Swiss photographer René Robert died after suffering a dizzy spell and falling on a Paris street in his neighbourhood. Robert was ignored by passersby and was left lying on the sidewalk for 9 hours until somebody finally called emergency services. Sadly by then, it was too late, and the esteemed 84-year-old photographer succumbed to hypothermia. Robert reportedly left his home at 9:30 pm for his usual evening stroll around the busy neighbourhood in central Paris....

Many people would describe their wedding as the happiest day of their life. But if you’re in a toxic relationship or marriage, the day you get out of it is also worth celebrating. This is where photographer Allie Siarto comes to the scene. In addition to her usual packages, Allie has recently started offering divorce photography. She helps divorced people reinvent themselves and regain their confidence. And at the same time, it appears that this genre has helped her reinvent her business as well....

Photographer Ian Norman was out on shooting some night skies photo in Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. The photos are gorgeous (as you can see below), which is pretty usual up till now. But some time into the shoot Ian notices a huge fireball over the Sierra Nevada mountains. While Ian’s “big guns” gear was not setup to shoot it, he grabbed an A75 and started recording. It turns out that those fireballs were the expected reentry of the upper stage of China’s recent CZ-7 rocket launch, namely the rocket upper stage....

The coronavirus pandemic has stopped all of us in our tracks. All social gatherings have been postponed, so many people are out of work right now, including wedding photographers. Chris Wallace of Carpe Diem Photography was set to have plenty of work in 2020, but then everything stopped. Still, he didn’t lose his creativity and the desire to shoot. He threw and shot his own wedding ceremony – made entirely from Lego....

Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid (a.k.a. Shawkan) won this year’s The Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, awarded yearly to those contributing to press freedom anywhere in the world. Shawkan was arrested in 2013 in Cairo for covering an anti-government protest in August that year, and prosecutors requested a death sentence for him. https://twitter.com/FreeEgyptPress/status/977533537619447813 According to Reporters Without Borders write, Shawkan is one of more than 700 people currently facing a death sentence in Cairo....

Advertisements Uygar Önder Şimşek says he entered the competition in 2018 under a pseudonym (which he prefers not to disclose) in order to protect his identity. After being notified that he was shortlisted, he emailed the organizers to double-check that his identity would remain secret and that the images would be published under his assumed name. However, all did not go to plan, and although the accounts differ, unfortunately, the outcome was the same and the images were published under Şimşek’s real name, causing him to flee to Germany in fear of his life....

It’s no secret. Copyright theft is rife on the Internet. Finding online photo thieves to send DMCA takedown notices and a bill is even a full time job for some people. But what if you want to look for yourself? Well, there are a few services out there, but checking them all individually, manually, can be a very time consuming process. Now, thanks to PhotoTracker Lite, it just got a whole lot easier to find copies of your images around the web....

Close-Up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY) is one of those contests I always look forward to. To start off the new year with lots of inspiring images, the competition has shared its winners and runner-ups, and they’re absolutely stunning. Canadian photographer Samantha Stephens is the overall winner of this year’s contest, and her striking image shows something you don’t see every day: a pair of salamanders being consumed by a carnivorous pitcher plant....

Selfies are practically everywhere, and it’s difficult to avoid them. Well, there’s now a photo-sharing platform that’s built literally for avoiding selfies. Poparazzi bans this kind of photos and encourages you and your friends to take photos of each other instead. In fact, your whole account is created by the people who take photos of you! Looking at the layout, Poparazzi reminds me a whole lot of Instagram. However, unlike Instagram, you won’t find selfies on this platform....

As we all know by now, Instagram is a part of Facebook and it has been like this since 2012. But the historic acquisition could face antitrust charges. According to some reports, Federal and state investigators are about to sue Facebook because its acquisition of Instagram was an attempt to protect itself from the competition. Back in June, Mark Zuckerberg’s emails leaked, showing that the idea was to improve Facebook, but also to neutralize competition by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp....

