world

After traveling through 40 countries in 2 years, Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger of How Far from Home decided to sift through their 14,000 photos and find similar shots from different parts of the world. Using these images, they created a series of beautiful "photo mashups," or side-by-side images that blend together in beautiful ways.

Alexander Khimushin is a Queensland, Australia-based photographer who has been on the road for 9 years. During that span, he visited 84 countries. 10 months out of a year he's on the road shooting photos in remote places. He's currently working on a series titled "The World in Faces."

Camera sales haven't been doing too well in recent years, but that hasn't kept picture taking from exploding. While the dedicated camera industry has seen year-on-year declines, smartphone photography has turned everyone into a casual photographer: there are now 8 times as many picture takers worldwide than there were 10 years ago.

Porter Yates is a Brooklyn, New York-based photographer who takes his camera to the remote corners of the world, documenting the beauty and uniqueness of different cultures by embedding himself in those communities of people.

How much would you need to earn to make photography a full-time job? On a recent visit to India, I was strolling through Mumbai's colonial-era neighborhoods when I was approached by a young man with a Nikon DSLR and a backpack. He offered to take my photo against the backdrop of two of the city's landmarks, the Taj Hotel and the Gateway of India.

Instant prints were available, and examples in a clear plastic file were offered for inspection.

After camera drones started taking off -- both literally and figuratively -- in the photography industry over the past few years, there was a brief window of opportunity for photographers to legally shoot aerial shots at many famous tourist locations around the world before authorities decided to make those spots off limits to drones.

Photographer Amos Chapple spent two years traveling the globe and doing as much drone photography as he could while "staying ahead of local laws against their use."

Photography is an analytic art form. We aim our lenses to specific parts of the world around us to pick a frame because, in our analysis, that particular frame presents the photograph we wish to take. We can certainly raise the camera, lower the camera, rotate it, pitch it, yaw it, aim at a different part and end up photographing something different.

You should realize that there are infinite number of photographs you can take from where you are now. How then do we aim the camera to “that particular frame” to photograph?

Romanian photographer Noroc Mihaela is on a mission to photograph women from every single country on Earth in order to show that beauty is found everywhere. Her project is titled "The Atlas of Beauty."

A new year has gone by, which means a new World Beard and Mustache Championship has been completed. And in keeping with his annual tradition, portrait photographer Greg Anderson was there to document some of the most outrageous facial accoutrement you will ever come across.

It managed to make its way into the Oxford English Dictionary last November, gaining the honor of being 2013’s “word of the year,” but there’s one book the 'selfie' has remained absent from... until now.

With the help of two Indiana natives, Mark E. Miller and Ethan Hethcote, selfies have now infiltrated the Guinness Book of World Records as well, with Miller and Hethcote setting the record for “most selfies taken in an hour” at a whopping 355.

What happens when you use a generous dose of juxtaposition in combination with some digital retouching skills? You end up with a rather humorous series of images that show the softer side of some of the most infamous men to ever walk this Earth.

Looks like you’re going to have to up your selfie game once again, because you've got nothing on British filmmaker and adventurer Graham Hughes.

Last month, Hughes officially received the Guinness World Record for being the first person to ever travel to every country (at least the ones acknowledged by the UN) on Earth without flying... and to make matters more photographic, he took a one second “selfie video" in every single country on the way. The result is the nifty four-minute video you see above.

Living smack in the middle of the information age, we're well acquainted with the incredible amount of data and statistics gathered and thrown around on a daily basis. And with the advent of social networking, the amount of publicly available data about society has only increased.

These networks are a treasure trove of information for better understanding the underlying trends and habits of people. Trends that would otherwise go unseen. One research project in particular, called Phototrails, is trying to spot these trends by gathering insights from that photography-oriented social media site many of us love to hate: Instagram.

Here's a startling side-by-side comparison of news photos that has begun floating around on the social web. Both photographs show a large crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of a new pope. The top one was what AP photographer Luca Bruno saw in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was introduced, while the bottom one is what AP photographer Michael Sohn witnessed yesterday at the election of Pope Francis.

This portrait is of a little boy named Lucas who lives in Sydney, Australia. Like many children around the world, Lucas enjoys playing with toys, particularly his set of miniature trains and wooden railroad tracks.

Like many photographers around the world, Gabriele Galimberti enjoys traveling. During an 18 month span of travels, Galimberti visited and photographed children in a long list of countries around the world with each child posing with his or her favorite toys. Lucas was one of the kids Galimberti visited for his project, which is titled "Toy Stories."

One method for capturing "multiple exposure" photographs is to shoot a long exposure photograph of a scene with your camera pointed in different directions while the shutter is open. Photographer Nicolas Ruel uses this concept in an ambitious project that has taken him around the world. Titled 8 Seconds, the series features famous cities around the world (e.g. New York City, Tokyo, Beijing, Barcelona) captured in surreal multi-exposure photographs.

