conceptual

Conceptual Ad Photo Shoot Opts for Thousands of Balloons Over Photoshop Trickery

In a day and age when it’s almost always more time- and cost-effective to use CGI for more complex photoshoots, it’s refreshing to come across amazing work that was done almost entirely in-camera and by hand.

Such is the case with the above photo series created by Getty Images Art Director Lauren Catten and photographer Martin Barraud, who teamed up for these wonderful conceptual photos.

Video Game Artist Uses Inspiration from His Day Job for His Photography

Seattle-based artist Nicolas Bouvier spends most of his days creating concept art for some of the biggest names in the video game world.

But when he’s not in the office drawing up something for Halo or Assassin’s Creed, he’s out with his camera capturing beautiful photos of landscapes and cityscapes filled with people exploring this Earth of ours.

See Chess Pieces Brought to Life in These Creative Portraits

There are a total of six piece types in the game of Chess, and Italian photographer Francesco Ridolfi has managed to bring each of them -- in both black and white versions -- to life in his creative fine art portrait project "Chess Portraits."

Beautiful Concept Photos by NYC Fine Art Photographer Ben Zank

Benjamin Zank is a young fine art photographer based in New York City. He caught the photography bug a few years ago, at the age of 18, after picking up a Pentax ME Super 35mm film SLR from the attic of his grandmother's house, and has been creating incredible concept images ever since.

Surreal Photoshopped Self-Portraits of Life in a Miniature World

Canadian photographer Joel Robison regularly creates surreal self-portraits that show what his life might be like if he found himself on the receiving end of a shrink ray. The conceptual photo-manipulations show him interacting with objects that are suddenly the size of trucks. In one image he is seen sitting on a Christmas tree next to some body-sized ornaments. In another, he's exploring a globe while perched on top of a bottle of Coke.

Creative Conceptual iPhone Photographs by Instagram Shooter Brock Davis

If you'd like to receive a regular injection of photographic inspiration, you should consider following along with photographer Brock Davis' Instagram feed. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based artist regularly shoots conceptual photos with his iPhone that have the same creative touch as photographs Davis shoots for major commissions.

Presence: Invisible Portraits of Celebrities Hiding from the Camera

What defines a portrait? Is it still a portrait if the subject is present in the frame but hidden from the eye? If the answer is yes, then photographer Chris Buck has captured a series of unique celebrity portraits through his project titled Presence. If not, then each of the photographs simply shows a random scene.

The photograph above? That's a portrait of famous American photographer Cindy Sherman.

Photos of Ordinary Objects Infused with Meaning in Clever Ways

You might not recognize the name Kevin Van Aelst, but you might have seen his photography while flipping through popular magazines. The New Haven, Connecticut-based photographer specializes in editorial photographs that illustrate ideas in creative ways. In his images, you'll see eggs appear as light bulbs, paper airplanes formed from water drops on a windshield, and Hawaii in spilled punch. His work is often featured on the pages of numerous publications, including the New York Times, Time, Wired, GQ, and Money.

Pentax Si is a Concept Camera Based Around a Single Dial Button

Designer Andrew Kim thinks that point-and-shoot cameras aren't simple enough for many ordinary consumers. After all, if you're only looking to take snapshots of everyday life, having buttons and dials that can toggle undesired functions is more of an annoyance than a benefit. Taking a page from Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa's book, Kim created a concept camera that he calls the Pentax Si.

Futuristic Drag and Drop Concept for Transferring Photos and Media

Tired of fiddling with cables and memory cards? You might not have to in the near future as wireless data transfer becomes more and more common. This brilliant concept video by designer Ishac Bertran imagines how we might soon be using "spatially aware devices", or devices that can share data simply by holding them close together. Want to transfer some photos off your camera? Simply hold it close to your computer monitor and drag them off!

Apollon: Concept Cameras that Connect Together for Social Photography

Apollon is a concept camera designed by product designer Gordon Tiemstra for his industrial design university project. The big concept is that the camera can be physically combined with your friends' cameras, allowing them to snap photographs together to create things like panoramas and 3D photographs. The images captured by any camera in the cluster is wirelessly transferred to all of the others, giving everyone the complete set of images that were snapped.

