Inspiration

Los Angeles Times Jay L. Clendenin spent four weeks leading up to the Olympics traveling around Souther California, making portraits of athletes on the US Olympic Team. While he certainly wasn't the only one shooting the athletes, Clendenin chose an interesting way of capturing them: in addition to using Canon 5D Mark IIs for digital photos, he also used a 4x5-inch field camera and a 100+-year-old Petzval lens. When displayed side-by-side, the photos show an interesting contrast between "old" and "new".

More and more superstar athletes are using instant photo sharing services like Instagram, …

Big Appetites is a project by photographer Christopher Boffoli that features miniature people living in a world of giant food. The subjects are seen mining for strawberry seeds, chopping up giant blocks of chocolate, and lobster wrangling. Each of the figures (meant for miniature train models) are hand-painted with meticulous detail.

The Wizard of Oz Experiment is a creative video installation by …

Photographer Robert Buelteman takes pictures of shocking things -- literally. The California-based photographer uses Kirlian photography techniques to capture amazing images of 80,000 volts of electricity coursing through flowers. The technique is so dangerous and tedious that very few people in the world even attempt this kind of photography.

Nothing like starting off the weekend with some gorgeous footage of the City of Lights. This video comes courtesy …

New York City was battered by heavy storms yesterday, and photographer Ryan Brenizer …

Superheroes usually do their world-saving work in big cities, but what if they lived lives that were as mundane as the civilians they're sworn to protect? Photographer Chow Kar Hoo has a creative series of photographs that show well known superheroes living rather ordinary lives in Hong Kong. Batman is seen strolling a night market, Wolverine is found making a living slicing up meat at a butcher shop, and Hellboy is spotted enjoying some late night hot pot.

Back in 1982, 19-year-old five buddies -- John Wardlaw, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney, John Molony, and John Dickson -- went on vacation to Copco Lake in California and snapped a group photo (seen above). Since then, they've embarked on the same vacation every 5 years, staying at the same cabin, sitting on the same bench, and snapping the same photo (with identical poses and all). They're 48-years-old now, and the tradition is still going strong.

Photographer Dona Schwartz, a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, has an interesting pair of photo projects titled "On the Nest" and "Empty Nesters". The first shows portraits of expecting parents as they prepare to welcome a new member of the family. The second features portraits of parents who are coping with an empty house after their children have grown up and moved out.

Lake Bogoria in Kenya is home to one of the world's largest populations of lesser flamingos. When conditions are right, the lake turns into an eye-dazzling spectacle, with over a million birds congregating to feed on the blue-green algae in the waters. Wildlife photographer Martin Harvey was able to witness, shoot, and film one such gathering, and calls it "truly one of the worlds greatest wildlife experiences left on earth."

Photographer Tabitha Soren started shooting a series of photographs titled Running after snapping a picture of her daughter running in front of the headlights of a car.

Surprisingly enough, this isn't the first time somebody has recreated Super Mario using sticky notes, nor is it the first time we've featured it, but given the improved production value and the fact that this one comes complete with a behind the scenes video... well... we couldn't help ourselves.

Photographer Tom Warner shot this http://www.weathervideohd.tv/detail/1091/cumulonimbus-cloud-to-ground-cg-stepped-leaders-overcast-continuing-current-m-components-rain-falling-clouds-primary-types-lightning-sky-moods-tornadoes-hail-downburstsslow motion incredible video of lightning at 7,207 frames per second.

Photographer Rick Giles' project Light features abstract long-exposure shots of light pouring in through the door of a barn. He tells us,

The shots were created in camera by moving the camera across the surface of where the light is penetrating the barn. This draws the light in, and depending on the movement of the camera, creates shapes on the dark interior of the barn. Sometimes in quite abstract formations breaking the light down into the hues of the season. Other times mirroring the complete landscape of the exterior onto the interior wall.

It's awesome how the colors in the light offer a hint of what's on the other side of the door.

We Are Nature is an awesome portrait project by photographer Christoffer Relander of Raseborg, Finland. He used a Nikon D700 for in-camera multiple exposures and then made small contrast and tone adjustments in post for his surreal portraits.

