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Computer generated imagery is becoming ubiquitous in the world of filmmaking, but some people still prefer some good ol' fashioned elbow grease. Los Angeles-based filmmaker Vu Hoang of Westscape Media spent 7 months creating this stop-motion love story, titled "Love Drama". Why did it take so long? Well, Hoang and his small crew of 3 people created all the animation seen using 3,000 photographs -- photos that were shot frame by frame and individually cut out by hand.

San Francisco-based photographer Lee Materazzi doesn't just take pictures of people jammed into uncomfortable spaces. She also photographs people with their heads stuck into random locations for photos that make them look strangely headless. The quirky images have titles that include "Head in Table", "Head in Rug", and "Head in Sand."

For a fun weekend craft, try sculpting your own camera using a chunk of oven bake clay. Philippine based-photo enthusiast Astilla created the sculpture above, and writes, …

We've shared this same topic here a couple of times before, but Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens created this video lesson showing some examples of how profound of an impact your focal length choice can make.

If you want to take Lensbaby-style selective focus macro shots using your phone, go buy a cheap laser pointer. Photographer Zaheer Mohiuddin writes that the lens inside laser pointers (the one that focuses the laser) works well as a macro lens for the tiny cameras found on smartphones. After taking the device apart and finding the small gem-like lens, simply attach it to your camera with some tape to start shooting close-up pictures.

Bruce Davidson is an American photographer who's well known for his photographs of Harlem, New York City decades ago. In the video above, he sits down and talks to Leica about his life and work: …

Want to wear your Instagram photographs as jewelry? Instasparkle is a maker of wearable picture frames. They make necklaces, brooches, and rings that hold tiny prints, allowing you to show them off in the real world. The rings, seen above, hold .75x.75-inch prints.

You know the infinitely long tunnel that appears when you look into two mirrors that are pointed at one another? Have you ever noticed that the tunnel becomes more and more green, the deeper you go?

Back in May, we wrote about a photographer named John Butterill and his brilliant idea of using a Internet-connected phone to share his photo adventures with people whose mobility was limited. Google liked Butterill's story so much that they're sharing it as an example of the different things you can do through Google+ Hangouts. The video above is a neat look at how Butterill came up with his idea, and how the concept quickly spread around the world.

While working as a fishing guide in Tofino, British Columbia, Matthew Thornton captured this wild photograph of a humpback whale calf leaping out of the water an extremely short distance away (estimated at 10-30 feet). In his submission to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest, Thornton writes, …

Slit-scan cameras are used to shoot finish line photos due to the fact that recording a moving subject along a strip of film makes it impossible to miss any frames. Engineer and photographer James Guerin was interested in the distinctive look, so he went about building his own slit-scan film camera using an old Pentax SLR.

Filmmakers Derek Kwok and Henri Wong of Parabucks created this ridiculously awesome stop-motion short film titled "Batman: Dark Knightfall" using highly-realistic 1/6-scale collectible action figures by Hong Kong toy company Hot Toys. Be sure to turn on HD when you watch it.

California-based entomologist Shaun Winterton was browsing Flickr back in May 2011, when he discovered a new species of insect.

Wanting to see how she and her siblings have changed over the years, Helsinki-based photographer Wilma Hurskainen decided to gather her three sisters together and recreate photographs of the four of them taken by their father decades ago.

The man in the moon and the face on mars. These are both the result of a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia, which involves the brain trying to perceive random signals as significant. It's one of the brain's face detection mechanisms, and causes us to see faces where they don't actually exist -- the Virgin Mary's face on toast, for example.

On Monday, a group of four friends went on a fishing trip in the Pacific Ocean. Taking their boat "A Salt Weapon" 20 miles west of Santa Cruz, Mark Peters, Jeremy, Dave, and William were expecting a fun-filled day of albacore tuna hunting. What they ended up capturing was so much more.

When shopping for a new computer, online shops often allow you to customize the computer and choose the individual components that go into it. If the computing world can offer that, why not the photography world?

Here's a video that offers a peek into the life of a Reuters photographer covering the Olympics. It features photographers and editors on the Reuters team talking about the joys and challenges of shooting the biggest sporting event in the world.

Big bulky cameras can be pretty intimidating when they're used to photograph young children. For a cheap and simple way to make yours a little more child-friendly, consider using a PEZ candy dispenser as a fun, attention-grabbing hotshoe accessory.

The photographs in photographer Gail Albert Halaban's series Out My Window are unsettling and beautiful at the same time. Each of them shows people framed by open apartment windows in New York City -- quite creepy if the images are actually of unsuspecting strangers. At the same time, the voyeur is quite a photographer, as each shot perfectly balances the lighting of the subject inside with the cityscapes and brick walls outside.

You know the major firmware update that just rolled out for the Canon 7D? The purpose of it might have been to hold Canonites over through a couple months of DSLR-less news. Northlight Images is reporting that Canon will not be unveiling a new DSLR at Photokina, but will instead be waiting until October to unleash a new full frame DSLR on the world.

Over the past year, Instagram has been the most talked-about photo sharing service and one of the most talked about social networking services. Logically, more and more brands are joining it and trying to figure out ways to reach potential customers through filtered photos.

Ever since NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars and started beaming back photographs earlier this week, people have been wondering, "why are the photos so bad?" The criticism seems merited: consumers these days are snapping great high-res photographs using phones that cost just hundreds of dollars, yet NASA can't choose a camera with more than 2-megapixels of resolution for their $2.5 billion mission? …

A couple months ago we shared an app called Foap, which allows people who take pictures with their phone to put the images up for sale for $10 a pop. If Foap is the bane of microstock photographers, then Scoopshot is the bane of photojournalists.

Ever wonder what it's like to be the world's fastest man winning a gold medal at the Olympics? Usain Bolt wants you to know.

