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Pakistani Official Accidentally Uses Cat Filter During Live Press Conference

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



The face filters built into the cameras of social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are all the rage these days, but not usually in official government settings. But when a Pakistani politician live-streamed a press conference on Facebook Live last week, a cat filter was accidentally turned on. Hilarity ensued.

Regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai was holding the presser last Friday when viewers suddenly began seeing him with pink cat ears and whiskers.

“I wasn’t the only one — two officials sitting along me were also hit by the cat filter,” Yousafzai tells the AFP.

Upon noticing the

Continue reading “Pakistani Official Accidentally Uses Cat Filter During Live Press Conference”

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Pakistani Official Accidentally Uses Cat Filter During Live Press Conference

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



The face filters built into the cameras of social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are all the rage these days, but not usually in official government settings. But when a Pakistani politician live-streamed a press conference on Facebook Live last week, a cat filter was accidentally turned on. Hilarity ensued.

Regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai was holding the presser last Friday when viewers suddenly began seeing him with pink cat ears and whiskers.

“I wasn’t the only one — two officials sitting along me were also hit by the cat filter,” Yousafzai tells the AFP.

Upon noticing the

Continue reading “Pakistani Official Accidentally Uses Cat Filter During Live Press Conference”

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NASA’s Starshade is a Flag for Blocking Starlight in Space Photo Shoots

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Photographers use tools called flags to block and control light. NASA has detailed a new technology called a starshade that’s essentially a gigantic flag in space for doing photo shoots with space telescopes.

“Although starshades have never flown in space, they hold the potential to enable groundbreaking observations of planets beyond our solar system, including pictures of planets as small as Earth,” NASA writes.

A starshade mission would involve two spacecraft working together with extreme precision. One would be a space telescope (the camera) that can hunt for and photograph planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system. The

Continue reading “NASA’s Starshade is a Flag for Blocking Starlight in Space Photo Shoots”

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Construction Guy Instagram Influencer Turns Out to Be Coffee Ad Stunt

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



A construction guy named Omar in Austin, Texas, became an “Instagram influencer” recently after attracting hundreds of thousands of followers to his @justaconstructionguy account with just a handful of photos. But it turns out the guy was a carefully crafted persona designed to help a small coffee shop sell coffee.

After being created in May, the account shot to Insta-stardom when it was Tweeted out by Twitter user @barbzlovescarbs, who purported to be Omar’s daughter.

In his photos and captions, Omar was apparently an ordinary construction worker who had a knack for poking fun at Instagram’s exploding “influencer” culture:

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Has Social Media Turned Photography Into a Contest With No Closing Date?

This post is by Andy Hutchinson from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Being a photographer used to be pretty simple. You had a camera, you had a subject you liked photographing, and you used to go out with your camera and photograph the subject you liked. And apart from perhaps showing off the occasional print at the local camera club to a group of like-minded tragics, that’s probably about as far as it went. Then social media arrived and, as with so many aspects of this modern connected life of ours, everything changed.

Here is a photograph of a globally recognisable icon. Did I take this photograph for Internet points because everyone

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Instagram is Designed to Make You Feel Bad, Madonna Says

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Madonna has about 14 million followers on Instagram, so the American singer knows first-hand how powerful the photo-sharing social network is for “influencing.” But now she’s speaking out against Instagram and the darker side of using it.

“You get caught up in comparing yourself to others,” the 60-year-old star tells The Sun in a new interview. “I think Instagram is made to make you feel bad.”

She says it’s especially hard for artists to develop their art and as people under the Instagram microscope.

“I was lucky enough to have a life as an artist before the

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Drunk Droning is Now Illegal in Japan

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



If you’re planning to do any drone photography in Japan, make sure you stay away from alcohol. The country has just outlawed drunk droning, making it an offense that’s punishable by up to a year in prison.

Japan’s parliament passed the law on Thursday in an effort to exert more government control and oversight over drones, which have exploded in popularity around the world in recent years.

If you’re caught flying drunk and your drone weighs over 7 ounces (200g), you could be fined up to $2,750 (¥300,000) and face some harsh time behind bars.

“We believe operating drones after

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NASA Finds ‘Star Trek’ Starfleet Logo on Mars

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



NASA has announced an unusual new discovery: the iconic Star Trek Starfleet logo has been found on the surface of Mars.

The insignia was captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that’s orbiting the red planet, and the MRO HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera team at the University of Arizona explains that the curious chevron shapes are footprints of old sand dunes:

These curious chevron shapes in southeast Hellas Planitia are the result of a complex story of dunes, lava, and wind.

Long ago, there were large crescent-shaped (barchan) dunes that moved across this area, and at some point,

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When You Ask a Photographer Friend to Babysit Your Cat…

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Photographer and actor Josell Mariano recently had a friend ask him to babysit her beloved cat, Jade. He decided to use his time with the blue tabby cat to do a photoshoot.

“If I babysit the cat for more than 3 days, the photos just happen,” Mariano says.

“Here’s her face when she takes a s**t,” Mariano says.

Mariano shot portraits of Jade with a single strobe through a large diffused beauty dish located to camera right. He was using a Canon 6D Mark II with a 50mm f/1.8 at f/8 and 1/100s.

Mariano has since created a dedicated

Continue reading “When You Ask a Photographer Friend to Babysit Your Cat…”

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When You Ask a Photographer Friend to Babysit Your Cat…

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Photographer and actor Josell Mariano recently had a friend ask him to babysit her beloved cat, Jade. He decided to use his time with the blue tabby cat to do a photoshoot.

“If I babysit the cat for more than 3 days, the photos just happen,” Mariano says.

“Here’s her face when she takes a s**t,” Mariano says.

