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Posts Tagged ‘Photo’

How to Use the HDR Panorama Photo Merge in Lightroom Classic CC

21 Jul

The post How to Use the HDR Panorama Photo Merge in Lightroom Classic CC appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.

Not long ago I wrote about Four of the Latest Updates to Lightroom Classic CC. In it, we talked about some of the fresh features Adobe has recently added to Lightroom. One of those great new additions was the single-step HDR Panorama Photo Merge. That’s a mouthful of a name, but it’s an incredibly useful tool that allows us to combine multiple bracketed exposures into a seamless high dynamic range panoramic image in, as the name suggests, essentially a single step. In this article, we’re going to delve a little deeper into the new single-step step HDR Panorama Photo Merge (geez) feature and show you exactly how to capture and combine your images to make a beautifully executed panorama.

What is an HDR Panorama?

High dynamic range (HDR) photographs and panoramas are nothing new to the world of photography. In fact, neither are HDR panoramas.

HDR photos are simply images combining multiple exposures to form a final photo that exhibits tonal and/or focus ranges far beyond a single exposure. Along those same lines, panoramic photos are images stitched together that carry a visual perspective beyond what is obtainable from a single exposure (with a few exceptions).

As you may have guessed, an HDR panorama combines multiple photographs to produce a wide perspective composite image featuring high dynamic range.

Previous methods for merging multiple images to produce HDR panoramic photos were generally tedious and required venturing over into Photoshop. Luckily, with the new HDR Panoramic feature introduced in v8.0 of Lightroom Classic CC, you can now efficiently combine your images with just a few clicks of the mouse. Let me show you how I made the above HDR pano combining twelve separate bracketed photos right inside of Lightroom.

Obtaining your images for merging

The first and arguably most crucial part of creating your HDR panorama begins inside your camera.

Lightroom places some stringent criteria on the images you can combine using it’s single-step HDR Panorama function. ALL of these rules must be met by each one of your images prior to merging.

Here are the “rules” for images you plan to merge into an HDR pano directly from Adobe:

  • All the images in your selection must contain the exposure metadata – Exposure time, f-number, and ISO.
  • Each set of bracketed exposures in your selection must have the same number of images. For example, if you chose to bracket with three images, then all the sets in the selection must also use three images.
  • Every set of bracketed exposures in your selection must have the same exposure offsets. For example, if your first set has exposure offsets of (0, -1, +1), then all other sets in the selection must follow the exposure offset pattern. The image sets can have different exposure values; only the exposure offsets pattern must be consistent across all the sets.
  • Each set of bracketed exposures must be captured contiguously. For example, if you’ve considered a bracket size of three while capturing the images, then the first three images in the sequence become part of a bracket set. The next three images in the sequence become part of another bracket set, and so on.
  • Within a set of bracketed exposures, the images must not have the same exposure value.

While you can shoot your images in either a vertical or horizontal orientation, it is a good idea to use vertically orientated photos in you plan on displaying them digitally. This avoids extremely long, yet narrow images. Of course, this is entirely up to you.

Combining the images

Now that you’ve made it through the rather exacting process of actually obtaining your photos for merging, the rest of the operation is refreshingly easy to complete.

Selection

First things first. In the Library Module of Lightroom Classic CC select the images you want to use for the HDR pano. An easy trick to select all of your images at once is to select the photo at the beginning of the series and then hold down the shift key while clicking the last photo in the series. This automatically selects all your bracketed exposures at once. It also saves you quite a few mouse clicks if you are using a high number of photos.

Once you’ve got all of your photos selected, right-click on any of those images and choose Photo Merge, and then HDR Panorama.

It’s here where you learn for sure whether all of your images meet the requirements for merging. If not, you will receive the soul-crushing message ‘Unable To Detect HDR Exposure Bracket Size. Merge To Non-HDR Panorama Instead?’ That means Lightroom will merge the photos into a normal non-HDR pano if possible.

However, if you’ve done your duty, and you obtained all of your images correctly, your photo will appear as a preliminary smart preview. From here, it’s just a matter of controlling how you want Lightroom to handle the final merging of your images. You’ll have quite a few options that will affect the ultimate product.

Projection modes

Think of projections as the shape of the canvas on which Lightroom paints your finished HDR panorama. There are three different projection modes from which to choose based on the nature of the panorama you are creating:

  • Spherical: This aligns and transforms the images as if they were mapped to the inside of a sphere. This projection mode is great for ultra-wide or multi-row panoramas.

