Ideas

Have a bunch of film canisters lying around and not sure what to do with them? You could use them to geekify your Christmas lights by punching a hole in the caps and sticking the lights in.

Here’s a creative self-portrait by Dutch photographer Joeri Bosma. It’s neat how the …

Last week it came to light to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had filed …

Flickr user Henrique Feliciano Silva made this neat photograph by hollowing out a light bulb, filling it with water, hanging it upside down on his balcony, and shooting his neighborhood through it with a shallow depth of field.

Here’s a fun and cute baby picture idea for photo enthusiast parents. Nikon should drop Kutcher and hire this …

Film student Zach King and his sister made this creative mock commercial for the Macbook Air using a Canon 5D Mark II, some string and a lot of imagination.

The Appcam is a new concept design for camera controls — and supposedly …

Here’s really random/strange/stupid idea inspired by a comment left yesterday, but have you heard of anyone “printing” …

Finish modder metalfusion has a sweet DIY way of showing off photographs. After …

Leica offers a funky $200 lens holder accessory for its M system film rangefinders that screws into the tripod mount and lets you store an extra lens on the bottom of the camera.

Here’s a fun weekend project: create a tiny keychain photo album with your favorite photos! Simply print out your …

If you ever find yourself with some unwanted negatives on your hands, you can upcycle them into creative film …

Check out this mummified camera used by Reuters photographer Jo Yong-Hak. Yong-Hak was assigned to cover the popular Boryeong Mud Festival this year in South Korea, and decided to protect his gear with some good ol' fashioned plastic wrap.

Here's an awesome tutorial that teaches you how to create beautiful light painting sparkler photos. The materials are pretty cheap: all you need is some steel wool, an egg whisk, and a rope or cable. Simply place the steel wool inside the whisk, light it on fire using a lighter (or 9V battery), and swing it around at the end of the cable while your camera snaps a long-exposure photo. Just be careful not to start a fire!

Ken Murphy created this time-lapse showing an entire 360-degree view overlooking San Francisco using only a single camera:

The camera (a Canon A590 with CHDK installed) snapped an image every five seconds while the motorized mount slowly rotated, making a single rotation in 90 minutes. I assembled the images into this panoramic movie, in which each “pane” is actually the same movie, slightly offset in time. The panes combine to make a single 360-degree view. [#]

What does four hours of a toddler playing look like when compressed into 2.5 minutes? Photographer Francis Vachon found …

Here’s a concept for you to play around with over the weekend: give your shadow a real camera to …

There's plenty of tutorials online teaching you the "proper" techniques for photographing fireworks, but have you ever tried shooting them "incorrectly" on purpose? When photography enthusiast Pete Rogina took his Canon 5D Mark II out to capture fireworks this past Independence Day, he decided to try "light painting" with the fireworks by shooting them at long exposures without a tripod, waving the camera so that the streaks of light would take on abstract shapes.

At what point does inspiration turn into plagiarism? That's the question that popped up last year when Rhianna was sued by David LaChapelle over scenes found in one of her music videos, and it's the same issue with a lawsuit recently filed by photographer Janine Gordon against photographer Ryan McGinley. Gordon claims that 150 of McGinley's images -- including some used for a Levi's ad campaign -- are "substantially based" on her photos. In the three pairs of disputed images shown above, the ones on the left are by Gordon and the ones on the right by McGinley.

File this under “awesome ways to show off your photos”. Lomographer zakguy had …

San Diego-based wedding photographer Aaron Willcox won 1st place in …

This light painting photograph was created by a group of students over in Germany using a swarm of seven Roomba automated vacuum cleaners. Each one had a different colored LED light attached to the top, making the resulting photo look like some kind of robotic Jackson Pollock painting. There's actually an entire Flickr group dedicated to using Roombas for light painting -- check it out of you have one of these robot minions serving you in your home.

Maybe when Leica’s designers were brainstorming ideas for the company’s logo, they noticed …

Photographer Dana Neibert made this unique iPad case using an old 8×10 film …

Have you been running low on creative juices lately? Fill up again with these 29 simple ways to stay …

German wedding photographer Rocco built this ingenious …

Flickr user Robert Hodgin purchased a cheap RC helicopter and shot these 30 second exposure photographs of him attempting to keep the helicopter from crashing. If you have RC helicopter skills, you might be able to create pretty neat light-painting photographs using this idea.

Did you know that you can turn any wall magnetic by painting it with magnetic primer? Communications company M Booth did this with one of its walls, then sent out employees onto the streets of NYC with Fujifilm Instax cameras. The result is this impressive wall displaying 800 instant photos!

Here’s an idea for a quick photo activity (perhaps on a rainy day?): pick a random color, walk around …

Flickr user Betty Ann recycled a photography book by transforming pages into these …

Photographer and blogger Thomas Hawk has an ongoing project called …

Back in 2008, photographer Hailey Bartholomew was feeling down even though everything seemed …

Mother’s Day is in just a couple of days, and if you’re planning on writing a letter for your …

We suggested a couple weeks ago that you start collecting things via photos if your idea tank …

Illinois industrial design student Ned Mulka created this Nikon D5R concept camera for his senior thesis design project. While the design itself may be pretty iffy for a camera, the main idea behind it is pretty interesting -- instead of having to rotate the camera itself for portrait orientation photos, why not only rotate the sensor, mirror, and viewfinder? An even crazier design would involve only rotating the sensor, allowing the camera to shoot any orientation without having to change how you hold the camera -- though this would probably be an engineering nightmare for the camera makers.

Here’s something cute and creative way to share your photographs: turn them into tiny, confetti-sized postcards. All you need …

Here’s a neat idea for displaying your photos: pick up a set of …

Flickr user Steve Kushnir came up with this neat idea of building a cheap DIY diffuser using a Pringles can, two layers of paper towels, and some rubber bands. He attached it to his Nikon D5000's popup flash and uses it for macro photographs of creepy crawlies.

With the recent craze on mimicking retro photography through phone apps, it's only natural that someone would take it a step further and design a retro way to shoot with the phone as well, right? The Slow Photography camera concept by photographer David McCourt is a medium format-style box that lets you use your phone as a digital back.

If you’re looking for an interesting photo project to undertake, you can try starting a collection through photos. While …