In 1965, amateur photographer Marc Weinstein used a fake press pass to get police to escort him stage-side at the historic Beatles concert in Shea Stadium. Now, almost 50 years later, he has sold all 61 of the images he captured there for a whopping £30,000 (or about $45,500). The story involves a little bit of bravery, a little bit of trickery, and a lot of luck.

The Beatles’ 1965 concert at Shea Stadium would go down in history as the biggest concert the band would ever play. Taking place at the height of their fame, McCartney, Lenon, Star and Harrison played for a then record-breaking crowd of over 55,000 people that day. One of those people was Marc Weinstein and his fake press pass. He tells Examiner.com,

I just blended with everybody there. I had a method of operation; I just acted like I belonged. Anybody in authority, I would look the other way.

The method seemed to work for him, because he was ultimately able to trick police men into escorting him right to the front of the stage. That’s where, as luck would have it, the only other photographer present happen to run out of film, which is probably why the photos sold a few days ago through Omega Auctions for about £10,000 more than anticipated.

The winner of the auction was Paul Fairweatherm, a “huge collector of Beatles memorabilia” who currently resides in Washington with 61 new black and white photos of his favorite band and about 45,500 fewer dollars to his name.

(via Examiner via DPReview)

Here’s a bit of silly humor as we’re winding down the workweek: if you’re a photography enthusiast who has fond memories of playing Pokemon Snap during the days of the Nintendo 64, then you might enjoy this humorous fake trailer by Gritty Reboots, which takes popular movies, TV shows, video games and turns them into cinematic trailers.

This one imagines what a live-action Pokemon Snap movie would be like.

In the film, we see protagonist Todd Snap visiting Pokemon Island in order to photograph all of the Pokemon needed for a report by Professor Oak. Equipped with his Canon DSLR, Todd scurries around the island on foot and in his little motorized, amphibious buggy.

Snap is like a cross between a wildlife photographer and a conflict photographer in the Pokemon world.

If you’d like to see how the trailer itself was created, here’s a 3-minute behind-the-scenes video that shows certain shots being filmed and put together:

(via Laughing Squid)

Image credits: Videos and stills by Gritty Reboots

If you want a taste of how fast technology progresses in the world of digital photography, just look at the consumer camera industry through the lens of a company that continues to make a big splash: Apple.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, cameras on phones were horrible and viewing those shoddy pictures was a pain. Then, almost overnight, the smartphone photography revolution — and the slow demise of the compact camera — began.

It’s crazy to think that just six years ago things like pinch to zoom, turning a device to view photos in the correct orientation, and swiping to browse pictures were unheard-of features. Check out this short clip of Jobs’ making the capacity crowd gasp by demonstrating these features that we now take for granted:

Now step back 10 more years to December 20, 1996. On that date, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance at the company’s meeting room after a decade of exile. Apple employee Tim Holmes was one of the people in attendance and shot a number of photographs of the event. His camera of choice? The Apple QuickTake.

That’s right, Holmes was using the camera that Apple launched in 1994 — a camera that TIME calls “the first consumer digital camera” and one of the “100 greatest and most influential gadgets from 1923 to the present.”

Here are the photos Holmes snapped:

The photographs emerged this past week after Holmes decided to upload them to his Flickr account. He notes that, “The QuickTake camera, as all early digital camera, did a poor job or reproducing color.”

See those purple jackets and sweaters being worn in the photos above? Those were actually black…

Apple discontinued the QuickTake in 1997, and reentered the consumer photography game ten years later with the iPhone introduction seen above. Luckily for millions of users around the world, the iPhone’s camera does a much better job at capturing black as black.

(via Reddit and Business Insider)

Image credits: iPhone introduction still and video by Apple, Apple QuickTake 200 Digital Camera by donjd2, Apple “town hall” photos by Tim Holmes

I knew the first minute I saw Jennifer that she was the one. Jen was beautiful and the kind of person that everyone wants in their life: she listened, and when you talked with her you felt like you were the only person who mattered. 