  • Cylindrical: This projects the panorama/HDR panorama as if it were mapped to the inside of a cylinder. This projection mode works well for wide panoramas, but it also keeps vertical lines straight.

  • Perspective: This projects the panorama/HDR panorama as if it were mapped to a flat surface. Since this mode keeps straight lines straight, it is great for architectural photography. Extremely wide panoramas may not work well with this mode due to excessive distortion near the edges of the resulting panorama.

Boundary Warp

The amount of Boundary Warp is a way to stretch your merged HDR pano so that it more or less fills the frame of the selected projection mode. With Boundary Warp, you have a slider that ranges from 0-100 that allows you to preserve any content of the photo that you may lose after cropping.

Experiment with different Boundary Warp settings until you reach a happy medium between distortion and content preservation.

Auto settings/crop

These settings work extremely well to save you some editing time at least on the front end. The auto-crop and auto-settings functions allow Lightroom to trim and process your finished HDR panorama automatically. While you, of course, can crop and process your image manually after merging, I’ve found the auto settings function gives consistently outstanding results.

Stacking

Consider stacking as an afterthought of your post-panorama post-processing. It’s a way for you to keep all of your ducks in a row, so to speak, and is especially useful if you’ve used many photos to construct your HDR panorama. Choosing the stacking option literally stacks all of the images used for your HDR panorama merge into a group with the merged image placed on top. This aids in keeping your filmstrip tidy and saves physical space in the Library Module.

Once you have made all of your selections for the HDR pano merge, it’s time to click the ‘Merge’ button. This begins the process of combining the images into a single DNG file.

After the merge is complete, you will have an image which you are free to finish processing just as you could with any other digital RAW file. This includes adjusting the auto-cropping and, of course, the auto settings. This achieves the final image that we saw from earlier.

Final considerations

Remember that any HDR image is already by its very definition a composite photo. As such, it is a combination of many different exposures which, if pushed too far, can result in an incredibly fake-looking final product. Always keep your HDR images within the realm of passable reality unless you are intentionally going for a hyper-realistic appeal. Along those same lines, make sure the photos meet all the criteria for HDR panorama merging listed above.

Furthermore, attempt to previsualize the final merged photo in your mind and shoot your images according to the tonal range and perspective you wish to achieve. When in doubt, it’s always better to have too many images to work with than not enough.

Have some HDR Panorama photos you’ve created inside of Lightroom Classic CC? We’d love to see them! Feel free to share them in the comments.

 

HDR-panorama-photo-merge

The post How to Use the HDR Panorama Photo Merge in Lightroom Classic CC appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.


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Photo “Stolen” From Art Gallery, Used on Magazine Cover Without Permission

12 Jul

The post Photo “Stolen” From Art Gallery, Used on Magazine Cover Without Permission appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Last week, The Big Issue published an interview with renowned filmmaker David Lynch.

And the magazine put a headshot of David Lynch on the cover.

All of this would have been fine…

…except that the headshot of David Lynch wasn’t actually a headshot at all.

Instead, it was a photo of a framed David Lynch photo. The original was taken by Nadav Kander and displayed as part of a gallery exhibition.

In other words, a photographer attended Kander’s exhibition, took a photo of the framed David Lynch portrait, and the photo ended up on The Big Issue’s front cover. Note that this thoroughly violates copyright law, as Kander has ownership over all of his gallery images.

Kander vented his frustrations via Instagram:

[A] ”photographer” goes to one of my exhibitions and photographs my framed print of David Lynch…Unbelievable blatant copyright infringement. Sad behaviour and more. I would never have wanted this photograph sold.

View this post on Instagram

READ THIS: a”photographer” goes to one of my exhibitions and photographs my framed print of David Lynch. He uploads this picture to a stock site called Alamy. Now this week The BiG Issue which is a magazine in the U.K. publishes a interview with David and buys this despicably shot picture of my photograph, crops in and uses it on the cover of the mag this week. Unbelievable blatant copyright infringement. Sad behaviour and more. I would never have wanted This photograph sold…So photographer who did this, kindly call my studio and we should talk. My alternative is to just go up an avenue that is less than pleasant for you. I wish now I had not got your name taken down off the BI site. Then all could have seen you and “your picture”. My god I work hard to make my work what it is… but this is doubly insulting because added to this your site states clearly that permission should be sought before using your work!!! Go figure. #copyright #copyrightingringement #impissedoff

A post shared by Nadav Kander Studio (@nadavkander) on

How it happened

But how did this happen? How did The Big Issue, a reputable magazine, end up with a stolen photo on its cover?

