unique

Michael Zhang

Photographer Uses Mouth as a Camera

For her series titled Face to Face, photographer Ann Hamilton placed a pinhole camera in her mouth and shot photographs by simply opening her mouth at people. Upon first glance, the view almost looks like you're looking out someone's eye.

Michael Zhang

Light Painting Poetry into Photos

Math major and photo enthusiast Kris Hollingsworth created this beautiful photograph in which he light-painted an entire poem! It took patience and perseverance: practicing the technique took 15 hours, while the actual light painting took another two hours. The image is actually 9 separate photographs in one -- eight lines of poetry and the self-portrait of Hollingsworth.

Michael Zhang

World’s Largest Camera Big Enough to Hold an Airplane

What you see above is the inside of the world's largest pinhole camera measuring 45x160x80 feet. It's an abandoned airplane hangar in Irvine, California that was converted over the course of two months into a gigantic pinhole camera. 24,000 square feet of plastic, 1,300 gallons of foam filler, 1.52 miles of tape, and 40 cans of spray paint went into darkening the hangar.

Michael Zhang

Massive Six-Foot-Long Homemade Large Format Camera

Photographer Darren Samuelson spent seven months building a massive homemade large-format camera that's about six-feet-long when fully extended. He shoots with 14×36-inch x-ray film that's about 1/12th the cost of ordinary photographic film but much harder to develop.

Michael Zhang

Show Off Prints with a Giant Photo Album Coffee Table

Having a coffee table that looks like a giant photo album is already pretty unique, but what about a coffee table that also functions as one? Remembrance is a coffee table designed by North Michigan University design student Mitch Steinmetz that opens up to reveal your photos like any good giant photo album should.

Michael Zhang

Inconspicuous Camera Bag Designed to Look like a Quiver for Arrows

If Legolas from Lord of the Rings ever decided to trade his bow for a camera, the new Urban Quiver by the newly formed Blackstone Bags is a camera bag he might use. The quiver shape keeps it from attracting too much attention from would-be thieves, while the compactness allows it to be stored in small spaces like the overhead bins on airplanes.

Michael Zhang

Pinhole Camera Made from a Pine Nut

Transforming foods into pinhole cameras appears to be one of the popular trends. We already shared the egg pinhole camera, and now here's the pine nut pinhole camera. Italian photography student Francesco Capponi created this tiny camera by painting the inside of the shell black, poking a hole in one side, loading it with a piece of photographic paper, and using his thumb as a shutter. He calls it the "PinHolo", a play on words since "pinolo" is Italian for "pine nut".

Michael Zhang

Still Photos with a Dash of Movement

Photographer Jamie Beck has a beautiful series of images that she calls "cinemagraphs". They're animated GIFs in which only a small piece each photograph is animated, making them a neat fusion of still and moving images. It's amazing how much a tiny bit of movement in a still photo can do. They're almost like the moving pictures you see in Harry Potter!

Michael Zhang

Homemade Medium Format Camera with 360 Degree Lens

Check out this bizarre looking homemade medium format camera spotted by tokyo camera style on the streets of Tokyo, Japan. That bizarre glass bulb you see sticking out of it is the 360 degree lens that projects panoramic views onto the 120 film inside the camera.

Michael Zhang

Take Fun Portraits of Your Cat Using a Flatbed Scanner

Did you know that flatbed scanners make fun portrait cameras as well? Just place your cat on the glass, do a quick scan, and you'll have a strange looking portrait shot from below! Apparently this is pretty popular among cat lovers -- a Flickr search for "cat scanner" returns thousands of results! This gives "cat scan" a whole new meaning!

Michael Zhang

Pinhole Cameras Made with Photo Paper

Photographer Thomas Hudson Reeve shoots pinhole photographs in a pretty interesting way -- rather than using photo-sensitive paper or film inside a separate camera, he creates the camera using photo paper itself. The resulting photograph is exposed onto the inside of the photo-sensitive camera (which he calls the "PaperCam"), and creates a pretty surreal look when opened up and developed.

Michael Zhang

Room Divider Made with Film Canisters

Tiffany Threadgould of RePlayGround had the awesome idea of building a room divider using old 35mm film canisters. She spent three months befriending film processing shops in New York and collecting the 1,000+ canisters needed for the project.

Michael Zhang

Frying Pans That Look like Alien Planets

Upon first glance, the photographs in Christopher Jonassen's "Devour" project might look like pictures of alien worlds. What they actually show are the bottom of frying pans shot against a black backdrop.

Michael Zhang

Candid Portraits of People Peering at Their Own Reflections

If you think the expression on these people's faces don't look like ordinary street portraits, it's because they're actually looking at themselves in a mirror. Moa Karlberg captured these unique candid portraits of strangers by using a one-way mirror, capturing what it looks like when people look at reflections of themselves.

Michael Zhang

Custom Cup Made from Real Canon 300mm L Lens

Forget those fake plastic (but wildly popular) mugs that look like Canon lenses, there's a one of a kind custom lens cup made from a real $1,300 Canon 300mm f/4 L lens being auctioned on eBay. Kai over at DigitalRev had an accident while shooting a video about the lens and, instead of tossing it out, they decided to convert it into a cup and auction it off for charity (all proceeds will go to help victims of the recent Australian flooding).

Michael Zhang

Pint-Sized Toy DSLR Complete with Swappable Lenses

Ordinary DSLR cameras too big and bulky for you? Check out the CHOBi CAM ONE, a DSLR-style toy camera the size of an eraser that actually has lenses you can swap in and out. It shoots 1600×1200 still photos and VGA video at 30 frames per second.

Daniel Goodale-Porter

How to Make a DIY Polaroid Themed Camera Strap with Luggage Belts

What does a rainbow mean to you? An interesting atmospheric phenomena.... gay pride... the 42nd Infantry Division? To me a rainbow screams, "Polaroid Corporation!". Even when Polaroid was actually making cameras, the camera straps were disappointingly plain vanilla. Polaroid missed a critical branding opportunity! In this tutorial, I'll attempt to make a new camera strap for my Polaroid 100 camera by recycling rainbow colored luggage belts.