We’ve seen celebrities getting sued (and banned from Instagram) for copyright infringement. After Bruno Mars, Brian May, and Gigi Hadid, now it happened to Sir Rod Stewart. Only this time, the legendary singer is being sued for using a photo as a gig backdrop, and not for posting it to Instagram. And the weird thing is: the photographer who filed the lawsuit didn’t even take the photo. Reportedly, Sir Rod Stewart used a photo of himself with his ex-girlfriend as a gig backdrop back in 2015, and British photographer Julia McLellan holds the copyright to the image....

When it comes to on-camera microphones, the Rode VideoMic series is way up there when it comes to recommendations. Their flagship VideoMic Pro Plus is one of the best solutions out there for an all-in-one on-camera microphone. Specifically, one that plugs into your camera’s 3.5mm microphone socket. But they’ve just announced a new contender. The Rode VideoMic NTG. As the name would suggest, it follows the design principles of Rode’s NTG series shotgun microphones....

Samsung is reportedly ramping up its image sensor production capabilities in a big way, although it’s doing it at the expense of RAM production – again. The process began in 2018 when Samsung converted its DRAM-producing Line 11 plant to make image sensors instead. At that time, they also announced their intention to convert Line 13 to do the same. The conversion of Line 13 was expected towards the end of 2018, but it seems to have not happened yet....

Retouching portraits isn’t at all uncommon, and most photographers include it in their services. But if we talk about portraits of children, this becomes a rather sensitive topic. Journalist Sam Walker recently expressed her outrage with a school photographer who offered “basic and premium retouching” for annual school photos of eight-year-olds. The packages included blemish removal, teeth whitening, and evening skin tones. Sam is the mother of two daughters. She tweeted on Monday that her girls had their school photo, and there was the option to airbrush the picture....

After first trying out the WD My Passport Wireless Pro as a solution to backup photos and video while traveling (click here for the full review of the My Passport), I thought I would try the competition – the Seagate Wireless Plus. The main issue that I had with the WD My Passport is that it could not effectively synchronize files with cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive) without the need for a laptop computer....

Sigma has announced the new Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC DN Contemporary Lens for Fuji X Mount. Originally released in October of 2021 for Leica L and Sony E mount, this APS-C lens is now available to Fuji shooters. It’s pretty much the same lens, but with a new mount, so it has all of the same specifications with the same internals and external appearance. It just has a larger customer base....

Skylum Luminar has seen some pretty massive changes over the last couple of years. The latest version, Luminar 4, particularly so. It’s had a lot of cool new AI enhancements, like easy sky replacements, and the Structure tool which identifies the different parts of your image and enhances the most important bits. More recently, they’ve also been showing off some new tools for portrait shooters, too, like the AI Skin Enhancer....

Skylum has announced a free update for Luminar 2018 which adds a new AI Sky Enhancer. Operated by just a single slider, the new feature, as the name suggests, uses AI to selectively add depth, definition and drama to enhance the sky in your photos. The goal of the AI Sky Enhancer is to help bring back some of that contrast and drama we saw with our eyes without having to spend too much time creating masks and layers to selectively bring areas up or down to try and bring it back....

What’s in your refrigerator right now? A couple of eggs? A lonely avocado? Wilted lettuce and a beer? Can you cook anything with that or is it a take out night (again)? Never mind, Snap Chat has now introduced a new camera-based analysis feature called Food Scan, and it could be the answer to all your dinner-based problems. The new Food Scan feature does exactly what it sounds like. You simply choose the scan option, point your phone at the object in question, and the app will scan and search for related images, identifying the ingredient....

Sony claims that they are now number 1 in full frame interchangeable lens camera sales in the USA, beating out both Nikon and Canon. Sony also says that within just the mirrorless market, they’ve held that top spot in both dollars and units for over 6 years. It seems may be well on track to become the top camera brand they see themselves becoming by 2021. Sony says that 4 out of every 10 full-frame cameras sold during the first half of 2018 were made by Sony....