As it turns out, The Big Issue did not purchase the David Lynch image directly. Instead, the image came from the stock site Alamy, which sold the image to The Big Issue.

The Big Issue writes, in response to Kander’s anger:

Hi Nadav, we’re very sorry you feel aggrieved. This image was sourced by the art team. They discovered it on Alamy. It’s a great image that we felt would help move the magazine. We told Alamy what we were doing and neither tried to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes nor get away without paying.

The first we discovered about the issues with the image was when your agency got in touch at the start of the week. Clearly, Alamy have some explaining to do. We would never intentionally do this. As an organisation that serves the complex needs of thousands of our vendors each year, we understand the need to meet emotional distress with sensitivity. We hope this goes some way to explaining the situation. If you would like to discuss further, please DM us.

This apology would probably be fine, putting the blame squarely on Alamy and the photographer. Except that it turns out the stock image purchased by The Big Issue is different from the image that appears on the magazine cover.

Specifically, the David Lynch photo-of-a-photo acquired by The Big Issue showed a clear frame, as well as an information plaque. It also included shadows that fell across the glass:

But The Big Issue cropped out the frame and the information plaque, apparently oblivious to the photo’s illegal nature.

(Since then, the photo has been removed from The Big Issue’s website, as well as from Alamy.)

So…

Who do you think is to blame for this fiasco?

Is it the fault of the photographer, who took the picture and sold it to Alamy?

Is it the fault of the stock agency, Alamy, who put the photo up for sale on its site? Or is it the fault of The Big Issue for using a questionable photo in the first place?

Let me know right now in the comments!

 

Featured image photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

The post Photo “Stolen” From Art Gallery, Used on Magazine Cover Without Permission appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.


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3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

03 Jul

The post 3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

Most dictionaries don’t recognize “keyword” as a verb, yet keywording is seen as an arduous task by many photographers. Despite the mundanity, if you want to find specific photos amid a large collection, it helps to keyword them. This article looks at three keywording tools that will hasten the work for little or no cost.

Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

Manual vs automated

The main benefit of laboriously keywording every image yourself is accuracy. You know every word you enter applies to that photo. Or, you have a good-faith belief that it does. Good keywording often involves research, especially if you’re keywording with the aim of selling or licensing photos.

Semi-automated

One way to speed up keywording is with the quick keyword lists you find in all software with built-in DAM (digital asset management). Such lists normally need building first, but they cut out typing and thinking time once installed. A similar system is used in paid-for keyword tools.

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate - keywording - quick keyword lists

An ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate quick keyword list, which you can expand if necessary to include many keywords. I also have an organized keyword list under construction.

Automated

An even faster way to keyword is by using image recognition software. This populates keyword fields quickly. The main drawback is having to remove a few words from most photos. That’s not a bad trade-off when it works well, since deleting words is less taxing than adding them. You’ll still need to add a few keywords yourself, because software like this tends to identify subjects generically.

Three keyword tools for little or no cost

Keyword software ranges from expensive to free. It can be standalone, plugin, SaaS or web-based without charge. You’re unlikely to want to pay for keywording unless there’s a chance of return on investment. Below are three keywording tools that have little or no effect on your bank balance but which might save you time.

Any Vision Lightroom Plugin

The Any Vision Lightroom Plugin uses Google Cloud Vision technology to recognize the content of photos and populate the LR keyword field accordingly. It’s clever stuff. You can try the same technology out here on image files under 4 MB in size. Google Cloud Vision is the engine behind Google image search. The plugin is available on trial for the first 50 images, after which you must buy a license for whatever price you can afford or deem suitable.

Does it work? I’ve found it to be useful for everyday photos, and it even recognizes a few iconic buildings (e.g. Flatiron building). Yes, I have to cut out a few keywords, but I keep more than I delete. It’s not so good with plant portraits, as it tends to fill the keyword field with the names of various lookalike flowers. But once you know its weak spots, it’s good to have on board.

Any Vision Lightroom plugin

Any Vision impressed me by identifying the location of this photo (Lyons-la-Forêt), though I’ll still need to add and subtract a few words.

