Custom photo frame maker Alphabet Photography has scored one of the first big viral marketing wins of this holiday season by releasing the creative video above a couple of weeks ago. In it, they play the popular Christmas tune Carol of the Bells using various objects inside the warehouse in which the company's photo frames are made.
Self-portraits snapped with an outstretched arm can be seen everywhere these days, from profile pictures on Facebook to filtered shots on Instagram. Among iconic historical photos? Not so much.
However, Cape Town, South Africa-based newspaper Cape Times has launched a brilliant new advertising campaign that imagines what those photos were look like if they had been captured with arm's-length "selfies".
If Adobe Photoshop tools could work their magic in the real world, what would people use them for? One obvious application would be as a beauty product, which would allow people to 'shop actual faces instead of photos of faces. Budapest, Hungary-based photographer and graphic designer Flora Borsi recently shot a series of photos that humorously depict how it might work. The project is titled, "Photoshop in Real Life."
Check out this brilliant marketing idea: to promote its professional sling-style camera backpacks, Kata designed a carnival/arcade-style game called Shootout. It's live contest that has been held in various store locations and trade shows around the world. Basically, participants engage a virtual cowboy photographer in a duel. Once the timer starts, one must swing their camera bag around, "unholster it", and snap a photo of the screen. If the time captured in your photo is less than the time achieved by Mr. Cowboy Photog (and faster than other participants), you win a pretty pricey camera bag.
When his wife Osher became pregnant with their first child, photographer Tomer Grencel had the idea of documenting the pregnancy through a stop-motion video. Over the next 9 months, he snapped 1000 photographs at different points and with different creative concepts. After his daughter Emma entered the world, he spent a month combining the images into a single stop-motion animation that tells the story of Emma's journey from the womb into the world..
Last week we issued a challenge asking readers to shoot a creative mirror self-portrait using an alternative style of photography. Reader Agustin Barrutia took us up on that challenge, and created a pair of wet plate photographs that take the concept of "mirror self-portrait" to a new level (they're unlike anything we've seen before). Both photographs are straight-out-of-camera wet plate photos that weren't manipulated digitally. Barrutia simply used "mirrors" (one doesn't involve a mirror, per se) and "reflections" in clever ways.
The wet plate above is a self-portrait of Barrutia shooting the wet plate. That camera in the frame is the camera that captured the wet plate.
For his project titled "Bubbles", London-based photographer Jason Tozer photographed soap bubbles in a way that makes them look photos of planets taken from space. Unlike NASA's actual space probe photos, Tozer's images contain wild, psychedelic colors.
"Cerealism" is a project by Phoenix, Arizona-based photographer Ernie Button that features clever photographs of common cereals. He comes up with various scenes inspired by the shape and textures of the cereals, and then uses the cereal pieces as props. Some turn into bales of hay in a landscape, while others become fish in a simple fish bowl.
Check out this geeky Instagram-inspired Halloween costume created by photographer Eric Micotto. What's neat is that it actually "works" as a camera: it's powered by a Nikon D800 snapping photos through the "lens", and has an iPad on the back that acts as the camera's giant LCD screen. Subjects who have their photo taken by the costume can run around to the back to take a peek at how it turned out.
Based in San Francisco, Kim Pimmel is a photographer, a user interface designer, a DJ, and a "maker." Take a look at his experimental light painting photographs, and you'll see each of these interests shining through. Pimmel has spent years experimenting with long exposure photographs that show different light sources as brushes. His beautiful images are created using custom rigs and common objects -- things like turntables, ping pong balls, fiber optic cables, pendulums, iPhone screens, and more.
Earlier this year, we shared the photos of Tim Noble and Sue Webster, London-based artists who are well known for creating amazing shadows using piles of carefully arranged objects. Perhaps inspired by their work, photographer Julian Wolkenstein shot a clever series of photographs a couple of years ago that show three people contorting their bodies in various ways to create intricate shadows on the wall behind them. The project is titled, Nova.
