Surreal Macro Photographs of Insects by Lee Peiling a.k.a.Twomeows

“Malaysian photographer Lee Peiling lives and works in Tanzania where she picked up a camera for the first time just three years ago. Among her quickly growing body of work are these macro photographs of insects that look almost like paintings due to her use of a focus technique known as bokeh. If you like these, definitely check out more of her Small World series.”

In this attempt to understand concepts second nature to all veterans of a militarized basic training, we explore the four fundamentals of marksmanship and how they apply to improving one's photographic technique.

Imponerande 360 graders panoramabild som fyller hela webbläsaren.

Inevitably, there’s been a lot of chatter about the Nikon D800 today and it ranges all over the spectrum. In addition to showing up all over the web, it’s also invaded my inbox. “Dude! There’s so many megapixels!” is one common refrain. “Dammit, they didn’t make a stripped down D4 this time!” is another. Me, while I have a love/hate relationship talking about gear—in large part because so many people think it’s just about the gear—I have to say that I’m pretty stoked by the D800. I think a lot of good photographers are going to put this camera to excellent use.

Here are some snippets from conversations I’ve had about the new camera today:

False advertising 101.
So, I went to some fast food places (I won’t say “restaurants”, just “places”), and picked up burgers and tacos, so I could compare them with the ads. (I’m always on the hunt for little projects like this. Stoked.) I brought the food home, tossed it into my photography studio, and did ad-style shoots, with pictures of the official ads on my computer next to me, so I could match the lighting and angles.
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People around the world know fast food as one of the most reliable distributors of disappointment ever produced by the business world. We know that if we ever feel the need to complain about something, we can just grab a page out of a coupon booklet, adorned in pictures of juicy burgers, then go have a party. Why, the places themselves usually plaster their walls with pictures of juicy burgers – often hanging right over your table – so you need only open your eyes to find something to compare your food with, while you eat it.
Needless to say, the results of my little project were unsurprising… which shouldn’t be a surprise.

Why would you need a 2,000 pound steel blast door in the middle of the Adirondacks?

Because this particular house was built on the site of a 9-story Cold War-era Atlas F underground missile launch site – and it’s still there:



Backstory: I was in upstate New York over Christmas break when I read an article in the local paper about a man who had purchased a decommissioned 1960′s missile launch site in 1995, built a few houses and an airstrip on the property, and was now looking to sell it ($750k and it’s yours! click here!), or perhaps lease it for film production use.

I. HAD. TO. SEE. THIS. PLACE.

I immediately contacted the owners, who graciously provided me with a tour which I am thrilled to present below.

Läckra bilder från någon rysk anläggning (raket?) som jag inte har någon aning om vad den gör. Eller snarare gjorde.

Girocam: One click, one 360° photo

Girocam is a little revolution unto itself: It’s the first camera that let’s you take 360° shots completely automatically. The dream of many of us is now a reality: to create 360° panoramas and virtual tours very quickly while maintaining fine photographic quality. With three fisheye lenses and three sensors of ten megapixels each, Girocam takes three photos in just one click, allowing it to cover a field of 360°x150°. The completely automated stitching is done by included Kolor Girocam Studio software; it was developed by Kolor and is based on the same state of the art algorithms as those used in Autopano, the world benchmark for image stitching software. With the Panotour Pro software (optional), finally turn your shots into interactive virtual tours and publish them to the web.

Glif+ is a deluxe Glif package. It contains the Glif, the Serif, and the Ligature. The Serif is an additional piece that is designed to keep your iPhone incredibly secure on the tripod. While the Glif is great for normal use, the Serif will keep your phone safe in more extreme situations. And, when you are not using the Serif, it fits snuggly inside the Glif, making it very compact.

Additionally, Glif+ comes with the Ligature, a simple keyring loop that attaches to the tripod thread on the Glif. Now, you'll have a way to always keep your Glif handy, by attaching it to your keychain, backpack, purse, or anything, really.

And to top it all off, the Glif+ packaging transforms into a little tripod. So, in a pinch, it's there if you need it. Cute.

I'm a bit of a shutterbug, so Photo Stream is something I was really interested in when it was announced as part of iOS 5's feature set way back in June. Frictionless, automated sending of photos from my phone to my computer? Sign me up!

Of course, as is too often the case with Apple, the nitty gritty of how this would work wasn't explained in any detail -- particularly for Aperture, which often takes a back seat to iPhoto when Apple is showing off its apps.

Hopefully, this article will answer all your questions about how these two products interact. If not, please leave a comment pointing out what I've overlooked.

Before we start, some basic housekeeping. Photo Stream isn't going to appear in your Aperture at all if you don't first upgrade to v3.2. You'll also need OS X 10.7.2 or later, and iOS 5 on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you've done all that, you're all set.