To get Any Vision working after the trial, you must obtain a Google Cloud Key. That’s linked to your Google billing account, but unless you keyword over 1,000 photos a month, you won’t be charged a thing. Bear in mind you won’t need to analyze every image (i.e. you can copy and paste).

IMS Keyworder

The online IMS Keyworder tool is simple to use. Just enter one or two keywords that best sum up the content of your picture, hit enter and click on relevant photos to create more keywords. The keywords that appear are ranked for their popularity with microstock searchers – customers that look for and download photos. This gives you a clue as to how vital a keyword is to your image.

IMS Keyworder - free image keywording tool

IMS Keyworder shows you how popular search terms with microstock buyers. You can also see how often each keyword appears among your selection.

Other handy IMS features include the ability to bring up a list of synonyms and create templates. You can also embed keywords, descriptions, and captions directly into JPEGs on your PC. This online software is free with the option of making a voluntary payment to the developer.

Xpiks Keyworder

Xpiks is a good open-source program that, like IMS, draws its keyword suggestions from microstock photo libraries. You still need the Internet to use it, but the software exists on your hard drive. And that makes it more versatile since you can add keywords to bigger file formats in the absence of bandwidth restrictions.

Among the useful features of Xpiks are XMP/IPTC/EXIF metadata editing, translation, autocomplete, search facility, spellcheck and, of course, keyword suggestions. If you happen to contribute to microstock libraries, you can also upload photos straight from Xpiks.

Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost - Xpiks keyword program

A photo of Mont Blanc in Xpiks with 30+ keywords sourced from several similar microstock photos.

Other keywording tools

Among the other third-party keywording tools I’m aware of (free or not) are the following:

  • Akiwi – online drag and drop image recognition, free
  • Excire – Lightroom plugin with AI technology that lets you search without keywords, 99€ one-time cost
  • fotoKeyword Harvester – by Cradoc fotosoftware, long-established company, not free
  • Keyword Perfect – by A2ZKeywording.com, responsive developer, not free
  • Keywords Ready – online image recognition technology with 50-image monthly limit, free
  • Microstock Keyword Tool – online tool that harvests keywords from microstock photos, free
  • MyKeyworder – image recognition Lightroom & WordPress plugin, small donation to remove restrictions
Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

Akiwi has a cleanly designed webpage that is simple to use. Image recognition helps you find a maximum of 15 keywords per image.

Keywording tips

If you break keyword lists up into categories and sub-categories, you’ll have the basis of a methodical keywording system. The problem with adding words randomly without any system is one of consistency: you’ll rarely end up with the same set of words twice. And that may force you into trying multiple search terms later when it comes to finding pictures. Even if you use keywording tools to help you, it’s handy to have your own lists of words to add on top.

Excire Lightroom plugin

Excire recognizes content but adds keywords sparingly. It’s a paid-for Lightroom add-on that can search your library to some extent without keywords.

The number of keywords you should add is open to debate, especially if you’re licensing photos for publication. You don’t want to waste picture researchers’ time with loosely related words, but you also don’t want to make photos invisible through minimalism. The same applies for your own purposes. About 10-25 keywords often suffices. Some photos might need more. It’s wise to stick to common words where possible. Long or formal words are less likely to be used in search terms.

Keywords Ready - free keywording tool

The 50-image limit of Keywords Ready is limiting for prolific photographers, but this is free software. It gave me a good selection of words for this photo, save for one or two exceptions (I wouldn’t add “material property”).

Final say

I hope this article has led you to some useful keywording tools. If you get to the stage where you have thousands of untagged pictures, modern AI software will help you narrow down a search. Paid-for keywording software tends to be more methodical than the free stuff. It usually includes a large lexicon of categorized words. But free or inexpensive programs will help you get the work done and make your library searchable.

Have you used any of these? What are your thoughts? Or do you use other keywording tools? Share with us in the comments below.

 

photo keywording tools

The post 3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.


