Google Glass is set to arrive in the hands of the general public later this year. There are already apps that can trigger the shutter by detecting winks, and some people are already thinking of how the wearable camera can be useful for various photographic applications.

Having always-ready glasses strapped to your face may be convenient, but how will photography look? The video above by Grovo offers a humorous look at what photographers would look like if Google Glass becomes widely used as a camera and camcorder.

In the video’s description, Grovo writes:

Here’s someone you’ll be seeing in a few months: the Google Glass photographer. Nature shots, concerts, time-lapse videos, weddings… the Google Glass photographer does it all.

Here’s what shooting a macro photograph of a flower would look like:

Want to capture some footage of the front of a car?

How about a closeup view of your friend’s hands as he plays the piano?

Engagement photographs could quickly become awkward:

Google Glass cameras don’t have any kind of zoom (no digital and no optical). If you want to follow Capa’s words of wisdom — “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” — you might need to look a bit silly in the process.

(via GoGrovo via SLR Lounge)

Google I/O brought with it a lot of exciting updates for Google+, not the least of which were a slew of automatic improvements to Google+ Photos including Auto Highlight, Auto Enhance and Auto Awesome. But the updates didn’t stop when I/O ended last Friday.

Today, Google’s Search blog announced that the company has started implementing some impressive technology that will allow you to search for your photos based on what they contain visually, even if there’s not a tag in sight.

This new ability is apparently based on two types of tech: “computer vision and machine learning.” Together, these will recognize not people, but things in your and your friends’ photos, allowing you to search for those photos visually.

For example, you could type in “my photos,” “my photos of cars,” “sunset photos” (above) or even “Aaron Feinberg photos” and get tailored results (assuming you’re friends with photographer Aaron Feinberg on Google+):

Basically, Google can now recognize concepts like “sunsets,” “flowers,” and “the beach,” and embed that info into image metadata automatically. That way, you can find the right photo easily, even if it’s buried somewhere deep within your archives and hasn’t been tagged.

With the amount of photo uploads increasing daily, and some Google Glass-toting photographers claiming that they’re taking many more photos each day just because of how convenient the headgear is, the ability to dig through photos based on content is here not a moment too soon.

To learn more, head over to Google’s Search blog or visit Google and/or Google+ to give the new search functionality a try yourself.

(via Engadget)

High-end DSLRs by major camera manufacturers are made to be durable. After all, photographers find themselves in all kinds of environments documenting all kinds of subjects, so their cameras need to have serious protection against accidents and the elements.

Ruggedness is often a characteristic that’s touted in new camera announcements, but exactly how rugged are flagship DSLRs? French Nikon photographer site Pixelistes recently decided to find out by torture testing a Nikon D3s.

By “torture,” we mean subjecting the D3s to the far end of the abuse spectrum. The camera they tested went through all kinds of extreme situations that normal cameras likely never see.

First off, they snapped photographs with the camera while standing in a shower:

They then tested the camera against mud and shocks, dropping the camera (attached to a tripod) into a muddy puddle and onto a hard dirt path:

As if that weren’t enough, they decided to immerse the camera in a container of water and freeze it into a solid chunk of ice…

…and then burn the camera in a pile of paper:

What’s amazing is that the camera did indeed survive all the durability testing. It emerged unscathed, and appears to be functioning just fine.

Here’s the entire 15-minute video showing the various tests. It’s in French, but you’ll get the gist just by watching what happens:

(via Pixelistes via Nikon Rumors)

Last month we shared some photo illustrations by science artist Ron Miller that showed what the night sky would look like if other planets in our solar system replaced the moon. Now Miller is back again with an equally interesting concept: what would landscape photos look like if Earth had a ring like Saturn’s?

It’s nice having a moon, but “for spectacular skies it might almost be worth trading in our moon for a ring like Saturn’s,” Miller says.

His illustrations show a ring that is in the same proportion to our planet as Saturn’s are to it. They show the different views people on the ground would see depending on where they live.

From the equator, the rings would pass directly overhead and show up as a thin, bright line in the sky, “arching from horizon to horizon.” Here’s what a photograph of Quito, Ecuador would look like at night:

From Guatemala, the rings become much more visible in the sky. The moon may be brighter in the sky due to additional light being reflected onto it from the Earth:

In Polynesia, the Earth would cast a shadow on the ring, causing a dark gap in the middle. Each night this gap would sweep across the ring:

From Washington, DC, the rings would “dominate” the sky both during the day and at night:

At the Arctic Circle, you’d only be able to see the very edges of the rings:

If you feel like you’ve seen the title of this article before, you’re not mistaken: we shared a similar post back in 2012 in the form of a video. Be sure to check that post out too if you found these concept illustrations interesting.

