Inspiration

How to Shoot Great Sunrise Photography

In this video from Master Photo Workshops photographer Jim Zuckerman shows you how he creates his iconic sunrise photography, using a beautiful lighthouse as his subject. He begins with the basics of choosing your subject and exposure well and then continues on to explain the need to move quickly, "work the scene," and understand that auto white balance works against you in sunrise and sunset scenes.

A Unique Medium: Photographs Printed on String

We've run into some cool ideas over the years -- most of them involving a new way of taking photos or an interesting mix of established photography techniques -- but Hong Sung Chul's work with photographs printed onto string is definitely different, if not unique. His choice of medium is said to represent our human connection to our mothers through an umbilical cord.

Check out the samples below and be sure to head over the Hada Contemporary Gallery for more examples his work.

Never-Before-Seen Project Gemini Photos Now Available Online

There's been a lot of nostalgia over the space program lately; as NASA is relegated to memories and museums, the general public is rediscovering why space once had us at such rapt attention. And the most recent relic to surface from the space program is a collection of never-before-seen photos from NASA's project Gemini.

Clever Photos Showing Famous Movie Posters from Behind

Here's a clever advertisement idea done by Brazilian ad agency Y&R Sao Paulo and photographer Lúcio Cunha. They took the iconic posters of famous movies (Kill Bill, Forrest Gump, and Pretty Women) and created photos showing what they would look like if viewed from behind.

Photos Recreating Scenes From Movies

Allen Fuqua loves traveling and watching movies. To combine those two loves, he visits locations around the world were scenes in various films were shot, and reshoots them for what he calls "movie mimicking". How many of these movies do you recognize?

Glimpses of World War 2 Seen Through Photos of Modern Day Europe

After collecting old World War 2 photographs taken in major European cities, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov spent a year traveling around Europe to re-photograph the same scenes as they look today. He then carefully combined the old images with the new ones to create photographs that show two views of the same location captured over 60 years apart.

Vintage Photos Turned Into Superhero Ancestor Portraits

Foto Marvellini, an art workshop based in Milan, came up with the interesting idea of collecting vintage portraits and transforming them into photos showing the ancestors of Marvel superheroes. Eventually the project, began including characters from DC Comics and Japanese anime as well.

Ethereal Portraits Taken Underwater

Here's a gorgeous series of underwater portraits shot by photographer Jacob Sutton, the same guy who did the LED snowboarding shoot that we featured a while back. It's titled "Underwater Girl".

Portraits of Famous People Shot Using Various Photographic Techniques

Washington DC-based photographer Sam Hurd has a series titled "Epic Portraits" that consists of portraits of famous individuals captured using techniques such as the Brenizer method, freelensing, and compositing. What's neat is that each photograph has its own behind-the-scenes page detailing how it was created (the gear, goal, vision, story, and lesson learned).

Double Exposures of Nature Blooming Through Portraits of Young Women

Buried inside photographer Jon Duenas' extensive portfolio are a set of double exposures that seem to focus on the theme of nature blooming through portraits of young women. Sometimes the technique itself is novel; such was the case with the mix of light paining and bullet time we posted yesterday. But that doesn't mean that a photography technique that has been used time and again can't still produce fresh, unique, and inspirational results.

Stealthy Street Photography by the Czech Secret Police

In the 1970s and 80s the Czechoslovak secret police, among other things, were charged with surveying the population without their consent or, for that matter, knowledge. Taking pictures from under coats or inside suitcases, the secret police kept tabs on the goings on of the general public. And while the act itself is voyeuristic and creepy, the pictures turned out surprisingly well.

Woman Aims to Meet and Photograph Her 626 Facebook Friends in Real Life

After amassing 626 friends on Facebook two years ago, Tanja Hollander began to wonder how many of them were actually friends in the conventional sense. She then set out to answer the question by meeting each one of them and photographing them in their homes. The portraits are published on a website set up for the project, titled The Facebook Portrait Project, and each photo includes some information about the subject and their relationship to Hollander.

Ruined Polaroid Pictures as Abstract Art

While many photographers aim for technical perfection, photographer William Miller goes the opposite route. After "rescuing" an old and barely functional Polaroid SX-70 instant camera from a yard sale, he began taking advantage of its glitches by viewing the resulting photographs as abstract art. He states,

The camera sometimes spills out 2 pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling the images in unpredictable ways.

