The 5 Boro Foto Fest Says No to Generative AI

Want to apply to be a vendor? Join the authenticity. This year, we're throwing something special in celebration of photographers: it's called the 5 Boro Foto Fest. We've been working on something very big here at the Phoblographer for a long time now. The state of photography tr…

NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month...

NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month Ever. “It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl…” (This record will be broken several more times in the decades to come.)

The Moral Unseriousness of Centrist & Conservative Pundits

Jamelle Bouie almost never misses. In this video that’s just shy of 10 minutes long, he chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on “wokeness” instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump re…

Burrsday

I subscribed to the Los Angeles Times early last year when I was writing about the challenges for journalism in covering the wildfires there. That was in my News Commons series, which I think has some brilliant and useful stuff. But it didn't go anywhere, for reasons. So I wasn'…

A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain...

A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain from 2005. “We discuss Tony’s preferred sucker-punch etiquette, his loyalty to cigarettes & the Chateau Marmont, ayahuasca in Peru, and the talk show he dreamed up with Christopher Walken in mind.”

Supersonic Trebuchet

Ok so when you woke up this morning, you probably didn’t expect to watch a 20-minute video about a trebuchet — but to be fair, I didn’t either. But Tom Stanton’s build of a fully mechanical trebuchet that propels a tiny plastic pellet faster than the speed of sound (c…

Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs:...

Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs: A Swarm of Blood Robots. “I now have a comprehensive family tree, naming the very boats my Italian and Polish ancestors came over on in the late 1800s, the villages a few came from…”

“Draw any shape and hear it as a drum.”...

“Draw any shape and hear it as a drum.” Eigendrum: a drum simulator where you can change the shape of the drum to see how it affects the sound it makes.

G.P.S. and the Lost Art of Getting Lost . “G.P.S....

G.P.S. and the Lost Art of Getting Lost. “G.P.S. has also led us to outsource existential skills: locating yourself in space, parsing out your surroundings, staying calm when you don’t know where you are. Do we lose something when we no longer get lost?”

This DIY Infrared Flash Lets Street Photographers Shoot Without Being Noticed

Flash has been a creative accessory for many photographers, but when it comes to genres such as street photography, it can be disruptive. It often leads your subjects to know that they are being photographed, and that can be a huge challenge if you are working discreetly. To fix…

Some of the most storied problems in mathematics, those...

Some of the most storied problems in mathematics, those posed by Paul Erdős, are being solved by LLMs.

Why You, Yes You, Need a Tripod

I noticed several years ago that cameras started to be all about capturing moments quickly and moving on. More than anything, it's all about being light, nimble, and kind of like a fly on the wall. And this type of photography I think is something that really needs to go away be…

nikitonsky is being grumpy

nikitonsky: Telegram invention I haven’t seen anywhere else: right click on a button. Totally undiscoverable, but when you know about it, it’s kinda okay. You don’t use these options often #Telegram #Button #Dropdown

The Most Popular DSLRs in Singapore Revealed

When it comes to choosing a camera for a young photographer, a DSLR is often the best bet. One of the reasons being that the device is cost-effective, and gives you the right features and controls, as opposed to using one's phone. For Singaporeans who are beginning this journey…

The 5 Best Cameras from 2015 That You Can Pick in 2026

A good camera, whether ILC or compact, is some of the most opted options today. Compacts make your setup easy, while ILCs allow not only a range of lenses to work. If you are looking for a perfect camera, whether compact or ILC, then these options can be of help.

Geology Building

The Art of the Copyist

Lovely short video about artist Jas Knight, who is a participant in the Met Museum’s Copyist Program: The Copyist Program offers time and space for artists to develop their own interpretation of an artwork through intimate study in the Museum’s galleries. Copyists have…

Here’s how Rocky’s musical language from the Project...

Here’s how Rocky’s musical language from the Project Hail Mary movie was created. The filmmakers didn’t “want it to feel like a human language because he’s supposed to be really more musically communicating”.

These Presets Work with Retro and New Cameras

The lead image of this story is from our Olympus EM5 review, and it has our newest presets applied. Over the years, the Phoblographer has tested cameras and lenses with every major camera manufacturer and lens maker. And so we've got a massive database of images. We've used that…

I’m Done Using AI . “It made me lazy. It made me...

I’m Done Using AI. “It made me lazy. It made me stop caring. It made me a worse programmer. It made me depressed. Because I stopped doing the hard work, I stopped learning, I stopped growing, I stopped being the one making the software.”

Why weren’t bicycles invented sooner? “Why...

Why weren’t bicycles invented sooner? “Why was no one…even considering the question of human-powered vehicles until the 1400s? Why weren’t there bicycle mechanics in the 1300s, when there were clockmakers, or at least by the 1500s, when we had watches?”

Fendsday

Live and re-learn I've been a citizen of California for 41 years, and I learned here long ago that the narrow staircase-like parallel terraces on many ranchland hillsides were caused by cattle grazing on horizontal paths, because ungulates aren't climbers. I have seen cattle on…

Death Cab for Cutie’s Tiny Desk Concert

Death Cab for Cutie rolled into the NPR offices for a Tiny Desk Concert, which featured two new songs from their current album and some oldies: Title and Registration and Soul Meets Body. Gibbard noted: I’m starting to realize that some of our earlier records came out a s…

The Camp Snap 2 Just Bought the 90s Back so Hard

Camp Snap has created some wonderful cameras over the years. Screen-free, lightweight, and an analogue appeal in a digital body, are some of the reasons why photographers are going after the devices. As part of their latest color update, Camp Snap is happily announcing the color…

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting...

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same. “A recommender that’s a mediocre predictor of what you’d love in a rich, diverse world becomes an excellent predictor of what you’ll click in the impoverished one it creates.”

A Collection of Eclipse Glasses (1793-2019)

Oh wow, Williams College’s Hopkins Observatory has a huge collection of eclipse glasses & viewers (and other eclipse ephemera), some of them dating back to 1793. Here are a few of my favorites: (via present & correct) Tags: design · ec…

Flashback Teases Its Next Camera as Part of Brand ‘Reset’

Flashback, a brand known for reviving film nostalgia on a budget, has recently published a candid video which has raised some eyebrows. One of the founders, who admitted that the brand is a shadow of its former self, has also taken the moment to set the record right: a brand res…

nikitonsky is being grumpy

nikitonsky: Don’t move buttons from under the mouse. Thanks @The2lb3oz4dr10grOfHedgehogs for the video #Popup #Calendar #Stability

Stories that the authors of the Bible borrowed from...

Stories that the authors of the Bible borrowed from other cultures and religions, including the flood myth, the Garden of Eden, etc. I learned about these in a religion & mythology class in college, which cemented my atheism.

How to Keep Taking Photos When Depression is All Around You

In November of 2025, I wrote a note to myself inspired by poet Kyle Tran Myhre's book, "Not a lot of reasons to sing, but enough." Track 9 of the audiobook is a poem that I truly wish I had in my life at the end of 2023: a moment that I consider to be one of the most depressing…