If someone told me that mold can be beautiful, I would just give them a disgusted look and say “Ew, no way!” But Beauty of Science proves me wrong in their latest video The Rise of Molds. It shows different types of mold growing in a super-macro timelapse, and it turns that “disgusting” mold into a true work of art. Beauty of Science always comes up with interesting ideas, turning biology and chemistry into artistic videos....
If you’re a photographer, it’s possible that you often get inspired by other forms of art, like movies, paintings, or music. But have you ever thought about how different art forms depend on each other? In this interesting video, Stewart Hicks talks about how architecture and photography are intertwined and how one depends on the other, often quite a lot. It’s hard to imagine for everyone who knows me now, but I dreamed of becoming an architect when I finished elementary school....
We’ve seen some incredible aerial photos shot by French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet this year, including the blue aurora seen from space. But have you ever wondered how he captured these images? For aerial photography you can’t get much better than being 400km (250 miles) up in the International Space Station, and most of the images are taken from the cupola, the 7 window observation module that looks down at Planet Earth below....
polarizing filters are something that pretty much all of us own as photographers. It may not be something we really use all that often, but most of us have at least one somewhere in our pile of camera bags filled with gear. But what exactly is polarized light? And how can we used to go beyond the usual popping of skies and foliage in landscapes? Well, in this video from The Science Asylum, we take a deeper look into light polarization....
This morning I woke up to one of those emails. Yes, that’s right, another SmugMug Film is being launched today. This one follows street photographer Alan Schaller as he walks around New York City talking about street photography, what it means to him, what he looks for to make an image, and his general thoughts on humanity and the city. Alan has only been a photographer for four years, but has a long history in the arts....
Photos of distant planets are fascinating, right? But how often do we get to see a photo of a planet as it’s just being formed? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have recently captured a planet as it was forming around a young star. The photo is incredibly detailed and it’s the best photo of a planet’s birth taken so far. The Max Planck Institute scientists were working with the European Southern Observatory’s very large telescope in Chile when they captured the star being formed....
Shooting portraits in the studio with flash can be daunting to newer photographers. They look at the setups like the one above and have no idea what each of the lights is doing, how or why. This video from photographer Mark Wallace is a primer to flash-lit portraits in the studio. Mark explains what each light is, its purpose, and how each of them contribute toward the final shot. It’s a great breakdown showing you exactly what everything does....
But, this is a first. As you may recall, on December 21st, we have a once in 800 years event when Jupiter and Saturn appeared especially close in the night sky. Unlike any earthly photos that we have seen, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a stunner image from space. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, is a system of three cameras mounted on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)....
One thing I’ve learned as I’ve started to do more video stuff is that there’s no such thing as too much b-roll. B-roll is essentially the visual content that plays while you’re hearing something else. Creating it requires as much thought as your main shot. It needs to progress the story, or illustrate something being said. But it also needs to be visually appealing, and match the rest of the content....
Carleton E. Watkins was born on November 11, 1829, the eldest of eight children. At the age of 22, Watkins moved to San Franciso and discovered his love of photography. Ten years later, Watkins made a decision that not only changed his career, but perhaps the whole future of the the American wilderness. Traveling to Yosemite with a plate camera that shot massive 18″x22″ glass plates, and a stereoscopic camera, Watkins produced some of the first photographs of Yosemite to be seen in the Eastern USA....
Game Boy camera was launched twenty years ago, and technology has advanced immensely since then. Nevertheless, experimenting with this toy camera in the modern era is still kind of fun. Photographer Tim Binnion recently brought his to 2018 Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, China. He captured the Formula 1 race with the 0.016-megapixel camera, and the results are unusual and pretty amazing. Tim was inspired by zhx’s photos of the solar eclipse and Alexander Pietrow’s photos of Moon and Jupiter, which were also taken with a Game Boy camera....
You do see some strange things popping up on Kickstarter. This one doesn’t launch for another 17 days or so, but I think it definitely qualifies as a little strange. It’s the TriLens Holder from a company called Frii. On first glance, it might seem quite useful. A neat new idea that could be a valuable time saver if you’re shooting something like a wedding or other event. You’re not going to be using the same lens all day, and you want to have your other go-to lenses close at hand....
We have discussed several times why shooting only with one lens can be a good call. And no matter the genre you shoot, you can benefit from using only one lens. In this video from Advancing Your Photography, documentary photographer Daniel Milnor will share three reasons why you should use only one lens if you’re shooting documentary photography. Daniel admits that he didn’t know how to use his first 50mm lens when he bought it back in the ‘90s, so he sold it....
Autumn is a magical time of year and a great opportunity to get outside and go looking for those amazing organisms called fungi. This video by Tom Mackie shows you how to take advantage of the fall and create some awesome macro shots of toadstools and mushrooms. Getting your camera low to the ground is imperative to give you an interesting point of view. As you can see in the video Tom has mounted his camera upside down on the tripod, so he gets the advantage of a low point of view but the camera is still stabilized....
Tokina has announced their new “Opera” 16-28mm f/2.8 full frame lenses for Nikon & Canon DSLRs. Sitting at a pretty low price point compared to the Nikon and Canon alternatives, the new lens is targeted towards landscape, architectural and astrophotography uses. Of course, with a lens this short of focal length and this wide of an aperture, there are many other potential uses for it, too. Focal Length: 16-28mmMax aperture: f/2....
TTArtisan has launched the 35mm f/0.95, a cheap, lightweight, ultra-fast lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras. It comes in six different mounts, and if you’ve wanted to try out a fast lens like this, it could be a great choice because it’s the cheapest one there is. The TTArtisan 35mm f/0.95 is a manual focus lens, which can be a bit tricky due to its extra-shallow depth of field when it’s wide open....
If you’re a fan of cinematographer Roger Deakins’s work, you’re most likely familiar with Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Deakins modified a lens especially for this movie and used it to get a unique and dreamy tilt-shift effect. This type of lens has become known as the Deakinizer lens, and in this video, Chung Dha Lam shows you two simple and affordable methods for making your own....
If you want to shoot macro photography, sure, you can buy dedicated macro lenses. But, there are two simpler and cheaper ways to go macro and use the lenses you already own. In this video, photographer Andres Moline will show you how to turn any lens into a macro lens on the budget. Experienced photographers already know about these techniques, but this video can be very useful for newbies. Basically, you can turn any lens into a macro lens by reversing it so that the front element faces the sensor and the back element faces the subject....
Matching colors in Photoshop is fun, but getting the selections and the hue exactly right can also be frustrating. Thankfully, some newer Adobe Photoshop tools have made it easier than before. While there are several ways of transferring colors from one image to another, in this video, you’ll learn a simple one that takes around two minutes. Let Colin Smith of photoshopCAFE will show you how. To start with, you’ll open your source and target images....
For its February cover, Vogue chose photos of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris – and both of them have sparked outrage. People have been calling out Vogue for making Harris’ skin lighter, but also for “bad lighting”, a “questionable” photo, even for the Converse sneakers she’s wearing. Tyler Mitchell took the photos, and Vogue published them both on its Instagram, as well as in the interview the Vice President-elect gave for the magazine....