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Creating Spectacular Photo Displays with Digital Projectors

02 Jul

If you are reading this, it is likely that you take copious amounts of photographs. A few years ago, families would gather around their Kodak carousel slide projector and look at 35 mm slides of family vacations. There was something that was almost magical about seeing images on the big screen in living color. Really, back then, a homemade slideshow Continue Reading

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5 Attributes of a Great Product Photo for Your Online Store

02 Jul

As an online store owner, you are constantly striving to design your shop in the most appealing way to your customers. And the first step to success is to make your product photos shine bright like a diamond. Why Exactly You DO Need Great Product Photos for Your Online Store People don’t buy before they see. Some of them even Continue Reading

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3 Photo Editing Mistakes to Avoid

30 Jun

The post 3 Photo Editing Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Lily Sawyer.

If you are a photographer who shoots in RAW, then you know that editing is a must!

Editing is a lot of fun. Personally, I enjoy seeing a blah photo turn into a good one by manipulating the details in the image. It’s almost like magic. However, editing doesn’t come without caveats.

In this article, we’ll look at three basic editing mistakes to avoid. They are easy to do, especially when you are new to editing and are overly enthusiastic about transforming your photo into something magical!

When I was a novice, my photos were over-edited (cringe). I looked at other photographers’ work with awe, and I wanted my photos to look like theirs. I got lured into using actions and using them too heavily for that color-pop, scroll-stopping, jaw-dropping impact a photo can have.

It was awful; as I later discovered. It was when I learned how to distinguish between a good photo edited correctly and a photo decimated by actions or over-editing that my images dramatically improved and my confidence as a photographer grew.

Let’s dive in and look at the three basic editing mistakes to avoid. The photos I used in this article are ordinary snaps, taken without the use of any lighting and on a normal bright morning. You don’t have to set up amazing sessions and shots for an excuse to edit your photos. Even the most ordinary of photos could do with a bit of magic.

dps-tutorial-editing-mistakes-to-avoid

1. Not shooting in RAW

The first mistake in editing is not shooting in RAW format. Editing and RAW are best friends. Editing a RAW file is the best combination you can use because RAW is a lossless format. That means it retains all the information in the image for you to play around with during the editing process.

RAW is untouched, unprocessed, and unedited. The raw information in pixels is all collated without any interference from the camera. On the other hand, JPEGS (whether that be fine or basic), is a format which allows the camera to process the raw information and compress it by discarding pixels. It does away with some of this raw information before saving the image to your memory card. As a result, you get a smaller image that has already been edited by your camera.

This means the colors and contrasts are already different from the original information. When you edit a JPEG image, you are further fiddling with the remaining information and processing an already processed image. This is not an ideal starting place, as it’s often difficult not to overedit from this point.

For more detailed articles on RAW vs JPEG, read here.

dps-tutorial-editing-mistakes-to-avoid

2. Incorrect white balance

This may sound basic to some of you, but many of you might not have heard of the term white balance. When I first had a DSLR, I shot on portrait mode. I didn’t know how to shoot in Manual and didn’t feel I needed to learn it. I relied on the camera modes until I realized I could not achieve the style and type of images I wanted. Until then, I did not know – let alone understand – what White Balance meant.

To put it simply, white balance is making sure white objects appear white. Many lighting factors can affect the whites in your image. These are called color cast. Color casts happen when whites look like different colors depending on the ambient light. A very common color cast occurrence is from incandescent light which, if the white balance is left unadjusted, will render white objects a yellow color, for example.

There is a thing called color temperature measured in Kelvins which offers a range of numerical values to which you adjust your white balance to get your white balance correct. When shooting outdoors in natural sunlight, for example, the color temperature is usually in the 5500K range. You want your camera’s white balance to match that so your white looks white. Conversely, indoors usually has a warmer color temperature. When there are tungsten lights involved, the Kelvins are around 3500K. You need to match this too to ensure your white looks white.

Sure the camera can do this by itself using Auto White Balance, and it does it really well too. The trouble I find is that it still varies quite a lot even though the variations might be minimal. For me, this proves a problem when editing thousands of images, especially when batch editing. My preference to counteract this is to shoot in Kelvin which gives me a pretty constant white balance, though not an absolute science, that I can tweak when editing.

Read more about demystifying white balance here.

dps-tutorial-editing-mistakes-to-avoid

3. Over editing

There are a hundred and one ways you can over-edit your images. I will touch on a few favorites, especially because they are the ones that affect the image the most.

a. Heavy vignette

I love vignettes. I apply vignetting to most of my images and love the way it draws the attention to the middle of the image by way of overall contrast: darker around the edges and lighter in the middle. However, it is so easy to be heavy-handed with it so that your image looks like “a moth to a flame” effect: black spherical shape on the outside and a very bright central area. The key word is subtle.

