beautiful

Surreal Portraits by 19-Year-Old Fine Art Photographer David Talley

David Talley is a 19-year-old fine art photographer who has attracted a sizable following on Flickr through his dreamlike portraits and self-portraits. He often spends a good deal of time and energy setting up his shots. For the photograph above, Talley and his buddy hauled a huge door nearly a mile to the beach.

American Tintype: A Portrait of a Tintype Portrait Photographer

Documentary filmmaker and photography enthusiast Matt Morris recently noticed a magazine article about a tintype photographer named Harry Taylor based in his hometown of Wilmington, NC. Having recently gotten engaged, Morris and his fiancée decided to have Taylor shoot their engagement photos using the 150-year-old photo process. They ended up sitting for a 5-hour-portrait session, and Morris was stunned by the results.

A few months later, he decided to return to Taylors studio with two Canon 5Ds in tow and spent an afternoon documenting Harry's work. The fantastic 4-minute documentary above is what resulted.

Beautiful Homemade Polaroid Twin-Lens Reflex Camera Made of Wood

Feast your eyes on this gorgeous twin-lens reflex camera that was designed and built from scratch by photographer Kevin Kadooka, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Portland. It uses a Mamiya-Sekor 105mm f/3.5 Chrome lens and has a Polaroid back for shooting 4.25x3.5-inch instant film, and is crafted out of laser-cut birch plywood.

Trippy 180-Degree Vertical Panoramas of Churches in New York City

New York City is undoubtedly one of the most photographed cities on Earth, but photographer Richard Silver doesn't let that fact faze him. He's on a personal mission to capture facets of The Big Apple in ways people have never seen before. A month ago, we shared his New York Sliced series, which consists of spliced photos of buildings that show day turning into night.

Silver has now followed that project up with a new one titled, NY Churches, which documents the various churches in NYC through beautiful (and disorienting) vertical panoramas.

Ethereal Photographs from Wonderland

Take a look at the portfolio of Washington D.C.-based photographer Cade Martin, and you'll feel like you're looking at movie stills from an upcoming live action Alice and Wonderland film. His beautiful, dreamlike photographs have themes of grace, beauty, repetition, and light.

Turn Your Instagram Photographs Into a Beautiful Tear-Off Calendar

Last year, we wrote about Poladarium, a tear-off calendar that inspires you with a new Polaroid picture every day. Now, for roughly the same price, you can create one that features your own photographs. Instagram printing company Printstagram has launched a new calendar product that allows you to turn your Instagram photo stream into a beautiful stack of 365 8.5x7cm "Polaroid" pictures.

Gorgeous “Rooftopping” Photography of Toronto in Time-Lapse Form

Toronto-based photographer Tom Ryaboi is one of the godfathers of "rooftopping", which involves climbing to the tops of skyscrapers, pointing a camera off an edge, and capturing cities from high perspectives that most people never experience. It's an activity that's not for the faint of heart; rooftoppers sometimes even dangle their feet off the edge of buildings.

Over the past year, Ryaboi has been working hard at combining rooftopping photography with his newfound passion of time-lapse photography. The result of his efforts was City Rising, the gorgeous time-lapse video seen above (be sure to watch it in HD).

Beautiful Animations Showing MRI Scans of Fruits and Vegetables

Most photographers and artists will never have the opportunity to make the kind of images that Andy Ellison does. As an MRI technologist at Boston University Medical School, Ellison has access to extremely expensive imaging machines. More specifically, he runs a research-only Philips 3 Tesla MRI machine. When he's not using it for official purposes, he experiments with it by placing various fruits, vegetables, and flowers inside. The resulting still images and animations are beautiful and abstract, and form a project that he calls "Inside Insides." The images above show a pineapple and an artichoke.

A Beautiful Time-Lapse of Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Journey Through LA

If you've been following the news over the past week, you probably know that the Space Shuttle Endeavour spent October 11-14 rolling through the streets of Los Angeles, going from the Los Angeles International Airport to its new home at the California Science Center. News crews and large camera-wielding crowds were constantly by the shuttle's side, documenting its progress.

For those of you who weren't lucky enough to personally witness the neat sight of the giant shuttle moving through the city, check out the beautifully-made time-lapse video above that shows the four-day journey in under three minutes.

Google Lets Photographer Into Secretive Data Centers, Beautiful Photos Ensue

Look around on the web, and you'll find plenty of photographs of Google's colorful offices in Mountain View (AKA the Googleplex) and around the world. Finding images shot from inside the company's tightly-guarded data centers is much harder, since only a handful of employees are allowed to roam the spaces where the "web lives." However, Google recently invited photographer Connie Zhou inside a number of its high-tech data centers. Gorgeous photographs resulted -- images that show incredible scale, mind-numbing repetition, and quirky colors.

