Taschen just launched a book featuring young Stanley Kubrick’s photo essays for Look Magazine. It’s called Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs and it includes dozens of previously unpublished images. Before becoming one of the most brilliant auteurs who ever lived, Kubrick made a name for himself in photojournalism. At only 17, he managed to sell his first image to Look Magazine. And in five years, he became one of the publication’s most promising talents....

When it comes to weird lenses, Mathieu Stern is pretty much the undisputed king. But it seems we have a contender for that title who’s out to prove that you can use pretty much anything as a camera lens – as long as it’s a pinhole camera lens – as German film director and photographer Simon Meyer has been showing off on TikTok. Everything from potatoes and shoes to rolls of toilet paper and even a cuddly toy Elmo....

Zhiyun has refreshed its popular Crane-M with a new model. Not surprisingly, it’s called the Zhiyun Crane-M2. Designed to be as versatile as possible for travelling filmmakers, this lightweight motorised 3-axis gimbal is designed for use with small mirrorless cameras, compact cameras, phones and action cameras. It offers up to 8 hours battery life, features “enhanced camera control”, Bluetooth and WiFi control, and a Crane 2-style OLED display. Zhiyun says that the Crane-M2 is “a revolution in affordable camera stabilisation technology”....

I don’t know when mounting strobes the wrong way around inside softboxes became a thing. But, apparently it is. More mysterious than the “when”, though is the “why?”. The Shwop is a new product on Kickstarter that lets you do exactly this, though. Reverse mount a strobe inside a softbox. They do list a few benefits of working this way on the campaign page, although I’m not entirely convinced. Putting me off even further is the fact that what essentially amounts to a fancy flash bracket costs more than the strobes it holds....

When Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book, “Outliers“, he had a chapter devoted to the “10,000 hours” rule that intimated that it took 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something. I think this single criterion has been mild to totally debunked already, and he has said that most who quote that are doing so out of the real context of it, but he was clearly making a statement regarding the absolute importance of practicing one’s skill....

No matter how experienced we may get as photographers, there are always ways to improve. Sometimes it’s learning something new. At other times it’s simply seeing something in a new way. Occasionally, it’s just getting reminders to help us lose bad habits that might make us screw up. The folks at Mango Street have been putting out some quite cool videos recently, with some great advice to help with this....

When Canon announced the EOS R, many were disappointed. And it wasn’t just the single card slot, either. It was that Nikon had just announced a pair of bodies, with one being a high 45MP resolution, while Canon was only launching one. Now, though, it seems that those high resolution prayers may be getting answered. And according to Canon Watch, that may happen as soon as next year’s Photokina in May – if not sooner....

Black Friday may be well and truly over, but there are still a lot of sales going on and we’re well into the Holiday Season now. Have you already got your loved one (or yourself) that perfect gift? If not, here are some options for you. This is the first of our 2019 gift guides, and we’re going to start with cameras. These are some of the new cameras that have come out over the last year as well as some of the steadfast favourites that we’ve used throughout the year....

Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA) never fails to take us for a ride on an emotional rollercoaster. The contest has announced this year’s winners, and it’s done it again. The entire selection is, once again, nothing short of amazing. But the photo of the year is the most moving image I’ve seen lately. The 2021 overall winner of SIPA is Mehmet Aslan, a photographer and a veterinarian from Turkey. The image that brought him this prestigious award is titled Hardship of Life, depicting Munzir and his little boy Mustafa....

Like every other genre, landscape photography has plenty of challenges. In this video, photographer Toma Bonciu shares three challenges specific for landscape photography – yet we may not think about them. While we worry about the gear, places to visit and the techniques we’ll use, there are a few other very important things to think about. Toma points out to them, and these are definitely the challenges you need to overcome if we want to devote yourself to landscape photography....

What’s the most important lesson that shaped you as an artist? For me it’s this. If a photographer only looks at the work of other photographers, his artistic growth will eventually stagnate or even decline due to boredom. Instead we should direct our attention to a much broader spectrum of visual art. Drawing and painting, illustration, sculpture, animation, film, comics and even performance arts. Some of these other fields help us by inspiring new ideas for photographic work....

This year’s winner is Kenichi Morinaga with his photo of two cats sitting on a fence cheek to cheek… or better to say neck to neck. Of course, there are category winners as well, and we’re sharing all of them with you today. Kenichi is a photographer from Japan who loves to visit the small islands around the country, taking shots of the street cats that he finds there. His passion started when he got his own pet cat and first visited Europe as a backpacker, and also brought him the win in the Best Cat category....

Detroit-born rapper Danny Brown recently caused a ruckus when he posted an image taken in Melbourne by Michelle Grace Hunder to Instagram without permission. The photo had been taken at a music festival for Howl & Echoes, a Sydney-based online music site. https://twitter.com/MichelleGHunder/status/725153018056871936 H&L Editor-in-chief Lauren Ziegler sent Brown a DM on Twitter to ask him to add a photo credit. Brown’s response was less than cheery, and festival promoter Nic Kelly went public with the exchange....

This is my fifth Olympic Games and I am always visiting the Canon Professional Services area to borrow equipment from them. And for all of those previous Olympics, they have always been very guarded about letting anyone, outside of Canon employees, go behind the scenes to see what they have in their inventory. And trust me, I have asked in the past. Well, this year I was allowed into the back room to see the arsenal of cameras and lenses, and it was incredible!...

The debate whether the gear matters or not is probably never ending. And while I generally always place the idea above gear, I still believe gear matters in many other aspects. But what does a veteran photographer has to say about this? What really makes a good photo? Photographer Jesse James Allen has created a wonderful tribute to his mentor, photographer Charlie Howse. He inspired him and showed him not how to take, but how to create photos....

We need to have a chat. There is a lot of nonsense going on in the workshop world, and it needs to stop. Taking someone’s money and promising that you can help their business, is no joke, and it needs to be taken seriously! Every week we hear a story of yet another workshop filled with damaging business advice, dishonest marketing, or physical safety issues, and with each new story we hear, we start to feel a personal responsibility to say something....

Dear Vicar, I am writing an open letter to Vicars. Not all Vicars, I hasten to add, but unfortunately it’s becoming such a regular occurrence, that I feel compelled to write to all those that it applies. You do not have to be religious to understand the depths of human spirit that a Church ceremony invokes. I have been in some ceremonies as a photographer where I have felt the incredible amount of love lift from the congregation, it is almost palpable....

If you’re a regular reader of DIYP or you’re an avid astrophotographer then the name Andrew McCarthy should be familiar to you. We’ve featured him numerous times, you’d think we’d be getting bored by now. But no, every single time his work just keeps getting better and better! And he’s really outdone himself with his latest set of images that show the sun in incredible detail with no less than a 150,000 image composite!...

From time to time, we hear about people who get really furious at photographers taking photos in public places. I don’t know what reasons they have, but there’s no reason good enough to attack someone and smash their camera. This is exactly what an angry man recently did in Rock Island, IL. He was caught on camera as he smashed the photographer’s gear against the ground, and then rushed towards him in anger....

The first batch of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites was launched in May this year, making astronomers worried about how they would affect the night sky. Now that the second batch has been launched, the astronomers’ concerns are becoming a reality. On Monday 18 November, two astronomers checked the image of their remotely operated telescope in Chile. But instead of a clear night sky, they saw a bunch of light trails from Starlink satellites....