A good trick of knowing how much vignette to add is to slide the bar across both extremes and then you can see the effect of each stage and decide what looks right.

dps-tutorial-editing-mistakes-to-avoid

b. Over and under-saturation

Have you heard of the term “pop” in photography?

Photographers love using it! Add a color pop to make the image pop etc. Often, saturation is not the way to achieve this “pop”! I would advise against fiddling with the saturation slider. Only use it if the photo is so undersaturated that a saturation boost is necessary to make the colors get closer to a natural look.

The danger of using the saturation slider is making the colors look ‘neonesque’! A classic ubiquitous example of this is green grass. NO grass looks neon green yet often we see them in photos. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the saturation slider is the culprit when I come across those images.

It is better to use the vibrance slider if you want to add some life to your color. Here is an article that explains the difference between vibrance and saturation.

Undersaturation is just as bad. This is when you strip the image of color so everything looks deathly pale or rather steely and cold. I have made this mistake before when I was starting out. Avoid it! Better yet, do not even attempt to do it.

dps-tutorial-editing-mistakes-to-avoid

c. Extreme contrasts

Contrast is simply the difference between the whites and blacks in the image or, if you like, the light areas and dark areas. Three sliders affect contrast: whites, shadows, and blacks. Move those sliders to see what effect they do to the image.

The best advice I can give is to choose a natural contrast where the blacks are just right, and the whites are not blown or overexposed. Keeping an eye on the histogram helps to ensure you are not clipping blacks and whites and are staying within the proper range of values when it comes to contrast.

So there we are – three easily made editing mistakes. I hope you have learned something from this little article.

Any more valuable tips? Do share in the comments below.

 

3 photo editing mistakes to avoid

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Think Tank Photo releases Digital Holster 150, a waist holster for super-tele zooms

28 Jun

Think Tank Photo has released the Digital Holster 150, a top-loading waist holster designed specifically for use with super telephoto zoom lenses.

Think Tank Photo says the holster was built to replace a backpack for times when you’ll only be carrying around one super telephoto zoom lens and an attached camera body. Like Think Tank Photo’s other holsters, the Digital Holster 150 is designed to be used with a belt system, such as the Pro Speed Belt V3.0 or other belt system.

The holster features an integrated seam-sealed rain cover, a front pocket that’s large enough to hold a 150mm lens filter, an internal pocket for memory cards or lens cloths and an attachment point for monopods or other modular components. There’s also an additional divider included so you can pack another smaller lens or accessory if your camera setup doesn’t require all of the internal space.

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Think Tank Photo has provided two example setups that would fit inside the Digital Holster 150:

• Nikon D5 with 200–500mm F5.6 VR II attached
• Canon 7D Mark II with Sigma 150–600mm F5–6.3 Sport attached

The Digital Lens Holster 150 is available to purchase from Think Tank Photo for $ 109.75.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram is rolling out photo and video advertisements in Explore tab

28 Jun

Instagram rolled out its redesigned Explore tab in May, introducing topic shortcuts, direct access to IGTV, and more. In an update today, the company has revealed another addition to Explore: advertisements. Instagram users will begin seeing sponsored posts in the app’s Explore tab over the ‘next few months,’ the company announced this week.

According to Instagram, more than half of the accounts on its platform use the Explore tab every month to discover new content and 80% of accounts follow at least one business in the app. The company plans to bring these two realities together by introducing sponsored posts in Explore.

When an advertisement is encountered, users will see a direct link to purchase items from the company that paid for the ad, as well as a ‘Sponsored’ label below the brand’s name. Instagram presents the new addition as a way for advertisers ‘to be part of what’s culturally relevant and trending while reaching new audiences who are looking to discover something new.’

It’s unclear how many users currently see the advertisements, which Instagram says it plans to introduce ‘slowly and thoughtfully in the coming months.’ Users will simply start to see ads at some point over the next few months ‘as part of their browsing experience,’ the company said this week.

It’s unclear how often users can expect to see advertisements in Explore once they are fully deployed on the platform. The first advertisements will arrive today and direct users to Instagram’s own IGTV, The Verge reports. In the future, ads will include both images and videos. This marks an expansion of advertisements on the platform, where they can already be found in Stories and the regular user feed.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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500px tells photo artist it once praised that his work is no longer welcome on platform

25 Jun

Online photography community 500px has alerted one of its most prominent users, Polish photo artist Michal Karcz, that his work is no longer welcome on the platform. According to a post Karcz published on Facebook, 500px warned the artist that ‘non-photographic content’ on his account is now in violation of the company’s Terms of Service.

