a double whammy today by announcing both the new name of their company and their first foray in camera hardware with the connected sunglasses they're calling Spectacles.

Adobe has announced the 2.5 update to their popular Lightroom Mobile app. The new update adds the ability to shoot directly to Adobe's open source raw file format, DNG, avoiding the compression and data loss inherent in standard JPEG files. To capture in DNG, users will need a device running iOS 10 that has a 12 MP sensor, such as the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, and iPad Pro 9.7. When available, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will also support capturing in DNG format. The latest update is available in the App Store at the time of this writing.

Apple just finished their keynote announcing the new iPhone 7. The new 7 and 7 Plus include some pretty awesome (sounding) camera upgrades that should be another step forward for mobile photographers and videographers.

We're live now, come humor me as I mock the company that takes all of my money!

Lomography, makers of fun film cameras and cool vintage lenses, has just launched a Kickstarter for their latest instant camera, the Lomo'Instant Automat. The Automat is the second generation of the Lomo'Instant camera and offers updates and improvements over the company's original instant camera that they successfully Kickstarted over two years ago.

ORCA is the maker of a wide range of photo and video accessories: primarily bags and other protective gear. They sent me their new rolling camera bag to try out, and I was eager to give it a go. As you'll see below, I've been using a $50 suitcase from Target as a camera bag for the last four years, so I was excited to see how an actual camera bag would hold up.

The original Game Boy is one of the most iconic gaming systems of all time and as such, continues to inspire the internet to utilize both its aesthetic and its hardware in new and creative ways. There's just something about it, the weight, the feel of the buttons, watching the Nintendo logo scroll down that screen when you first boot up a game, that can't quite be described if you weren't able to experience it as a kid. That same nostalgia is what led Gautier Hattenberger to give his old Game Boy a breath of fresh air.

CheeringTech, the China-based company behind the original CASE Remote and CASE Remote Plus, are back again with another CASE Remote update and this time they're hoping to drastically improve performance while reducing the physical size of the unit. All this while offering the same features as the industry leader CamRanger. To achieve this, they're launching the CASE Remote Air.

Everything about this short video by Russian designer Misha Petrick fills me with desperate nostalgia for the 90's. Some people will mock Windows 95, but for me it was a coming-of-age operating system. The first computers I built myself ran Windows 95. Windows 95 is how I discovered Weezer. Windows 95 gave me Hover, the greatest built-in OS game until Space Cadet Pinball rolled out with Windows 2000. All that to say, I think that Instagram on Windows 95 would have been amazing.

Have you ever gone out to a restaurant and seen a chef slaving away in the back for hour after hour, producing one delicious dish after another, and asked yourself, “Do they even enjoy cooking once they get home?” Well the answer to that is “Yes!” and photographer Ben Sassani takes viewers behind the scenes (and refrigerator doors) of some of the top chefs around with his personal project Shoot My Chef.

I am going to be completely up front with you: this is an expensive camera bag. It is, in fact, the most expensive camera bag I have ever owned, and I have owned many. Instead of buying this bag, you could easily purchase a very solid prime lens. But you know the old saying "you get what you pay for"? Well sometimes that turns out to be 100 percent true.

The guys over at Cooridor-Digital just released this sweet video using a combination of drones and visual effects to create an awesome dogfight between an X-wing Starfighter and several TIE Fighters. Drones + Star Wars = Nerd Love.

JP Sears is one of two accounts that I actually subscribe to on YouTube (the other is TJ Townsend). There's a good chance that you've seen his videos shared on Facebook before, most likely his one making fun of essential oils or his more recent one titled "If Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans." This video, however, might be my new favorite as he takes us through some best practices for photographing your yoga poses for Instagram.

Google's Cultural Institute was founded in 2011 with the goal of having "important cultural material available and accessible to everyone and to digitally preserve it to educate and inspire future generations." In their pursuit of said goal, Google has just announced their new Art Camera; a robotically controlled gigapixel camera specifically designed for photographing some of the finest works of art in existence.

Quick synopsis for the non-gamers out there: Uncharted 4 is a brand new game available on the Playstation 4. It is, according to most reviews I've seen, an excellent game. I can't vouch for this personally, as I sold my PS4 last year and got an Xbox, but I do know that the first three Uncharted games were pretty stellar. Uncharted 4 follows in the footsteps of recent games such as The Last Of Us: Remastered and Grand Theft Auto V with the inclusion of an in-game photo mode: a tool that lets players go above and beyond a standard screenshot and capture images that they would not be capable of recording within the game's standard mode of play. 

