Here’s How the Blackmagic Camera ProDock Can Turn the New iPhone 17 Pro into an Actual Pro Camera

No Film School: Highlighted by Apple in their debut of the iPhone 17, Blackmagic Design has announced its new Blackmagic Camera ProDock. This new docking solution aims to add professional camera connections to iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models.

Watching the World in a Dark Room: The Early Modern Camera Obscura

The Public Domain Review: Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores the early modern fascination with this quasi-spiritual technology and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced.

First Look at the Surreal Art Installations of Burning Man 2018

mymodernmet.com: Each year the eyes of the world are glued to the Nevada desert, as the Burning Man festival reaches its apex over Labor Day weekend. The annual event attracts people from around the globe, including major artists and architects who help transform the Playa with their incredible art installations. Images have begun to pour out of Black Rock City, showing how, yet again, the art of Burning Man doesn't disappoint.

BIG architects' mirrored orb among installation highlights at Burning Man

www.dezeen.com: Instagram images confirm that BIG's Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange have inflated the huge reflective sphere they crowdfunded for this year's Burning Man festival, which is well underway in the Nevada desert.

Burning Man 2018 art installation closed after someone fell off

www.usatoday.com: Safety rangers have closed one of the most popular art installations at Burning Man after someone fell off it late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning.

Artist Dustin Weatherford on Wednesday confirmed someone fell off “Night at the Climb In.” He said he didn’t know their condition, adding, “I hope they’re OK.”

Photo Manipulation Photographer Reveals Images Before and After Editing

mymodernmet.com: Photographer Lilia Alvarado captures the whimsical and carefree moments of childhood. Her passion for photography began after the birth of her twin daughters, Annabella and Juliette, who are often the subjects of her stunning fine art portraits. However, when Alvarado recently posted a photo she was proud of on Instagram, she was surprised to receive comments that questioned if it was over-edited.

Production Notes: Forced Perspective

Nevada Film Office: In filmmaking, forced perspective is a visual effects technique that makes things appear to be farther away or closer than they actually are. It can also be used to make things look larger or smaller than they really are.

Monkey Selfie Photographer Says He's Now Going To Sue Wikipedia

Techdirt: Thought the monkey selfie saga was over? I'm beginning to think that it will never, ever, be over. If you're unfamliar with the story, there are too many twists and turns to recount here, but just go down the rabbit hole (monkey hole?) of our monkey selfie tag. Last we'd heard, PETA and photographer David Slater were trying to settle PETA's totally insane lawsuit -- but were trying to do so in an immensely troubling way, where the initial district court ruling saying, clearly, that monkeys don't get a copyright would get deleted. Not everyone was comfortable with this settlement and some concerns have been brought before the court. As of writing this, the court seems to be sitting on the matter.

Monkey in the Middle.

This American Life: Nature photographer David Slater went to Indonesia. While he was there, he got some stunning photos of monkeys. What he couldn’t imagine was that he’d end up being sued, for copyright infringement, by one of the monkeys.

Shutterstock uses machine learning to let you search images based on composition

The Verge: Plenty of companies are taking advantage of machine learning to tag and search visual content. Pinterest lets you find visually-similar images in order to track down that recipe or jacket you’re looking for, and Pornhub is using machine learning to automatically identify porn stars in videos. Stock image company Shutterstock, though, has developed one of the more novel implementations of this sort of technology: using machine learning to identify the layout of images.

How do you tell a story in a single image?

Creative Review: Primary school English classes always drummed it into us: A story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In literature, even non-linear narratives follow that format, albeit in a less simplistic way.

While that rule is all well and good for written or spoken tales, does it work when you’re telling a narrative visually? How do you tell a story in a single image?

Unearth Two Bold Color Techniques On Your Next Photo Shoot

Rosco Spectrum: When he’s not busy as guitarist and singer for Boston’s modern-metal band “Unearth,” Ken Susi is an active photographer. He recently visited Rick Friedman’s photography studio in Boston to learn a few of his techniques. Acting as both student and model, Ken took part in a shoot that resulted in several photos of the rock star bathed in moody, evocative color – thanks to the gels that came out of Rick’s Rosco Location Lighting Filter Kit.