A few months later I finally worked up the courage to ask Jen out, telling her, “I have a crush on you.” At the time Jen was living in New York and I was in Cleveland. We talked on the phone for hours and wanted to know everything about each other; after 6 months of long distance dating I moved to New York.

I remember getting to town with an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket and the girl of my dreams waiting there for me. That evening, after dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, I got down on one knee and proposed to Jennifer. For the entire cab ride home we held each other close and stared at the ring on Jen’s finger, we were totally in love. 

In September of 2007 we were married in Central Park and we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. When I first saw Jen walking down the path I couldn’t hold back the tears, she looked so beautiful and full of life. To this day I can’t put into words why I cried, I was just feeling more happiness than I ever imagined could exist in this world. 

I remember looking into Jen’s big brown eyes the entire ceremony, feeling that they held the world. 

I still struggle to believe that 5 months after this perfect day Jen called me with news that our doctors believed she had cancer. I rushed home to be with Jennifer. Completely numb, I remember telling Jen, “We have each other, we’ll get through this together.” Jen’s eyes lit up.

Our promise of forever was now being challenged by something so completely out of our control, but we made the most of life and embraced each moment, never letting cancer get in the way of our loving each other will all of our heart.

With every challenge we grew closer. Words became less important, we felt each other so deeply. I remember one moment in particular, Jen had just been admitted to the hospital, in tremendous pain. Looking up at me from her hospital bed, Jen told me, “You have to look me in the eyes, it’s the only way I can deal with this pain.” 

Throughout our battle we were fortunate to have a strong support group but we still struggled to get people to understand our day-to-day life and the difficulties we faced.

Jen was in chronic pain from the side effects of nearly 4 years of treatment and medications. At 39, Jen began to use a walker and was exhausted from being constantly aware of every bump and bruise.

Hospital stays of 10-plus days were not uncommon. Frequent doctor visits led to battles with insurance companies. Fear, anxiety and worries were constant.

Sadly, most people do not want to hear these realities and at certain points we felt our support fading away. Other cancer survivors share this loss. People assume that treatment makes you better, that things become OK, that life goes back to “normal.” However, there is no normal in cancer-land. Cancer survivors have to define a new sense of normal, often daily. And how can others understand what we had to live with everyday?

My photographs show this daily life. They humanize the face of cancer, on the face of my wife. They show the challenge, difficulty, fear, sadness and loneliness that we faced, that Jennifer faced, as she battled this disease. Most important of all, they show our love. These photographs do not define us, but they are us. 

When I started making these photographs I thought that just the fact that they were photographs of my wife who had cancer should be enough for people to understand what I was doing. Then it hit me, I still have to make strong photographs. Just because the content is powerful it doesn’t mean that light, composition, exposure and most important of all, feeling, can be ignored.

At this point I decided that the best way to make these photographs was to hit the shutter when I felt something in my gut. I trusted my instincts and felt that if something moved me then I should photograph it. To help make this possible my camera was always ready.

Most of these photographs were made with a Nikon D7000, which has 2 user settings plus the manual mode. I knew that in our bathroom and kitchen the exposure I wanted was 1/125th at f/4, ISO 1600, so I programmed this as User Mode 1. For the rest of the apartment I wanted to be around ISO 3200, 1/60h at F/2.8 and I set User Mode 2 accordingly.

My camera was always within arm’s length and again, when something hit me in my gut, I made a photograph.

During my early years as a photographer I often felt that my photographs lacked something real. I wanted to make photographs that would make people think, photographs that would still be important long after I am gone. I had no idea that this would come in the form of photographing my late wife as she fought for her life. Photography became necessity – when Jennifer’s cancer metastasized to her liver and bone we and we realized that our family and friends didn’t understand how serious our life had become, my camera became my voice.