This is a pet peeve of mine, so I am going to thank you in advance for indulging me. There seems to be a rampant misunderstanding in certain levels of the photo community as to what editing presets are, and what they actually accomplish. I (like many of you I would assume) am a member of various photo-centric groups on Facebook. In particular, I am a member of groups for people who have purchased Lightroom and ACR preset packs from a variety of creators. Almost daily I see posts in these groups that go something like this: "I thought my photos were beyond hope, but then I applied "WHIMSICAL PRESET NAME" and they were saved! These presets are amazing!!!1!111!!!" Sound familiar?

I’ve attended plenty of workshops in my time as a photographer. I’ve attended classes taught by Joe McNally, David Hobby, Joel Grimes, and more. I’ve assisted some of the best photographers in a variety of fields, and watched dozens of tutorials put out by some really top-tier shooters. It’s pretty safe to safe to say that I have had a solid amount of training through a variety of sources, but no amount of classes or YouTube videos will ever compare to the five months I spent interning at a large newspaper.

Impossible Project, the awesome folks that have been bringing you film for your Polaroid 600 instant cameras and even the ability to make Polaroid prints out of your camera phone images, have just announced their all-new instant film camera and it sounds awesome.

Human beings have rendered images of themselves in one form or another since the beginning of our species. The desire to try and capture the human essence in something that will outlast the physical body is universal; the need to encapsulate our understandings of “self” and “others” is found in every culture throughout the world. But have digital cameras, selfie sticks, iPhones, and Snapchat made such a pursuit so mind numbingly easy, that it has now completely lost it’s value? 

With our current sports-focused Critique the Community, now seems like a great time to share some tips and best practices to help you improve your sports and action photography in 2016. Read on for 11 solid suggestions to help you become a better shooter.

I hate being in front of the camera, and I think many photographers feel the same way. So when I discovered Mike Mellia and found out that his Instagram account is almost 99% self-portraits, I was more than a little impressed. But wait! Many of his selfies are also cinemagraphs? I don't know how much more impressed I can get. 

Pye Jirsa of Lin & Jersa Photography is back again with another great tip on how to make fantastic images in less than stellar light. Pye explained in his last video how to create golden hour without the sun, and in this new video, he shows how to take an awesome "hero shot" in harsh sunlight using a single strobe (and an elephant, but let's focus on the light here). 

We can all agree that there's nothing wrong with a little publicity stunt, as long as it's awesome, right? I think that Intel has achieved that with this video they released during their CES keynote last week in Las Vegas. It's pretty straightforward actually, just 100 drones flown simultaneously in the sky while performing a choreographed light routine as a live orchestra played Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Go big or go home, right? 

I have been unfailing in my anti-spoiler vigilance. I haven't watched previews, I haven't read articles, I haven't clicked links. A trailer came on during the finale of Fargo Monday night and I ran from the room with my hands over my ears. I'm taking this seriously. So it was with much trepidation that I finally clicked on this link I've been seeing around for Time Magazine's cover photos featuring the world-renowned R2-D2, and the king of the Weeble Wobbles BB-8.

New York Magazine recently published a fascinating article on the apparent phenomenon of "Instagram Hikers." The piece looks into the recent surge in so-called "Instagram Hikers", described by the article as "the sorts of people who see a pretty photo on Instagram and want to go take their own picture in that spot," and the impact they are having on America's national parks.

The FAA has been working on establishing rules and regulations for drone owners for several months, and today they have announced a mandatory registration law for drone operators that goes into effect on December 21 of this year. Starting on December 21, you will be to apply at the new FAA registration website.

"Behind every cute girl on Instagram is a guy like me, and a brick wall." The latest video from the folks behind The Mystery Hour gives us a glimpse into the lives of the men who take the photos of the ladies of Instagram.

French Filmmaker Maxime Baudin recently made this delightful short film in Paris that depicts a flirtatious couple. Baudin utilized stop-motion to make the film and describes it like this: "In a splendid and romantic Paris, while everything is going too fast, a young man rides a ‘bicycle.’ But his simple ride is going to take on a whole new dimension."

You may have seen an article several days ago detailing a hack into the servers of the children's toy company VTech. The hack gave attackers access to personal data for over 5 million parents and over 200,000 children. Motherboard has just posted an update to their story revealing that the hacker was also able to download over 190 GB of photos uploaded from thousands of children's camera-equipped tablets.

I happened to see the lead image in nikonrumors weekly news flash, and I knew I had to click. I'm a self-admitted sucker for space photos, and this shot of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko posing with all the gear I would love to have pulled me right in.