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Photographer Kayli Rene has captured quite a few family portraits for clients, but a somewhat unusual one has captured the world's attention. It's a photo she made recently for Sierra Sharry, the mother of a 6 month old boy who lost her husband in an accident last year. At Sharry's request, Rene included the husband as a ghostly figure in the shot.

The resulting photo (shown above) has seen been "liked" by hundreds of thousands of people and has been featured on news shows and websites across the country.

In late 2013, Australian photographer Cameron Bloom's family found an abandoned magpie chick on the ground in Newport, New South Wales. They took the bird in, learned how to raise it, and it quickly became a part of their family and daily life.

As they raised the magpie, which they named "Penguin," Bloom began to document the experience through Instagram. Tens of thousands of people around the world are now following along as he shares touching photos that show the closeness of the bird and family.

Since 2012, photographer Brian Batista has been shooting an ongoing project titled Tattoos & Rescues. It's a series of portraits that seeks to combat the negative stereotypes surrounding both rescue dogs and tattooed people. The photos are meant to show that looks can be deceiving, and you should get to know both dogs and people before judging them based on outward appearances.

This isn't very photography related, but it could make for an interesting 8-minute break to your day. The video above is the story of how commercial videographer Dave Wallace of British Columbia proposed to his girlfriend by putting together a fake and elaborate shoot for a jewelry commercial.

For as long as photographer Angelo Merendino can remember, leaving his parents' house involved a heartfelt goodbye at the door.

"There was never an, 'I'll just let myself out,'" he writes. "It was always, 'We'll walk you to the door.'" At some point he realized this goodbye wasn't always a given, and decided to capture it in photos for the remaining years he had with his 80+ year old parents.

There are few things that symbolize the innocence of childhood the way a teddy bear does. A stuffed companion who is as real to a 2-year-old as anything made of flesh and blood, at that age the teddy bear isn't just something you play with... it plays back.

It's this innocence and wonder that photographer Adrian Murray captures in his touching photographs of his two boys, Emerson and Grayson, and their toy bear.

Amidst the many photos of hate, anger, sadness and sometimes outright destruction that have flooded the media since a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, sparking riots and protests across the US, there are glimmers of hope and humanity.

One such glimmer was captured by Oregon-based freelance photographer Jonny Nguyen at a Ferguson demonstration in Portland earlier this week.

22-year-old Alexis Taylor recently shared an email she received from her 96-year-old photographer grandfather, and it's just too wonderful not to share.

If you need a reason to crack a smile today, or you and your significant other just found out you're having a baby and you'd like to announce it in a fun and creative way, San Francisco couple Kat and Kris can help.

Instead of just delivering the news directly, the couple pretended they were taking a group photo of their friends and shot video instead. When the time came for the standard "say cheese" moment at the end of the countdown, they instead told everyone to say "Kat's pregnant" and waited for the lightbulb to go off.

Out of tragedy, a small ray of light and corporate kindness shines through today. The eruption of Japan's Mount Ontake on September 27th took many hikers by surprise, claiming at least 56 lives. One of them was 66-year-old photography enthusiast Kazuo Wakabayashi.

At the height of AIDS hysteria in the 1980s, when some people still wondered if the disease could be passed to others through day-to-day contact, photographer Sage Sohier was going into same-sex couples' homes and photographing them for a series and photo book that came to be known as At Home With Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980s America.

The project captured an intimate portrait of the gay community that was at odds with the headlines of the day, and made all the more poignant by the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic against which it was created.

Photographer Maria Sharp has had one constant over the past sixteen years, and that constant was a German Shepherd, Collie, Hound Dog mix named Chubby.

And when Chubby's health began declining rapidly, Sharp said goodbye the only way she knew how: by digging up old pictures, and taking a few new ones before Chubby passed away.

Did you ever have a 'comfort object' as a kid? Maybe it was a security blanket, or a beloved stuffed animal that you carried around everywhere. Maybe you still have it somewhere in the attic where it's more socially acceptable now that you're an adult.

These objects meant, at least for a time, the world to us; A connection to security and safety that was, if irrational, also undeniably comforting. And it's these objects and the children who love them that make up photographer Anna Ream's recent series Comfort Objects.

The crushing blow came just 52 days before her wedding: Janine, a blushing bride-to-be, unexpectedly lost her fiancé. The grief was unimaginable, but she didn't let it conquer her. Instead, after taking some time to grieve, she got in touch with Matt Adcock at Del Sol Photography and asked him to help her move on and rediscover the beauty of the world around her.

What followed was an incredibly powerful 'trash the dress' photo shoot full of symbolism: a cleansing shoot that has helped Janine to make her peace with the past and embrace the possibility of a bright future.

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.

When photographer Jennifer Loeber lost her mother suddenly this past February, Loeber found herself clinging to even the most mundane and seemingly innocuous of the possessions her mother had left behind. But, as is so often the case, these objects became a stumbling block, a barrier to moving on, rather than the source of comfort she had hoped they would be.

And so, in her poignant, powerful series Left Behind, she symbolically 'let go' of the hold these items had on her grief by sharing photos of them on Instagram alongside related archival photographs of her mother.

It's getting to the point where you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't already know about Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton's project turned photobook turned international phenomenon. But that became even harder this week when Stanton took the project on the road with the UN and delivered some of his most powerful portraits from the streets of, not New York City, but Iraq.

Thanks to an infection, little baby Edie started her life 16 weeks earlier than she was supposed to, and in pretty bad shape. When she arrived, she weighed only 570g and a consultant told the family that she had between a 5 and 10 percent chance of survival.

And so, not knowing how much time he would have with his daughter, father David started taking pictures. Little did he know, he was documenting a fight that Edie would win, and a miraculous transformation in the process.

