Tag: Photography

The night I met Joseph Jachna, and the photo I didn't understand until this week.

Instagram, the app that forced everyone vertical with Reels, Stories, and the grid, is now testing horizontal video. Here's hoping the horizontal movement wins.

Tried balancing my phone on a snowy branch. Failed. Put my winter glove on the branch instead. Succeeded. Accidentally invented the glove-pod.

People who have used a camera for decades remember when horizontal was the default way to take a photo. If an everyday person turned the camera sideways for a vertical shot, that was considered a fancy technique. For much of…

The Kodak Charmera is a cute $30 digital camera by Kodak. The tiny camera even has a LCD preview screen. The Charmera requires a micro SD card to store photos. The card doesn’t come with the camera. You have to…

Give new life to your old photos. Use a new vocabulary word as a search term in Google Photos. Watch forgotten memories resurface in surprising, poetic ways.

Did you know? Instax instant photos can be CHEAPER than traditional 35mm film! At ~$0.75 per shot vs $1.08 for 35mm, instant photography isn't just convenient—it's economical! Check out our full price breakdown.

Do you like the mysterious vibe or the detailed HDR version?

Whenever snow falls in April, it always is a bit of a surprise. We tend to think of April as a spring month. The temperatures start warming up. And then boom. Snow. Snow? Really? When there isn’t a global pandemic…

Lately everyone has been sharing creative projects to do at home. Usually they are cute like putting a teddy bear in your front window. But how about a quirky project? Photograph all the doorknobs in your residence. Ever pay attention…

Can a photo captured with a 2-megapixel camera from 2002 still be popular today? Well, of course it can—if the subject matter works. Photos taken in the early 00s are in a weird in-between time The early digital photography years…

When I bought my first digital camera in 2001, I never realized how good the specs were. I just bought it based on reviews people gave at the time. The Canon PowerShot S110 could go down to a ƒ/2.8 with…

I’m thinking about what the domain would be for my photo website. And then an idea struck me. What if someone made an app that looked JUST like Instagram. But all the photos came from RSS feeds from individual photographer…

Most times your five-year-old iPhone works just fine as a camera. Today, I stepped off my train, and I looked up, the sunset nearly knocked me over. Whoa! So intense! I grabbed my iPhone from my pocket and snapped a…

While photographing the feet of a sculpture of two naked men wrestling, at the Art Institute of Chicago, a guard stopped me. She asked what the clip was on my camera. I walked over to her, and showed her how…

Flickr is imposing a 1,000-photo limit, and drops 1TB storage for free accounts, reports the cnet. SmugMug ends Yahoo’s old policy of a terabyte of free storage. Any free account with over 1,000 photos will have their oldest photos deleted.…

Ever want to photograph something REALLY close with your phone? Your phone’s lens has a limit on how close you can get. But slide one of this little macro lens onto your phone, and now you can get up super…

If you take a photo while you are invisible with an invisible camera, what is recorded on your camera? To be clear, both you and your camera are invisible. Tech expert Sparxmind makes a great point: If the camera is…

Seeing tiny snowflakes embedded in ice makes me wish I still carried my iPhone macro lens with me. This photo is a bit blurry, but you kinda get the point. The macro lens would have really zoomed in on a…

While walking along the Chicago Riverwalk with my wife, the river had just been dyed green hours earlier for the annual St. Patrick’s Day festival. The river has a surreal green glow that could be seen in the metal under…

Stepping outside the Tribune Tower with my new Nikon D610 around my neck. Lo and behold the tulips are starting to come out of the ground! Photographing the budding tulips on the median of Michigan Avenue has become a semi-annual…

When you are shooting a panoramic with your camera, do you ever wonder when you should stop sweeping across? When I was photographing this scene of the Chicago River, Initially, I was drawn to frozen Chicago River, and how part…

If you are in the market for a DSLR camera, here’s the best combination to get. I did two months of research looking at all the various DSLR cameras. My 7-year-old Nikon D80 died after 32,000 cycles. It was time…

The Tribune Tower has many locked doors leading to secret closets. Walk down any hallway, and you are sure to encounter a locked door that leads to a mysterious place. One of these such doors is on the 14th floor…

Time is short. People are watching you. Will you have the guts to draw something fun on a foggy window on the bus or train? These questions faced me this morning as with below zero degree temperatures in Chicago. Commuters…

Yeah! Take more photos! Taking photos makes you more observant of your surroundings. Pausing and considering things around you gives you perspective. Often I can get too wrapped up inside my head about life and worrying. To get outside of…

A fog crawls over Chicago, photographers slide their cameras out to capture the gray beast. Chicagoist selected 14 photos of today’s fog in Chicago. The second featured image is my photo of the Water Tower pumping station. While riding the…

(Front page of the Chicago Tribune on June 29, 2013; courtesy Assignment Chicago) What are you more proud of: Your local team winning a sports championship or your city’s photographers? Our city’s photographers work is more outstanding than the achievement…

2012 saw most of my photos cropped to squares thanks to instagram. I also found that while browsing other people’s photos on the Instagram app, I often didn’t read the caption. I would only look at the photos. I started…

Today Gapers Block featured a photo from my "Alley Giveaway" series.

The Museum of Contemporary Art is working with 17 teen artists to make self-portrait videos. Give them a look. They are interesting. Alejandro: I’d like to hear more of Alejandro’s interviews with MCA visitors. Alexis: Interesting piece asking strangers who…