Cameras

If you've been waiting for a new Sigma lens for your digital SLR, today might be your lucky day. From the company's Japanese headquarters, we have announcements on several fronts involving new lenses shipping imminently. First up is the Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM prime lens, announced last September and given an official street price of US$900 a couple of months later. (List pricing for the Art-series optic is US$1,400.) It's been available for a while now in Canon, Nikon, and Sigma-mount variants, and now it can be had for both Pentax and Sony mounts,... (read more)

Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin will help launch Hasselblad's latest camera, the Lunar, at a special event in New York City on May 30, 2013. The luxurious Lunar was announced at photokina in Germany last year and was initially pegged for a Spring 2013 release. While there was some talk about the launch date for the Lunar being pushed back to the summer, the high-end, compact system camera, which is built around a Sony NEX-7 body, seems to be back on schedule. We couldn't get confirmation from our Hasselblad contact as to whether... (read more)

Model Jen Brook made waves a few months back by posting an open letter to photographers from a model in which she discussed the things that made a shoot much better for her with a new photographer. The post went viral due to its excellent advice, and now Brook has made another post, this time from one model to another. Her new piece, "Dear Model..., kindest regards, Other Model. XXX" is a collection of little tips that she has picked up in her years of modeling, particularly about how to pose to emphasize certain features, and... (read more)

This guide is what I do during wedding days, and I typically photograph the cake right when I enter the reception location. Overall, I take 4 shots of the cake: 1 vertical, 1 horizontal, 1 detail of topper, and 1 detail of the base or whatever is the most interesting on the cake. This process takes me literally 30 seconds. That’s it; done. Move on to centerpieces. This guide is for photographing real cakes on real wedding days for wedding photography professionals. There will be some assumptions such as (1) you know how to expose properly, and (2) that the cake is indoors or lower light (think reception lighting). If you’re interested in photographing cakes in studio, this is not it, but the idea could definitely be translated into studio. Things You’ll Need Camera 200mm lens Flash with 90 degree (or higher) swivel and point-up ability Delicious wedding cake (preferably red velvet… am I right?) The Lens The lens you select to photograph a wedding cake is absolutely crucial. You’ll want to grab your longest focal length lens. I use Nikon’s 70-200mm f/2.8, but if you have the cheaper 200?s with 5.6, that works fine, too! What matters most here is that the 200mm will do 2 things: 1. Compress the view, allowing the cake to be the prominent subject and, if the venue isn’t organized, remove a lot of the clutter surrounding the cake. 2. Keep most of the cake in perfect focus, yet having a nice out of focus background. This is the wonderful thing about telephotos. With lower focal lengths, you cannot have both an out of focus background and retain focus throughout the cake. Shoot at f/4 for “fill the frame” cake shots and f/2.8 for “big picture” shots containing more of the ambiance and venue decor. The Flash The idea for flash is that we’ll be using our flash to ‘bounce’ light from the left off of a wall or whatever is available. This will create a pleasing soft light that will hit the cake from the left and will give an appearance of softbox or window light. The trick here is to aim the flash directly left, and not up or down at all. When shooting vertical framing, the flash will be pointed directly “up” from the camera’s point of view. When shooting horizontal framing, the flash will be 90? left. It’s important to remember not to have the flash pointed up at all, unlike photographing people where you would want the flash to be aimed towards the ceiling. Be mindful of guests; they do not like being flashed in the face. I’m leaving it up to you to expose for the ambient light and to make sure your background is how you’d like it. I typically expose 1-3 stops down depending on the mood I want to create and depending on pre-existing light. Set your flash to TTL if it is not already. Max out your flash shutter sync speed (Nikon is 1/250, Canon is 1/200). Your resulting image will be a very soft left-to-right lit cake. I light left to right because that’s a more natural look. The more of the frame that the cake takes up, the better your result will be with lighting. When you are first doing this technique begin with a very tightly framed cake and work out from there. Here are some cake photographs I’ve shot using this technique: About the author: Michael Doerman is a wedding photographer based in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit his website here and his blog here. This article originally appeared here.

Claudia Nallely Agres works as a bridal model for a living, but she hasn’t yet had the joy of being a bride in a wedding of her own. Wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer wanted to change that, so he recently held a special photo shoot for Agres that resulted in some beautiful and unusual bridal portraits. Claudia Nallely Agres and her husband Matt got married in a simple civil ceremony back in 2011. That was right before they were separated for eight months while Matt went through Air Force basic training. Shortly after the training, Matt was sent last year on a three year assignment to an Air Force base in Germany. Claudia is still unsure of when they might be able to have a proper wedding and a real bridal portrait shoot. When Brenizer learned about this, he decided to invite Claudia and Matthew to a studio in London for a special bridal shoot for photos Claudia could keep herself. Matthew wasn’t able to leave his base, so Claudia traveled solo from Germany herself with a vintage wedding dress in tow. Since Claudia has already done countless shoots while posing as a bride, Brenizer decided he would try a unique concept that would be new to Agres. Inspired by Jan von Holleben’s Dreams of Flying project, Brenizer decided to create fantasy scenes on the ground and photograph Claudia from above while she posed on the ground. The shoot lasted for an hour and a half, and resulted in three photographs showing Claudia biking and leaping in a fantasy world created with tissue paper, flowers, and wood blocks: Here are some behind-the-scenes photographs Brenzier provided us that show the studio as they were preparing for the shots: Brenzier says he hopes to one day photograph Claudia again, but with Matthew present and playing a part in the whimsical scenes. (via HuffPo and TODAY) Thanks for sending in the tip, Steve! Image credits: Photographs by Ryan Brenizer and used with permission