This photograph by artist Chuck Anderson has received over 30,000 notes on Tumblr since it was posted back in September of 2010. It might look like a Photoshop creation, but Anderson assures us that what you see is straight off the camera.

Astrophotographer Laurent Laveder has a delightful series of photographs titled Moon Games that feature creative photographs shot as the moon hangs low over a hill. Laveder's subjects play with the moon as if it's a glowing sphere here on Earth. In one shot it's a reading lamp, and in another it's a framed art piece waiting to be hung. The photos are sure to make you want to find your own hill so you can play with the moon yourself!

Photographer Knate Myers of Albuquerque, New Mexico created this awe-inspiring time-lapse video using …

Car photography isn't nearly as glamorous or talked about as portrait, wedding and landscape photography, which is probably why you probably have never heard of John Jackson. But well-known or not, he happens to be a great example of the free, "doing what you love" (and taking pictures of it) lifestyle that so many people look for photography to give them.

Falling just slightly outside of photographically-relevant but square in the middle of awesome, this short video is just plain …

If you've ever flipped through a surf magazine and wondered how some of those incredible barrel riding pictures were taken, then this two part Momentum documentary on surf photographer Zak Noyle will be particularly interesting to you.

Here’s a cool video showing what went on behind the scenes when photographer …

Stop-motion projects often require mind-blowing amounts of work and preparation. Just how mind-blowing? Music duo Daniel Larsson and Tomas Redigh (AKA Rymdreglage) recently poured out 100 boxes of LEGO pieces that each contained 650 blocks. They then had two cameras snap a photo every 20 seconds as they spent a whopping 71 hours sorting by color. The time-lapse video was created using the 12,775 photos that each memory card ended up with.

Like most people, your kitchen at home is probably littered with various items collected over the past months, years, or even decades. Photographer Erik Klein Wolterink has a project titled Kitchen Portraits in which he captured portraits of the kitchens of various ethnic groups within Amsterdam. Rather than photograph them from one angle, he opened up the cupboards, drawers, fridges, and ovens, and photographed each space individually. The images were then combined afterwards into detailed composite images that offer interesting snapshots of the spaces.

Vivian Maier, Photographer is a beautiful short film about the life and work of Vivian Maier, the unknown amateur photographer whose massive collection of street photographs was discovered at an estate sale after her death.

The Mirror is a highly acclaimed and incredibly creative short film by Swiss directors Ramon and Pedro. It shows a journey through life in one take, with everything taking place in the reflection of a bathroom mirror.

The Sartorialist might be a big name in street fashion photography these days, but snapping impromptu photos of the latest clothing trends is nothing new. Over a century ago, a photographer named Edward Linley Sambourne did the same kind of photography on the streets of London and Paris using a concealed camera. His images form a beautiful historical record of what people wore that deviates from what people typically think of when they hear "Edwardian fashion".

Unlike the fabulously rich, those living at or under the poverty line in countries around the world have to make tough choices regarding what they eat on a daily basis. "The Poverty Line" is an ongoing project by photographer Stefen Chow and economist Lin Hui-Yi that shows how much food people living at the poverty line in various countries can buy.

The photos above show the different options in China, where 26,880,000 people live on ¥3.28 ($0.49) per day. Each image shows what one poor person can buy in one day.

Photographer Dallas Nagata White shot this ridiculously awesome photograph while visiting a …

For his surreal series titled "Beibeees", artist Alberto Seveso blended photos of women with smoke-like photographs of ink in water. To recreate this kind of look, try shooting smoke or ink against a pure white background and then use the cloudy formations as a layer mask on a portrait.

In 2000, photographer Noah Kalina started his …

World class athletes eat huge meals to provide their bodies with fuel during training (you might have heard that swimmer Michael Phelps gobbles down 12,000 calories every day while training). Reuters photographer Umit Bektas recently decided to do a photo project exploring this fact by shooting studio portraits of Turkish Olympic athletes posing next to tables laden with their daily meal intakes.

Director Kevin Parry recently finished creating a music video for the song "Water Falls" by Kalle Mattson. Filmed by Andrea Nesbitt, the video features some crazy time-lapse shots over great distances in San Francisco. Parry has also turned the shots into these animated GIFs that show you what various locations would look like if you were Superman whizzing around.

