Mobile Photography

First, I'd like to start this article off with a little bit of a warning. This post is primarily aimed at people just starting to get into photography or people just beginning to make the jump from hobbyist to professional. That said, hopefully there's something below that can be appreciated by photographers of all levels.

fter experimenting a little bit — and by experimenting I mean desaturating the heck out of everything or filtering through any Lightroom preset I could find (yes, I was young, dumb, and very naive) — I wasn’t pleased with my results. Simply put, nothing felt right.

Working in concert with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, photographer Patrick Gries has put together a book/photo series packed full of striking black and white photographs of vertebrate skeletons — from tiny creatures to massive mammoths, his book Evolution covers a vast swath of vertebrate natural history.

In all, the book consists of 300 of these white on black skeletal photographs that took Gries six full months to shoot. The photos represent a coming together of art and science: even as the book chronicles millions of years of evolution, each individual photo is masterfully taken, with the skeletons arranged in poses that breathe life back into the bones.

I’ve been shooting photos for 20 years. I’ve made my living in the profession for the last 15. I can count on one hand the number of times that everything lines up perfectly and a truly rare image was created.

Now, I don’t want to toot my own horn about this shot, but the fact that, during a 30 second exposure, after a 10 second timer (during which I hopped down from the roof of my truck where the camera was on a tripod, and joined the scene by the fire), a meteor (or so they tell us) would enter the sky EXACTLY in the corner of the frame and explode in the very part of the frame that needed balance, just as I had finally worked out the correct exposure and lighting to match the foreground with the night sky, is beyond rare. It’s a non-chance. There is no way to plan for something like this. No way to even hope for it.

But lest you get the impression that I’m subscribing to a lifestyle of reliance on freakish luck, there is a deeper game at play here. Namely this: If you shoot enough arrows, eventually you’ll pull a Robin Hood and split the arrow that was already a bulls-eye. When I took this shot, it was the final day of my project shooting fall landscapes in the American West. Five weeks previous, I had left Seattle in my truck with no mission beyond creating and sharing beautiful photography as I chased good weather almost all the way to the Mexican border.

Every morning, I was up shooting the sunrise. Every night, I was posted up somewhere scenic to shoot the close of another day in the great outdoors. From the Olympic rain forest to the Tetons, Yosemite to Zion, I was on an epic hunt. And, to be perfectly honest with you, toward the end of the trip, despite the thousands of images taken, and the extremely enthusiastic feedback from the world at large, I was disappointed that I hadn’t captured a single transcendent image; an image that would make me want to burn my camera, a la Jimmy Hendrix.

Everyone has their own reasons for taking pictures. All valid. But even so, photography is the world’s universal language. No need for translation. 

To Be Creative. Since it's inception photography has engaged some of the most creative minds. And some of the most bizarre, too. And although it was under pressure in the early years to justify itself as an art form, most museums today have photography collections and understand its historic and aesthetic contributions. Social networking sites like PicsArt, Facebook, and Instagram have opened up new opportunities to showcase

To document

There are not many truly creative photographs being made. Most people just want to capture moments of their new baby, wedding, graduation, gathering, party, “selfie”, etc. Photography serves as the easiest and most convenient way to remember. You do not have to know how to spell RAW or PhotoShop to get competent results.

To be trendy

Photography has been popular since Kodak made it easy. But the digital revolution has made it accessible for all. The cameras are simpler, cheaper. More pictures are taken with cell phones than all cameras. It is a universal hobby. Anybody can do it. Even hipsters.

To tell stories

It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional or an amateur. You don’t need formal training. But we can most accurately tell the big and little stories of our own lives, of those surrounding us and of those far away. The more we know about each other, the more we see, the better we understand and cope.

Back in July, we told you about a heartwarming Skype campaign called "Stay Together." Inspired by photographer John Clang's viral photo series Being Together, the company got in touch with Clang to see if he would help them create a campaign/contest, the winnter of which would be reunited with their distant friend or relative.

For months, people from all over the world sent in their stories and many of them won the opportunity to have Clang come take an “impossible family portrait” for them using Skype and a projector. But those were just the finalists… one of them would win an all-expenses-paid trip and be reunited with the other people in their portrait.

Many people submitted their stories to this contest, but once you hear theirs, you’ll understand why Sarah and Paige’s story stood out from the crowd.

Both were born with only one arm, their mothers finding each other online as a means of support even before they were born. The families eventually lost touch, but at 8 years old, Sarah sought Paige out and the two have been digitally inseparable ever since. We say digitally because they’ve actually never met in person — until Skype intervened, that is.

