project

Peaceful Still-Life Photographs Combine Kitchenware and Roadkill

Certainly there's ample artistic precedent for including a dead animal or two in a still-life. Old Master paintings are rife with images of freshly killed ducks, bunnies and fish awaiting a trip to the dinner table.

Photographer (and certified taxidermist) Kimberly Witham slyly subverts that tradition with "Domestic Arrangements," a series of still-life photographs that combine modern kitchenware and other items of domestic life with birds, squirrels and other animals retrieved from the roadside. All items come from within a short radius around Witham's New Jersey home.

Light Blaster Turns Your Flash and Lens Into a Slide Projector

Earlier today, the folks over at DIYPhotography announced a revolutionary new product that they believe will "push your creative potential to the max." It's called the Light Blaster, and it's a light modifier that, with some help from one of your lenses and a speedlight, can project a 35mm slide or transparency into your image the moment you click your shutter.

ARKYD Selfie Shots

$25 Could Soon Buy You a Photograph of Your Face in Space

Up until now, the use of multibillion-dollar orbiting satellites has been extremely limited to space agencies and companies that, well, require satellites. But here's a radical idea that could change the future of man-made satellites as we know them.

It's a Kickstarter project called ARKYD, and it's intended to be the first publicly accessible space telescope ever.

DIY: 35mm Film Slide Business Cards

Want to make some business cards for your photography business that stand out from among traditional cards? Try making some in the style of 35mm film slides. Last week we shared photographer Lars Swanson's beautiful slide cards, and this week we have a step-by-step look at how you can make something similar.

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize Given to Duo for First Time Ever

A pair of British artists has won the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize for a work that combines war images with text. It is the first time the prestigious photography prize -- described as the "biggest" and "most prestigious" photo prize in Europe -- has been awarded to a pair of artists.

Photographer Captures the Experiences of Mentally Ill Prison Inmates

Due to the evaporation of funding that supports mental health facilities, many prisons across the United States have been given the extra duty of treating those who are mentally ill. These patient-prisoners are often trapped within the systems with no where else to go for better treatment.

Trapped is a project by Minneapolis, Minnesota-based photographer Jenn Ackerman that shares the experiences of these prisoners through gritty black-and-white photographs.

Photographing the National Convention of the National Socialist Movement

The National Socialist Movement held their 2013 national convention in Atlanta, Georgia, protesting undocumented immigration and contemporary political policies. The NSM boasts of being the nation's largest "white civil rights groups" and aligns itself with other like-minded individuals across the nation. Spanning across the majority of the 50 states, the NSM retains its presence through regional and local leaders.

Here's a look at the convention and how I documented it through photographs earlier this year.

Photo Series of Students Posing in Their Housing Around the World

Images Connect is an international photo project by photographer Henny Boogert that explores the similarities and differences between the places students call home around the world.

Boogert believes that all students worldwide share the same goals: to move forward and establish a career. Their housing -- be it a room, an apartment or a hut -- is as universal as those goals, and the Images Connect project aims to highlight that universality.

Project OneRollFifty2: Shoot One Roll of Film Each Week for a Year

For a long time, photographer Travis Lawton had been toying with two ideas: shooting film for the first time since he was 6 years old, and doing a 365 project where he shot something every day for a year. Instead of choosing one, he decided to mix the two desires into a project he felt he could realistically keep up with for an entire year; that's how he came up with Project OneRollFifty2.

Strange Photo Project Keeps Daily Tabs on a Vending Machine, Apologizes for It

We've seen some strange photo projects in the past, but they're typically making a statement or serving some purpose. Haley Morris-Cafiero's photos of herself getting strange looks turned the tables on judging onlookers. Theron Humphrey's photos of his dog Maddie balancing on things across America allowed him to document his trip in an interesting way.

But photographer Motomachi's daily photos of his local vending machine serve no real purpose -- in fact, he felt the need to apologize by titling the project/blog: "I take a picture of the vending machine every day (or so). I’m very sorry."

Massive Photo Collage Creatively Depicts Every Street Sign in Manhattan

Photographer Jacob Kedzierski first came up with the idea to create a street sign collage eight years ago while riding a bike around the streets of his hometown of North Tonawanda, NY. After completing that project and moving to New York City, the idea for a Manhattan version crossed his mind several times, but he was never ready to commit to the amount of work it would take to actually get it done.

That was until he offhandedly mentioned that he was "working on" a Manhattan version at a local print shop. The owners had liked his North Tonawanda collage and when he mentioned Manhattan they offered him a spot in the front gallery area for when the project was done. He finally had his motivation.

Collaborative Project Using Gas Masks to Draw Attention to Wet Plate Photography

The Mask Series is a collaboration between wet plate photographers around the world who are trying to raise public awareness of the historical photographic process that they're so passionate about. The whole thing is centered around a specific prop: a vintage Czech M10 gas mask. Basically, every photograph contributed to the project must somehow incorporate one of these gas masks in one way or another.

I Collect Gingers: Photographer Shoots Portraits of Redheaded People

South African photographer Anthea Pokroy is a self-proclaimed "ginger," and has been on a mission to photograph other redheaded people in order to create a series of images about identity, prejudice, racial classification, segregation, and elitism.