Thanks for sending in the tip Leonardo!

Image credits: Illustrations by Ron Miller and used with permission

Remember that 50-gigapixel camera being developed by Duke University scientists? Since we reported on the project last year, researchers have created a spin-off company called Aqueti for bringing the technology “into the world for everyone to experience.” The camera they’ve developed will soon be making public tours, and we’re starting to get a peek at what it’s capable of.

Team member (and PetaPixel reader) Scott McCain tells us that they used their prototype Aware2 camera this past weekend to take a picture during Edenton, North Carolina’s 300-year anniversary celebration. With a single exposure, they captured this 300-megapixel photograph of North Carolina’s governor:

The photo is embedded as an interactive, zoomable image, so feel free to dive into it to enjoy the camera’s crazy resolution. (You’ll notice that the team also embedded a couple of other shots they snapped over the course of the day.)

Unlike traditional gigapixel cameras, which use panning robotic camera heads to capture hundreds or thousands of photos, the Aware2 camera captures all of its images in a single snap. This makes it possible to capture gigapixel photographs of single moments containing movement — scenes that are difficult (or impossible) to capture using traditional gigapixel technologies.

Here are a couple more uber-high-res photos captured using the Aware2 prototype:

The secret behind the Aware2 is that it uses 160 individual microcameras that each have a 14-megapixel sensor. Thus, each snap captures 2.24 gigapixels of raw photographs. These images are then stitched together into a smaller ~1 gigapixel photo measuring 55,000×18,000 pixels. (The prototype photos seen above are smaller than this.)

These gigapixel photos have a panoramic field of view that’s similar to the human eye, yet you can zoom into them with the power of a large telephoto lens. The team is still working on improving the exposure and focus abilities of the camera, but claim that the current quality is roughly comparable to consumer DSLRs.

A 100% crop from the Aware2 camera (left) and a 100% crop from a Nikon D60 (right)

Here’s a prototype camera that the team recently showed off at a local farmers market. A new iteration of the camera this summer will be 1/3 of the size of this one:

Aqueti is planning to take the camera on a tour of North Carolina this summer and is currently raising funds through Kickstarter to make it happen. Next year the company is planning to drive the costs down to make the camera available to a wider audience.

The price point of the camera right now is quite high — McCain compares it to a TV broadcast camera — so it’ll likely be something that’s rented out for special purposes and events rather than something you’ll be able to keep on your shelf.

You can find out more about the camera and the campaign over on the Aqueti website.

There’s no shortage of interesting work coming from Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun of Seoul, South Korea. Yesterday we posted an interesting body of work that employed the use of computer algorithms to detect facial structures in the clouds above. The duo has another project that caught our eye: one that shares a representation of the four seasons — with a twist.

Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun have gone about an interesting method of combining a million images to create just one representation of a season. The project, not surprisingly called ‘A Million Seasons,’ involved the collection of one million photos tagged with spring, summer, autumn, and winter on Flickr.

Color Averaging Process

Each of those pictures was then converted to one pixel, with the color of that pixel representing the average color of the image collected. The final result? One image, composed of one million pixels, that represent each of the seasons.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Differentiating the Spring and Summer picture may be tricky, but you can clearly see the differences between the Autumn’s orange-and-red and Winter’s lighter colors.

You can view more of Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun’s work on Shinseungback Kimyonghun.

Image credits: Photographs by Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun and used with permission

I am a former kid. I have lived through the trauma of bad photos taken of me by my father. I was not photogenic, and admittedly he had a cheap camera. He had a knack for catching the incredibly awkward moments of childhood in a way that now makes me cringe. If I could go back in time and give my 1970′s dad a few tips on how to take better pictures of me I would.

As a former kid recovering from the trauma of bad photographs, I feel like it is my duty to future kids of the world to give parents and photographers some tips I have learned on how to take some great photos of kids. Or, at the very least, photos that won’t make your kid cringe when they get older.

Two things come to mind after seeing the photo above. First, a big thanks to my dad for timing this perfectly, and second, why am I wearing such horribly dirty T-Shirts in every picture?

Thank you Dad for this picture of me in prison pajamas pointing at a location somewhere in Michigan.

At least now I know that those feelings of complete teen awkwardness were not just in my mind.

Dad liked to snap blurry pictures of us posing in front of trash cans. I am actually a little thankful for the fact this shot was out of focus.

Photographing Kids is Not Difficult

I’ve heard people say that taking photographs of kids is one of the hardest types of photography to master. I’d have to disagree; in fact, I think that photographing kids is just about the easiest thing you could do with your camera.

