weird

Photos of Skunk Owners Showing Off Their Quirky Choice of Pet at Skunk Fest

Behold the work of South Carolina-based photographer Vincent J Musi and one of the most unusual photo sets you're likely to run across today. As part of an April cover story for National Geographic on “exotic” pet owners, Musi went out and photographed the owners of an animal most of us wouldn't dare bringing into our homes: skunks.

Frog Photobombs NASA Launch Photo

Check out this photograph NASA captured recently during the launch of its LADEE spacecraft. Notice anything unusual? If you're thinking that the strange dark spot seen in the middle of the smoke plume looks familiar, you're right -- that's a frog.

Upcoming PS4 Game ‘Outlast’ Pits Digital Camera Against Zombies

Here's yet another reason why it's a bad idea to think reporters outfitted with cameras can replace actual photojournalists -- the reporters apparently are dumb enough to wander into an abandoned insane asylum full of zombies.

(The first thing a real photojournalist would do, of course is ask "Do I get paid mileage?" before refusing to take the gig.)

Controversy Erupts After Photographs of Cosplayers Show Up on Pillows

You've had a rough day, you're bone tired and ready for bed. What would feel better than cuddling up with an image of some anonymous dude in a Superman outfit?

Yeah, I can think of a couple million things, too. But apparently there's a market for body pillows emblazoned with images of comics fans dressing as their favorite characters. The legal and ethical framework for selling them, however, is a different matter.

Bizarre Portraits of People Dressed In the Food They’d Like to Eat

Hunger Pains is a very... different series of portraits by NYC-based photographer Ted Sabarese. For each of the photographs, Sabarese asked his model one simple question: "What are you craving at the moment?" He then took the food described, had them turned into clothing items, and photographed the models wearing the things they'd like to eat.

The Armadillo Camera and Other Wacky Camera Creations

Swiss photography duo Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs were featured here in April of last year for their DIY large format camera created out of a stack of books. It turns out books aren't the only things the two are making cameras with: they also have cameras that mix the worlds of taxidermy and photography.

For their project titled Camera Collection, Onorato and Krebs created one-of-a-kind cameras out of extremely unusual things -- including an armadillo (shown above).

Headless Portraits From the 19th Century

It's not easy to remember life before Photoshop. When we do, we think of a world where picture were straightforward, always showing exactly what happened to be in front of the lens when the exposure was taken. But that's not entirely the case.

Trick photography has been around for centuries, and even though the folks in Victorian times weren't nearly as concerned with artificially slimming down, they did like to have some photographic fun once in a while. This set of headless photographs from the 19th century is a great example of the kind of 'fun' we're talking about.

Portable Vacuum Cleaner in the Shape of a Nikon 70-200mm Lens

Of all the photography-related novelty products we've seen so far, this one has to be one of the most bizarre. It's a hand-held vacuum cleaner designed to look just like a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR lens. The device can draw its power from either the cigarette lighter socker in your car or the USB port on your computer.

Art Students Become Human Cameras by Eating 35mm Film

Kingston University photography students Luke Evans and Josh Lake wanted to do something unusual for their final major project, so they decided to turn themselves into human cameras by eating 35mm film squares and letting their bodies do the rest. After eating and pooping out the film in the dark, they used fixer on the film and then scanned the film using an electron microscope. They are currently exhibiting massive prints of the images that show every detail of what their bodies did.

Crumpled Faces of Random Strangers

For his project titled "Good Morning!", photographer Levi Mandel shot stealthy photos of unsuspecting strangers, printed out the faces, crumpled them up, and then re-photographed them.

Creative Self-Portraits Captured Inside an Airplane Lavatory

Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style is a spontaneous portrait project that photographer Nina Katchadourian started while traveling by plane in 2010. Here's her account:

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. I was wearing a thin black scarf that I sometimes hung up on the wall behind me to create the deep black ground that is typical of these portraits. There is no special illumination in use other than the lavatory's own lights and all the images are shot hand-held with the camera phone.

Some people just have to flex their photographic muscles regardless of where they are...

Cremation Portrait: Owner Has Photo Printed with Dead Dog’s Ashes

There's all kinds of things people do to remember their beloved pets after they pass away, but here's a pretty creepy one: a dog owner in Norway had a photo of their Gordon Setter named Susie printed with her ashes. Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgle figured out a way to rebuild a printer to accept dog ashes as "ink", allowing them to print a vintage-looking black-and-white photograph of Susie.

Surreal Photograph of Camel Thorn Trees

Check out this photograph of camel thorn trees in Namibia shot by Frans Lanting. It looks like a painting but is actually a photograph...

Tinted orange by the morning sun, a soaring dune is the backdrop for the hulks of camel thorn trees in Namib-Naukluft Park.

Can your eyes and brain make any sense of it?

This Camera Van Has Rolling Shutters

In 1993, a guy named Harrod Blank had a dream in which he drove around in a camera-covered car taking pictures of people staring at his camera-mobile. When he woke up, he decided to make the car a reality, and spent the next two years designing and building the thing. In 1995 he completed the Camera Van complete with a working camera to capture the expressions of onlookers.

Extra Reach for Shooting the Moon

Now here's a novel way to shoot the moon: stack five separate Canon 2x extenders to boost the focal length of your 800mm lens. Supposedly (and surprisingly) this rig actually captured a decent photograph of the moon.

This was done by the folks over at BorrowLenses, who also did the crazy filter stacking thing we featured recently. When you have as much gear as they do at your disposal, you have a wider range of ways to have fun with gear experiments.