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.
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.
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.
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 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.
If you want a daily dose of creativity and humor, start following the Instagram account (@cintascotch) of art director Javier Pérez. The Ecuador-based artist regularly posts simple and quirky photographs that consist of only a small object and a simple sketch.
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.
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.
For his project titled Improbabilità ("improbability"), Italian photographer and photo manipulator Giuseppe Colarusso created a series of surreal photographs showing various household objects and scenes... with a twist.
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?
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.
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."
"Child's Caves" is a beautiful (and nostalgia-inducing) series of photographs by photographer Björn Ewers and STUDIO314 that shows how children turn their play areas into make believe scenes from the world of grown ups. Imagined locations include the moon, the jungle, a pirate ship, and an igloo.
Parisian photographer Malo has fun portrait series titled "Un jour, mon enfant tu seras" (One Day You Will Be My Child) that imagines what a baby's future career might be.
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.
Dutch illustrator Tineke Meirink likes to take a closer look at photographs and then draw whatever her playful imagination reveals to her. Her website stop:watch is a collection of these "what it is" and "what I see" comparisons.
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.
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.
When Calle Hoglund had his buddies over one night editing a music video, …