Starting in 2001, photographer Mary Mattingly has created an image every year on the winter solstice — the day of the year when daylight is shortest — showing the first light of the day and the last light of the day blended into a single photo. The series is called “First Light / Last Light“.
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Here’s a short video in which photo instructor Bryan Peterson shows how you can use sunlight and a simple reflector for creative macro shots — perfect for people who have a macro lens but lack lighting equipment.

Want a challenging photography project? Try capturing an analemma in a single shot. “Analemma” is the name given to the figure-eight shape traced by the sun if photographed at the same time of day over the course of a year. To capture it, you’ll need to leave your camera in a fixed position and shoot photos at exactly the same time of day for all of the shots.
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To capture “portraits of the sun” and to illustrate its power, General Electric filled 20 weather balloons with hydrogen and helium, surrounded them with 24 Canon DSLR cameras (18 7Ds and 6 60Ds), and shot the balloons exploding Matrix-style.

(via Laughing Squid)

SunCalc is a super-simple web app created with Google Maps and Javascript that helps you determine the best time to shoot depending on the quality of light you want in your photos.

You can see sun positions at sunrise, specified time and sunset. The thin orange curve is the current sun trajectory, and the yellow area around is the variation of sun trajectories during the year. The closer a point is to the center, the higher is the sun above the horizon. The colors on the time slider above show sunlight coverage during the day.

It was created by Vladimir Agafonkin. Similar apps include The Golden Hour Calculator and The Twilight Calculator.

Solaroids are unique prints created by photographer Jeff Mclane by exposing large format (4×5 in) Fuji instant film to direct UV light for long periods of time.
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