Montreal-based photographer Benoit Paillé's Alternative Landscapes project features photos of various outdoor locations lit with a glowing square. The images aren't Photoshopped: Paillé actually suspends a 1x1 meter cube for the beautiful illumination seen in his images.

A couple of months ago we featured a 30,000 photo time-lapse by …

Here’s a great behind the scenes video with architectural photographer Mike Butler that’ll …

"Bodybuilders' World" is a curious project by Belgian photographer Kurt Stallaert featuring digitally altered photos that combine the muscular bodies of bodybuilders with the youthful faces of children. At first glance they might look like ordinary portraits, but look a little closer and you'll see that things look very wrong.

Photographer Camille Seaman is well-known for her images of icebergs, but recently she turned her attention to another state of water: supercell storm clouds. She has been partnering with storm chasers and shooting amazing images of violent weather passing through the American Midwest. The series is titled The Big Cloud.

RRRRRRRROLL_gif is a project by a group of friends in Japan that comes together to create two cinemagraphs each week. The images feature people and objects rotating around a single axis.

Capturing photos of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes is an important job that no photographer takes lightly -- after all, we've all seen the kind of firestorm that can result from not doing it well. So when Benjamin Von Wong had the opportunity to photograph Olympic Para Dressage Rider Natasha Baker, he made sure to do it right.

A computer error at the San Diego fireworks show last week led to an 18-minute show being condensed into …

For his project titled Back Yard, Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota applied the musical ideas of echo, delay, and reverb to photography by shooting, developing, printing, and re-photographing the same image over and over. In an interview with American Photo, he states,

[...] first I used a compact digital camera, and printed the image out. Then I photographed that image with a 6x7 film camera, using color film, even though the image is later black and white. I developed it at home, in a way so that imperfections or noise will appear—I make the water extra warm, or don’t agitate the film. Even before that, I let some light hit the film; I’m developing in my bathroom, so it’s not even a real darkroom, which helps, but I’ll hold a lighter up to the film, or whatever is around. I’m always experimenting—the goal is to not do it the same way twice. So then, to produce more and more variations in the final image, I re-photographed the image about ten times.

Basically, Yokota is introducing distortion through what's known as generation loss.

The photograph you see above isn't the result of Photoshop or infrared photography. Captured by Spanish photographer Palíndromo Mészáros, it shows what the landscape of Ajka, Hungary looked like half a year after the Ajka alumina plant accident -- an industrial disaster in which 35 million cubic feet of toxic waste flooded the land to a height of around 6.5 feet. Mészáros lined up the thick red line caused by the sludge with the horizon line to obtain this surreal image.

Photographer David Nemcsik of Budapest, Hungary has a beautiful project titled the "Levitation Project" that features surreal images of people floating in midair in a lying up down position. The subjects are Nemcsik's friends, and the locations were picked by asking them this simple question: "where were you in your last dream?".

Photographer Shawn Van Daele has launched a beautiful (and meaningful) photo project called "The Drawing Hope Project" in which he shoots magical photographs based on the drawings of children living with health conditions. The photo shoots take 1-2 hours, but combining the images in post-production takes up to 8.

Getting potential clients' attention in the world of photography can be a difficult task, but photographer Gordon Stettinius has been doing quite a good job at it. So good, in fact, that one studio owner asked him to "never send anything to them again. Ever." His secret? Sending bizarre studio portraits as a follow-up.

Alex Dainis of Boston first recorded herself lip-syncing the song “Aaron’s Party” by Aaron Carter back when she was …

The "Smashing Booth" is a contraption that shatters objects and snaps photographs at the moment of impact. It was created by designer Henrietta Jadin, who created it as part of a school project titled "Breaking Point." The wooden device catapults an object at the back wall of its box, and a photo is captured by an open shutter, sound sensor (made from an Arduino controller), and strobe.

Vancouver-based photographer Eszter Burghardt creates miniature landscapes using food (e.g. seeds, powders, milk) and wool, and then photographs them using a shallow depth of field. Her images show everything from volcanos to icebergs. The projects are titled "Edible Vistas" and "Wooly Sagas".