imagination

Mixing Photos and 3D Modeling with Blender as a Photographer

I started in photography as a stepping stone into digital art. As with most photographers, I started taking pictures of everyone and everything. It was not fun hiking with me; I was the guy stopping every five minutes to take pictures of trees and rocks.

The Egg Dress: A Photo Rescue Story

I am starting a rescue effort. It has nothing to do with dogs, cats, or dolphins caught in tuna nets. I’m not trying to salvage old buildings nor save the environment. I still use plastic straws, people. I admit it. What I am rescuing is old photos.

Photographer Sees Mythical Creatures in Stormy Waves

Photographer Rachael Talibart spent a great deal of her childhood in southeast England staring at powerful ocean waves and imagining creatures in the sea. Through her ongoing photo project titled Sirens, Talibart is now sharing her imagination with the world.

A Before and After Look at the Magic of a Photoshop Artist

Photographer and visual artist Antti Karppinen has been reimagining photos using Photoshop for over 23 years now. Here's a before-and-after look at how Karppinen is able to take plain portraits (shot in studios, garages, and outdoors) and turn them into dreamlike images.

Fashion Photographer Imagines Cars as Supermodels

What if a spell turned some of the world's most famous car models into real women? What would they look like? That's what photographer Viktorija Pashuta decided to explore with her latest portrait project, titled "What if Cars Were SUPERMODELS?"

She gathered 12 top supermodels and gave them looks that reflected cars that range from Kia Optima to the Rolls Royce Phantom.

Quirky Photo-Manipulations That Remix the World in Creative Ways

Photographer James Popsys lives in London, one of the most photographed cities in the world. With so many people making virtually the same photos as each other, Popsys decided to take his images in a different direction using Photoshop.

After shooting photos of places and things, he uses photo-manipulation to create imaginative scenes that show strange sights that you never see in the real world.

Nostalgia and the Collapse of Imagination

“Regardless of what it signifies, any photographic image also connotes memory and nostalgia, nostalgia for modernity and the twentieth century, the era of the pre-digital, pre-post-modern.” --Lev Manovich

There will always be a need to connect to the past. Contemporary culture actively and unconsciously cycles through past follies and reflects upon progress. It is no surprise then, that we see popular culture re-presenting past generations. Perhaps more so than any other period in our recent past, today’s pop-cultural climate is mimicking that of the 1970s.

Fantasy Photo Shoots Bring Hope to Kids with Cancer

Photographer Jonathan Diaz is using his imagination and portrait photography skills for a good cause. He's the founder of Anything Can Be, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based non-profit that's working to inspire hope in young cancer patients by bringing their dreams to life with photos.

The Dreamlike Self-Portraits of Kylli Sparre

Fine art photographer Kylli Sparre spent years training to become a professional ballet dancer. After realizing that dance wasn't what she wanted to pursue as a career, Sparre picked up a camera, found that it was the perfect tool for channeling her creativity, and "never looked back."

Since then, Sparre has become well known for her surreal self-portraits, holding international exhibitions featuring her work.

What Outdoor Photos Would Look Like with Other Stars and Planets as Our Sun and Moon

The photo illustration above shows what a photo of a sunset here on Earth would look like if the sun were replaced with Arcturus, one of the brightest stars in our "neighborhood."

The Russian Federal Space Agency recently released a couple of "Alternative History" videos that imagine what the sky would look like if the Sun were replaced with other stars and if the moon were replaced with planets in our solar system.

Photographer Pays Homage to Childhood by Inserting Star Wars Into Real World Snapshots

If you were like many kids, you probably spent much of your childhood in a hybrid world where reality and imagination fused into an indistinguishable whole. Magical creatures walked the streets, everyday-objects transformed into priceless relics and your favorite movie characters walked down the street opposite you.

For photographer Thomas Dagg, this meant one thing and one thing only: Star Wars. And so for his recent series by the same name, he recreated this imaginary world by creatively inserting Star Wars characters and objects into the real world around him.

Creative Photos of Imaginary Inventions that Will ‘Save the Universe’

Photographer Jan Von Holleben specializes in imaginary awesomeness, creating scenes that whisk you away to a different place where random objects can be used to turn dreams into reality.

For his most recent project, however, he and his friends set about doing something even more difficult than bringing 'Dreams of Flying' to life: they're trying to save the universe... with imaginary machines, of course.

Parents Keep Their Kids’ Imaginations Alive with Creative ‘Dinovember’ Project

Parents Refe and Susan Tuma aren't big on Movember, at their house November is reserved for a different tradition: Dinovember. Documented in photos on the project's Facebook page, the Tumas spend November keeping their kids' imaginations alive by convincing them that every night, their dinosaur toys come to life and get into all sorts of trouble.

Please Draw Me a Wall: Creative Photos of People Interacting with Graffiti

French photographer Julien Coquentin's series Please Draw Me a Wall is a curious combination of street art and photography. By having his subjects (sometimes himself) interact with wall art as if it were real, he creates fantasy worlds using only a few props and drawings that some call art and others defacement.

The Sanity of Craziness: How Your Wild Imagination Can Be Good for Business

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.

Photog Uses His Imagination to Bring Joy to Boy with Muscular Dystrophy

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.

Creative Photos of Kids Enjoying Make-Believe Activities at Home

British advertising photographer Tim MacPherson has a wonderful series of photographs showing children having fun in imaginary worlds created out of ordinary objects. Kids are seen couch surfing, skiing down stairs, and horseback riding on shelves. The project is titled, "Kids at Home and Play."

The Amazing Photo Manipulation Art of Erik Johansson

Here's an awesome TED lecture in which digital artist Erik Johansson discusses creating realistic "photographs" of impossible scenes.

Erik Johansson creates realistic photos of impossible scenes -- capturing ideas, not moments. In this witty how-to, the Photoshop wizard describes the principles he uses to make these fantastical scenarios come to life, while keeping them visually plausible.

A Girl’s Dreams Photographed Using Things Found in a Bedroom

Photographer Jan von Holleben, known for his Dreams of Flying series, was recently hired by a German newspaper to make photos using his signature "lying on the ground" style for a feature on dreams. He ended up shooting photographs showing a girl's dream using a mattress and other ordinary objects you might find inside a bedroom.

Japanese Magazine Imagines What the Nikon D4 and D900 Might Be Like

CAPA magazine over in Japan asked some professionals in the camera industry to speculate on the rumored Nikon D4 and D900 DSLR cameras, and came up with some concept drawings for what the cameras might look like based on the information gathered. Their imaginary Nikon D4 packs a full-frame 18MP sensor, ISO 51200, 11fps burst mode, a tilting LCD screen, built-in Wi-Fi, and a 51-point cross-type autofocus system.