Wooden camera portraits by Afghan Photographers

Reminding us that early cameras were photochemical and shutterless, Kabul is home to two lone holdouts who still practice the 75-year-old art of wooden camera photography. Due to a ban on picture-taking by the Taliban, and then an influx of cheap digital cameras, the number of practitioners of kamra-e-faoree has steadily dwindled. But thanks to the Afghan Box Camera Project, the legacy left by these artisans is being preserved -- not least in the video above. Discover how it all works and then leave the faux-vintage to the hipsters. Check out this interesting video.

Source: Engadget

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended Finalized

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended software, major releases of the undisputed standard for professional digital imaging. Packed with new features and enhancements, the software includes groundbreaking innovations and unparalleled performance breakthroughs that expand the frontiers of imaging science, and deliver new levels of creativity and increased efficiency. Photoshop CS6 Extended integrates the state-of-the-art editing, compositing, and graphic design capabilities of Photoshop CS6, as well as advanced tools for 3D design*, image and video editing, and quantitative analysis which address the unique needs of the graphic design, video, Web, architecture, medical, manufacturing and engineering industries.

Photoshop CS6 features include:

• Content-Aware Patch – Allows greater control by letting users choose the sample area used to create a patch.
• Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine – Takes advantage of the graphics processing unit in modern hardware to speed up imaging and editing tasks, and process large images faster.
• New and Re-engineered Design Tools – Type styles enable consistent formatting; vector layers apply strokes and add gradients to vector objects; custom strokes and dashed lines are easily created; quick layers search and more.
• Intuitive Video Creation – The full range of familiar Photoshop tools and an intuitive set of new video tools to create and enhance any video clip.
• Blur Gallery – A simple new interface with on-image and in-context controls allows users to quickly create photographic blur effects including tilt-shift effects, blur everything with one focal point, or vary the blurriness between multiple focal points.

Photoshop CS6 Extended includes all Photoshop CS6 features and:

• Mercury Graphics Engine for 3D – Increased power and speed via engine optimized for 3D imaging.
• New 3D Controls – UI improvements for more efficient 3D workflows.
• New 3D Effects – Reflections and “drag-able” shadows to enhance images.

Source: Canon Rumors

Volcano Tungurahua in Ecuador

The Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador has some of the most amazing, terrifying eruptions in the world. This one, from 2006, shows molten lava streaming down the sides of the mountain while ash spews into the night sky. Volcano Tungurahua sometimes erupts spectacularly. Pictured above, molten rock so hot it glows visibly pours down the sides of the 5,000-meter high Tungurahua, while a cloud of dark ash is seen being ejected toward the left. Wispy white clouds flow around the lava-lit peak, while a star-lit sky shines in the distance. Located in Ecuador, Tungurahua has become active roughly every 90 years for the last 1,300 years

Source: NASA

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography

The National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography spells out the basics of fine photography—whether you are using a digital SLR or a film camera—as well as more advanced techniques for the amateur photographer. From the top twelve color moves to creative gift ideas to quality camera phone photography, this guide will not only inspire you but also arm you with the practical know-how to get great images. It is the indispensable reference for photographers everywhere. Straightforward and entertaining, this is the ultimate source for people seeking real how-to advice from the editors and photographers of National Geographic. It is carefully designed to lead the amateur photographer to better pictures and is comprehensive in scope, explaining the entire process from choosing a camera to taking the pictures to printing, scanning, and archiving the images.

You can view and purchase it here:

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography from Flipkart.com

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography from Amazon

Robert Doisneau – Street Photographer

Robert Doisneau was known for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes. Doisneau's work gives unusual prominence and dignity to children's street culture; returning again and again to the theme of children at play in the city, unfettered by parents. His work treats their play with seriousness and respect. Doisneau worked at Rapho until the outbreak of World War II, whereupon he was drafted into the French army as both a soldier and photographer. Some of Doisneau's most memorable photographs were taken after the war. He returned to freelance photography and sold photographs to Life and other international magazines. He briefly joined the Alliance Photo Agency but rejoined the Rapho agency in 1946 and remained with them throughout his working life, despite receiving an invitation from Henri Cartier-Bresson to join Magnum Photos. His photographs never ridiculed the subjects; thus he refused to photograph women whose heads had been shaved as punishment for sleeping with Germans. In 1950 he created his most recognizable work for Life – Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville), a photo of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris, which became an internationally recognized symbol of young love in Paris.

deviantART– Community of Artists and Art Lovers

If you are an artist, photographer or a designer then here is the online community where you can share your work to gather ideas and get yourself inspired, you can even make money out of your work. There are millions of visitors and this is one place where you can share all your work, all of them for free. Below are some of the features of deviantART.