In 2009, photographer Hannah Price made a cross-country move from Colorado to Philadelphia, and along with the inevitable change of scenery came a different, more surprising change: for the first time in her life she started having men catcall her on the street. 

Being a photographer, she didn’t react the same way most women might. Instead, she began turning her camera on these men, birthing the now-viral photo series City of Brotherly Love.

Her series really took off a couple of weeks ago after an interview with The Morning News, which was followed by a whirlwind of press and social media attention that wreaked havoc on her website and spread these photos around the world many times over.

Reactions to the series have varied widely, as some blogs incorrectly published the photos under the title “My Harassers,” implying that Price was calling for action against catcalling in general. That, she says, is not the point. The series was more about presenting a different way of dealing with this particular situation — one that turned the tables on these men.

“Just turning the photograph on them kind of gives them a feel of what it’s like to be in a vulnerable position — it’s just a different dynamic,” Price tells NPR. “But it’s just another way of dealing with the experience, of trying to understand it.”

She even includes two photos that have nobody in them, non-portraits that symbolize “how I would like to be approached,” and lend ambiguity to the series as a whole.

In this week's PicTapFeatured, Megan Jaeger captures the beautiful and intimate moments of her family life. Utilizing deep shadows and hard light, Megan creates some incredibly dramatic images.

What does mobile photography mean to you?

Being able to capture life easily and beautifully with the use of my iPhone, has made it possible for me to not “pack the heat” aka my monster size DSLR in my purse everyday. I captured every smile and thrill during our family Disney World trip this Summer with my iPhone and I didn’t even have to fret that my DSLR would be stolen or break during a ride. Go to the beach and feel confident that the sun, sand and Ocean would not prevent me from documenting my children’s memories. The fact is that mobile photography has been so liberating, that I didn’t even pick up that big camera of mine all Summer.

When we first covered Brandon Stanton and his Humans of New York project almost a year and a half ago, he had accumulated about 3,000 portraits of people from around New York City. Now that number has grown to over 5,000, and the blog that started it all has birthed a book and the kind of viral fame the Internet it known for.

Fortunately, this isn’t the kind of viral fame that comes with posting a video of a cute cat doing a silly thing, Stanton’s project has inspired many thousands of people by shedding light on the sometimes extraordinary, sometimes touching and sometimes tragic stories of normal people.

In the video above, Mashable got a chance to follow Stanton around on the street as he interacts with the people whose photo he’s taking, while also interviewing him briefly to get his thoughts on the project and what it has evolved into.

On June 7th, 2007, a Delta II rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California, carrying with it the Italian Thales Alenia-Space COSMO-SkyMed Satellite. And while the rocket was careening towards space, Staff Sgt. Eric Thompson (who was moving in the decidedly opposite direction) managed to snap this amazing photo.

At the time, Staff Sgt. Thompson was the instructor with the 532nd Training Squadron based out of Vandenberg. Knowing full well that a rocket launch was going to be happening on June 7th, he planned his skydive to coincide.

In his photo series The Square, Korean artist Seokmin Ko throws a small glitch into reality. In every photo, someone can be seen holding a mirror that obscures everything but their hands wrapped around the edges, in a couple of cases blending them into the surroundings so well that it’s hard to see were they are.

The series is about camouflage, in both the symbolic and literal sense. The literal is obvious: the mirror is hiding the holder by reflecting his or her surroundings. Symbolically, however, this represents what peer pressure often drives us towards in social situations: an attempt to reflect our surroundings to the best of our abilities.

This leaves only “a distorted image,” the only proof that an individual exists behind the reflection being that small finger curling around the edge of the mirror.

When it comes to high-speed liquid photography, you'd be hard-pressed to find more than one or two people the world over who can match illustrator Alberto Seveso. Last year we featured two of his projects: a surreal set of photos that mixed portraits with ink, and the awesome "Ink Riders" series of LEGo men surfing on ink.

To create these photographs, Seveso dropped ink mixtures into a container of oil, photographing them at high-speed and flipping the resulting photographs upside down. What you get in the end is a set of ethereal ink droplets seemingly defying gravity and reaching towards the sky.

Parents Refe and Susan Tuma aren't big on Movember, at their house November is reserved for a different tradition: Dinovember. Documented in photos on the project's Facebook page, the Tumas spend November keeping their kids' imaginations alive by convincing them that every night, their dinosaur toys come to life and get into all sorts of trouble.

