Recently, I wrote about Rock Your Ugly, a fantastic, empowering project by photographer Waleed Shah. He would interview people about their insecurities and ways of dealing with them, and then take their photos to follow the story. Reading all those stories from guys and gals who came out and spoke about their insecurities, I wanted to participate myself. But there was one obstacle: I am located in Serbia, and Waleed lives and works in Dubai, 4,000 kilometers away from me....

We always hear praises of the might of Mother Nature, how it renders useless mans’ creations, and bears life above the ruins. Well, it’s something that is always felt, but never on such a huge scale. This place IS the place for these contrasts. It’s pretty hard to describe the overall atmosphere I experienced during this trip. Despite the events of 1986, the ruins, and the rust, I didn’t have grim feelings while traveling there....

The last couple of years has been tough on us all, but especially those of us who love to travel. Well, even if we haven’t been able to get away, hyperlapse and timelapse photographer extraordinaire Kirill Neiezhmakov has started getting out and about around the world with this camera again. In his latest video, he takes us on a whirlwind tour through Singapore. As usual, Kirill takes us on a journey around the city, showing off what makes it such a beautiful and wonderful place to visit....

Advertisements I’m a travel photographer and writer. To create my images I put a lot of time and expense into being in the right place at the right time. Last week I opened my Instagram app to find I’d been mentioned in a comment on this photo. What makes this different is that it isn’t a feature account simply showcasing images, it’s a business selling a service. My photo had become a part of their social media marketing to attract people to click on their ‘link in bio....

Innovatronix has taken a break from its usual line of portable power inverters and announced the CPFlash 550W – A powerful LED flash designed specifically for smartphones (although it works with DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, too). As of writing, they say that it’s the “first and only high power off-camera flash for your smartphones”. The photo above makes it look quite big and chunky, but it actually seems quite similar in size to a speedlight – even showing it fitting into a Godox Bowens bracket in some of their promotional videos....

One of the biggest complaints about Instagram has always been that you can’t easily see who follows you back. Or at least, it’s one of the oldest complaints, if not the current big one. We’ve had to rely on a series of third party apps and websites to help figure out who’s following us back. Personally, I don’t follow people just to get people to follow me back, but I am sometimes curious about which of them are....

It’s been a while since Instagram switched its focus from creativity to business, ads, and shopping. However, the platform is now getting rid of the Shop tab on your homepage to “simplify Instagram” and focus more on creativity, connecting people, and discovering the content they’ll like. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced the changes in a short video on Instagram. From now on, the Create button will be back where it was, in the center of the bottom navigation bar....

The lack of links in Stories and posts is one of the things I really wish Instagram would change. Judging from the current test – it just might. As of today, some users are able to add links to their Stories and it might soon become available for everyone. If you use Instagram, you probably know that not everyone has the swipe-up link option. You have to have above 10,000 followers or a verified account to be able to get this feature....

One of many double standards oddities of Instagram is that it doesn’t allow nipples, but only if they’re female. Not even a famous movie director like Pedro Almodóvar can’t post a female nipple on the platform. After sharing a poster for his new movie Parallel Mothers, the director had it removed “because it violated Instagram’s nudity standards.” But did it really?Advertisements The movie poster features a lactating nipple (a female one, obviously) in an eye-shaped frame....

Can you imagine paying to see Instagram Stories? Well, the option is just around the corner. After some reports from earlier this year, it looks like Instagram is now just a step away from launching its own paid subscription service. App store analysts Sensor Tower and AppTopia have spotted “Instagram Subscriptions” within the US app. It’s nested under in-app purchases, with prices ranging from $0.99 to $4.99. Still, it’s not quite clear what this feature includes....

If you hang out on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed a flood of 2021 recaps expressed through music on Spotify. Well, Instagram was quick to come up with its own version, so now you can see the 2021 Playback as told by your Instagram Stories. Basically, Playback lets you create a collection of Stories from 2021 so you can share the most important ones again. By leveraging Stories Archive, you can customize and select up to ten stories to share with your community....

The grid. That element of your Instagram profile in which your entire history of images are nicely laid out in a nice 3 image wide layout. A layout that users have known and loved for years. A layout they’ve strategically chopped up and posted their images to accommodate. Well, it’s all about to change. No official announcement seems to have been made as yet. But, a few users have started to notice that their Instagram app layout is a little different....

There’s always a lot of fuss made about the cameras whenever a new iPhone is released or… pretty much any smartphone these days, really. But are they as good as many people think they are? Well, probably not as this video from the folks at Corridor Crew demonstrate in this video. In it, they put the iPhone 12 Pro Max (they didn’t have the iPhone 13 Pro Max in time to make this) up against the original iPhone....

Well, I didn’t think we’d have to wait long after January’s Irix Cine 21mm T1.5 lens announcement before we’d see its photography counterpart, the Irix 21mm f/1.4. Now, the company has officially announced the new lens for Nikon F, Canon EF and Pentax K DSLR mounts. As with all of the Irix lenses, the optical makeup is identical to that of the cine version, although its exterior housing is quite different....

Well, this is new. Typically, with companies that produce photography and cine versions of the same lens, the cine version is something of an afterthought. It’s a stills lens design that’s thrown into a new housing to give it benefits for filmmakers – like a long focus throw and more standard dimensions. This time, though, it seems like Irix has gone the other way around. They’ve now announced the new Irix 30mm f/1....

Chances are, most of you arriving here are aware of the backstory to this article, but just in case, I’ll quickly catch you up. A few weeks ago I announced a community competition on my Facebook page; all you had to do to enter was to submit a ‘before’ photo (the raw) and an ‘after’ photo (the final fully retouched photo). There would be two winners; one chosen by a populous vote and one chosen by myself....

Wet plate photography’s one of those mythical analogue photography processes to most of us. All we know is that some liquid gets poured onto a piece of metal or glass, it goes into a camera, the shutter is fired, magic happens and we get a photo at the end of it. But one person who definitely understands the wet plate process is Markus Hofstätter. Markus has made it not only his passion but he also shoots wet plate photography for a living....

This is an interesting video from tech YouTuber and smartphone aficionado Marques Brownlee that talks about the iPhone’s camera system and why it appears to be getting worse than the competition with each new generation. Having dumped iPhones myself back in 2017, it wasn’t something I’d really paid much attention to, but on watching his video, I realised that he was right. Their quality seems to be getting worse. Marques has a theory as to why this is happening, and I think he might be right....

The end of year report for Japanese camera sales in 2021 has been published, and it’s a little surprising, to say the least! No DSLRs, Nikon or Full Frame camera reached the top 10 in sales. While we hear the most noise about the biggest, newest and most expensive cameras, it’s worth noting that often those are not the most popular in terms of what people actually buy. The list itself was compiled by Japanese body BCN Retail and the data accounts for around 40% of Japan’s sales market including the nation’s major camera retailers....

A while ago Sigma joined the L mount alliance along with Panasonic and Leica. Although it wasn’t really till recently that we started to see the true results of this collaboration when Sigma released their new fp camera. They also released several “designed for mirrorless” lenses like the 14-24 f2.8 Art DG DN. Those lenses are both smaller and lighter than their DSLR counterparts. One of the new features of the 14-24f2....