neat

“End Love” by OK Go Blends Stop and Slow Motion in Awesome Ways

OK Go, an LA-based rock band, makes some of the most creative music videos you'll ever see, from the treadmill video that amassed over 50 million views on YouTube to their gigantic Rube Goldberg machine one that dropped jaws around the world. Their latest video for the song "End Love" is yet another display of pure creativity, as they blend stop motion and slow motion techniques in strange and awesome new ways.

How to Make Your Own Photographic Negative Business Cards

Editor's note: The creative photographic negative business card idea that we shared recently was pretty popular with our readers. Here we've asked Steph Goralnick to share how exactly it was made in case you want to make your own.

The realization that I had run out of my regular business cards the night before I was scheduled to attend a weekend-long special event inspired me to create a small edition of extra special cards on the fly. I was aiming for a simple design with a unique construction that would showcase my skills as both a photographer and a graphic designer. Due to the fact that time was an issue, traditional vendors out of the question; and since I didn’t need more than a couple dozen cards, I decided to make them myself at home using an inkjet printer and some negatives.

Neat Polaroid-Themed Birthday Card

Here's a neat birthday card idea for the Polaroid or photography lovers in your life: make a hand-drawn Polaroid camera spit out a real instant photo! Kayla Davis received this card from her friend Chrissie for her 19th birthday.

Big City Heat Maps of Local and Tourist Photo Spots

Two weeks ago we posted on the Geotaggers' World Atlas, a project by Eric Fischer that shows heat maps of where photographs are taken in big cities, created using geolocation data from Flickr and Picasa photos.

Fischer now has a new set of maps called Locals and Tourists that distinguish between photos taken by inhabitants of the city and others who are simply passing through.

Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in piaces that tourists don't visit.

Blue points are locals (determined by whether the person has a history of photographing in that city), red points are tourists, and yellow points indicate photos for which it cannot be determined.

San Francisco

Nikon 24-70mm and 70-200mm Coffee Cups Appear on eBay

After the enormous success of the Canon 70-200mm Coffee Mug, it was only a matter of time before Nikon-branded cups joined the party. Nikoneans can now rejoice -- a 24-70mm coffee cup has just appeared on eBay as a pre-order for $50. It doesn't appear that Nikon has anything to do with this 1:1 replica cup, but those who have been eagerly waiting for such a thing to appear can now pounce on this awesome (but unofficial) accessory.

Clever Canon AE-1 Program Digital Mod

Ken Rockwell posted some links to photos of a Canon AE-1 Program Digital a couple days ago, and photo-enthusiasts around the web have been discussing whether or not it's a real camera.

Driving Wooden Chairs in Stop-Motion

Here's an amazing stop-motion video created for Nissan, and promoting zero emissions mobility. It's amazing that a sense of speed and danger can be created from photographs of people sitting still in wooden chairs.

Stock Photography Books Recycled to Teach Reading

As online stock photography services and libraries have expanded in recent years, stock photography books have become more and more obsolete.

Advertising and communications corp JWT recently came up with an idea to breath new life into these dying books by transforming them into tools to help teach disadvantaged children to read.

Fold Your Own Photo Kaleidocycle

Looking for a neat new way to show off your photographs? Foldplay has a cool web application that can help you print and fold your very own kaleidocycle, a moving paper sculpture that turns endlessly.

Protect Your Gear by Flying with a Gun

A few days ago we came across this brilliant trick for protecting your valuable camera gear while flying. Most airlines don't allow you to fly with your luggage locked, but there's a clever way around the rule -- bring a gun.

Light Painting Animation by Freezelight

Freezelight is a Russian group that creates light painting photographs and animations. They have a pretty interesting blog showcasing their work, and opened up a Vimeo account a few days ago to showcase their films.

Neat Photomosaic iPhone App by LEGO

LEGO recently released a free iPhone app that turns your photographs into photomosaics made with 1x1 LEGO pieces. The app obviously isn't limited to faces, but can turn anything into a LEGO mosaic.

Aerial Photography with iPhone-Controlled Quadricopter

This is one of the coolest gadgets we've seen in quite some time. The Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter that you control visually through wifi using your iPhone or iPod touch. The quadricopter has a built in camera that displays the real time view of the drone on your screen while you control it. We're not sure if still photography or video capabilities are built in, but this could open the door to making simple aerial photography accessible to the general public.

A Polaroid Camera LEGO Needs to Offer

If you're a fan of Polaroid instant film, then 2010 might soon become a great year for you. The classic instant film format is making a comeback through the Impossible Project, so it might be time to dust off your old Polaroid cameras (if the redesigned format is compatible, that is).

Customize Your Bokeh with the Bokeh Masters Kit

Here's yet another interesting camera accessory that might make a good present this Christmas season.

Back in April of 2007, Udi Tirosh over at DIYPhotography wrote an article describing how to customize your bokeh using a paper cutout in front of your lens. That do-it-yourself project was so successful that Udi has now turned it into a camera accessory you can purchase.

Dancing to Music in Timelapse

Here's your daily dose of (semi)photographic inspiration: Musical duo Gloobic put together this creative video in which Eric Gunther, one of the two members, dances to a Gloobic track in timelapse.

Time Lapse Video of a Pearl Jam Concert

I'm a sucker for time-lapse videos, especially ones that are edited well. This video of a Pearl Jam concert last month took a whopping 10,000 photographs to make. One photograph was taken every six seconds between 9:09AM and 11:29PM (Wowzers!).