concept

Ever wonder what you look like while you're taking pictures? Orlando, Florida-based photographer Rich Johnson wants to show you. For his latest project "Behind the Mask," Johnson had photographers pose for two pictures, one with their camera, and one without.

Want to see where camera drones are headed? DJI made this 3-minute video that shows a concept drone called the DJI Phantom X. It's a look at what camera drones may soon offer for capturing both daily life and high-end productions.

Say hello to "Camera Restricta," a new concept camera by designer (and photographer) Philipp Schmitt. It's described as a "disobedient tool for taking unique photographs." In short, the camera searches the Web for other photos that have been captured from the same place and if too many photos are found, the camera will prevent you from taking another unoriginal photo.

British car manufacturer Land Rover has introduced an interesting new technology that uses multiple cameras to make trailers “disappear” from an LCD rearview mirror while you're driving. By combining video feeds from both the existing rear view and side view cameras with a digital wireless camera mounted on the back of the trailer, the system creates the impressive illusion of transparency.

Back in July, writer David Sikorski and photographer Kristina Bakrevski gained quite a bit of attention online after publishing engagement photos of Sikorski and his one true love: the burrito.

The idea was so popular and unusual that McDonald's decided to steal it for a new advertising campaign.

Memory Clock is an interesting new concept design that combines the world of clocks with the world of digital photo frames. It's a clock that helps you relive memories by showing you photos from the past.

For the Ludum Dare 32 game jam event, game developers from around the world came together for a weekend to create the best games they could based on the theme "An Unconventional Weapon." The game developer known as mint created a game called "Selfie Assault!" that involves walking around in a room of blocks, finding green blocks, and taking selfies with them.

Videographer Paul Parker created the experimental video above, titled "Seagull Skytrails," which reveals the flight path of birds with clever post-processing.

Check out this crazy-looking camera setup that looks like it can double as some kind of futuristic energy weapon. Engadget spotted and photographed this strange kit over at the CP+ trade show happening right now in Japan. Olympus is showing off a gear combo that's possible with its new Air lens camera.

Justin Poulsen is a conceptual photographer based in Toronto, Canada, who specializes in building physical props for his surreal photos rather than relying on digital trickery. To convey this fact for his latest promotional mailer campaign, Poulsen decided to take the idea of "thumb drives" very literally.

Sustainability is a big and important idea these days, and it's the one behind this new concept box design for DSLR cameras. It's clever packaging that has two uses: once the camera is safely transported to the owner, the box is taken apart and used as the owner's manual for the camera.

What you see above is one of the most unusual pieces of lighting gear we’ve ever chanced across. Looking a bit like a prop from the upcoming Star Wars film, this contraption is actually a macro flash adapter designed by Polish photographers Agnieszka and Ernest Lysak.

Seattle-based artist Nicolas Bouvier spends most of his days creating concept art for some of the biggest names in the video game world.

But when he’s not in the office drawing up something for Halo or Assassin’s Creed, he’s out with his camera capturing beautiful photos of landscapes and cityscapes filled with people exploring this Earth of ours.

Typically, the only people who would take a marker to your pictures would be your kids when you're not paying attention. But wouldn't it be at least a little fun to pretend you were a kid again, take out a marker, and just go to town on a few of your photos?

Designer Brian Khouw obviously thinks so, which is why he came up with a concept picture frame dubbed the Vandalijst -- a frame that actually encourages you to doodle on your photos.

Benjamin Zank is a young fine art photographer based in New York City. He caught the photography bug a few years ago, at the age of 18, after picking up a Pentax ME Super 35mm film SLR from the attic of his grandmother's house, and has been creating incredible concept images ever since.

The downside to being the photographer in any given group is that you inevitably wind up being left out of the majority of the photos. One simple little student concept camera seeks to change that by splitting in two and allowing both subject and photographer to take a picture at the exact same time.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years shooting personal projects as a way to get hired by the companies with whom I really want to work. When I began this process, my images were fairly tame. I assumed that mainstream and technically-correct images were better than free-form zaniness.

But then I started attending portfolio reviews, where I had the opportunity to sit down with industry buyers to find out what it is they really wanted to see. It was surprising to discover that my loopier ideas resonated more, even if they weren’t necessarily in the style of the company to whom I was pitching.

Last month we shared some photo illustrations by science artist Ron Miller that showed what the night sky would look like if other planets in our solar system replaced the moon. Now Miller is back again with an equally interesting concept: what would landscape photos look like if Earth had a ring like Saturn's?

Here's an interesting concept! Jiho Jang, a student, has come up with Polaroid-like instant camera, dubbed GIFTY, that captures short clips and prints them out. According to Jang, it was put together as part of his college thesis.

Wait -- printing out a video? What's next? A GIF with sound? The concept involves first capturing a small clip (the camera prototype includes a timer). Thereafter, the camera will print each frame, at which point in time you can tear each frame apart to create the flip-book. By the looks of it, the concept includes a page holder of some sort, so you don't easily lose frames. So there you have it, a GIF on-the-go. Sound not included.

When BBC Future approached design company Conran with a challenge to "redesign any object," Senior Product Designer Jared Mankelow chose the camera. He believes that the form factor of our cameras hasn't kept pace with their function, and so his square creation harkens back to the film cameras of old, while simultaneously catapulting the camera into the future.