A few days ago we shared the story of a memory card that stayed alive after three years at the bottom of a muddy creek. What's important to note is that the card had the luxury of being protected by the Canon XT it was inside -- a camera that was utterly destroyed during those three years.

What happens if you take photos of synchronized swimming shot at the Olympics and flip them upside-down? Ethereal beauty, that's what.

In Russian art museums, older ladies are hired as guards for the pieces in the collections. Photographer Andy Freeberg noticed that these women were a constant part of the visitors' viewing experience, silently hovering near the artworks as they're being enjoyed. Finding these women "as intriguing to observe as the pieces they watch over", he decided to photograph them alongside the works they're tasked with guarding. The project is titled "Guardians of Russian Art Museums".

It looks like the digital camera industry is moving quickly towards building mobile operating systems into its products.

If you've been shying away from posting your photographs to Facebook because you don't want them stolen, security software company McAfee has come up with a solution for you. It's a new tool called McAfee Social Protection, and helps you protect your photos using invite lists, blurring, and lock-down.

One of the common reasons given for being wary of photographers is that terrorists commonly use cameras as part of their information gathering tactics prior to devastating attacks.

Remember the days when portable electronic devices were mostly all powered by AA and AAA batteries? Consumers had to regularly purchase new batteries to keep their gadgets juiced -- a big sink for your hard earned money. When rechargeable batteries started becoming ubiquitous, they were touted as a feature for saving both time and money. All you had to do was plug your camera into the wall (or your battery into a charger) and a few hours later you were recharged.

Using a novel technique he developed himself, artist Christian Faur turns photographs into giant prints created by using crayons as pixels. When exhibited, the size and three-dimensional nature of the work make for an interesting viewing experience for visitors. The space appears to be full of photographs, but the images turn into abstract and colorful sculptures as the visitor gets closer. Each piece is composed of hundreds of crayons of different colors.

Well, that was fast. Just a couple days after photos of the duo leaked onto the web, the Nikon 1 J2 mirrorless camera and Nikkor 11-27.5mm lens are now official.

Want to see what you would look like as an outlaw from the 1800s? With Mugshot Yourself, you can!

Usman Rashid of Irvine, California was photographing during a trip to Florida last year when started looking for a way to view his DSLR's photos in real-time using his iPad. What he found was that existing solutions on the market were either too pricey or a pain in the butt.

Would you shoot a wedding professionally with your iPhone and Hipstamatic? If you want to stay in business, probably not. But what if you were asked to do so, and paid for your work?

For people looking to protect their belongings from theft in public places, there are bag alarms out there that can alert them (and everyone around them) if someone tries to pick up their stuff. DIY hacker Kip Kedersha (kipkay on YouTube) recently came up with a clever way to make one of these alarms for just $2.

There are new rumblings in the rumor mill about a 35mm f/1.4 refresh from Canon. For years now photographers have been wondering when the lens -- popular among photojournalists and street photographers -- might see an update. According to Canon Rumors, the time is "sooner rather than later".

Photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson of Stonehouse Photography made a splash on the Internet this past week after sharing a heartwarming dog photograph through Facebook.

Gigapixel images are usually used to capture tiny details in expansive scenes, but scientists in the Netherlands recently created one that shows microscopic details in a tiny subject. Using a technique called virtual nanoscopy (a new relative of microscopy?), the researchers created a massive 281-gigapixel image of a 1.5-millimeter-long zebrafish embryo.

How do you feel about Android OS? How about Android OS in your camera? If you're a Nikon compact camera user, that might soon be possible. Nikon is reportedly planning to announce its first Android-based point-and-shoot in the very near future.

Ready for another giveaway? This week we're giving away an awesome Creative Effects System Kit by Lensbaby. The kit for Canon and Nikon DSLRs includes the popular Composer Pro lens, a bag, interchangeable optics for different effects, and tons of accessories (including a kit for creative bokeh shapes!). The package is worth $540.

While visiting beautiful New York City earlier this year, an Australian photographer named Kiernan traveled to the top of the Empire State Building and snapped a photograph of the cityscape. After returning home, he decided to do a reverse image search on Google just to see what he might find. He was surprised to discover that the top result was a nearly identical photograph that was captured 36 years ago.

When you think about photographs from the early 1900s, you probably think about boring monochrome photos of locations or portraits of people with humorless expressions and rigid poses. Photographs costed more in terms of time, effort, and money back then, so photographers didn't waste them on silly photos, right? Wrong.

Reuters photographer Luke MacGregor doesn't know much about astronomy, but he had the idea recently of photographing the full moon rising up into the Olympic Rings found on London's Tower Bridge. Armed with a phone app that informed him of moonrise times, he spent two evenings trying and failing to create the photo. Finally, on the third evening, he succeeded: …

A couple years ago we reported on the amazing fact that chickens have image stabilized heads, and shared some interesting "research" into using chickens as camera stabilizers. It turns out birds aren't the only creatures with IS systems built into their hardware: cats have it too!

Photographer Patrick Lu always carries around his Olympus OM-D EM-5 camera around. "Every day. Everywhere," he says. That came in handy last week, when Lu and a friend were at the capital in Austin, Texas. His eagle-eyed friend somehow noticed that a man nearby was about to propose, and Lu was able to snap some stealthy photos of the event, including the beautifully framed one above.

Cameras these days are smart enough to recognize the faces found inside photographs and label them with names. What if the same kind of recognition could be done for the locations of photographs? What if, instead of using satellite geodata, the camera could simply recognize where it is by the contents of the photographs?

Leather goods maker Hayden-Harnett has a new product geared towards fashionable photographers: the Bespoke Scarf. Using a friendly web-based interface, fashion-aware photogs can upload their favorite images to have them transformed into a silk scarf.