Mariano shot portraits of Jade with a single strobe through a large diffused beauty dish located to camera right. He was using a Canon 6D Mark II with a 50mm f/1.8 at f/8 and 1/100s.

Mariano has since created a dedicated

Continue reading “When You Ask a Photographer Friend to Babysit Your Cat…”

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This is How Hong Kong Photojournalist Are Protesting Police Actions

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Hong Kong police held a press conference yesterday to discuss the anti-extradition bill protests that have been raging this week. Photojournalists showed up to the presser wearing helmets, gas masks, and safety vests in protest of the excessive force they say police have been using against them.

The large crowd of photographers wearing bright high-visibility jackets and protective gear at the peaceful indoor press conference made for an unusual sight.

“Photojournalists in full protective gears attend police chief’s presser

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GQ Ran a Photo of ‘Tech Titans’ That Had Women Photoshopped In

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



GQ ran a story last week about a group of “tech titans” making a “pilgrimage” to small Italian village to visit luxury designer Brunello Cucinelli. The article’s lead image was a group photo of the attendees, but something looked off…

A screenshot of the original article published by GQ.

BuzzFeed News Ryan Mac noticed that the two women in the photo, SunRun CEO Lynn Jurich and Peek CEO Ruzwana Bashir, looked out of place in the strangely low-res image. The pixelation, lighting, and color didn’t seem to match the other 15 men in the frame.

The original lead photo in

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Photographer Pleads for Help Finding Lost SD Cards with Wedding Photos

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



A wedding photographer has lost an SD card case full of photos she shot at a wedding, and her appeal for the public to help find the lost memory cards is making headlines in Colorado.

Contact7 reports that photographer Lenzi Holmes was hired to photograph the wedding of her best friend Kacie and her fiance Troy Sanford in Berthoud, Colorado, last Friday. All of the photos she shot were recorded on SD cards that were then placed into an SD card carrying case (the case in the photo above).

The following day, after checking out of their hotel and enjoying

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These Deepfakes of Famous People Are Testing Facebook’s Policies

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Facebook has recently taken a position of not removing faked videos, choosing instead to reduce their reach and display them alongside fact-checking information. Now a series of viral deepfake videos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other famous individuals is putting Facebook’s policies to the test.

Motherboard reports that artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe recently partnered with the advertising Canny to create AI-generated fake videos of people talking about a mysterious “Spectre,” which is actually an exhibition the artists put on at the Sheffield Doc Fest in the UK.

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Frontman Slaps Phone from Fan Who Jumped Onstage for Selfie

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



The punk rock band FIDLAR was performing in Berkeley earlier this week when a fan jumped onstage and attempted to take a selfie with frontman Zac Carper. Carper would have none of it, and he proceeded to slap the phone out of the woman’s hand.

The punk rock band FIDLAR was performing in Berkeley earlier this week when a fan jumped onstage and attempted to take a selfie with frontman Zac Carper. Carper would have none of it, and he proceeded to slap the phone out of the woman’s hand.

Back in 2015, FIDLAR actually tweeted a warning of this

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Woman Captures Seagull Stealing $22 Lobster Roll From Her Hand

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Pepperdine sports law professor Alicia Jessop was visiting Maine from California recently when she stopped by a popular tourist destination for a lobster roll. When she held out the roll to take a picture of it, a seagull swooped in at the exact moment Jessop pressed the shutter.

Jessop was visiting the famous Cape Neddick Light lighthouse in southern Maine on June 7th when she ordered the $21.50 lobster roll from a parking lot lobster shack.

“I wanted a lobster roll because that’s been a bucket list item of mine since I was a kid: to get a lobster

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A Photographer’s Powerful Photo and Message for a Mom After Birth

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



After a child is born, that newborn baby generally becomes the center of everyone’s attention. One photographer recently captured an often-overlooked moment of a mom post-birth, and her photo and the accompanying message are going viral, reaching millions around the world.

After her friend Tammy Wright of Jacksonville, Florida, gave birth to a baby boy on May 20th, photographer Alex Dovel of Alex Michele Photography shot the above photo of an exhausted Wright holding the side of her hospital bed. Dovel then shared the photo on her Facebook page with the following message:

In the hustle of the room I

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This Bird Has Impressive Built-In Image Stabilization

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Drones these days often feature mechanical gimbals to stabilize their cameras while in flight. But long before consumer drones exploded onto the scene, birds were already taking to the skies with impressive built-in image stabilization.

Designer and wildlife photographer Anthony Roberts was shooting with his Canon 5D Mark IV and his 100-400mm image stabilized lens at South Stack on the UK island of Anglesey when he captured some neat footage of a male kestrel hunting in strong winds.

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NASA Will Let You Shoot Photos on the ISS, But You’ll Need $50 Million

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Astronauts have dazzled the world in recent years with photos and videos shot from the International Space Station. If you’ve always dreamed of shooting from the ISS yourself, there will soon be a way. You’ll just need very deep pockets.

NASA just announced today that it’s opening the International Space Station to both tourists and commercial activities “so U.S. industry innovation and ingenuity can accelerate a thriving commercial economy in low-Earth orbit.”

NASA will allow ordinary (ultra-rich) people to go on private astronaut missions to the ISS and stay there for up to 30 days. Two of these

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Photographers Get Lowballed Because They Love Their Jobs: Study

This post is by Michael Zhang from PetaPixel


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



Photographers have been speaking out in recent years about getting asked to do work for little or no money. A new research study is now suggesting that photographers get lowballed because they love their jobs.

Professor Aaron Kay and Ph.D student Jay Kim at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business recently published a paper titled, “Understanding Contemporary Forms of Exploitation: Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers,” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. What the researchers found was that people feel like it’s more acceptable to exploit workers who are passionate about what

Continue reading “Photographers Get Lowballed Because They Love Their Jobs: Study”