beautiful

Stunning Photographs of Rain Drop-Covered Flowers After a Storm

Digital media designer and, for at least the last two years, photographer Bettina Güber recently shot a series of photographs that are stunning in their simplicity. Not overdone or over-processed, they're simply photos of flowers and leaves from her backyard, covered in rain drops from the storm that recently passed through.

Portraits of Eight Beautiful Celebrities Morphed into a ‘Perfect’ Composite

Photoshop and other image manipulation software has become an interesting tool in the quest to define 'beauty.' Often used to sculpt and create false beauty, it's also been used by people like Esther Honig to illustrate how our definitions of beauty change based on culture.

Another project by animator Marius Vibe that is currently making the rounds seeks to answer a different question: If you combined portraits of eight of the most beautiful women in the world (at least according to Maxim) into a single composite, would that composite be even more beautiful than any of the individual parts?

Gorgeous and Very Rare Leica MP Titanium Available for the First Time Outside of Japan

In April of 2007, to commemorate their first anniversary, the Leica Store Ginza in Tokyo, Japan released the beautiful camera above: a Leica MP Titanium limited edition that was only created in a single run of only 150.

Since then, the only place to get one of these has been at the Ginza store in Tokyo. But now, buyers outside of Japan have the rare opportunity to grab one of these gorgeous shooters through the Leica Store Miami... assuming, of course, that you've got $40,000 to drop on a film camera.

Stunning Video of Paris Captured Through the Viewfinder of an Old Pentax 67

If this video doesn't make you want to go out and buy a Pentax 67, nothing will. Paris is beautiful enough as-is, but there's something about exploring it through the viewfinder of a classic medium format camera that will tug at your photographic heartstrings and have you nostalgic for the good ol' days.

Star Trails, Fog, Volcanoes and a Meteor: A Spectacular 270-Image Composite

270 photographs and a total exposure time of two hours and fifteen minutes went into creating this stunning composite photograph of an Indonesian landscape complete with an erupting volcano, a steaming caldera, a meteor, copious amounts of fog and beautiful light trails created by cars traveling below the fog.

This Beautiful Stripped Down Leica M3 is Totally Worthy of the Term “Gear Porn”

It's not often we get to use the words stripped and porn in one of our titled, but this gorgeous stripped down Leica M3 offered up one of those rare exceptions.

In a world were the term "gear porn" is used to describe pretty much any desirable piece of equipment, this camera takes it to another level by shedding its outerwear (if you will) and giving us a peek at the something that is at once incredibly intricate and beautifully simple.

Father Documents His Premature Daughter’s Fight for Survival from Birth to Age One

Thanks to an infection, little baby Edie started her life 16 weeks earlier than she was supposed to, and in pretty bad shape. When she arrived, she weighed only 570g and a consultant told the family that she had between a 5 and 10 percent chance of survival.

And so, not knowing how much time he would have with his daughter, father David started taking pictures. Little did he know, he was documenting a fight that Edie would win, and a miraculous transformation in the process.

Kayakers Raised Out of the Water by Playful Whale, Capture the Incredible Encounter on Camera

A couple of kayakers, believe to be a father and daughter, had an unbelievable encounter with some playful whales in the waters off the coast of Puerto Madryn, Argentina. They captured the entire thing in a GoPro video that has since gone viral, but the footage has sparked serious criticism from authorities and those who capture professional footage and photos of these gentle giants.

This is What Happens When You Close the Drapes on Your At-Home Camera Obscura

Photographer Daniel Tellman is an experimenter, and his ideas often lead to beautiful results. After turning his daughter's room into a giant camera obscura, he decided to have some fun by closing the drapes and turning them into a makeshift projector screen.

He then set up a camera in front of the drapes to capture images of the world outside passing by over the course of a day. The time-lapse video above is a gorgeous compilation of those images.

Breathtaking Wedding Photographs Make a Great Case for Eloping in Iceland

We don't know Ohio couple Sarah and Josh personally, but we like the way they think. Because when wedding planning got to be a bit too much and they decided to elope in Iceland, they cancelled all things but one: their photographer.

They brought wedding photographer Gabe McClintock along to capture their elopement, and the photographs he left them with leave no doubt at the wisdom of their decision.

Dronestagram’s First Drone Photo Contest Shows the Awesome Potential of the Genre

Drone photography is still new enough that we haven't really seen the true potential of this new media unlocked -- yet.

While the FAA and others bicker about privacy and regulation, some photographers are out there exploring the boundaries of this new technology... and all of them seem to have shown up for the first Drone Photography Competition put together by Dronestagram with help from Nat Geo France, GoPro and a few others.

Video: Modern Day Earthrise in HD, as Seen by the Japanese Lunar Orbiter

Forget sunrises... what we need to see more of on Instagram and our Facebook newsfeeds is Earthrises. Of course, they're a bit harder to capture, but spectacular footage like this high-definition video shot by the Japanese Lunar Orbiter can give even the most beautiful beach sunrise a run for its money.

