It’s not much of a secret that I like to see those factory tour videos. Watching cameras, lenses and other photography related items being built fascinates me. I just like to know how things are put together and how they work. But one thing that often gets lost in such videos is the human connection. To the company and its workers. The folks at cinema5D had the opportunity to take a look around the factory to see lenses being built....

So, you’ve seen what you’d look like when you’re old. Now it’s time for something new, right? Check out AI Portraits Ars, a website which turns your selfies or self-portraits into faux, but realistic-looking (and kinda eerie) classical paintings. The website was built with help from researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. They have trained Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) models on 45,000 portrait images to reproduce human portraits. The AI is able to reproduce the images in different styles and levels of abstraction....

The Tokyo International Foto Awards has announced its 2020 contest winners and finalists. The contest honors both professional and non-professional photographers, but they all equally contributed to the wonderful selection of images. They reflect the world around us from all of its angles: from nature’s divine beauty to its terrifying disasters. And since the photos were taken over 2020, there’s an extra bit of madness to it all. The 2020 contest received entries from more than 100 countries around the world....

Although some quite enjoyed the idea of seeing Getty get a good legal spanking for once, that is not how things are turning out. US District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff has dismissed all of Carol Highsmith’s federal copyright claims. After the dismissal on October 28th, he left three of Highsmith’s state law claims intact. Those, too, have now been voluntarily dismissed after Highsmith and Getty have reached an agreement to settle the case....

Getting your flash away from the camera is the obvious way to start moving from snapshots towards portraits, and there are many techniques to add drama to your images with lighting alone. In this short behind the scenes video from our friends at SLR Lounge, we see three fantastic techniques for pushing those dramatic portraits just a little bit further. Gel your flashes Colour is one of the biggest influences on our mood and emotion....

It looks like Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and Space X, has been causing a bit of a fuss on Twitter lately. After posting an image to his feed of 27 million followers by photographer Richard Angle, without any kind of credit or permission, he’s been getting called out by those leaping to Angle’s defence. Then those people have been summarily blocked. The now-deleted Tweet, which was posted to Musk’s Twitter feed had received over 1,200 comments, 6,600 retweets and 77,000 likes....

When you start vlogging, one of the most difficult things to get used to is actually filming yourself. It’s a little ironic as it’s kind of the whole point but it presents unique challenges that you don’t usually think about when filming or photographing somebody else. Or rather, you think more about them when you’re filming somebody else but you’re on autopilot. When you’re filming yourself, you just forget they’re a thing....

NASA’s Artemis program wants to place astronauts on the lunar surface, and it’s successfully completed its first step of this long journey. The Artemis 1 mission has reached its destination, and we’re already getting some marvelous shots showing us our planet in an entirely new context. While we normally see the moon rise and set. But in a recent video Artemis 1 sent back to earth, we see our planet as it sets behind the moon – and it’s absolutely magical to watch....

We’ve seen cameras tortured and destroyed in all kinds of ways: shot, smashed, and even chewed by ants. But it slowly melting due to the acetone fumes is somehow more… elegant. The guys from YouTube channel Amazing Timelapse exposed a plastic Konica film camera to harsh acetone fumes. It turns out, the camera can’t survive them for very long, and it starts melting like the butter. It’s not as harsh as shooting or smashing....

Your wedding day is one of the happiest days of your life. You’re surrounded by family and friends to watch you get married to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. You also want photos of the day to look back on in years to come, so you hire a photographer. But then what if that photographer doesn’t show up? That’s what happened to newlyweds the Dunaways, of Utah....

It’s a common complaint of wedding photographers and happy couples alike. Although, with the latter, it’s typically after the wedding when they see how many of their friends and relatives have ruined the paid photographer’s shots by standing in the way with smartphones and even iPads to get snaps of their own. Fortunately, more couples are speaking out and going “unplugged”, but word hasn’t spread to everybody yet. For photographer Hannah Mbalenhle Stanley of Hanna Way Photography, she faced one iPhone too much recently and posted a rant to Facebook expressing her thoughts....

One of the windiest nights I’ve ever taken pictures turned into perhaps the single most rewarding — and frightening — landscape photography experience of my life. I was on the Mesquite Sand Dunes in Death Valley, a place I had visited twice in the past, though under much tamer conditions. This night, the gusts of wind were far greater than I had seen before, and they kicked up a layer of sand that made for amazing sunset photos....

On set, Production Assistants have a vital, yet often thankless role to play. In this video from RocketJump Film School, we see a day in the life of a production assistant through the eyes of Colin West McDonald. The tasks may be somewhat different for a production assistant on a movie, but there are many parallels to those of assistants on photography shoots, especially when it comes to mindset and attitude....

No matter what you do, I’m sure you learn from your job and your hobbies. About yourself, about the world and about the people around you. Ted Forbes addresses this topic in this video that can really get you thinking. He shares the most important lesson he’s learned as a photographer. And I’d love to hear if you agree with him. Ted got a handwritten letter from a 14 year old girl who told him she picked up photography and she would like to start filmmaking....

Thór Halldórsson is an accomplished goalkeeper, I mean, not every goalkeeper gets to deny Messi from a penalty shot. But, when goalkeeper Thór Halldórsson is not keeping the goal, he is working as a film director. In fact, one of the latest Coca-Cola commercials, the Icelandic Coca-Cola ad for the World Cup 2018, was directed by Halldórsson and it’s pretty awesome. It’s quite a clever commercial, making use of the Icelandic team SKOL cheer....

Away from the world, the city, and the light pollution, I stood in a green forest where the breeze couldn’t even penetrate the trees surrounding me. It was an area that only existed to me in imagination from multiple times of poring over Google Maps and allowing my mind to wander. Off in the distance I could hear the low rumble of a slow moving freight train struggling to climb up the hill that I had perched myself on....

We live in a terrifying world and the news tell us: just about anything out there is out to get us. Fear is HOT right now. So talking about being safe… Does hiding the Leica logo with tape actually serve a purpose? What is the purpose of this strange behaviour? Is it possible that one idiot did it and it just caught on? Could it be that by trying to draw less attention, Leica users may actually be screaming “I’m here look at me and my anti-Leica Leica”....

Photographer Kevin Mullins is often asked why he chooses to shoot his camera in black & white, even when shooting raw. So often, in fact, that he finally made a video explaining why he chooses to work this way. If you’re shooting mirrorless, as Kevin does, the choice is simple. If you know you’re going to be using the black & white image anyway, then being able to see it in the EVF before you even hit the shutter means there’s no guesswork....

If you enjoy landscape photography as much as I do, here’s a real treat for you. International Landscape Photographer of the Year (ILPOTY) has just announced its 2020 competition winners. I honestly couldn’t tell which of these photos I liked most because they’re all jaw-dropping. So sit back, relax, and scroll down to see this year’s impressive ILPOTY winners. The contest is now in its seventh year and it has received over 3,800 entries from around the world....

A woman from Cobb County has recently filed a lawsuit against a photographer who covered her daughter’s high school dance. The 15-year-old girl had a wardrobe malfunction which left her exposed. The photographer captured it, and the mother was horrified to discover that the photo ended up on his website for sale. So, she decided to sue, and it’s reported that it will be multi-million dollar lawsuit. Reportedly, the teenage girl didn’t realize that a part of her dress slid down....