When I was a little girl, I lived in Incirlik AFB, Turkey. We lived for a year off base on the third floor of a very large apartment building. My parents spoke no Turkish and the landlady spoke no English, but somehow, they managed just fine. My dad was a lot cooler about the whole thing than my mom. But then, dad left and went to work on base each morning, while my mom had to deal with things like mice in the kitchen, Turkish toilets, and the man who walked his bear down the street each day....

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. As every year, photographers are among winners as well. Both winners illustrated violence and fear, but on different sides of the world. Daniel Berehulak won the Breaking News Photography Award for documenting violence in Philippines, brought about by a government assault on drug dealers and users. E. Jason Wambsgans won Feature Photography Award for the portrayal of a 10-year-old boy and his mother, who were after trying to recover from the boy being shot in Chicago....

Advertisements The problem with the new healing brush is that it left us with “salt lines” around healed areas, then this got fixed and left us with results that just, they just weren’t as good as 2014 in my opinion, it’s almost like the algorithm was completely different. Fantastic news though right! If you are not sure why this is awesome, check out this explanation from Pratik Naik. Is it time to say no to 2014 and move to 2015 yet?...

I like camera and photography-inspired knick-knacks (even when they’re a little cringeworthy). If you like them as well, you can now pimp your coat, camera strap, or even your ears with a cute little accessory. Funleader is selling a $39 sterling silver brooch that can tell everyone you’re a photographer without you going through your phone and showing off your work to total strangers at a party. The M3 brooch is a faithful replica of a Leica M3 shutter speed dial....

By now, you’ve probably heard of text-to-image prompt-based AI such as DALL-E2, Midjourney, and even Google‘s own version. These programmes pretty much do what they sound like – they take a text prompt or set of instructions, and turn them into an image. It’s usually either photo-realistic or it’s an illustration. Tests have shown just how powerful this technology can be, and because it’s AI, it means that it’s constantly evolving and getting better and better....

After unlocking link stickers for everyone, Instagram has now come up with another way to make its users more engaged. A new sticker will now enable everyone to become a part of your Story and turn it into a public thread. From now on when choosing a sticker for your Story, you’ll see a new option reading “Add Yours.” When you select it, it will create public threads in Stories....

I noticed something changed on my YouTube account a couple of months ago. It’s a new “Checks” feature, and it seems to have now rolled out on a wider scale. Essentially it’s a new step YouTube takes immediately after you upload your videos to check for any obvious monetisation or copyright issues. It’s likely the same checks they’ve always done, except they’ve taken the status report from behind the scenes to right in front of the user during the upload process....

Just about all cameras come with a built-in EVF, so why would you spend thousands of dollars on a Zacuto Gratical HD EVF? Well, not all EVF’s are created equal. Also, not all cameras are created equal when it comes to monitoring options. Here are some examples. The resolution and quality of built-in EVFs on cameras vary hugely. You may get a camera that is amazing, but its EVF is not the best....

Advertisements Zeiss Batis 135mm f/2.8 is available at the incredible price of $2000. To compare, Canon EF 135mm f/2 costs $1000, while Nikon 135mm f/2 is quite close to Sigma, with the price of $1390. Sigma 135mm F/1.8 DG HSM Art lens costs $1400, so you can conclude two things. First, it seems that Sigma doesn’t really consider Nikon and Canon to be competitors to their Art lenses anymore, given the price of the 135mm f/1....

In this part of our 2019 seasonal gift guides, we’re moving on from cameras to focus on lenses. There have been some great ones released over the last year. And there have also been one or two unusual ones. Here are some of our favourites. Available in Nikon F, Canon EF, Sony E and Sigma SA mounts, this has to be the stand out lens of the year for me....

Recently my phone died, unfortunately, there is no app to fix water damage, so I had to buy a new one. Re-installing all the apps and settings was very simple. You just log in to everything and away you go. When I logged into Google, it simply started to download all my apps. The same sort of process is on the iOS-based systems.Advertisements However, there was a problem I didn’t have room on my new phone for all my old apps....

Effects lighting is an extremely fun area of lighting to explore. In this context, they’re about recreating the light that we see in our daily lives with studio lights. While aimed more at video, the techniques and setups can apply equally as well to stills photography, too. In this 4 Minute Film School video from Aputure, Ted Sim talks to DP Julia Swain about recreating several practical lighting effects. A TV screen, a projector, city lights and police lights....

When shooting a video, a general rule is to set the shutter speed to be the double of the frame rate. However, there are scenarios in which breaking this rule is welcome. In this video, Jordy Vandeput of Cinecom shows you five creative effects you can pull off just by changing the shutter speed while filming. For example, if your frame rate is 25 fps, the shutter speed should generally be 1/50, which will give you the most natural motion blur....

I don’t know about you, but this time of year is traditionally when I officially lose it. I don’t what it is about December but suddenly all my former clients and people previously sitting on the fence about booking a shoot decide that they MUST have those photos done now, no yesterday! And I invariably find my previously empty December turning into back-to-back shoots, all night editing sessions, and my poor son pretty much being adopted by the babysitter....

No matter how long we’ve been flying drones or how much experience we have, there always seems to be more ways to improve with new techniques to learn, refine or build upon. And with that in mind, YouTuber and filmmaker Jeven Dovey has put together this fantastic video showing off 50 of his top drone tips for both beginners and pros. And it’s not all about flying technique, either. Some of the 31-minute video is simply about workflow and planning to make sure you’re safe and legal....

The use of color gels expands the possibilities and helps you create plenty of different looks. If you’re just discovering color gels, Ted Sim of Apurture shares eight ideas for using them. These will give you some inspiration why and how to add color to your shots. And while Ted focuses on moviemaking, you can also use gels to add color and change the mood of your photos. Although the title of Apurture’s video suggests eight ideas, there are six of them, but with some combinations and variations mentioned as well, which expand the possible uses of gels....

The fascination with degrading the performance of our gear is interesting. On the one hand, why does a person spend thousands of dollars on equipment to want to do that? On the other, it can have some neat visual effects, even if that’s sometimes down to luck. Regardless of the reasons, or what kit is being used, it’s quite popular. Even if just to play and experiment with. In this video, the guys at the Cooperative of Photography (COOPH) show us 8 ways to make our own DIY lens filters to get some of these effects....

As technology is advancing, our notion of what’s “standard” changes. The resolution used to be measured in lines, and today 4K is rapidly becoming a standard. But according to Matt Granger, 8K is to replace it in the near future. In this video, he explains why it’s important to embrace 8K as soon as you can, even though it’s still quite challenging. He gives the typical reasons against it but tries to beat them with his reasoning why you should be ahead of the curve and start investing in 8K....

More than three billion smartphone users use more than six million apps to create and upload 500 hours of video every minute. Journalist Charles Feldman calls this 24/7 convergent clickstream an “information tsunami.” I see it as an opportunity and so does Sennheiser who has developed the series of mobile-friendly microphones featured in this series of articles on how to mojo. Defining a Mobile Form Simply put, Mojo is a combination of digital storytelling skills and tools used to capture and transform raw user-generated content (UGC) into complete user-generated stories (UGS)....

Optical illusions using glass and water have always been popular with photography. Whether it’s reflections of objects on top of each other or the world seen through a water droplet, it’s a fascinating subject. So, it’s no wonder that so many photographers want to give it a try. One such photographer is Brazilian born Alexandre Watanabe, also known as EvilWata Imagery. In a pair of images recently posted to Facebook, we see the technique performed beautifully....