You don’t have to use lights. You don’t have to make them pose. You don’t have to explain what looks good and you definitely don’t have to worry that they are self conscious. You just pick up the camera and shoot. It’s simple.

Chasing Cuteness

I actually have a term for photographing kids. I call it “chasing cuteness,” and I think it’s exactly what kids photography is all about. My general rule of thumb with photographing kids is to put them in the right place where the light is good, give them a prop or a situation to deal with, and then fire away.

I run around. I get on the ground. And I shoot. I shoot a lot of pictures. Getting a good photograph of kids is about chasing the cute things they do and (hopefully) capturing those cute things on camera. In short, you have to really match your own energy level with the energy level of kids (which is extraordinarily high).

I come from a huge family — 12 brothers and sisters, and it just gets bigger. I think at last count I have over 20 nieces and nephews, so I get an endless amount of practice in taking pictures of kids. I wanted to give my list of the top 10 techniques that I have learned through trial and error on how to get the best shots of kids. These are techniques and approaches that I use every time I pick up the camera.

1. Get Out of the Studio

Here is the good news. You don’t need to have a fancy studio setup to take awesome pictures of kids. In fact, you are better off if you get out of the studio and get into their natural element. You only need 1 studio shot a year of your kids and I consider that their school photos. Get outside. Go in their room. Go anywhere to take kid shots – just not in a studio.

2. Get on the Ground

If you read any tips on photographing kids, this is the most common thing you will see, and that’s because it is true. If you’re not cutting your eye level view down to under 2 or 3 feet, then you’re not capturing the kids in the way that they see the world. When I shoot kids, I am sitting, and often times I’m laying on the ground even lower than them.

She’s under the bed hiding. I could only get this shot by laying down under the bed too.

3. Create a Situation, Then Watch What Unfolds

Kids are unpredictable in a predictable sort of way. Sure they can do anything at any moment, but if you put a bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of them without a spoon, what do you think will happen? My prediction is that you will end up with some hilarious shots of your kid with ice cream all over their face.

This is my favorite of all techniques. I try to come up with creative situations that will later tell a story about what is important to that kid. If they love to watch mom put on makeup, then I give them a mirror and some makeup brushes and create a situation where I am almost always guaranteed a great shot.

We gave this little boy in Vietnam a kitten to play with and ended up with some great shots:

4. Use a Fisheye Lens

If you’re going to take a lot of pictures of kids, invest in a fisheye lens. Not only can you capture a wide scene of whats going on, but you can capture the mood of what it’s like to be a kid — everything is slightly larger than life.

I like to use a technique called the Jarvie Window. It’s a great technique to use at kids parties and can be a lot of fun.

Using a fisheye lens lets you capture the energy of kids and is also wide enough to capture all of the chaos.

5. Machine Gun Shoot

A lot of people don’t like it but with kids you have to do it or you will miss the best moments. Put your camera on high speed mode and shoot. The average adult will blink 25 times a minute. The average kid will change their facial expressions dramatically almost as often, so you have to machine gun shoot to get the cutest shots. Sure you end up throwing out a lot of the shots, but there are those golden gems that are priceless that you could not get without employing this technique.

All these pictures were taken in a span of about 30 seconds. She went through all the human emotions in that short period of time.

6. Let Them See Your Picture, and Perhaps Take a Couple

Kids love to see pictures of themselves. If you’re stalling out in taking cool pictures of kids, show them your viewfinder and what you have come up with and I guarantee they are going to come up with a bunch of new ideas for you.

Of course, you can also give them the camera and take some cute pictures of them trying to take pictures. That works too.

7. Put Them in Big Stuff

Kids pretending to be adults is a sure fire way for cuteness. I like to put big shoes on kids (like their parent’s shoes) and take pictures. You can also give them their parent’s guitar, or put them on their parent’s drum set. Whatever you can do to put the kids in a situation where they are acting like their parents in a cute way works pretty well.

8. Don’t Say No

Half of why photographing kids is so cool is because their imaginations and their creativity is way beyond our adult minds. I usually come into a situation in which I am photographing kids with my own notion of what I want to capture, and it is almost never what I end up doing.

My rule of thumb is to pretty much never say “no” to a kid about their ideas. Most of them are good. No, in fact most of them are great. Just let them run with their ideas and you will probably be much happier with the result.

Let a kid be awesome without saying no to whatever silly thing they come up with in their mind.

9. Get a Helper Behind You

Kids have short attention spans and sometimes you need someone to help you keep them in one place long enough for you to shoot something spectacular. One technique that I like to use is to have a helper behind me who can coax the kids into doing cute things. The benefit of having a helper behind you while shooting is that you can get the kids to appear to be looking straight into the camera for some great shots.

