Ron Leach

At 15,781 ft. above sea level Europe’s Mont Blanc doesn’t compare to the world’s tallest mountains, and it’s not one of the most difficult climbs. But thanks to an ambitious project led by Italian photographer Filippo Blengini, the peak does have the distinction of being the subject of the world’s largest photograph. Blengini and his international team managed the feat by shooting 70,000 images over a two-week period late last year to create the breathtaking, 365-gigapixel panorama of the mountain.

Most of us who are serious about photography own an arsenal of gear. These days that could mean one or two DSLRS with an array of lenses and accessories, a compact mirrorless system for traveling light, and a high-end compact camera (or two) with manual controls so there’s always a capable camera on hand for those unexpected moments worth capturing.

 

Levi Bettweiser is a photographer. He’s also the founder of The Rescued Film Project—an amazing online archive of images captured on film between the 1930s and the late 1990s. Every image in the collection was rescued from rolls of undeveloped film that Bettweiser obtained from a variety of locations across the globe.

As 2014 draws to a close and I write the 100th installment of this column, I decided to reflect not on the future, but rather how the photo industry has evolved over the past 10 years or so. The pace of technical innovation in imaging gear has progressed so rapidly over the past decade, that is easy to forget how much has changed.