• Explore over 100 million original works of art.
  
• Exhibit your artwork to an audience of over 12 million members.
  
• Set up a profile, create galleries, and build a fan base.
  
• Communicate, collaborate and learn from artists from over 190 countries.
  
• Make money selling your art in the deviantART Shop.

Visit my deviantART  account http://ravindrajoisa.deviantart.com/
Check out the video below:

Instagram for Photo Sharing

Instagram – A beautiful way to share photos. It's fast, free and fun! 



Pick from one of several gorgeous filtered effects to breathe a new life into your mobile photos. Transform everyday moments into works of art you'll want to share with friends and family.



Share your photos in a simple photo stream with friends to see - and follow your friends' photos with the click of a single button. Every day you open up Instagram, you'll see new photos from your closest friends, and creative people from around the world.



Features
:

☆ 100% free custom designed filters and borders
☆ Lux works its magic by making your photos more vibrant and brings out details in your photos you couldn't see before
☆ Instant sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare (Flickr coming very soon)
☆ Interact with friends through giving & receiving likes and comments
☆ Works with Android versions 2.2 and above that support OpenGL ES 2
☆ Full front & back camera support

☆ And much much more.

Update: Facebook acquires Instagram

Download from your App Store today.

Source: Google Play

Christian Ziegler - National Geographic Photographer

Christian Ziegler, a tropical biologist turned photojournalist, specializing in tropical ecosystems has worked extensively in rain forests around the world  for  the last 15 years. Several research projects and his fascination for nature photography brought him to the tropical forests of Asia, Africa and Central America during his studies. Christian lived in Thailand where he worked as a free lance photographer for the WWF (World Wide Found for Nature). The year after Christian spent four months in the Ivory Cost of West Africa visiting both the Savannah and the rain forest. Since 1998, Christian has been working primarily in Panama, on Barro Colorado Island, a field station of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). After finishing his graduate work in 2000, his focus changed solely to the field of nature photography and journalism. He spent 15 month of fieldwork doing the photography for his picture book on the ecology of tropical rain forest “A magic Web”, which was published by Oxford University Press in November 2002.
In April 2002 Christian was appointed ‘associate for communication’ by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Over the years Christian won several international recognized awards, such as the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year (category 'behavior of all other animals' in 2005). He has completed dozens of magazine assignments, 8 of them for National Geographic Magazine covering topics ranging from ocelots ,tree frogs and monkeys to bats, deception in animals, visitors to a flowering rain forest tree, and orchids. Christian is interested in showing species in their ecosystem context, and sharing interesting behaviors. Christians work is published internationally in magazines such as the National Geographic Magazine, GEO, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC Wildlife Magazine and Natural History. Next to his magazine work, he thinks it important to work with conservation groups, such as WWF and others. Christian is a founding fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers .

Checkout this Photos here: [Link]

Source: National Geographic

Lightbox Photo Sharing

Lightbox is a community of people from around the world sharing their unique experiences through photography. Lightbox is available on Google Chrome Store which can be installed in your Chrome browser or you can downloaded it for free on your Android device.

Following are some of the features:
Create a Timeline of your Photos:
All the photos you upload are automatically turned into a timeline of postcards on Lightbox.com. You can keep these photos private or selectively share them with friends, family, or the entire Lightbox community.

Publish your own Tumblr-Like Photo Blog:
Photos you share publicly will also get posted to your very own Lightbox website that other people can follow. You just focus on taking photos, and we'll automatically create an attractive website for you.

Example: http://ravindrajoisa.lightbox.com/

Top features in Photoshop CS6

Here is a list with some of the favorite features that you may like in Photoshop CS6:

1. Crop tool –  Cropping an image has been the same without any enhancement for a long time now. CS6 crop is non disruptive, it will not throw away data after cropping, you can always go back. Even after cropping, you can get the cropped image back and then edit. You can use the classic crop tool as well in the new CS6 if you are used to the older version.

2. Filters – Blur gallery now has 3 different types - Field, Iris and Tilt blur. You have great control over the blur and you can edit your photos which can't be captured photographically like focusing on more than one object at the same time.

3. Adaptive Wide Angle - Instead of cropping and do lens correction go for adaptive wide angle filter. Example is if you have a photo with too many buildings which appear curved because of the wide angle lens used, Photoshop CS6 allows you to adjust manually by drawing lines and edit the image and make it look much better.

