mirrors

How Ultra High Speed Cameras Shoot Up to 25,000,000 FPS

Tracking and panning a camera in time with a tank shell seems impossible given that the shell travels at over 1,500 meters per second. Yet, somehow, there are videos showing just that floating around the Internet. Here's a 7-minute video from Curious Droid that lifts the veil of mystery on ultra high-speed cameras and explains how they work.

It Took 17 Square Meters of Mirror to Get This Shot

Photographer, digital artist, and Photoshop master Erik Johansson just released the behind the scenes video for his latest creation, and you may be surprised when you find out just how much work (not retouching, on-location work) goes into setting up a dreamscape like this.

Photograph Sound & Heat Waves with this $9 DIY Schlieren Flow Visualization Setup

Schlieren Flow Visualization is a rather fascinating technique by which you can see and capture the differences in air pressure caused by various forces such as sound or heat.

And if the video we shared recently explaining/showing off this photographic trick had you yearning to try it for yourself, you're in luck, because there's a way you can create your own DIY Schlieren Flow setup for only $9.

Broken Mirror/Evening Sky: Unique Sunset Photos Shot Through Shattered Mirrors

Sunsets are beautiful. They've inspired songs and paintings, they've been the backdrops to weddings and celebrations, and overall they're natures way of ending almost every day on a beautiful note.

However, as photographers, we often see them as something of a cliché. To change that up a bit, photographer Bing Wright decided to create a series of images titled "Broken Mirror/Evening Sky" that add a new element to the equation. As you can see from the image above as well as those below, it looks like he photographed some beautiful sunsets through broken windows. But that wasn't exactly how the images came to be.

Strange Floating Formations Created by Mirroring Photos of Trees

For her project Mirrors, photographer Traci Griffin explores the concept of symmetry by photographing trees in various locations, and then mirroring the sweeping branches while omitting most of the trunks.

The resulting photographs look like strange shapes, formations, and even creatures floating in midair.

Photos of Beams of Sunlight Bouncing Around a Room

For his project "Trace Heavens," James Nizam found an abandoned property in Delta, Canada, and, with the government's permission, sliced gaps and holes into a couple of the rooms. He then allowed sunlight to stream into the space in the middle of the day, and then used small mirrors attached to ball joints in order to direct the light beam around the room in various patterns.

Mind-Bending Reflection Portraits Shot Using a Wet Plate Camera

Last week we issued a challenge asking readers to shoot a creative mirror self-portrait using an alternative style of photography. Reader Agustin Barrutia took us up on that challenge, and created a pair of wet plate photographs that take the concept of "mirror self-portrait" to a new level (they're unlike anything we've seen before). Both photographs are straight-out-of-camera wet plate photos that weren't manipulated digitally. Barrutia simply used "mirrors" (one doesn't involve a mirror, per se) and "reflections" in clever ways.

The wet plate above is a self-portrait of Barrutia shooting the wet plate. That camera in the frame is the camera that captured the wet plate.

Creative Landscape Photos Shot Using a Mirror and Off-Camera Lighting

Last week we shared a project by photographer Daniel Kukla, who photographed mirrors on easels in the desert in a way that makes them look like landscape paintings. Photographer Brendan Wixted did a similar project earlier this year for a photography class at his university, except he used off-camera lighting to illuminate the reflected landscapes.

Giant Mirrors Placed in Landscapes

For her project titled Mirrors, Swedish photographer Ilar Gunilla Persson photographed various landscapes with giant mirrors placed in them. The mirrors give the scenes an surreal and artificial look, but all the shots were captured on film.

Trippy Photos Shot From Inside a Box Made of Mirrors

These photos might look like they were computer generated, but they're actually unmodified photographs. Ron Brinkmann took 6 mirror tiles and made a box with them with the help of some duct tape. He then placed a camera inside and triggered shots using the timer.