Lawyer: Without The Monkey's Approval, PETA Can't Settle Monkey Selfie Case

Techdirt: Ted Frank is a well-respected lawyer who has heroically dedicated much of his career to stopping bad legal practices, including sketchy settlements in class action lawsuits. Now he's taking action in another case involving a sketchy settlement: the monkey selfie case. As we highlighted earlier this week, while it was no surprise that PETA and photographer David Slater worked out a settlement agreement to end the ridiculous lawsuit PETA had filed, it was deeply concerning that part of the settlement involved PETA demanding that the original district court ruling -- the one saying, clearly, that animals don't get copyrights -- should be thrown out.

Can an English Artist Use Classical Nigerian Art as He Likes?

The Theatre Times: The insensitivity of many Westerners in the question of looted artifacts or artifacts acquired under dubious circumstances is astonishing. Hirst and other Western artists can derive inspiration from the looted artifacts kept in Western museums, which they can visit anytime they want. But where can African artists derive such inspiration when iconic African objects are all kept away in Western capitals they can’t visit?

Vintage lighting control photos you didn't know you needed in your life

et cetera...: Welcome to the latest edition of the Monthly(ish) Museum, where we explore the storeroom of vintage lighting industry equipment and ephemera in ETC’s collection.

This entry doesn’t focus specifically on gear; in addition to equipment, we have boxes full of manuals, drawings, and printed promotional material from companies throughout the the lighting industry, dating back as far as 1892. Some of those promotional materials are product brochures, and some of those product brochures contain amazing vintage images of people using – or at least posing with – lighting equipment.

DP Sherry McCracken on Cinematography vs Photography, Pre-Visualization and the Growing Ease of Equipment for Female Crew Members

Filmmaker Magazine: In part two of this interview, DP of American Gothic Sherry McCracken discusses moving from photography to cinematography, what she’d do differently, and how lighter cameras make it possible for more women to work as cinematographers.

It's Time to Break Arts Philanthropy Out of Its Silo

Createquity.: About a decade ago, as a fresh-faced summer intern halfway through my MBA program at the Yale School of Management, I found myself given the extraordinary task of helping one of the largest foundations in the United States map out the first-ever logic model for its $20 million a year performing arts program. My colleagues on the program team had come up with a set of well-articulated impacts that spoke to the foundation’s goals for its performing arts grants. But we had not tried to connect these impacts to the foundation’s overarching mission statement emphasizing human welfare. Shouldn’t we close that gap, I wondered? When I brought it up, I was gently told that wasn’t part of the plan, and being the fresh-faced intern that I was, the matter quickly dropped.

Fascinating Photographs of Europe's Perishing Palaces

The Creators Project: The combination of luxury and decay is equally appealing and off-putting. Whether it's shabby-chic, faded Hollywood glamor, or the staunch-yet-penniless vibe of the heroines in Grey Gardens, it seems society has always had a complex, car-crash attitude towards people and places that have gone downhill. Mirna Pavlovic's photo series Dulcis Domus documents our uneasy relationship with the recent past through images of abandoned mansions, decaying villas, and disintegrating palaces of Europe, with the ghosts of former landlords silently echoing riches-to-rags tales we'll never know.

'A Sharper Scaling' Upscales Images Better Than Photoshop

lifehacker.com: Windows: A Sharper Scaling is a single-purpose app that increases the size of an image while preserving an impressive amount of detail. Compared to conventional image upscaling methods, A Sharper Scaling almost pulls off a magic trick.

The Selfie Monkey Could Still Win Copyright, Long Live The Selfie Monkey

The Frisky: This is the selfie-loving monkey Naruto, perhaps you know her from the Internet?

Naruto took this pic of herself among others with photographer David Slater’s camera. Slater thinks he owns the photos because he owns the camera, and Naruto disagrees.