The tradition started last year, and their Facebook page now boasts almost 250K followers who love to see what the dinos got into last night.

At it's most basic level, Dinovember is a whimsical photo series that makes for a fun way to spend November, but the Tumas are quick to point out that the point of the experiment goes beyond that.

Yuri Acurs, the world's top-selling microstock photographer, will go to great lengths to prove he's right, and the video above is a great case in point for that. He wanted to prove that he could flash freeze a fighter jet at full speed, and he got that shot. ALl he needed was appromimately 30,000Wof filll flash... no big deal.

For those unfamiliar with how studio lighting usually works, 30,000W is as much as 100 times more flash than you're going to typically use in a regular studio setting. So muh flash power being thrown at this jet that the people on the ground can actully feel the heat from the lights.

Apparently, the project started as "A heated in-house discussion about flash speeds [and] ended up becoming a rather BIGGGG experiment..." An experiment that ended with Acurs getting his shot and proving his point.

Wherever you stand on the idea of having children, one of the advantages seems to be the infinite photographic possibilities opened up by having a cute child at your disposal. Whether you're talking Photoshop trickery or just watching them grow up, we've seen plenty of creative and adorable photos and videos come out of the photographic parent/photogentic child relationship.

One incredible creative example that is currently making the rounds on the Internet is mother and photographer Queenie Liao's series Wenngenn in Wonderland.

This series is based around Liao's adorable baby boy Wenngenn and his daily naptime. While others might take their child's naptime as an opportunity to take a small break of their own, Liao instead creates beautiful dreamland scenes around her sleeping boy using household items.

Earlier today we published our post – 25 Images with Shadows – which we hope gave you a little inspiration. Now it is your turn.

Stephen Alvarez is an award-winning photojournalist, travel photographer and filmmaker who has been working for National Geographic magazine since 1995.

Recently National Geographic teamed up with mobile phone maker Nokia to send Alvarez on a trek across the American West, covering thousands of miles, with the new Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone camera.

The Lumia 1020 is surprisingly DLSR like in its results. I shot a 3 page gatefold ad in the October issue of National Geographic magazine with the phone. That fact still astounds me!  You can use the phone in total automatic mode and get great results or you can do what I did and use the Nokia Pro Cam app to get great control over the image.

It strikes me that I did not have to learn anything new to use the camera. The interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. Results of settings changes appear live on the back of the camera before you take the photo so you can see what you are getting.

At times, wildlife photographers have to show an incredible amount of patience to get the perfect shot. Wild animals (much like humans, actually) rarely do exactly what you want them to, and when they do, you and your camera have to be prepared.

But still, how long could you possibly have to wait? Hours? Days? Weeks maybe? For Nat Geo photographer Steve Winter — who was chasing the perfect shot of a Mountain Lion with the lights of Los Angeles in the background — that patience had to extend a full year.

If you’re wondering why it took so long, one of the reasons might be that there is only one mountain lion in the world that lives in a place that would make this photo possible. The elusive cougar, named P-22, is a 125-pound 4-year-old that has quite miraculously made his home in Griffith Park, where researchers caught and tagged him.

To get this shot, he set up several IR-triggered DSLRs in special housings. The cameras would go off and trigger a flash when they sensed movement.

Yesterday, our own Alan Steadman shared some advice. He told you to go out and explore, to travel, to see the world and meet new people so that those experiences could inform the stories you tell when you're working behind the camera. 

Well, if you were looking for a shining example to go with those words, look no further than photographer, writer and cyclist Rob Lutter, then man who is currently 15,000km (about 9,300 miles) into a 40,000km (about 25,000 miles) photographic journey around the world.

When it came to documenting this trip, Lutter (who is a photographer and writer when he’s not on his bike) made sure to bring along his trusty Canon 5D. And so, since the moment two years ago when he set out from London, every step of the way has been recorded with stunning pictures he’s uploaded to his website, The LifeCycle.

What happens when you give a bunch of skaters, some photographers and a light painter free reign to create a Street View tour of a French concert venue/cultural hotspot? We'll give you a hint, it's similar to what a Frnech ski shop did for its virtual tour.

The business in question is La Bifurk in Grenoble, France, and when you take Street View into their humble establishment, you'll find all manner of light-painting shenanigans going on.

Unlike the ski shop, it seems this project was actually authorized by Google itself. Photographers Damien Leleux and Nicolas Bernard of Odoxo were given leave to work with light painter Jadikan and shoot as creative a virtual tour as they would like.