As Space Shuttle Atlantis left the International Space Station to head back to Earth for the final time, one of the astronauts on the ISS captured this beautiful image of the shuttle’s glowing re-entry. Any guesses for what shutter speed this was shot at?
Update: Someone from the Photo Operations Group at the Johnson Space Center was kind enough to leave a comment with the answer: 1.6 seconds, f/2.8 at an ISO of 10000.
Photographer Lori Nix spends weeks and months creating extremely detailed miniature scenes — called dioramas — and then photographs them using an old fashioned 8×10 large format camera. This video offers a look at what goes on behind-the-scenes at Nix’s Brooklyn studio, and how she goes about creating her unique images. You see some of her photos in this post we published a year ago featuring her photography.
Remember the strange boxy cameras that were spotted on Samsung’s website a couple months ago? Turns out they were in fact digital medium format cameras, but were developed for “internal purposes” only. In an interview with Megapixel, a Samsung Regional product manager states,
We have the technology to develop a medium format cameras but we are not going to do that because this is not our market. Samsung is a manufacturer that focuses on a broad market – we are not a niche manufacturer like Hasselbald or Lieca [sic]. What you see in the image was developed for internal purposes in order to look into future technologies. At this point we have no plans to release it to the public. We have done similar things with lenses – for example we developed a 1000mm lens for astronomical use – but again just for internal purposes.
Hopefully they change their mind — an affordable medium-format camera geared towards enthusiasts would be awesome.
Skott Chandler’s House Watch project consists of photographs taken in private living spaces using a pinhole camera fixed to the ceiling. Read the rest of this entry »
After reading about the revolutionary “shoot first, focus later” Lytro camera that’s currently in development, Canadian fashion model Coco Rocha reached out to the company to ask if they could work with a prototype. The next week, Lytro sent photographer Eric Cheng with one of the prototype cameras to do a fashion shoot with Rocha. In addition to the photos from the shoot, Rocha also released a behind-the-scenes video. While the video mainly shows Rocha posing, we get a few very brief glimpses of Chen holding a blurred out camera. The camera is entirely obscured, but we do see that it’s relatively small (roughly the size of a P&S), and that you compose shots with a screen on the back.
Photographer Mike Mitchell was 18-years-old back in 1964 when he captured The Beatles on their first US tour. After sitting in a box for 45 years, 50 of the photographs were individually sold at a Christie’s auction on Wednesday for a whopping $361,938. The Observer writes,
“I wasn’t expecting this, when I took those photos all those years ago. It’s a pretty good feeling,” Mr. Mitchell told The Observer after the auction had ended. During the bidding he watched wide-eyed from the audience as the prices kept rising, in some cases surpassing their estimates by a factor of ten. Frantically, he texted with his sister, who is in Florida. “We were going ‘Wow, Wow, Wow!’”
The collection was previously valued at $100,000, but the photograph above (estimated at $2,000-$3,000) was itself sold for $68,500. You can see all the images and their sale prices here.
PBS is starting a new web-only video series called “Off Book“, and the inaugural episode features Patrick Rochon and Aurora Crowley, two photographers dedicated to the art of light painting.
If you ever find yourself with some unwanted negatives on your hands, you can upcycle them into creative film candle holders! All you need is a glass candle holder and some way to fix your negatives to it.
Here’s a short clip from the talk show Stossel where American libertarian journalist Radley Balko talks about how cameras — especially mobile phone ones — are a powerful weapon against tyranny, and why laws should protect our rights to use them.
How do you get a silverback gorilla to put a GoPro HD camera up to its face? Stuff the case full of raisins, of course!
This cheeky ape turned photographer for a day after being handed a high-definition camera by his keepers. Silverback gorilla Ya Kwanza, 27, happily snapped away at himself and his surroundings in his compound in Durrell Wildlife Park in Jersey. The gorilla even took a number of close-up shots before returning the camera to his keepers by throwing it over the wall of his enclosure. Staff at the park also captured the gorilla photographing himself with the indestructible camera, which was covered in honey and oats. [#]
Lesson learned: if you ever lose your camera to a silverback gorilla, ask nicely and they’ll throw it back.
