Photographer and mother Holly Spring's photography has always been about her daughter. Born with only one hand and suffering from something known as Hirschprung's disease, little Violet almost died from surgical complications before Holly ever got a chance to take a single picture of her.
Shortly after that, her husband bought her a DSLR, and she has been taking pictures of Violet ever since.
Photoshopped fantasy wedding photos have gotten quite trendy over the past couple of years, and often involve the wedding party running away from large and scary things (e.g. dinosaurs and AT-ATs). Louisville, Kentucky-based wedding photographer Shane Elliott recently took the concept to the next level with a set of wacky groomsman photos.
Montreal-based photographer Benjamin Von Wong's underwater fantasy fashion shoot in a Bali shipwreck has quickly become the most popular project he has ever released. And even though he shared some behind the scenes details when the series first debuted, he's back today with a much more detailed look at how exactly these now-viral photos came to be.
No photoshoot goes off without a hitch. But with the correct amount of planning in the way of a vision, schedule, proper team and backup equipment, the risk that you'll run into a big hitch is dramatically reduced.
One photographer who seems to have mastered putting all of those components together seamlessly is Benjamin Von Wong, but it took all of his skill and more to make sure that his most recent crazy adventure came together seamlessly.
Two years ago, photographer and musician David Niles was watching his son Nathan let his imagination run wild as he played with his favorite toys. It was then that he was inspired to put Nate, now 9 years old, into these worlds with a little help from Photoshop. Thus was born the Nate's Adventures series.
Photography purists might want to look away on this one. The above video is a 9 minute time-lapse that speeds up 7+ hours worth of Photoshop CC work. That work was spent creating an intense composite that wound up consisting of 284 layers before it was all said and done.
Creative, imagination-filled wedding photographs are starting to become quite trendy -- at least online. Earlier this year, we shared viral photos of bridal parties running for their lives from a T-Rex and from Star Wars Imperial Walkers.
Chicago-based wedding photographer Steven Kowalski also joined in on the fun, creating the epic Star Wars-themed photograph above at a wedding earlier this month.
How old were you when you first started working with Photoshop? 14-year-old Natick, Massachusetts-based photographer and retoucher Zev has been at it for 6 years now, which means he first picked up his camera and laid his mouse cursor on Photoshop's Toolbox when he was just eight years old!
Claudia Nallely Agres works as a bridal model for a living, but she hasn't yet had the joy of being a bride in a wedding of her own. Wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer wanted to change that, so he recently held a special photo shoot for Agres that resulted in some beautiful and unusual bridal portraits.
Slovenia photographer Matej Peljhan has a touching series of photographs titled The Little Prince, which stars a 12-year-old boy named Luka. The images show the boy exploring an imaginary world created by laying colored sheets and household objects on the ground. Peljhan created the images to give Luka the feeling of being able to do things he can't.
You see, Luka suffers from muscular dystrophy, a disease that causes his body to become weaker and weaker over time.
When I started planning a series titled DreamWorld, one of the first characters that came to me was a dryad: a nature spirit representing our connection with nature. I saw her as a strong, benevolent queen, keeping watch over the woodland creatures and protecting them. The first concept I came up with that made my heart pitter-patter with excitement was the idea of building a huge crown for her from sticks and branches. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this, but I had a vision. And I have learned over the years that having a vision will pave the way to making it a reality, regardless of if I know how that will come about.
Portland, Oregon-based photographer and visual artist Jim Kazanjian is like the M. C. Escher of architectural photography. His art pieces appear to be photos of some of the strangest looking buildings found in the weirdest locations, but the reason the images are so dreamlike is because they came from Kazanjian's mind rather than the real world.
For her projects titled Égarements and Quotidien, French photographer Cerise Doucède creates elaborate scenes by hanging objects from the ceiling, creating swarms that look computer generated but aren't.
For his project titled Reflexion Autour du Bassin, French photographer Alain Laboile created fantasy photographs of his children, seen through the reflection of a small pond.
Gigapixel photographs are generally created by snapping a large number of photos of a scene using a special robotic camera rig, and then stitching those images together afterward using special software. Jean-François Rauzier creates similarly massive images, except his "hyperphotos" are all stitched together by hand.
We first shared photographer Rachel Hulin's The Flying Series back in February when it started getting quite a bit of attention online. The series consists of beautifully Photoshopped images of Hulin's baby boy Henry using his magical powers of flight. Since then, Hulin has added more surreal images to the set that capture Henry taking his skills to new locations and new heights.
Starting in 2007, Disney and portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz have collaborated on a series of advertisements called the Disney Dream Portrait Series. Each ad features a portrait of one or more celebrities dressed up as famous Disney movie characters. Along with the advertisements, Disney has also been releasing some behind-the-scenes glimpses showing how the photographs came together. The video above shows actress and model Olivia Wilde posing for Leibovitz as the Evil Queen from Snow White.
Photographer Shawn Van Daele has launched a beautiful (and meaningful) photo project called "The Drawing Hope Project" in which he shoots magical photographs based on the drawings of children living with health conditions. The photo shoots take 1-2 hours, but combining the images in post-production takes up to 8.
Photographer Andrey Pavlov's images of ants may look like they were computer-generated or created with dead insects, but they're actually real photographs of living ants. Pavlov spends hours setting up his fantasy scenes and then waits for his ant subjects to interact with his miniature props in just the right way.
The Girl With 7 Horses is a creative project by photographer Ulrika Kestere that shows a girl traveling to various landscapes in search of her "invisible horses":
Once upon a time there was a girl who had 7 invisible horses. People thought she was crazy and that she in fact had 7 imaginative horses, but this was not the case. When autumn came the girl spent a whole day washing all her clothes. She hung them on a string in her garden to let the gentle autumn sun dry them. Out of nowhere, a terrible storm came and its fierce winds grabbed a hold of all her clothes and all seven horses (authors note: since they are invisible they obviously didn't weigh much). The girl was devastated and spent all autumn looking for each horse spread around the country, wrapped in her clothes.