If you're a working photographer using a Nikon digital SLR now, chances are the announcement of the J1 and V1 in September caught your attention briefly, you grumbled that the system wasn't built around a much bigger image sensor or wasn't more pro-oriented, and then you returned to wondering when the company will issue replacements for cameras like the D700 and D3S.

Admittedly, my reaction was along those lines as well. While I admired the boldness of Nikon's move to create a new-from-the-ground-up camera system, I didn't see it as doing much for my own photography. That is, until I tried out the cameras and accompanying lenses. After a few weeks of shooting with Nikon 1 system gear, almost exclusively in my off-duty role as parent to two active boys, I've gone from being nonplussed about to singing the praises of Nikon's newest wares.

The responsiveness of the camera and its capable autofocus, the good-looking pictures that come from its comparatively small sensor and the optical sweetness of the tiny 1 Nikkor lenses, these and other positive Nikon 1 attributes have left me impressed. It's not a perfect system by any means, but for certain types of photography, ones that favour portability without sacrificing too much performance, Nikon 1 rocks.

It's official: at long last, my weekend carry-about camera has arrived and it's called the V1.

Heinz Maier's amazing waterdrops photos

Heinz Maier recently started photographing last year. His main interest is in macro photography, specifically water drops (featured here) and insects. Maier is based in Leinzell, Germany.

Basically you want to simulate the shallow depth of field you would get when photographing small objects. This can be done either with lens with tilt function (i.e. special purpose lens called either a tilt-shift or perspective control lens) or by selectively blurring an image in post.

It's not hard to do, but there is something you need to ensure in the original capture, and that is a high vantage point. This is a must, not only are most miniatures shot from above, but you need a steadily progressing depth from top to bottom. This is especially true when using a tilt-shift lens as your only option is a gradually increasing blur, it's possible to fake shallow depth of field from a ground level image but you would have to do an awful lot of very difficult masking if the furthest part of your scene is in the centre of the image, and the result wont look as good anyway.

Here's a walkthrough of one of these I produced for the University of York magazine. Here's the original image (actually part of a panorama) shot from the back of a tower crane!

1: Which Comes First, the Background or the Subject?
I get asked this one all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not a definite answer one way or the other. For me, I’d say that 75% of the time the subject usually comes first. Give me someone interesting to photograph, and I’ll find a fitting background for them. Most of the time, I don’t even know what that background is before I photograph the person. The other 25% of the time, I’ll have a background specifically in mind before the photo shoot. I’ll photograph the person in a way that I know will work for the background. Some times, I’ll even try a quick composite in Photoshop while they’re still in the studio.

This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

This is only small part of my underwater work at the White Sea Biological Station. When I went underwater for the first time I was absolutely shocked. White Sea showed me another world with it's own aliens, and some of them were really amazing creatures. And... here they are: 

Do you love your camera so much that people tell you to marry it? Or does that stop happening after 3rd grade? Either way, if you really love your DSLR, you should put a ring on it. (Beyonce, your wisdom knows no bounds.)

The Ring Flash Adapter is a reflective circle that attaches to the front of your external flash. It requires no batteries or cords because it uses the flash you already have.

Not only does this give your photos a soft, even glow, but it also gives you a studio quality look without a myriad of expensive and difficult equipment.

In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city's painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America

When taking photos on the move, sometimes it pays to have photo editing apps. After all, you’re not going to tweet that picture without a bit of increased contrast, or brightness – right? It’s a well-known fact nowadays that the majority of photos we see on the web have being edited in some way in a graphics package such as Adobe Photoshop. But what if you can’t get to your computer and need reliable and feature filled editing applications on the move?
Being a keen photographer and designer, I thought it’d be fun to give you my low-down on the photo editing apps I personally think you should have on your phone. I’ll explain why I think you should have them, and what features and benefits I like most about each application. Here we go!

Just wanted to do a review of PhotoForge. Being a professional photographer it would be really cool to tweak the images I take with my iPhone. Up until recently I was using a couple apps for this. PhotoGene, Camerabag, and CoolFX. These apps are somewhat different in what they offer. I won't get into those, but I was using PhotoGene for my main image editing.

In comes PhotoForge. Long story short, it's now my favorite image editing app on the iPhone!!! It rocks! It offers so many of the options I would expect to be able to do on my desktop. Being a Lightroom and Photoshop user you get use to specific types of controls to edit your images.

I'm going to touch on the things I like about this app, the image editing mainly. I won't review ALL aspects of it. I don't really need or use the brushes, clone stamp, etc, but it's really cool they are there.

En fin samling tips kring digital bildbehandling och fotografering. Mycket matnyttigt att läsa.

En mycket bra samling "tutorials" kring digital fotografering och bildbehandling. T.ex. hur man använder nivåer och kurvor i Photoshop, men även grundläggande om färglära, vitbalans och mycket annat.

DP Review har intervjuat en kille som avkodad alla tillverkares varianter av RAW-format genom "reverse engineering", angående debatten kring Nikons kryptering av vitbalans