Canon AE-D Mirrorless Camera Concept

Olympus recently rebooted its OM line of film SLRs with the OM-D mirrorless camera, and many photographers are hoping that Canon will follow suit with one of its film bodies. Industrial designer and photographer David Riesenberg is among them, and recently decided turn what he wants to see into a concept drawing.

Concept Bicycle Doubles as a Tripod

The T-Bike is a concept bicycle by designer Reza Rachmat Sumirat that's inspired by the camera tripod. In addition to having three sliding bars that can help riders easily adjust the bike to their desired size, the bike also doubles as a tripod for active outdoor photographers. The handlebars provide a tripod mount, and the kickstand on the front wheel helps stabilize the shot.

Nikon Shows Off Some Funky Concept Camera Designs

At the Hello Demain (Hello Tomorrow) exhibition in Paris, France this year, Nikon showed off a number of strange looking concept camera designs. While it's pretty unlikely they're actually planning to release any of these designs, it's interesting to see what they would come up with for this kind of exhibition.

Hitch Concept Camera for Capturing Memories at Group Events

At weddings, guests are often given disposable cameras that they can use to capture memories from their vantage point, but collecting and processing them afterwards can be a hassle and it's definitely not something that has caught up with our digital photography age. Hitch is a concept camera idea by industrial design student Martin Spurway that makes a lot of sense -- guests at an event are given simplified digital cameras, and photographs from the cameras are automatically collected when the camera is placed on a special dock.

Nikon D800 Concept Features Detachable LCD Screen and Swiveling Grip

TechnoFotografia created a concept design for the yet-to-be-announced Nikon D800 DSLR. One of the novel features dreamed up for the design is a LCD screen that can be detached from the camera and used remotely (seen above). If this were to ever exist on a DSLR, losing the screens would be an issue, and replacing them would likely cost a fortune.

Futuristic Concept Camera Captures Entire Perspectives at Once

It's always fun thinking about what photography will be like in the future, and the direction camera technology will go. What's even cooler is seeing these ideas turned into concept drawings or videos. The Capture180 is a concept camera by Lucas Ainsworth that takes a 180° hemispheric photograph with each exposure in addition to the ordinary, framed photograph. When viewing the photographs with the camera, you can "knock" the camera into a viewing mode in which it acts as a small window into the giant scene that was captured.

Futuristic Eye Dropper Concept for Transferring Photos and Files

The i dropper is a conceptual device designed to make transferring photographs from different devices and computers intuitive, quick, and easy. To move a photograph from your iPad to your desktop, all you would have to do is "suck up" the photo on your iPad using the stylus pen-shaped device, and "drop" the data onto your computer screen. What's more, the data contained in the pen is displayed on a little screen to inform you of what's ready to be dropped.

Digital Holga Concept for a New Generation of Hipsters

Holga D is a concept camera by India-based industrial designer Saikat Biswas that brings the plastic, medium-format Holga camera into the digital age.

The cheap toy camera design retains the optical jankiness that lures hipsters to this type of camera (i.e. vignetting, blurring, and light leaks), but a DSLR-caliber sensor inside ensures that the anomalies are optical rather than digital.

Futuristic Polaroid Camera for Printing Wallet-Sized Video Clips

Wouldn't it be neat if we could print out short video clips in Polaroid-esque "prints"? That's the idea behind Kim Hyun Joong's Movie Polaroid Camera, a concept camera that uses a flexible display material rather than ink to "print" out ultra-portable video clips rather than traditional Polaroid pictures.

Concept Sony Alpha DSLR Offers a Slanted LCD and Futuristic Design

Here's a new Sony Alpha concept DSLR camera that features a slanted LCD to keep your face away from the screen, similar to the Sony a352 concept camera that we featured last month. Unlike that one, which had a solar and rounded design, this one has a lot of edges and sharp angles, like what you might see in futuristic concept cars.