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Writer/Director Paul Ratner was doing research for his 2013 film "Moses on the Mesa,” a love story about a German-Jewish immigrant and an Acoma Pueblo woman, when he discovered a treasure trove of beautiful color photographs of native Americans. Because color film wasn’t readily available until the 1930s, many of these striking images had been colored by hand.

Instagram is, unquestionably, the hottest social network right now for sharing photos. While the service is simple to use, getting your work noticed is not easy considering you’re competing with over 400 million other Instagram users. So what’s the “trick,” if any? We interviewed three photographers who have found success on Instagram to learn more about this social media phenomenon. Along with checking out (and liking) their Instagram pages, don’t forget to visit (and like) Shutterbug’s own page (@shutterbugpix), where we’re sharing our favorite work from readers.

Interested in learning more about how to be a better portrait or wedding photographer but not interested in paying a lot for it? Well, The Wedding School is offering three days of live online classes this week from some of the leading names in portrait and wedding photography. And the price is certainly right. It’s free!

HDR, as most photographers know, stands for High Dynamic Range, allowing you to capture a wider range of highlight and shadow detail than you could in a single frame. You create an HDR image by shooting several identically framed shots of the same scene at different exposures, often with three brackets such as -2, 0, and +2 EV. The newest kid on the HDR block is Aurora HDR Pro from Macphun, currently for Mac only, but with a Windows version in the works.

According to NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams, one of his favorite activities aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is taking photographs of Planet Earth. In this fascinating video from NASA Space Station Live, Williams explains the equipment he uses—including a lens selection from wide–angle to an 800mm telephoto equipped with a 1.4 multiplier.

Researchers at the Columbia University Computer Vision Laboratory are pursuing a radically different approach to photography with the design of optics and sensors applied to a large, thin flexible sheet. Rather than the conventional approach of taking photographs from a single point in space, this camera would enable image capture from any surface—regardless of shape.

Hasselblad showed off its new H6D medium format camera at an exclusive media event in New York City today and Shutterbug was on hand to test out this hotly anticipated system. The H6D camera, which was officially announced last week, comes in two versions: the H6D-100c with a 100-megapixel CMOS sensor, and the H6D-50c with a 50MP CMOS sensor.