Photo Shoot.Info

4th of July 2009 is almost here, so check out the cool assortment of 4th of July pictures that we’ve featured below (photos sourced via Corbis).

Loving the outdoor photo shoot? Canon has teamed up with all four U.S. national parks and conservationists for “Canon Photography in the Parks”. It’s a program that combines a competition with a series of free photography workshops at four national parks.

There are twice daily outdoor sessions hosted by professional photographers. These sessions give participants the opportunity to try a variety of Canon cameras and lenses. There are also indoor evening workshops that focus mainly on the technical aspects of photography equipment.

Sessions are currently being run at Yosemite (for all of June), then it’s on to the Grand Canyon in July and Yellowstone and Acadia in August. The workshops are designed to be useful both to amateurs and more advanced photographers, with the main idea being that those participating in the sessions will submit their photographs to the competition.

If you happen to be in the area of any of the national parks during these sessions, be sure to pop in.

After recently reporting a profit of JPY 28.1B for the year ended March 31, 2009, Nikon Corp does not expect to be as fortunate the next time around. In addition to its forecast of a JPY 17B net loss for fiscal 2010, the camera maker announced that it will trim 1000 jobs from its global workforce of 4600, and put plans for future growth on hold. Nikon will also merge four of its Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries into two units in an effort to save a total of JPY 8B in fixed costs over the next three years.

This definitely wasn’t mentioned on the elephant tour brochure! It’s a quick stop for an elephant mating break

The awesome caving picture below was taken by Stephen Alvarez deep inside a Tennessee cavern that was only discovered last year. It’s National Geographic’s picture of the month for June 2009. See more pictures from that ‘Deep Southern’ series of caving pictures here.

This awesome picture of a leatherback turtle hatchling on Matura Beach in Trinidad was taken by Brian Skerry. The baby turtle is getting its first taste of salt water. This photo is National Geographic’s photo of the month for May 2009. Click here to see more in this series.

Elephants crossing the river - It’s sunrise and the Mahouts take their Indian elephants to browse across the Rapti River near Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal.

Did you know that Kodak has produced 1.5 billion one-time-use (single-use) cameras since 1990??

About 1 billion of those were actually recycled thanks to Kodak’s recycling program.
How does it work? Consumers use the single-use cameras and then turn them in to photo-finishing labs for development. The labs then return the used camera to Kodak via collection centers.

Kodak reportedly says that if all 1.5 billion cameras were laid end-to-end, they would measure an estimated 120,000 miles - they could circle the earth 5 times, or reach more than halfway to the moon.

Just a few interesting camera / photo facts for you

This awesome ‘angry tiger’ photo was taken by Frederic Larson and featured on Corbis. It shows Odin, a six-year-old male white Bengal tiger as he cools hmself off from the heat wave by swimming underwater in his pool at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California. Odin is one of the few tigers in the world that submerges in this way, closing his nostrils and folding his ears down when he dives.

Below is a polar bear picture that was taken by Paul Nicklen in Svalbard (Norway’s Arctic archipelago). It is National Geographic’s photo of the month for April 2009. See more polar bear pictures and other pictures from the Svalbard series here.