When Flickr launched its site-wide redesign this past week, one of the things that saw a quiet revamp was the default user avatar. The company hired Greek designer Charis Tsevis to upgrade the original default icon — an expressionless gray and black square face — to something more colorful. Over on Behance, Tsevis shares some of his thoughts on how he came up with the new eye-popping illustrations. First off, here’s what the old default avatar looked like. It was nicknamed “Howdy”: Remember it? Apparently Flickr wanted the avatars to be more “vibrant.” The three requirements for the new avatars were that (1) they needed to reflect photography, (2) they needed to be colorful and use Flickr’s colors, and (3) they needed to be personal to users. Tsevis turned to a style of illustration called “Neo-Futurism,” and sometimes “Neo-Cubism.” Hours were spent trying to choose the best shapes, forms, and colors for various types of cameras. This lineup of final avatars shows what Tsevis ended up coming up with: To start using one of the new buddy icons, head on over to New Flickr’s Buddy Icon page and remove whatever avatar you currently have set: Here’s what the avatars look like on the new photostream pages: You can read a behind-the-scenes account of Tsevis’ design process over on Behance. The article includes a number of images showing what the new avatars looked like at early stages of their development. (via Behance via Visual News)

I recently began contributing to Stocksy United (AKA Stocksy), the new(ish) stock photography agency that is headed up by Bruce Livingstone of iStockPhoto notoriety fame. Why I Contribute To Stock Agencies I consider myself a business owner first and foremost. Photography is a job that I really, really like doing, but in the world in which I live, I need to earn an income or I cannot be a photographer. Like the quote from Zorba the Greek says: “Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.” To that end, I see stock as a secondary revenue stream — a way to add potential income to commercial jobs that are already in the can (by selling “left over” images that were not licensed to my primary client). I also see stock as a way to create a potential revenue stream for personal projects – which in turn, allows me the freedom to photograph more personal projects. As an example, the image below is the first photograph that I contributed to Stocksy. It is a photograph that I took of my wife up at our cottage. At the time, I was practicing underwater photography techniques for an upcoming commercial gig that I had with three potential Olympic swim team athletes. The images that I captured on my own time now have the potential to generate revenue: Stock versus Microstock Over the years I have dabbled in various microstock services, including iStockPhoto. It is pretty easy to have your work represented by the various microStock agencies, so the barrier to entry is relatively low. However, with microstock, I quickly learned that there was not much point in me spending wasting my time preparing — editing, keywording, uploading and curating my stock catalog just to earn a few cents when my photographs were sold. To be blunt – for me microstock is a complete waste of time. Stocksy: Good or Evil? I first heard of Stocksy from an article here on PetaPixel — one that was not overly positive, and which prompted this Tweet from industry guru — and a guy who’s opinion I really respect — David Hobby: However, there was a follow up article on PetaPixel in which photographer Thomas Hawk described his frustrations with Getty Images and Getty’s ridiculous deal with the devil Google (someone tell the devil – “Don’t be evil”). This convinced me to take a second look at Stocksy United. Stocksy Application Process Originally, I sent in an unsolicited contributor application to Stocksy… to which I never heard back… However, totally by coincidence, one of my images was selected as an editor’s choice from my 500px portfolio: 500px Editor’s Choice: “Freestyle Black” Out of the blue, I received an email from Stocksy, inviting me to apply to contribute. So, I re-applied and was subsequently accepted. It’s totally true that “Chance favors only the prepared mind” (Louis Pasteur). In this case, a combination of my continuous hard work to promote my photography, and random events conspired to produce the exact result I was denied just a couple of weeks earlier. What I LOVE About Stocksy 1. The Stocksy Collection is Phenomenal As someone who buys stock for my side project PicturesByMom.com, I have a good appreciation for how out of context, contrived, rote and just plain bad most stock photography is. The Stocksy collection is completely different. The images are artistic, captivating and vibrant — and I love being a part of that. (At Stocksy, you’re not going to find stupid photos of attractive young women photographed on white seamless with a set of headphones, smiling banally at you as they pretend to answer your customer service request.) 2. The Stocksy Editors are Fastidious In my initial submission to Stocksy, every single one of the images I submitted was rejected. All of them… no good… go away or I shall taunt you a second time. Now at first, you might see this as a setback, but I see it as a huge positive. I think the fact that the Stocksy editors are only going to acc

After Moore, Oklahoma was struck by a deadly tornado earlier this week, photographs quickly emerged showing what the storm looked like from space and what the destruction was like on the ground. Now, Google’s Crisis Center website has published satellite photographs showing what the city look like before and after the tornado. As you can see from the “after” photo above, the tornado — which measured 1.3-miles wide at one point — left a trail of devastation on its 17-mile path. Here are some before and after photographs showing various parts of the city on April 29th, 2013 and on May 22nd, 2013: One striking thing seen in the satellite photographs is how concentrated the tornado’s damage is on the land. In certain neighborhoods, groups of three or four homes are completely destroyed, while homes nearby on either side of the path remain standing with their roofs intact: Here’s an interactive view you can use to browse the imagery yourself: You can find a larger version of this interactive browser over on the Google Crisis Center website. Moore, Oklahoma Tornado [Google Crisis Center via CNET] P.S. As we shared earlier this week, there are a number of major relief organizations you can donate to if you’d like to help the victims of this disaster. Thanks for sending in the tip, Leonardo!

CENTER has announced the 13th Annual Review Santa Fe, a juried portfolio review event and conference for photographers. Read more and comment »

Pictastik is a free, location-based photo sharing app that allows users to see what’s happening, right now, in the cities around the world. Read more and comment »