Why Getty Just Abandoned Its $3.7 Billion Merger With Shutterstock
Getty Images has killed its $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock, refusing a condition set by UK regulators that would have forced Shutterstock to sell off its entire editorial photography business. The deal had already cleared US antitrust review with no strings attached, which makes the UK objection the single reason two of the biggest names in stock photography will stay separate.
Why Your Photos Look Worse Than the Scene You Saw
You stand in front of something stunning, a valley flooded with evening light, a city skyline at dusk, and you press the shutter sure you have captured it. Then you look at the file and the magic is gone. The colors are flatter, the sky is blown out or the ground is a muddy mess, the mountain that loomed over you looks like a small bump, and the whole thing feels ordinary. The instinct is to blame the camera, or your skill, or to start shopping for a better lens. Usually none of those is the real culprit.
Yellowstone Bison Flips Tourist 8 Feet as Photographer Captures the Whole Thing
A bull bison charged an older man walking with his grandson at a Yellowstone campground on Friday evening and threw him roughly eight feet into the air. The man landed on his side with serious injuries, and the animal stood over him afterward instead of running off.
A Portable Projector for Portraits, Outdoor Exhibitions and More
I've been looking for new ways to exhibit my photo and video work, ways that aren't tied to white walls or interior spaces. That search led me toward projectors, and I found one that fits. The appeal of something untethered is obvious in the fact that you can take your work almost anywhere. I initially expected I'd need a separate power station, but instead I found a quality projector with a built-in battery, making the whole setup far simpler than I'd imagined.
Photography Doesn't Need You. So Why Do You Need Photography?
"How you make a picture is much easier to articulate than why you make a picture." I read this statement in a comment under one of my articles here on Fstoppers, and it inspired me to talk about this in more depth.
Turn a Flat Sky Into a Dramatic Storm Scene With Contrast Alone
A flat, cold panorama of a cloud over farmland becomes a dark, dramatic storm scene using nothing but contrast adjustments. The difference comes down to knowing which sliders control contrast globally and which ones do it locally, then applying each in the right place.
What Happens When You Ask a Chemist to Build Your Dream Film
Custom film built to one photographer's exact wishes, coated by hand sounds like a dream, and this version is wildly unusual. Film that behaves this way rejects almost every rule commercial stock follows, and it opens up a way of working most shooters never consider.
Haters Never Show Their Faces and Photographic Work
I've always wondered what goes through someone's mind when they decide to become a hater. Being a hater is a kind of job: you have to create fake accounts, which guarantee anonymity, and then, from those accounts, launch attacks against the object of your hatred.
GoPro's Founder Is Lending His Own Company $20 Million to Keep It Alive
GoPro's founder and CEO is lending his own company $20 million to keep it running while its board looks for a buyer. The action camera maker warned last month that it might not survive the next 12 months without new money or a sale.
'Missed the Mark': Meta Retreats on Instagram AI Photo Grab
Meta has removed the feature in its new Muse Image tool that let anyone generate AI images from your public Instagram photos, just three days after switching it on. The company said the feature "missed the mark" and is no longer available.
11 Landscape Photography Mistakes Beginners Keep Making
Landscape photography looks like it should be easy. You find a beautiful place, point the camera at it, and press the shutter. Then you get home, look at the files, and the magic that was right in front of you has somehow drained out of the picture. Almost always, the cause is not your gear or the location. It is a handful of specific, fixable habits that nearly every beginner falls into. Here are 11 of the most common, each with a fix you can apply the very next time you are out.
After 15 Years and a Dozen Cameras, Here's What I Learned About Shooting the Street
In 2010, I made a decision that didn't make much sense on paper. I sold my Nikon gear and bought the first Olympus Pen E-P1.
It was slow. It was imperfect. Autofocus... lol. It didn't impress anyone who cared about specs.
But it changed how I worked in the street.
Since then, I've worked with Canon DSLRs, Lumix bodies, Olympus, Ricoh, Sony, Fujifilm, and Pentax systems in real documentary contexts, not as a collector or reviewer, but as a working photographer moving through unpredictable environments.
And over time, something became clear.
The Sharpest 24mm Lenses You Can Buy Right Now
A $200 lens outperforming a Zeiss on corner sharpness is exactly the kind of result that shows how fast optics have moved. The 24mm focal length gives you a wide field of view with just enough drama to hold onto your subject, and paired with a bright aperture, it delivers backgrounds that fall away beautifully.
The Shutter Speed Range Most Photographers Skip Over
Most slow shutter advice sends you straight to a tripod, a waterfall, and a 30-second exposure. There's a whole range of shutter speeds you can shoot handheld that keeps part of your frame sharp while letting motion streak through it.
A Fast, High-End Nikon Camera Is Reportedly Weeks Away
Nikon is reportedly close to launching a fast, high-end, professional APS-C camera, with an announcement expected in the next couple of months. The most talked-about spec is a 45-megapixel stacked sensor in a body built for speed.
Meta Just Made Your Public Instagram Photos Fair Game for AI
Meta's new AI image generator lets anyone pull photos from a public Instagram account and feed them into AI creations, without asking the account owner or telling them afterward. The feature is switched on by default for public profiles.
650 Freelance Photographers Are Fighting the WSJ Over an AI Contract
Roughly 650 freelance photographers who work for The Wall Street Journal have refused to sign a new contract they say could funnel their images into AI training. The fight centers on two changes: who owns the photos you shoot on assignment, and the paper's new right to license those photos to third parties without asking you first.
Myth: You Must Shoot in Manual Mode to Be a Pro
There is a belief that follows almost every beginner around: that real photographers shoot in manual mode, and that the semi-automatic modes on the dial are a kind of training-wheels embarrassment you are supposed to outgrow as fast as possible. The aperture priority setting even gets the dismissive nickname "A for amateur." It is one of the most persistent myths in photography, and it is wrong. Plenty of working professionals shoot in aperture priority every day and have for decades. The mode you use says nothing about whether you are a pro.
Hohem MT3 Pro Gimbal: A Solo Creator's Dream
At this point, there are so many brands of gimbals that it can be hard to know which direction to go, especially with heavy-hitting names like DJI at the forefront of most publications and media outlets. But when I saw the MT3 Pro from Hohem, there was a standout feature that made me pause.
Why Depending on One Client Nearly Ended a 20-Year Career
Editorial work once brought in 75% of one photographer's income. Today it accounts for about 5%, and the shift wasn't forced on him by failure.