The words "grandma's cooking" often elicits warm feelings and pangs of nostalgia in people, as they're reminded of delicious meals prepared by their grandmother's loving and experienced hands. Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti wanted to learn what these memories are for people in different cultures and contexts, so he set out to document grandmas and their dishes in countries all across the globe. The result is a project titled "Delicatessen with love."

Here's a slightly-oldie but a very-goodie: New York University photography professor Fred Ritchin gave this keynote address last year at the "What's Next?" event put on by Foam. He shares his thoughts on the past, present, and future of digital photography and how it impacts the world around us.

There have been a number of projects in the past that asked people to capture videos and photographs all over the world during a single day. Montblanc wants to take the idea one step further: the luxury company has launched a photo project called "Worldsecond" that aims to have all its participants capture photographs across the globe at the same moment in time.

Starting in 2004, British photographer Julian Germain began a photo project shooting portraits of classrooms in North East England. The next year, he began doing the same thing for schools across the UK. It soon turned into an international project, as he began traveling to schools across the globe to document the environments young people are learning in. He calls the series Classroom Portraits. The photograph above shows a 4th grade math class in Cusco, Peru.

What if there were an up-to-date live stream of photos from any location on Earth, allowing you to see whatever is happening "right now"? Well, there is: Worldcam is a simple web app that's designed to do just that. Simple provide it with two pieces of information: city and location. City is pretty straightforward, but location is the cool one; you can type things like businesses, buildings, parks, and more.

Manchester-based couple Lisa and Alex are on a mission to find the best place in the world to get married, and through first hand experience rather than other people's opinions. They're currently in the midst of a two-year journey around the world in a 24-year-old camper van, hunting for both the perfect location and the best cultural wedding ceremonies.

They stage a mock wedding in each country they visit -- in the style of a culture associated with that location -- and recruit a wedding photographer to help them document that experience.

Chemin Vert is a project created by Italian artist …

Albert Kahn was a wealthy French banker who launched a project in the early 1909 that aimed to create a photographic record of the world. The first commercially successful color photography process, Autochrome Lumière, had just arrived two years earlier, and Kahn decided to use the medium to both document human life and to promote peace. He sent out an army of photographers to 50 different countries, amassing 72,000 photos and 100 hours (183,000 meters) of film that became one of the most important collections of images in human history.

Curious about where people like to take pictures in your part of the world? …

The folks over at Triposo wanted to know when people around the world take pictures, so they harvested the timestamps and geolocation data from photos shared on the Internet and created this beautiful visualization showing one year of photos taken around the world (be sure to watch it full screen and in HD). It's neat seeing certain parts of the world light up with photo activity on special days.

Photographer Kien Lam quit his job last year and embarked on a 343 …

Most people like to stand inside photos taken during travels, but photographer Tom Robinson documents his adventures by showing his family's feet. Robinson started his project Feet First back in 2005 while sitting on a beach which his girlfriend Verity, and has added over 90 photos captured from all over the world since then. In 2011, his photos began showing an extra pair of feet: those of his daughter Matilda.

Last Thursday, three Georgian photographers including Irakli Gedenidze, the personal photographer of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, were arrested on …

“Around the World in 2000 Pictures” is a neat project by Alex Profit — the same guy that did …

Last week one of the big stories in the world of photography was that Kuwait had banned the use of DSLR cameras in public places. The story originated with an article in the Kuwait Times, and was then widely reported by publications ranging from The Guardian to Amateur Photographer. People were in disbelief that a country would take such an unreasonable stance against a particular camera technology while leaving others legal (e.g. mobile phones, compact cameras, etc...). Turns out the whole thing was a big hoax.

Jock McDonald is a San Francisco-based photographer that has travelled the world, photographing people of different ages and cultures. He recently teamed up with animator Paul Blain to transform his black-and-white portraits spanning decades into a single 17-minute long video. The twist is that the transitions between faces are seamless using morphing, resulting in what feels like a single, dynamic portrait of the world.

Typical sized white balance cards may be of (literally) little assistance in color calibrating global imaging satellites, …

Nikon and NASA are showcasing some amazing photos taken aboard the International Space Station with Nikon equipment. According to Nikon, NASA took over 700,000 photos with the Nikon gear kept on board, which includes one Nikon D3S DSLR, eight Nikon D2XS cameras, 36 NIKKOR lenses including three teleconverters, seven SB-800 Speedlights, and other gear. Nikon notes that the D3S is unmodified, and is the same quality as available on the consumer market.

Nikon has a long history with NASA since sending a Nikon F camera with Apollo 15 in 1971. Since then, Nikon's enjoyed exposure while helping NASA get image exposures. Most recently, the D3S that is currently on board was delivered to the ISS via the Space Shuttle Discovery, launched April 10, 2010. NASA says each shuttle launch costs approximately $450 million -- that is one expensive delivery! Here are more images from the International Space Station taken with Nikon gear: