Inspiration

If there was an official list of things that are too epic, this video would probably be somewhere on …

There's something profoundly sad about a missing persons poster. That rectangular piece of paper often signifies a last ditch effort, a one in a million chance, and it's that desperation and sadness that Graham MacIndoe captures with his "Missing Persons" photo series. Started way back in 1989, the series takes an up close and personal look at the posters many of us pass daily but never notice.

Photographer Wendelin Spiess created this series of images for the latest edition of USED magazine. Spiess took photographs of models, split the faces down the middle, and mirrored them. They say human beauty has a lot to do with facial symmetry -- perhaps models' faces are more symmetrical than your average mug?

For his project titled Perspe, Italian photographer Gustav Willeit created imaginary locations by mirroring landscape photographs and then adding in non-symmetrical elements into the images.

This has to do with filmmaking rather than photography, but check out this jaw-dropping shot from the 1997 movie …

Ken Burns is a documentary legend, and even though he comes from a filmmaking perspective, his ideas on what makes a story worth telling (or, in our case, a moment worth capturing) are universal and universally inspiring.

As behind-the-scenes videos go, this one is pretty short, but it still offers an interesting look at how photographer …

In Episode 1 of the Framed Network series Film, hosts and photographers Tanja …

When Hamburg, Germany-based photographer Florian Bison first saw a video of parkour, he …

Since November 2011 I’d been thinking about an astrophotography project: take a photo of the moon each day from full moon to full moon, then combine it into a seamless movie that looks as if someone had moved the sun around the moon for one minute. I found similar videos, but most were simulations done in software, or photographic ones that weren’t very smooth. Seemed simple enough, mostly because I didn’t see the complications that would come along with this project caused by... physics.

My plan involved setting the same exposure each night starting with the full moon, and let the moon’s dark side gradually move across its face while the lit side stayed about the same brightness. Adjust the photos’ angles to match each other, throw all of them into Final Cut Pro X and add cross dissolve transitions between them, and I’d get a smooth movie showing every phase of the moon.

Life Backwards is a beautiful short by …

This amazing image has been going viral on the Internet, usually accompanied with the caption: A man in Japan …

Caleb and Candra Pence had a couple unexpected guests crash their wedding in Kansas last Saturday: tornadoes! The two twisters touched down roughly 10 miles away during the ceremony but -- luckily for everyone involved -- were not moving. Wedding photographer Cate Eighmey took advantage of the rare situation by having the newlyweds pose with the twisters in the background. The resulting photographs have taken the Internet by storm (haha, get it?), and the Pences have spent their honeymoon in Wyoming handling calls from the media.

Feast your eyes on this amazing stop motion music video idea for the song “Rivers and Homes” by electronic …

Many consider Robert Frank's classic photobook "The Americans" (originally published in France as "Les Américains") to be one of the greatest photobooks of all time. Knowing this, Mishka Henner should have probably thought twice before using it as the subject of one of his forays into digital appropriation and, in this case, erasure.

The Portrait Project is a series of 10 stitched portraits by London-based artist Evelin Kasikov. Each portrait is created with an actual Polaroid picture as the starting point, and is based on the same grid. The idea is similar to pointillism, but instead of dots she uses squares, crosses, and lines of different colors and weights. 10-15 feet of cotton thread does into each piece, and stitching them takes between two days and a week to complete.

At first glance, photographer Timothy Pakron's "Silver Print" series of portraits might look like ink paintings or some kind of CG art. They're actually photographs created by hand painting developer onto photo paper in the darkroom instead of immersing the paper entirely in the solution.

Jack Robinson was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, which explains why it was his boss, Dan Oppenheimer, who was left to take care of his estate when he passed. Little did Oppenheimer realize, however, that when he opened the closet in Jack Robinson's incredibly tidy apartment, he would find a collection of pristine portraits of celebrities that Robinson shot in his early days as a commercial photographer for Vogue.

The Staples Center in Los Angeles is the official home of two NBA …

From Love to Bingo in 873 Images is an amazing short film created by …

Dreamland is a series of diptychs by Italian photographer Francesca Guadagnini that's based around the simple question "where would you like to live?". Guadagnini shot portraits of the subjects and then photos of their answers as well, creating images that offer a small peek into the brain and personality of each person.

Artist Thomas Allen creates vintage scenes by cutting up pulp fiction book covers and turning them into dioramas. He also uses depth of field and lighting to add an extra dimension to the scenes.

Back in 2010, street artist JR won the $100,000 TED Prize to continue his massive photographic street …

Germany-based freelance photographer Michael Hughes is an avid traveler and has visited over 200 countries. Throughout his travels, he has been working on a running photo series in which he places souvenirs found at various locations into shots of the tourist locations themselves. The famous landmarks in his photographs are replaced with miniature models, pen holders, and even paper cups.

When photographer Robert Johnson of Business Insider was denied so much as a …

If you went outdoors to observe the solar eclipse yesterday, you might have noticed that the shadows cast by trees had suddenly become quite strange. The tiny gaps between leaves act as pinhole lenses, projecting crescent shaped images of the eclipsed sun onto the world below.

Photographer Cory Poole created this time-lapse video of …

Photographer Philip Karlberg, whose "33 RPM" project we featured before, shot these images of celebrities wearing sunglasses for Plaza Magazine using carefully arranged wooden pins. Shooting 6 faces required 6 days and ~1200 pins. Can you recognize all of the celebrities?

Several weeks ago we mentioned a new Google Maps feature that allows you to take virtual tours of famous locations all over the world. And now -- coming out of a partnership between design firm Dassault Systèmes, Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts -- you can take a historically accurate, 3-dimensional, online look at Egypt's entire Giza plateau online.

Trey Ratcliff is the well-known and well-loved HDR photographer behind the travel photography blog …

This fascinating video by Hayley Morris for Hilary Hahn and Hauschka's "Bounce Bounce" is both a very creative use of stop motion, and a testament to her skill as a craftsman. She actually created the entire underwater world, sketching and creating the characters herself.

If you’ve ever wondered how a professional moving still is put together, this behind-the-scenes video of …

If you haven't seen Kirsty Mitchell's Wonderland series yet, then you're bound to start running into it everywhere. Inspired by the fairytales her late mother used to tell her before she passed, the series wasn't actually shot in exotic locations. In fact, some of the photos took months of planning to get right.

The Friends of Anton is an organization that has come together over the past year to ensure the future of slain South African photojournalist Anton Hammerl’s three children; and 3 days ago the organization in partnership with Christie's held the latter's first ever auction of contemporary photojournalism prints, raising over $100,000 towards their touching cause.

You've probably seen photographs similar to the image above before, but this one is special in that it wasn't created digitally. Photographer Matthew Spiegelman shot it with a 4x5 camera and 180mm lens using a two-way mirror. The photo is titled Portal {Matthew Spiegelman in his studio with mirror, two way mirror, c-stands, clamp with suction cup, two geared tripod heads, three strobes, 4x5 camera, 180mm lens} [Variation 6]" 2010.

Fashion photographs are generally shot to make the clothing and the models look attractive, but British photographer Neil Bedford chose not to go that route when shooting a series for clothing label Neighborhood's lookbook. He had his models press their faces against invisible panes of glass, resulting in quirky and humorous fashion photos featuring smeared faces.

Here’s an interesting TED talk by photographer Rachel Sussman, who undertook an interesting …

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey's living grass portraits are a testament to creativity. Created by exposing patches of seedling grass to the sun through custom-made negatives, these portraits are grown rather than taken. And just like the regular pictures and the subjects inside them, over time, the images on the grass will fade and disappear.

Here’s a skateboarding video by Joe Pease that shows a creative point of view, riding along with the shadow …

Photographer Tadao Cern has an awesome project titled, ahem, Blow Job that consists of portraits of people having their faces blown by extremely strong blasts of air.

Foam Sculptures is a project by Dutch photographer Suzanne Jongmans, who recreates the look of old 16th and 17th century Flemish and Dutch paintings using clothing and accessories created from foam packing and insulating materials. It reminds us of Nina Katchadourian's airplane lavatory portraits, except with higher production values.

While we’re on the subject of world records in photography, did you know that …

In celebration of the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games — or maybe just because she felt like it — …

Burning House is a series of photographs by artist Carrie Schneider that shows a small white house burning on an island in the middle of a lake. While the subject matter might not be too out of the ordinary, glance through the images and you'll soon find that the house appears to be perpetually on fire throughout the seasons.

London-based advertising and art photographer Atton Conrad does some pretty interesting mixing of fashion and light painting photography. He has done a number of images for magazines and ad campaigns that feature models wearing dresses manufactured from light rather than fabric. For each fo the images, Conrad paints the dress around the model in a blacked-out studio while remotely triggering the camera.

This music video for the song “Solidified” by Gramatik features an interesting technique: …

NASA astronaut Don Pettit shot this beautiful long exposure photograph showing star trails and city trails from the International Space Station. The image was created by combining 18 separate long-exposure photographs.

Prior to the fancy graphics video game players enjoy today, classic games were based on simple geometric forms. German photographer Patrick Runte decided to do a quirky photo project exploring what these games might look like if translated to the real world. His series, titled Jump 'N' Run, shows people dressed in simple costumes of "characters" from games like Pac-Man, Pong, and Tetris.

Photographer Christian DeBaun of Charlottesville, Virginia captured this photograph that shows six living …

Metamorphose is a project by photographer Frederic Fontenoy that consists of slit-scan self portraits created in outdoor locations. The technique produces an effect that makes his body look like it's metamorphosing into some other life form.