My camera also became a way for me to escape the reality that the love of my life was dying right in front of me and there was nothing I could do to stop this. Often I would put my emotions away because I just had to stay strong for Jennifer… I knew there would be a day when I would be able to face these feelings.

These photographs have now become therapeutic for me. I look at photographs of Jennifer and I remember our love and all the challenges we faced together. Without these photographs I cannot imagine how I would be dealing with the loss of my wife. I tell people all the time that they should be making photographs of their life and technology has made this so much more accessible for everyone.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from making these photographs is the importance of trust, respect and honesty. Jennifer trusted me. She knew that I would never make a photograph of her that was inappropriate. This trust let to Jennifer being completely open. Last October I attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in Upstate New York. Lynn Johnson spoke that weekend and she said something that resonated with me. Lynn said, “the people we are photographing are not subjects, they are humans.” I think of this every time I make a photograph.

About the author: Angelo Merendino is a photographer based in New York. You can follow him on Twitter here. The project “The Battle We Didn’t Choose” can be found in its entirety here.

There’s a humorous new photography meme emerging from Japan. Students in the country are shooting photos that look like they’re ‘Kamehameha’ scenes from the popular manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball.

In each shot, one participant poses as a character exploding with energy, while one or more other subjects pretends to be blown away by the force of the blast. As with all of the popular memes that have emerged in recent years, participants are jumping onboard by shooting their own photos and then sharing them on the web.

The photograph above was shot by Tokyo student named Ryo Ichikawa.

The technique behind the photographs is simple enough: just time the shot so that you capture the “flying” subjects jumping up and consorting their body into an ‘L’ or sideways ‘V’ shape (try touching your toes in midair). In the resulting photo you’ll look like you’re flying backwards (it helps if you can get some motion blur in the shot).

Photo by @ari_snows

Photo by Rimi)

Photo by @haarnppp

Photo by @arri_1122

Photo by Natsuno

This new meme is likely due to the fact that a new Dragon Ball movie titled Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods is set to hit theaters at the end of this month. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on what this new fad is called, but “kamehamehaing” seems like a likely candidate.

(via Kotaku via Laughing Squid)

Sony has used its “Cyber-shot” brand for digital cameras since 1996, and from 2008 to 2009 the company also slapped the brand on its Sony Ericsson camera phones. Now, with the smartphone industry investing heavily in camera technologies, Sony may soon be reintroducing the brand to its Xperia smartphones in order to compete against other photo-focused phones.

phoneArena reports on a rumor that upcoming flagship Android-equipped Xperia smartphones will carry Cyber-shot branding and will feature serious camera specs.

Cyber-shot branding appeared on Sony Ericsson cameras from 2008 to 2009

One of the phones will reportedly feature a 5-inch LCD screen and “the best camera” so far in the smartphone industry. The claim mainly has to do with the fact that it will feature Carl Zeiss optics for its lens and a large sensor that rivals other heavyweight sensors on the market (e.g. the Nokia PureView 808).

The smartphone camera’s other specs will also be “top of the line,” and the new camera tech won’t cause the phone to be too bloated in terms of size.

Competition in the smartphone industry is intense as companies battle for market share, and camera quality is becoming one of the main battlegrounds on which this war is being wage. Samsung and Apple are the two biggest smartphone manufacturers on Earth, and apparently Sony thinks focusing on photography can help it secure the number three spot.

(via phoneArena via DigitalTrends)

Image credits: Photo illustration based on SONY CyberShot TX5 UnBox by 246-You, Cyber-shot cellphone “W61S” (2008) by MIKI Yoshihito (´･ω･)

Check out this one-of-a-kind music video for the song “Could Be Me” by the band Gunnar and The Grizzly Boys. The video is titled “Redneck Country Band Ambushes Google Street View Car!,” and appears to be a music video shot entirely through the cameras of Google’s Street View cars.

The claim is that the band “ambushed” a Google Street View car as it was driving on a particular road, and that the band was able to stay in front of the car and have portions of the lyrics captured in the shots.