The project is titled "I Collect Gingers," and has grown to over 500 portraits since it launched in August 2010. Red hair is a relatively rare trait that occurs naturally in 1-2% of the human population.

Beijing Silvermine: Rescuing Discarded Negatives from Illegal Recycling Centers

For his most recent project, French photography collector and editor Thomas Sauvin has been spending his time digging though illegal silver recycling centers in Beijing. He's doing this because buried within piles of X-Rays and CD-ROMs are hidden millions of discarded film negatives that Sauvin is intent on preserving.

Portraits of Refugees Posing With Their Most Valued Possessions

If you had to quickly flee both your home and country, what one possession would you make sure you take with you? It's a question that reveals a lot about your life and values, and, unfortunately, is one that many people around the world actually have to answer.

NYC-based photographer Brian Sokol has been working on a project supported by the UN Refugee Agency titled "The Most Important Thing." It consists of portraits of refugees in which the subjects pose with the one thing they couldn't let go of when running away from home.

Artists Set Up Walk-In Camera Obscura in Popular New York City Park

In an effort to educate the general public on the age-old art of the camera obscura, New York artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder have set up a 10-foot by 10-foot walk-in version in the city's Madison Square Park.

Surrounded by the Flatiron District, the installation offers an inverted look at the neighborhood, as well as the opportunity to learn a little bit about photography's roots.

Photos Showing the Beauty and Diversity of Seeds, Created Using a Scanner

In addition to being passionate about image making, photographer Svjetlana Tepavcevic is also an avid collector of seeds. After finding and collecting a new specimen, Tepavcevic creates a highly-detailed high-resolution photo of the seed using an ordinary flatbed scanner. The resulting images form a project titled Means of Reproduction.

Major Cities Around the World Captured in 8-Second Double Exposure Photos

One method for capturing "multiple exposure" photographs is to shoot a long exposure photograph of a scene with your camera pointed in different directions while the shutter is open. Photographer Nicolas Ruel uses this concept in an ambitious project that has taken him around the world. Titled 8 Seconds, the series features famous cities around the world (e.g. New York City, Tokyo, Beijing, Barcelona) captured in surreal multi-exposure photographs.

Portraits of Grandmas and Their Cooking Around the World

The words "grandma's cooking" often elicits warm feelings and pangs of nostalgia in people, as they're reminded of delicious meals prepared by their grandmother's loving and experienced hands. Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti wanted to learn what these memories are for people in different cultures and contexts, so he set out to document grandmas and their dishes in countries all across the globe. The result is a project titled "Delicatessen with love."

Portraits of People Who Look Alike But Aren’t Related At All

Canadian photographer François Brunelle is fascinated with the human face and the question of whether everyone has a doppelganger somewhere on Earth that looks exactly like them. For years now, he has been working on a project called I'm Not a Look-Alike!, which features portraits of people who look like identical twins but aren't actually related at all. Brunelle looks for subjects whose faces are so similar that their close friends might have trouble telling them apart.

Photos of an Island Across Four Seasons

Photo enthusiast Tyler Casson shot the above photographs by visiting the same spot on the edge of Lake Springfield in Illinois over the course of one year and snapping a photograph using his iPhone. The project is titled "The Four Seasons of the Bush."

Photos Imagining How Photoshop Tools Would Be Used as Beauty Products

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."

The Last Meals Requested by Death Row Inmates Before Their Executions

In certain countries around the world, death row prisoners who are about to face execution are offered a special last meal to eat. Authorities do their best to accommodate the special food requests, and these choices are often published to the media after the execution is carried out.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves decided to do a photo project to document what these last suppers comprised and what they might have looked like. He looked up the requests of some of history's most notorious executed criminals, recreated those meals, and photographed them. The project is titled "No Seconds."

Portraits of Projectionists: Photos of the People Who Play Movies at Theaters

Sitting in a movie theater is probably a very familiar experience to most of you, but what's it like to watch the movie from the projection room -- that room with a small window at the back of each theater that holds the projector.

New York City-based photographer Joseph O. Holmes has a new project called The Booth that offers a glimpse into these rooms and the people who work in them.

BTS: Building and Using the Largest Film Camera in the World

Here's an update on photographer Dennis Manarchy's Vanishing Cultures project, which we featured at the beginning of the year. Manarchy has just released the new video above that sheds some light on how the idea came about and how everything came together. After building the world's biggest film camera, Manarchy has been using the "largest-format camera" to document 50 different cultures all across the United States in an epic 20,000-mile road trip. The resulting portraits will be displayed in an equally epic exhibition titled "The Vanishing Cultures: An American Portrait."

Using a Gigantic Wet Plate Van Camera to Tell the Stories of People in America

Earlier this year, we shared a beautiful short documentary, titled "Silver & Light", which featured Los Angeles-based photographer Ian Ruhter and the gigantic wet plate photographs he shoots using a van that he converted into a massive camera. Since then, Ruhter's work has received a good deal of attention; the video now has nearly 1 million views, and Ruhter has been traveling around the country and using his special photography to tell the stories of people he meets.

He has just released the new video above, titled "American Dream." It's an inspiring look at some of Ruhter's first shoots for the project (note: it contains some strong language).