4. Video Editing - You can edit videos using Photoshop but using CS6 it is much more streamlined. You can go to timeline and select the right layer and then add effects to your video. This can be done to the objects in the timeline. You don’t have to be a video editor to do this.

5. Content Aware Patch - This feature helps in a great way when it comes to editing your image at the edges. Usually in older versions, when we try to edit image at the edges; it used to leave white patch. This is not the case with the CS6.

6. Content Aware Move – This is a new feature in CS6. If an object in your image is in one corner and you want to drag that object then this tool is very helpful as it will recreate a background which looks so real.
Check out this video by Terry White:

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

The world’s best digital image editing software is about to get even better. Photoshop CS6 beta is now available as a free download from Adobe Labs in English and Japanese.

Here are some of the Photoshop CS6 Highlights:

Content-Aware Patch — Patch images with greater control using the newest member of the Content-Aware family of technologies. Choose the sample area you want to use to create your patch, and then watch Content-Aware Patch magically blend pixels for a stunning result.
Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, Puppet Warp, and Crop. Plus, a refined, fresh, and elegant Photoshop interface features dark background options that make your images pop.
New and re-engineered design tools — Create superior designs fast. Get consistent formatting with type styles, create and apply custom strokes and dashed lines to shapes, quickly search layers, and much more.

Download Link: Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

Picnik will be closing

Back in 2010, I had written an article on Google acquiring Picnik, the online photo editing tool in another blog of mine—Ravi’s Blog. And its hardly 2 years after acquisition of Picnik by Google and they wants to close Picnik.  This is one of the products which Google has and will be closing in recent times. Picnik will be closed on 19th of April 2012. Some of  the best features which were meant for premium users are now made free till the closing date. Premium users who had updated their subscription will get their entire money back. For those who were using Picnik, you don’t have to be sad as Picnik will now be embedded into Google+ where you can find many of your favorite Picnik effects. You can edit your photo that is uploaded on Google+ by clicking on “Creative Kit” under each uploaded photo.

New Photoshop Feature–Content Aware Fill

Adobe Photoshop team has been rolling out a series of videos highlighting selected features of the popular photo editing software. Photoshop, well known for it’s vast array of time saving techniques, has established itself as the leader in image editing. Popular additions to the later versions of Photoshop have been the Content Aware options. In the video below users are given an example and brief tutorial on the Content Aware Fill function using the ability to paste pixel data from any area of the photo. Content Aware Move tool is a very quickly and handily, allows you to move large and small objects alike while avoiding the time consuming task of using Layer Masks. I will be updating more on these soon. Follow my blog and I will keep you all updated with more and latest updates.

Sam Abell - National Geographic Photographer

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Sam Abell has worked with the National Geographic Society since 1970 as a photographer and has photographed more than 20 articles on various cultural and wilderness subjects. He has also lectured on photography and exhibited his images to audiences throughout the world. In 1990, Eastman Kodak published a retrospective monograph of his photographs titled Stay This Moment: The Photographs of Sam Abell. A companion exhibit of his work was shown at New York City's International Center of Photography in November of that year. 

Abell's book credits include Contemplative Gardens, The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning, Australia: Journey Through a Timeless Land, and Seeing Gardens. In 1998 he collaborated with author Stephen Ambrose on Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery and again in 2002 on The Mississippi: River of History. That same year, he worked with author Leah Bendavid-Val to produce a retrospective of his life and work titled Sam Abell: The Photographic Life. Two additional book projects, Four Stories and The Life of a Photographer, are scheduled for publication in October 2007 and October 2008, respectively.

Check out National Geographic photographer Sam Abell talk about his career, what inspires and influences his work, and his most memorable adventures.

Stone Age paintings

These paintings/ symbols crop up throughout the prehistoric world. These hands were painted on the walls of a cave in Rio Pinturas, Argentina. The hand forms were created by pressing all or part of the hand against the surface, after having applied paint or clay. This symbol is surprisingly rare, found at just under 7 per cent of the French sites studied. Its earliest know appearance is at Chauvet, from where it seems to have spread out in all directions. By 13,000 years ago it had fallen out of use.

Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. Magnum Photos is a photographic cooperative of great diversity and distinction owned by its photographer members. With powerful individual vision, Magnum photographers chronicle the world and interpret its peoples, events, issues and personalities. The Magnum Photos library is a living archive updated daily with new work from across the globe. You may search or browse our 500,000+ images which are available online for licensing in a variety of formats.

Check out: Magnum Photos