Photographer Benjamin Von Wong recently took some time out of his incredibly busy schedule to warm our hearts and give a talented, chronically ill fan of his the birthday surprise of his life.

When wedding photographers Maria Velasquez and her boyfriend Ulices Del Toro started planning their second Laguna photowalk, she had no idea that he had something much bigger in mind than just walking around and snapping pictures.

It’s a sad day when your Grandfather needs to go into a ‘nursing home.’ For years my Grandpa, Stephen Clarke, had always been the strongest, smartest, most capable guy in the room. Now, he had been reduced to needing 24-hour care in a place that smells like a hospital.

In an effort to help him, my family and I cleaned out his now empty house. As I was sorting through things and cleaning I found a box of old 35mm slides. Little did I know just how much these slides would change the next half-decade of my life, eventually leading me to create my latest project, Grandpa’s Photos.

Get the tissues ready, because this one is aiming right for the feels. Tucked away within a documentary on the history of Japanese cameras, this touching story of Yoko and Minoru Tanaka took us completely unawares.

We thought we were watching a mildly interesting and informative documentary... as it turns out, it was much more than that.

Chances are good you've never heard the term Mingi, but if you were born to one of the tribes in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, this age-old tribal tradition might have been your death sentence. These days, however, that is far less likely, and it's due almost entirely to the work of Kara tribesman Lale Labuko and his friend and photographer John Rowe.

It's true that the Internet can be a stupid and cruel place -- read any comment section on a controversial news piece for proof of that -- but it can also be a wonderful place that occasionally brings you to tears... in a good way.

This is a story about the best of the Internet: about a grieving father, a heartfelt request, and an overwhelming response.

Too often, photographs of life in a rural village in a distant country revolve around sadness, hunger and depravity, but rural village life can also be playful, full of joy, and beautiful in its simplicity. It's the latter of the two that Indonesian photographer Herman Damarher set out to capture.

Polish husband and father-of-two Sebastian Łuczywo is a business advisor for his day job. But when he's not at work, he's capturing incredibly heartwarming portraits of his family and their animals.

With his rural home in Poland serving as a backdrop for these images, his photographs of his family -- including his two four-legged children -- seem to be a conglomeration of many styles, from surrealism to straight up candid. And it’s this unique blend of styles, along with the intimate touch, that takes his photographs to the next level.

There are times when you come across a collection of images that no written words or powerful images can describe on their own. Such is the case with the heartfelt series, Lifelines.

Inspired by past projects, photographer Norah Levine teamed up with audio guru Gabrielle Amster and Animal Trustees of Austin’s 4PAWS (For People and Animals Without Shelter) program to document and tell the story of the connection between the homeless and their beloved pets.

The New York City subway can be a cold place, metaphorically speaking. Headphones, cell phones, that one Seamless ad they've no doubt already read 600 times, whatever their approach, people go to great lengths to avoid communicating with the other people in the car.

So what happens when one of those people breaks, not only the unwritten rule against talking, but touching! How do people react on the subway when a complete stranger falls asleep on their shoulder?

It started as a chance encounter on a train. Photographer Lindsay Morris was on her way back from a photo festival where she had been inspired by a seminar on photo essays, when she happened to sit next to Janice Di Joseph and her daughter, Ricchina.

Mother's Day is tomorrow, and so we leave you tonight with a touching reminder from Canon Canada to do something sweet for the mothers in your life.

Back in January, we featured the story of Anthony Carbajal, a California-based wedding photographer whose career came to an abrupt end when he was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. After the story broke, media journalist Avni Nijhawan created the above video that offers a touching portrait of Carbajal's life and struggles.

After having a close friend lose a one-year-old to cancer years ago, and watching her stepfather battle this all-too-prevalent beast today, Oklahoma–based photographer Lora Scantling was inspired.

Inspired to create an image, or a series of images, that show the strength of and give encouragement to those who are battling the disease, as well as those who are watching someone go through it.

It took photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur 13 years to compile the photography found in her book We Animals, but it will take only moments for your emotions to run the gamut between deeply moved and sickened while scrolling through her work.

You might not know it if you watch too much TV, but there is a great deal of goodness in this human race of ours... and it runs deep. South African portrait photographer Albert Bredenhann discovered this in a big way recently when he was hired to do a photo shoot for a group of friends, one of which had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.

That kind of photo shoot is touching in and of itself, but the group took the idea further than that when they all voluntarily shaved their heads ahead of the surprise portrait.

Everybody takes photos of their family, trying their best to keep a chronicle of their children as they grow up. They capture moments both mundane and momentous and store them away in what later becomes the family album (although it seems that might soon be a thing of the past).

But while everybody might make an effort to capture these memories, photographer Alain Laboile does so with an expertise behind the lens that has turned his own personal family album, a series called La Famille, into a heartwarming viral sensation.

If you don't want to cry today, we suggest you skip this one. That being said, for the love of all that is holy, please don't skip this one! The tears are more than worth it when you hear the story behind these touching and at times heart-wrenching daddy/daughter photos.

A portrait is a powerful thing. Programs like Help Portrait -- which is dedicated to spreading joy, inspiration and hope by taking portraits of people who have never had one taken before -- are easy proof of this. But just in case you find yourself in need of more proof, the If Only for a Second portrait project is here to provide it.

Photographers have the power to make dreams come true, and if you've ever doubted that statement you won't after watching the video above and hearing the story behind it -- a story that includes a sweet, sick woman's shy email, and a photographer's determination to come through no matter what.

A few commenters have on occasion joked that we need to add a "tenuous links to photography" category for those stories where, strictly speaking, there's not much photography involved. The video above might quality, but we ask your forgiveness ahead of time because, a) there is a link, and b) it is one of the most touching, uplifting and inspirational things we've seen in a long time.

Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.