Unique Wedding Photographs Taken Inside an Ice Cave in Alaska

We promise we didn't plan it, but after sharing Josh Newton's amazing wildfire wedding photographs last month, we've managed to stumble across their antithesis today.

Last month it was wedding photos in front of a raging wildfire. This month we give you another beautifully-shot set of wedding pictures, this time taken inside a bonafide, had-to-kayak-to-get-there ice cave.

Bali Underwater Shipwreck Fantasy Shoot Part 2: How It All Came Together

Montreal-based photographer Benjamin Von Wong's underwater fantasy fashion shoot in a Bali shipwreck has quickly become the most popular project he has ever released. And even though he shared some behind the scenes details when the series first debuted, he's back today with a much more detailed look at how exactly these now-viral photos came to be.

This Flower Opening Time-Lapse Breathes New Life Into a Stale Subject

There are a few subjects that lend themselves particularly well to time-lapse photography -- think: sunsets, aurora borealis, the night sky, and the hustle and bustle of a city -- and so, naturally, they are the most frequently used subjects.

Another of these is flowers opening. Not quite as common anymore, it's nevertheless still familiar to anyone who has spent any time exploring the world of time-lapse photography... so why is it that this creation by photographer David de los Santos Gil is still so captivating?

Destruction/Creation: When Ink and Double Exposure Photography Digitally Collide

Inspired by the beautiful ink-in-water photography of Alberto Seveso -- who, by the way, we've featured many times on PetaPixel, so definitely check that out -- South African artist and photographer Chris Slabber recently put a spin on ink photography the likes of which we've not seen before.

Using his skills as a digital artist, he combined the genres of ink photography and double exposure portraits to create something that, in the interest of avoiding photography word inflation, is both good and beautiful (but not 'stunning' or 'brain paralyzing').

Ink Blot Inspired Photos Explore Color and Movement with Ballet Dancers and Powder

When photographer Jana Cruder was commissioned to photograph the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, she jumped at the opportunity to do something different -- something she felt would better express "the emotion and art of movement" that she witnessed when she saw them perform.

That something turned out to be copious amounts of colored corn starch.

Photographing the Matterhorn

70-200mm f/2.8 II at f/11, 170mm 1/15 seconds, ISO 100 It’s approaching 8pm and I’m sitting at the Chez Vrony, …

Convict Becomes Famous Meme After His ‘Beautiful’ Mugshot Goes Viral

Mugshots aren't exactly known as the height of beautiful portrait photography, but 30-year-old felon Jeremy Meeks' mugshot is something else entirely. Within 24 hours of the photo being posted on the Stockton Police Department's Facebook, Meeks' glamour shot had received over 23,000 likes and nearly 6,000 comments... as of this writing those numbers are up to over 87,000 likes and over 11,300 comments.

It's safe to say this image has gone well and truly viral, turning Meeks into a meme and sparking everything from Photoshop spoofs to a 'Free Jeremy' Twitter campaign.

Photograph of the Milky Way Taken Out the Window of an Airplane Above the Atlantic

One of the standard cliché Instagram shots that gets ridiculed on occasion is the plane wing photographs, usually accompanied by some clouds or a sunrise or sunset. And while we agree that taking a photo out the window of your commercial airplane is tacky and overdone, the photo above by astrophotographer Alessandro Merga is a big fat beautiful exception.

Photographer Captures Spectacular Floral Display in the Middle of Parched Wasteland

When the term decisive moment gets thrown around, it's usually used to describe a photographic moment that is fleeting -- the kind of street photograph that's there one instant and gone the next.

But the moments captured in these stunning landscape images by photographer Guy Tal are also decisive, not for their fleeting nature, but their rarity.

Infrared Photographs of Iceland Capture a Different Side of the Gorgeous Country

Between the landscape photos, aurora photos, waterfall photos and time-lapse project, Iceland probably ranks among the top most photographed countries in the world. And while all indications are that it, without a doubt, deserves that title, finding a photo series that offers a fresh perspective on the country can be tough.

Tough, but not impossible, as the photo series Blue Iceland and Iceland by Andy Lee go to show.

Artist Shares Beautiful Illustrations Created with Flower Petals and Household Objects

Singapore-based artist Lim Zhi Wei, who goes by Limzy or @lovelimzy on Instagram, doesn't use your typical materials to create her mini masterpieces. Where others might use paint or, in the case of photographers, light, the artwork that she shares with her 50,000+ followers is created using flower petals, watercolors, food and random household objects.

Stunning Aurora Borealis Photo Looks Like a Dog Jumping Through the Air

Time-lapse photographer Ole Salomonsen once referred to the aurora borealis as the 'polar spirits,' and characterized their movements as dancing. Well, after seeing the image above by photographer John Chumack we're tempted to conclude that the polar spirits have pets that do some jumping while their parents dance.