Articles from Casey Berner

If you have ever been in a remote enough place and looked up at the night sky, you know how magical the universe can be with countless stars dotting a black canvas overhead. Many photographers capture the night sky with their camera resulting in spectacular images. But it’s one thing to step out into your backyard and point your camera up, and a completely different adventure to hike out to a remote location and capture the cosmos with the wilderness as your backdrop.

Panasonic has announced the Lumix G7, a compact 4K mirrorless camera with a kit price of less than $800. Offering a solid list of features for an entry-level camera, the new Lumix G7 is perfect for amateur photographers looking for a inexpensive camera with both quality video and photo capabilities at almost half the price of the GH4. This 16-megapixel camera and small form factor make it light and compact. Even without some of the pro video features of the GH4, the G7 lowers the barrier to entry on 4K video recording even further.

Social currency is an exceedingly important metric when it comes to promoting your brand. Your likes, followers, pins, and posts all say a lot about your success, and the more engagement on your social platforms, the more likely you are to pull in clients. But how do you maximize engagement and get the most people to see your content? While there is no perfect answer, there are a few things you can do to optimize your social media strategy.

The guys over at Alpine Labs have announced a new Kickstarter campaign to fund their follow-up time-lapse motion control system, the Radian 2. Packed with the same features as the Radian, this new version adds a wireless preview of your time-lapse and complete control of your camera via USB allowing you to change camera settings like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO while shooting. But one of the most welcomed features is the ability to pair the Radian 2 with select sliders adding motorized slide movements to your time-lapse making Radian a complete motion control time-lapse platform.

Many photographers use the word “make” to describe their process of photography. “I made these images,” you might hear a professional say describing his work. The layman phrase, “take pictures” or “capture photographs” evokes a feeling that the photographer did not put any work into the image, that they simply pointed the camera and the photo just came to be. Any creative medium takes skill and I’m not here to argue the artistic validity of a photograph over a painting or sculpture. But a somewhat fatal flaw of the digital age is the ease of which photography can be transferred, saved, downloaded, and reproduced in comparison to that of physical artistry.

GoPro today announced it has plans to acquire the virtual reality software company Kolor. The France based company develops tools for spherical 360-degree videos and panoramas. With the rise in VR technology hardware like the Oculus Rift, purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $2 Billion, it's easy to see what GoPro has planned for their acquisition.

Sony today announced a price drop in their inaugural a7, making it Sony's first full-frame, mirrorless camera below $1,000. This $300 instant savings over the original $1,300 price tag is fantastic news for photographers looking to add a solid mirrorless camera to their gear bag. Retailers like B&H, are selling the body for $998 with free shipping. Check out Fstoppers' take on the a7 and a7R when first announced back in November 2013.

Visual Supply Co., the Oakland-based photography software company best known for their film presets and photo app VSCO Cam, raised an impressive $30 million in a new round of funding less than a year after raising $40 million last May.

The World Photography Organisation has named American photographer John Moore as the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards' Professional Photographer of the Year. Chosen from the winners of the awards' thirteen professional categories, the winning work "Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital" is a hard-hitting series of images that cut to the heart of this human tragedy.