7 Colorful Hours of a Sunset Captured in a Single Photograph

Turkey-based photography enthusiast Isil Karanfil created this beautiful image showing an entire sunset in a single photograph. Karanfil fixed her Nikon D60 in its view of the seascape, and then shot a single photograph every hour for seven hours between 3pm and 9pm as the day turned into night. She then took the resulting photographs, sliced them up, and combined them together using Photoshop for the image seen above, which she titles, "Sun Lapse".

Man Finds New Life as a Photographer After Being Shot and Paralyzed at Age 8

The short 4-minute-long video above is probably the most inspiring thing you'll see today. It's the story of Jaleel King, a man who became wheelchair-bound at the age of 8 after being shot in the back by an angry neighbor. The blast from the sawed-off shotgun almost killed him, but he fought through that challenge -- and every other challenge that has presented itself since.

Using Time-Lapse Photography to See the Movement of Massive Glaciers

People sometimes use the expression "slow as a glacier" to describe something so stagnant that even the speeds of snails and molasses would feel inadequately fast in comparison. The fastest glaciers ever measured move at tens of meters per day, while the slowest ones may budge only have a meter over the course of a year. Most of the time, the movement is too slow for the human eye to see.

Luckily for us, there's something called time-lapse photography. Back in 2004, PBS aired a NOVA episode titled Descent into the Ice, which followed photographers and adventurers as they ventured deep into the heart of a glacier found on Mont Blanc. One of the things they did was set up cameras to capture the movement of glaciers over extremely long periods of time. The video above shows 5 months of movement seen under a glacier moving 2 feet per day.

Hands-on with the Fujifilm XF1: A Retro and Flexible Compact Camera

Fujifilm is a camera company that's going all-in on the idea of "retro design". We're not complaining. Its new XF1 compact camera brings the sleek design of X-Series' cameras to the world of "point-and-shoots", featuring a minimalist aluminum body that's covered with faux-leather. The camera feels very nice and solid in the hand. It's not as compact as other point-and-shoots (the Canon S110 is around 30% smaller and 20% lighter), so I'd say it's purse-sized rather than pocket-sized. What it lacks in portability, however, it makes up for in beauty and brawn.

Mesmerizing Time-Lapse Shows What It’s Like to be an Airplane Pilot

You've probably seen time-lapse videos shot looking out the side of an airplane through a passenger window, but have you ever seen one from the pilot's point of view? If not, check out the beautiful video above. It was created by pilot Jakub Vlk, who brought his Canon 600D to work and captured photographs across seven days. The video shows Vlk taxiing to the runway, taking off, floating up into the clouds, flying around, and landing.

Rolleiflex Still Happily Making Analog TLR Cameras, FX-N to Debut at Photokina

Did you know that Rolleiflex is still producing its high-end analog twin-lens reflex cameras? Apparently there's enough photographers out there buying them for there to be a small, niche market, because Rollei is planning to show off a new model at Photokina 2012 next week.

The FX-N is a 6x6 medium format TLR camera that is an updated version of the Rolleiflex FX, a camera that costs over $5,000. The only difference it has with its predecessor (or sibling) is that it features a new Heidosmat 80mm f/2.8 viewfinder lens and a Rollei S-Apogon 80mm f/2.8 main lens that offer a shorter minimum focusing distance of 55 centimeters.

Create Beautiful Surreal Photographs by Stacking Your Film Negatives

We've shared a number of examples of surreal images created using multiple exposure techniques or by combining images using Photoshop, but did you know that you can also create beautiful images by stacking actual film negatives? Photographer Laina Briedis did some experiments with 35mm film stacking, and achieved some stunning results. She combined photos of stars and sky with pictures of people, creating images that look like they were plucked from someone's dreams.

Beautiful Photos of a Double Rainbow All the Way Over San Francisco

San Francisco residents were treated with a dazzling sight yesterday: a double rainbow all the way across the sky, visible from many parts of the city. The San Francisco Chronicle writes,

The mist mixed with golden light from the low-slung sun to cast a beautiful pink glaze across downtown skyscrapers. Thousands at the Giants baseball game took their eyes away from the game to gawk at a double rainbow that formed over center field, perfectly framed by the grandstands. "There was just some very light rain at the game, but it was amazing to see so many people bringing out their iPhones and taking a picture of it," said Mike Pechner, a forecaster with Golden West Meteorology who was at the game. Dozens of motorists pulled their cars to the side of the road to gawk and take pictures of the rare double-rainbow, created when the light refracted through the moisture in the air.