The decision to ban Karcz’s digital artwork highlights a major change in policy for 500px, which historically not only welcomed Karcz’s work, but also repeatedly praised it with multiple ‘Editor’s Choice’ and ‘Year’s Best’ designations. According to Karcz’s Facebook post, his work on 500px has received more than 7 million views, 168k ‘Affections,’ and his account has nearly 35,000 followers.

One of the photo illustrations Karcz shared on his 500px account. Used with permission

Karcz’s was declared a ‘Photoshop master’ in an article 500px published on its blog to showcase his work. The content blends photography and digital art to present viewers with unique, in some cases other-worldly, images of reality. These same images are now in violation of the 500px guidelines, a representative clarified to Karcz in a second message:

Hi there, Unfortunately photomanipulations based on photography is not photography and our website in the current iteration is evolving into a purely photography website. Not only that, our terms of service require you to be the copyright owner of the images you upload so if you’re editing bits and pieces of other peoples imagery then you’re in violation of that. I personally am a fan of your artwork but unfortunately it doesn’t fit within the conditions of our site at the moment.

Another photo illustration Karcz shared on his 500px account. Used with permission.

Karcz’s 500px account is still live on the service at this time and still features the same ‘non-photographic content.’ It’s unclear whether the account will be deleted, but Karcz’s work remains live on Facebook and his personal website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Dallas photojournalist recounts capturing photo of gunman during yesterday’s shooting

19 Jun

Yesterday morning, a gunman dressed in tactical gear opened fire at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in Dallas, Texas with a semi-automatic rifle. While at the courthouse for a separate assignment, Dallas Morning News photojournalist Tom Fox was caught in the middle of the chaos and managed to capture a stunning image, embedded below, of the gunman as he appeared to be reloading his weapon outside of the building he fired into.

As Fox explains in the above interview conducted with Dallas Morning News, he was at the courthouse waiting for a defendant to arrive for jury duty when he heard what he believed to be a backfire from a vehicle. What he heard though was the sound of gunshots that were being fired toward the federal courthouse.

After realizing it was gunshots he heard, Fox says he instinctually looked around to discover where the shots were coming from and ‘establish a safe perimeter and take a knee [to] see what I could [photograph].’

Shortly after hearing the first shots, Fox says a security guard and another individual, with whom he was talking with earlier, started running in his direction as pieces of granite from the Earle Cabell Federal Building were being kicked in the air from gunfire (the first photo in the embedded tweet below is implied to be the individuals he was referring to in the interview and shows both the gunman [left, in front of the blue sedan] and the granite turning to powder [top of the image, above the security guard’s head]).

It was at this point that Fox turned and ran to seek cover. Eventually, he noticed an alcove near the entrance of the building and took shelter behind it (Fox can be seen behind the alcove, just feet away from the shooter, in a screenshot from a video captured by a citizen in an adjacent apartment building in the embedded tweet below [second image]). When he peeked around the corner, he saw an individual down the street. At this point, he took out his telephoto lens and composed a shot when he realized the individual he saw ‘looked to be someone that would fit the shooter profile and made some frames.’ Fox says it was when the shooter went to pick something up and he saw the ‘nozzle’ of the gun that he got up and ran to safety.

According to Dallas Morning News, the shooter was shot and killed by federal agents as he was running away from the building he opened fire at. No one else was injured or killed.

Dallas Morning News has put together a video using footage captured by Fox that shows the moments shortly after he captured what has become a viral image in the aftermath of the events. We had originally planned to include it in the article, but the thumbnail used for the video shows the shooter collapsed in a parking lot adjacent to the federal building after being shot by a federal agent, so we decided to link out instead. Bear in mind the video is graphic in nature.

Fox said he thought he ‘was gone’ in a follow-up interview with Dallas Morning News that dives into more details of the shooting. In 2017, Fox won Dallas Morning News staff photographer of the year.

Update (June 18, 2019): This article had originally stated the photo Tom Fox captured of the gunman was done so as the gunman was running from the building. However, it appears the image was captured at a different point in the timeline of the events and the article has been updated to reflect this.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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