Most high-end digital cameras (not named Ricoh) aren't designed to be modular. If you want a new sensor in your camera, you'll need to buy an entirely new camera. Want to use a different lens system? You're out of luck.

What if there existed a universe in which all the major camera companies came together to form an extremely versatile modular digital camera? That's what Korean designers Dae jin Ahn and Chun hyun Park are attempting to answer with their concept camera design, called Equinox.

Brooklyn-based photographer Romain Laurent's "Tilt" project from 2009 is one that turns an oh-so-simple concept into unique photos that instant grab your attention. Each photograph shows a person standing, walking, or skateboarding in an urban environment, except the whole world is tilted around them.

Here's an interesting photo project idea by Matthew, who tells us that the top photo shows him being held by his father when he was 7 months old, and the bottom photo shows him holding his own 7-month-old son.

Photographer Caleb Charland is an artist who perpetually thinks outside the box for his photo concepts. In the past we've featured experiments that include a 14-hour exposure of a lightbulb powered by an orange and using scientific principles for creative images.

Charland's latest project continues this outside-the-box trend. The yet-to-be-named series features abstract images created without a camera -- the artist simply used photo paper and a candle.

Strange Fruits is a series of clever conceptual photographs by German photographer Sarah Illenberger. Each photo shows a common fruit or vegetable that has been arranged to look like some other object or material.

To make the point that Garnier Fructis' hair products are great for both women and men, advertising agency Publicis teamed up with photographers Billy & Hells for a series of creative advertising photographs.

Upon first glance, each of the photographs appear to show a tough guy with a massively long beard. However, look a little closer and you'll realize that things are not what they appeared to be.

If you'd like to receive a regular injection of photographic inspiration, you should consider following along with photographer Brock Davis' Instagram feed. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based artist regularly shoots conceptual photos with his iPhone that have the same creative touch as photographs Davis shoots for major commissions.

Mobile operating systems have begun making their way into digital cameras, but so far their foray has been limited to compact and mirrorless cameras. However, DSLRs are starting to have built-in Wi-Fi, but it seems to be only a matter of time before a full-fledged mobile OS appears in one.

Apparently some photographers (and Photoshoppers) over in China can't wait for that day to arrive. There's a series of viral images floating around showing Canon and Nikon DSLRs running various operating systems and programs.

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.

Designer Andrew Kim thinks that point-and-shoot cameras aren't simple enough for many ordinary consumers. After all, if you're only looking to take snapshots of everyday life, having buttons and dials that can toggle undesired functions is more of an annoyance than a benefit. Taking a page from Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa's book, Kim created a concept camera that he calls the Pentax Si.

Do you remember the Instagram Socialmatic? It's a concept camera that made the rounds on the Internet back in May -- a camera that lets people snap photos, share them online, and print them out as squared-shared sticky-note-style instant photos. The camera will soon go from digital concept to physical reality: it's being turned into an actual camera, which is a proposed release date of mid-2013.

Remember those leaked "spy" shots that supposedly show someone using the upcoming Leica M10 digital rangefinder? Leica Rumors took those images and everything that we know about the camera so far, and created some mockups showing what the camera will likely look like. The most striking feature is the special port on the back that allows for an electronic viewfinder attachment on the hot shoe.

By now, you've probably heard about Project Glass, Google's ambitious effort to develop a pair of Internet-connected, augmented reality camera glasses. Well, something similar was being explored for a different clothing item: the t-shirt...

tshirtOS is a concept created in collaboration by whisky-maker Ballantine and futuristic-clothes maker CuteCircuit that aims to build a camera, microphone, headphone hack, and integrated display into an Internet-connected shirt.

Using the human eye to control cameras isn't a new idea -- Canon used to offer eye-controlled focusing in its SLRs -- but designer Mimi Zou's Iris concept camera takes the concept one step further by having the camera be entirely controlled by the eye. Shaped like a lens, the photographer uses the camera by simply looking through it. Focusing, zooming, and snapping photos are done by looking, narrowing/widening the eyes, and blinking (respectively).

You know society has gone a little filter-crazy when a concept for Instagram glasses shows up on the scene, but we have to admit that Instaglasses make for an interesting idea. The basic premise is that Instagram fanatics aficionados would be able to use these to always see the world in filters. When they then glimpsed a scene that looked especially artsy with the Amaro or Inkwell filters applied, they could use a button on the side of the glasses to capture and upload that image to Instagram.

Artist Alan Belcher is known for pioneering a genre of art known as …

Tired of fiddling with cables and memory cards? You might not have to in the near future as wireless data transfer becomes more and more common. This brilliant concept video by designer Ishac Bertran imagines how we might soon be using "spatially aware devices", or devices that can share data simply by holding them close together. Want to transfer some photos off your camera? Simply hold it close to your computer monitor and drag them off!

Concept products aren't a rarity. In the world of cars and computers concepts usually make us ooh and ahh at their beautiful styling and implied functionality, but in the world of cameras things can get a bit, strange. Such is the case with a new SLR concept by industrial designer Arti Patel called the All.Round SLR.

MIT's Media Lab is no stranger to innovation; from super-high-speed cameras to cameras that can see around walls, they always seem to be on the cutting edge of imaging innovation. Their newest project, the EyeRing, is yet another innovative idea that could some day revolutionize the way we take pictures and experience our world.

Light Up Your Memories is a concept product by designers Hwang Youn Ha, Kim Min Jeong, Cha Yoon Suk …