We were able to get her to make some incredibly cute poses by showing her what to do. I could not have done this alone.

10. Don’t Stop Shooting When They Cry

When I am taking pictures of kids and they start crying, my first instinct is to stop shooting. I guess in my mind I have been programmed to believe that all pictures should be happy. A while ago, I started ignoring those instincts and just kept the camera going. I find that these shots are often just as good as any others. It’s part of growing up and its part of who kids are so I just try to capture it as it happens.

He was crying because he was afraid of a fish. Now he has a good picture and story to tell when he is older.

Anyone can take great kid photos with patience and energy. The great thing about photographing kids is that just about anyone with enough energy and patience can capture some pretty good kid photos. You don’t need an extraordinary camera. You don’t need to have expensive lighting. You don’t even need to understand all those complicated buttons on your camera. Just make sure you have good lighting and an interesting situation, then go and chase the cuteness down.

About the author: Frank McKenna is an amateur photographer based in La Jolla, California. You can find him on his blog, 500px, Tumblr, and Google+. This article originally appeared here.

Photographer Rob Whitworth has created a number of beautiful time-lapse videos that have received huge numbers of views online. This past April, Whitworth had the opportunity to take his skills to the city of Da Nang, Vietnam to document the Danang International Fireworks Competition 2013, one of the world’s “biggest and best” firework contests.

The video above documents the two nights on which the competition was held, and it also includes some glimpses of the day in between. There were 3 firework displays on the first night and 2 displays on the second. Leading firework makers from around the world — or more specifically, the US, Russian, Japan, Italy, and Vietnam — showed off their latest and greatest fireworks in the skies above the Han River.

On the third night of the competition, the winning team is awarded the DIFC Trophy. This year it was the team from the United States that took home the prize.

Here is a selection of the long-exposure photographs captured by Whitworth (these are the images that went into making the time-lapse video seen above):

You can find more of Whitworth’s photography and time-lapse work over on his website.

What’s cooler than a multi-cell pinhole camera? How about a multi-cell pinhole camera upgraded to a lensed version? That’s exactly what James Guerin has put together as a follow-up to a previous lens-less camera experiment.

“When I saw the effects I could achieve with the pinhole multi-cell I decided to go and build a lensed version. I thought that the in focus and blurred areas would add another dimension and open up a world of original portraits,” says Guerin.

Simultaneously, the camera shoots twenty images with twenty lenses in twenty compartments. That’s a whole lot of twenties!

The added lenses (made of cheap plastic double convex) feature a focal length of 150mm, which are arranged in a grid, according to Guerin. “Due to the nested box design concertina style focusing is possible from a distance of 300mm (where 1:1 magnification is achieved) to approximately 550mm (overlapping of cells occurs).”

Guerin says that “accurate focusing is achieved with the aid of a simple ‘ground glass’  (perspex and scotch tape) and the shutter is a simple sliding plate.”

“I vary the aperture by placing custom ‘aperture plates’ that slide in front of the lenses. Of course the aperture changes depending on the focus draw, therefore I calculate my aperture for each shot by dividing the distance from lens to film by the diameter of my aperture disc (simple steel washers).”

Camera-to-subject distance of 300mm yields 1:1 magnification, thus a “normal” picture, but longer distances produce rather interesting effects.

Guerin says that most of the pictures he’s taken on the camera so far have been on photographic paper. He hopes to shoot portraits using 8×10 x-ray film in the near future.

Image credits: Photographs by James Guerin and used with permission

The iPad mini and the Mac mini. Those are two “minified” products Apple has released to give its customers a choice for products that are cheaper and more portable. It appears Leica is planning to take a page from Apple’s playbook.

The camera company’s website has begun teasing a new Leica Mini M, a camera that will presumably be a smaller (and possibly cheaper) version of the Leica M flagship digital rangefinder.

Leica’s website currently features the teaser

The teaser shows a lineup of Leica digital cameras in order from most “pro” to most portable. It shows the Leica M, the Leica X2 Micro M, and the Leica D-LUX 6 Nanon M. In between the M and the X2 is a mysterious black box with the label “? MINI M.”

Leica says it’ll be unveiling “the new Leica family member” on June 11, 2013. If you want to be the first to know about the camera, you can sign up for Leica’s newsletter on the Leica Mini M product page.

Leica Rumors reports that a new camera model that fits between the Leica M and the Leica X has been rumored for years now. The new camera will reportedly be a camera manufactured in Germany that isn’t simply a rebranded Panasonic camera.