Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Most of us have done something risky on a shoot before. And if we haven’t, we probably will at some point. Perhaps we perched our camera or an expensive flash somewhere precariously for a shot. Maybe it even paid off, and perhaps it didn’t.
For one photographer, the risk certainly didn’t pay off, as he drops what looks like a Canon 500mm f/4L IS lens and 5D style DSLR body straight into a swimming pool. That’s an expensive risk to take, and an expensive mistake to make.
Is it April Fool’s day yet? Because GQ just won next year’s contest (if there was one).
In jest of all the botched jobs on other magazine covers, they decided to release this cover for the Comedy Issue with the best/worst issues! How many can you spot? I swear, I am now tempted to make one just for fun!
We all want to do something a little crazy for our social media at some point. Or, we at least contemplate it, even if we don’t follow through. Sometimes we’re just to afraid of how it may be perceived, and sometimes it’s just because we need a little help. In this case, it’s the latter, when fitness Instagrammer Libby Burkhalter wanted to create an indoor snow angel for her 29 followers.
Well, what else is one supposed to do when they want to make a snow angel, but either there’s no snow or it’s just far too cold outside? Naturally, she enlisted the help of her husband, who reluctantly agreed to participate in the activity. I think the look on his face just about says it all.
There are so many Photoshop horror stories out there from badly done HDR and selective colour to terribly “smoothed” skin in portraits. But none of them go quite so far as this short Photoshop horror film from Crypt Monsters.
It begins with a somewhat creepy photographer wrapping up a photoshoot with an attractive model who’s obviously quite nervous. He then loads up one of the images into Photoshop and starts to manipulate it, with some pretty severe consequences.
It’s all you need, really. There you are, in the middle of a field of ice and snow, filming polar bears and their not-so-subtle courtship ritual, and one of your cameras topples over. In this case, the remotely controlled “Blizzardcam”.
Riding on mini skis and propelled by a couple of fan blade motors, the Blizzardcam took a topple going over a bank of snow. It did not escape the notice of the curious courting polar bears. It’s a cute and interesting interaction, made all the more humorous by David Tennant’s narration.
Ok, so maybe it goes a little further than suggesting it. It states quite bluntly that it’s gone too far. I’ve still never seen an example in real life quite like that shown in the video posted to Facebook page Hot Date, though. But, I definitely see a lot more bad contouring makeup jobs when I wander through the local high street than I used to.
It’s always funny the things we see in images that aren’t really there. Like probably most of you who saw this come up as a preview on social media, I thought this was a crowd at a concert on first glance. But no, it’s not, it’s a field of cotton about to be mowed down by machines at night.
Don’t feel too bad, though. It turns out that Google’s Vision AI also thought it was a rock concert, too.
There are some things that one just shouldn’t do or say to a photographer. Doing so is bound to upset them. Sometimes it’s just that they don’t know any better, but often it’s a lack of simple common decency.
In this video from Lok Cheung, we see some absolutely perfect examples of how to not act around a photographer. Lok is joined by his good buddy Warren Ng, acting as our antagonist in this little story. If I didn’t know he was just pretending, I might have liked him a little less after watching this.
It’s said that the truth is often stranger than fiction. I’m not entirely sure about that, although it can be far more hilarious. In this example of a man who’s confident in his words, we have a sports reporter talking about the light levels on the cricket field. It can become difficult see the red ball when it starts to get dark. So, light meters are often used to measure the light levels. If it’s below a certain amount, the game is called.
To illustrate his point, he pulls out his “light meter” to take a reading and show the viewer. Unfortunately, his “meter” was an iPhone running the calculator app. It showed a “reading” of 6.5, which indicated that it was getting rather dark.
Usually, it’s female bodies that cause the Photoshop controversy. This time, not so much. It seems that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has had a little Photoshop treatment for the Shot Caller movie posters, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. It looks suspiciously like the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s body from the four year old Snitch movie poster.
It was spotted by Scott Wampler of Birth.Movies.Death. It’s not surprising that many others had noticed it, as Snitch wasn’t met with the best of receptions. So, perhaps the Shot Caller poster designer was relying on the fact that so few people ended up seeing it. Scott’s initial tweet has now had more than 10,000 shares and spawned several parody images.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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