Here’s what the description of the video says:

To protect our friends at Google who bent the rules to make this video possible (and their jobs), we can’t disclose when and where this was filmed.

It seems there’s a good chance the whole thing is a hoax and simply a clever marketing stunt. The video was created by marketing agency Rob Bliss Creative. Google takes privacy very seriously, and none of the faces in the video were blurred by Google’s automatic face blurring system.

Was it faked? Did they somehow “borrow” a Street View car? We have no idea, but the whole concept of doing a video in the style of browsing Google’s Street View photographs is certainly one we’ve never come across before.

South African photographer Anthea Pokroy is a self-proclaimed “ginger,” and has been on a mission to photograph other redheaded people in order to create a series of images about identity, prejudice, racial classification, segregation, and elitism.

The project is titled “I Collect Gingers,” and has grown to over 500 portraits since it launched in August 2010. Red hair is a relatively rare trait that occurs naturally in 1-2% of the human population.

Pokroy writes that she’s drawn to the “beautiful, romantic colour palette of a ginger person,” and that there exists an “innate sense of community and collective experience” among redheaded people.

Each of the portraits was shot in a studio with stark lighting and white clothing. Pokroy intentionally aims for a look that resembles passport photographs that are intended only for documentation.

You can find the entire collection of photographs over on the project’s website.

I Collect Gingers by Anthea Pokroy (via Flavorwire)

Image credits: Photographs by Anthea Pokroy and used with permission

The folks at Panasonic just developed an exciting new sensor technology that could significantly improve low light performance in all types of cameras very soon. Calling it a sensor technology is a bit misleading, however, because no improvements have been made to the actual sensor at all; instead, Panasonic has decided to change what sits in front of the sensor: the traditional color filter.

In order to generate a color image, most cameras use the same type of color filter in front of their image sensors. That traditional filter works by placing red, green, and blue filters in front of each individual pixel. While this works just fine, it also decreases the amount of light that hits the sensor by 50 to 70 percent.

By doing away with the filter and installing a film of “micro color splitters” instead, Panasonic is able to allow all of the light to pass through, essentially doubling the amount of light that arrives on target.

Here’s an example of two photos taken using the same type of sensor with the same settings at f/4.0. One was taken using a traditional color filter, the other using Panasonic’s new splitters:

We won’t go into the technical details here since they are a bit dense, but if you’re interested, they’re explained very well in the video at the top.

If you’re wondering why this hasn’t been tried before, it’s because this type of color analysis requires processing speed that wasn’t practical until now. But now that we have the speed, there’s nothing to prevent companies from implementing Panasonic’s tech right away.

Since nothing has to be done to the sensor itself, the splitters can replace traditional color filters on any type of sensor. And best of all, the materials and manufacturing techniques required to make the splitters are no different then ones already in use today, which means us anxious photographers may see this tech on store shelves very soon indeed.

(via DigInfo TV via Gizmodo)

Google takes photos pretty seriously. In addition to schmoozing the photography community earlier this week by releasing the entire Nik collection of plugins for only $150, the company also promised to make the cameras in their phones “insanely great.” And a recent patent shows one of the ways Google may go about doing that.

The patent (application number 20130076926 if you’re into that sort of thing) shows that Google is planning to one day connect GPS data to its smartphone cameras in a unique way. Instead of using it for geotagging purposes, your smartphone would use location data to automatically change settings such as white balance and saturation based on local weather info.

Even though settings like white balance are typically adjusted automatically already, getting ambient light data from your local weather forecast could further improve the cameras abilities and yield better photos with no input from the user at all.

It may not be on par with the major sensor improvements we’ve been hearing about recently — and being a patent it may never see the light of day — but it’s a step towards better automatic photography. And that’s a prospect the average smartphone photographer probably won’t be opposed to.

(via Engadget)

Image credit: Google Nexus 4 by John.Karakatsanis