Footage of Curiosity’s Descent onto Mars Interpolated to 25 Frames per Second

NASA's Curiosity Rover snapped photographs at 5 frames per second as it descended onto the face of Mars a few weeks ago. The footage that results when the images are combined into a 15 frame per second HD video is pretty amazing, but apparently not amazing enough for a YouTube user named hahahaspam. He spent four straight days taking the 5 fps footage and interpolating it to 25 frames per second. This means that instead of a video showing the choppy landing at 3 times the actual speed, his video shows the landing smoothly and in real time!

First Glimpse at a Retro-styled Compact from Fuji, Possibly Named the “XP1”

Fuji already introduced retro, Leica-style design to the world of mirrorless cameras with its gorgeous X series line, and now it appears that the company wants to do the same thing for the world of point-and-shoots. New leaked photos, first published on Digicam-info, show an unknown compact camera by Fujifilm that features a slick leather wrap and an elegantly minimal UI -- a camera that definitely wouldn't embarrass fashion-forward folk.

Beautiful Crystal DSLR Bookends Make Holding Up Books a Snap

Check out these beautiful crystal DSLR bookends! Created by photo accessory company Fotodiox, they're handcrafted 2/3-scale replicas of the Canon 7D DSLR with a zoom kit lens. In addition to holding up your literature collection, they can also be a nice addition to your desk as paperweights.

This is What You Get When You Stack Photos of a Meteor Shower

Capturing a single shooting star can make for a brilliant photograph, but what does it look like if you composite multiple meteors into a single image? Fort Collins, Colorado-based nature photographer David Kingham decided to find out recently during the ongoing Perseid meteor shower. The amazing photo seen above is what resulted.

Spectacular Wedding Photo Showing the Milky Way Floating Overhead

Melbourne, Australia-based wedding photographer Lakshal Perera shot this stunning wedding photograph a few days ago showing the newlywed couple in the foreground and the Milky Way floating in the night sky. The scene was extremely dim, allowing for a clear view of the sky. Perera captured it in a single exposure using a Canon 5D Mark III and 16-35 f/2.8L lens at 17mm, 71 seconds of exposure, f/5.6, and ISO boosted up to 4000 (wow). The couple is relatively sharp given that they had to stand still for 71 seconds!

Awe-Inspiring Family Portrait Features the Milky Way as the Backdrop

The next time you're out in a non-light polluted place with your family and your camera, try using our galaxy as a backdrop. Hawaii-based photographer John Hook shot this ridiculously awesome photograph of him, his wife, and his daughter staring up at the Milky Way. As if that weren't perfect enough, there's also a shooting star photobombing the portrait in the lower right hand corner!

Tuna Fishers Place Camera in Torpedo, Capture Amazing Footage of Dolphins

On Monday, a group of four friends went on a fishing trip in the Pacific Ocean. Taking their boat "A Salt Weapon" 20 miles west of Santa Cruz, Mark Peters, Jeremy, Dave, and William were expecting a fun-filled day of albacore tuna hunting. What they ended up capturing was so much more.

Wanting to save some memories of their trip and film their battles with tuna from underwater, Peters decided to bring along a GoPro Hero 2 camera fitted inside a $50 custom-made torpedo.

Olympic Synchronized Swimming Photos Flipped Upside-Down

What happens if you take photos of synchronized swimming shot at the Olympics and flip them upside-down? Ethereal beauty, that's what.

The Huffington Post did this experiment yesterday using photographs shot by Getty and AFP photographers. The results are magical.

Epic Photos of Supercell Storm Clouds Over the American Midwest

Photographer Camille Seaman is well-known for her images of icebergs, but recently she turned her attention to another state of water: supercell storm clouds. She has been partnering with storm chasers and shooting amazing images of violent weather passing through the American Midwest. The series is titled The Big Cloud.

Ethereal Photos of Indoor Clouds

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates indoor clouds using a smoke machine and uses dramatic lighting to make them look realistic. He calls the project Nimbus.

Incredible Long Exposure Photographs Shot from Orbit

Last month we shared a long exposure photograph by NASA astronaut Don Pettit that showed star trails and city trails in the same frame. Turns out the photo was just one of many long exposure images shot by Pettit so far during Expedition 31. The photograph above shows star trails, an aurora, and flashes of lightning splattered all across the surface of the Earth.