You know those carnival cutouts that let you stick your face in a hole for humorous photographs? A Chinese blogger named toshiya86 had the brilliant idea of creating these cutouts for her beloved cat Guagua's birthday. Humorous portraits resulted.
Here's a neat idea of thinking outside the box: high-speed photographer Scott Dickson added a pair of sunglasses to an ordinary water balloon pop photograph, giving the splash some personality (and a "bowtie").
You might not recognize the name Kevin Van Aelst, but you might have seen his photography while flipping through popular magazines. The New Haven, Connecticut-based photographer specializes in editorial photographs that illustrate ideas in creative ways. In his images, you'll see eggs appear as light bulbs, paper airplanes formed from water drops on a windshield, and Hawaii in spilled punch. His work is often featured on the pages of numerous publications, including the New York Times, Time, Wired, GQ, and Money.
This photograph shows renowned British photographer David Bailey standing with 142 men who share his name. You might be wondering how such a strange photo concept came together. If you remember, last month we reported that Samsung had launched a unique marketing campaign that asked any UK resident named David Bailey to step forward.
We've shared examples of creative promotional mailers in the past, but we usually don't receive them. A few days ago, however, we received a small box from the folks over at Photojojo. Inside was a clever papercraft Polaroid camera that serves as both a press kit and a desk decoration.
"Out of Place" is a clever series of photo manipulations by German photographer Robert Rickhoff, who starts with somewhat mundane photographs taken around town and then adds in elements that don't belong. A residential scene shows a "speed jump", streets are turned into skateboard ramps, and highways are transformed into volleyball courts. Each scene makes you look twice and smile at the absurdity of what it seems to show.
About a year ago, we shared a creative stop-motion video by Eran Amir that involved 500 different volunteers holding 1,500 individual photographs in order to create an animation. That video has amassed over 1.5 million views since then. It appears that Amir has a magical touch when it comes to viral web videos, because now he's back with another video that's going viral -- one that's also related to photography in an unusual way.
Daniel Kukla is a photographer who had formal training in biological and anthropological sciences. His educational background plays a major part of his artistic practice, and this can be seen in his clever project titled, The Edge Effect.
For its 2010 lookbook, Swedish fashion brand Courtrai Apparel created some gravity-defying shots of a guy floating in a featureless room. Rather than use fancy computer trickery, they used the same perspective trick as the Carl Kleiner project we shared a couple days ago.
Bandoliers are pocketed belts made for holding ammunition. They’re often seen in action and war movies, slung over the …
Samuel Cox, the "maker of things" whose Minority Report-style photo viewer we shared last year, was recently invited to a friend's wedding. He came up with the neat idea of creating a TARDIS-themed photo booth for the wedding reception, an accessible way for guests to leave photo memories in a lighthearted manner.
Photography instructor Mike Browne of PhotographyCourses.Biz has a clever way of teaching the basic principles of flash photography. He uses water from an ordinary garden hose as an analogy for light, showing different ways you can go about soaking your portrait subject.
Here’s a fun little 30-second stop motion video showing a roll of 35mm film loading itself into a camera.
Artists Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen have a two-year-long project titled 100 Posterworks that features B&W portraits in various locations, with standard compositions, featuring witty messages on hand-painted signs.
Here's a clever advertisement idea done by Brazilian ad agency Y&R Sao Paulo and photographer Lúcio Cunha. They took the iconic posters of famous movies (Kill Bill, Forrest Gump, and Pretty Women) and created photos showing what they would look like if viewed from behind.
Here’s a clever parody of the drug commercials you see on TV. It’s marketing “Fauxtographor”, prescription pills geared towards …
Dinner Etiquette is a project by Melbourne-based art director Sonia Rentsch and photographer Scott Newett that consists of clever still life photos of tableware that's arranged to look like fine dining attire.
Steven Alan and Ben Boutwell made this …
French humorist Rémi Gaillard created this lighthearted video showing what happens when you …