Over time I’ve figured out how to control and accentuate aspects of the camera’s flaws but the images themselves are always a surprise. Each one is determined by the idiosyncrasies of the film and the camera.

The images look like landscapes taken on strange alien planets. He has titled the project Ruined Polaroids.

LEGO Rooms Photographed to Look like Full-Sized Spaces

Remember those beautiful macro photos that showed the inside of musical instruments as giant rooms? Sao Paolo, Brazil-based photographer Valentino Fialdini did something similar, except instead of musical instruments he used small chambers created out of LEGO blocks. With some clever lighting and camera trickery, Fialdini captured the tiny rooms and corridors as to look like giant architectural spaces.

Photographs of Michael Jackson Tribute Artists and Impersonators

The Michael Jacksons, by photographer and social scientist Lorena Turner, is a study of people who make a living or perform as the late great Michael Jackson. In her own words:
It is an index of the refraction of Michael Jackson's public persona within the culture by exploring issues of fantasy, reality and representation as influenced by and filtered through cultural experience.

Beauty in the Broken: Photographs of Destroyed Apple Projects

Now here's a divisive photo series that will draw both anger and cheers: graphic designer (and former Apple employee) Michael Tompert teamed up with photographer Paul Fairchild for a project titled 12LVE that consists of photographs showing annihilated Apple products. Here's the description:

12LVE [...] provides society a mirror, forcing us to question our infatuation with mere objects. By annihilating the adored, pulverizing the precious, and obliterating the beloved, 12LVE reminds us that although these objects have become quasi-religious icons, we will soon discard and replace them with the new crop—sleeker, faster, shinier.

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.

German Garbage Men Turn Dumpsters Into Giant Pinhole Cameras

A group of garbage men in Hamburg have figured out a way to combine their love of photography with their work of hauling trash, turning large dumpsters into giant pinhole cameras to photograph their city. The dumpsters are converted by drilling tiny holes into the fronts and then hanging large sheets of photo paper inside. Although framing a shot with the giant rolling cameras takes only a minute, exposing it can take up to an hour of waiting. They've dubbed the experiment the "Trashcam Project".

Moonlight Photographs by a Nocturnal Photographer

Argentinian photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg started as a photojournalist before turning to documentary photography and developing his trademark style of shooting under moonlight and using strobes and long exposures to illuminate his subjects. His portrait subjects are asked to remain motionless for long periods of time as he photographs them using a large format film camera. He recently applied his style to a series on residents of Northern Kenya -- a location that's typically photographed under the harsh midday sun.

Fashion Photos with Dogs Peering Over Shoulders

"Doggie Style" is a cute series of fashion photos shot by photographer Emily Shur for Paper Magazine. They're pretty different from ordinary fashion photos: Shur had her human models face backwards while holding dogs facing forwards.

Ghostly Reflection Self-Portraits Shot While Traveling Alone

While visiting New York City by himself, Serbia-based art director Marko Savic came up with an interesting way of creating "tourist" photos with himself in the frame. Instead of setting the timer on his camera, asking passers-by for help, or photographing his reflection, he decided to shoot self-portraits by illuminating his face and photographing it in various reflections.

Abstract Photos of Bullets Fragmented on Bulletproof Plexiglass

For her project "The Big Bang", photographer Deborah Bay captured macro photographs of plexiglass sheets that had various types of firearms fired at them. After having professional law enforcement officers fire bullets into the glass, she brought the sheets into a studio and "shot" them again with a Contax 645 and a 120 macro lens. She writes,

I began thinking about "The Big Bang" after seeing a sales display of bullet-proof plexiglas that had projectiles embedded in it. The plexiglas captured the fragmentation of the bullets and provided a visual record of the energy released on impact. As I began to explore this concept further, I also was intrigued by the psychological tension created between the jewel-like beauty and the inherent destructiveness of the fragmented projectiles. Many of the images resemble exploding galaxies, and visions of intergalactic bling sublimate the horror of bullets meeting muscle and bone. In fact, Susan Sontag described the camera as "a sublimation of the gun" -- load, aim and shoot.

Tape Transfer Portraits Show Subjects Behind Their Own Altered Photos

Photographer Rory White's Rorshak Tape Transfer Series might look like some kind of surreal digital art, but the images were actually created without Photoshop. White shot portraits of his subjects, printed them out, and invited the subjects to paint, tear, and alter the prints. He then covered the image with packing tape, dropped it in hot water, and peeled off the paper on the back (like a Polaroid emulsion transfer). The semi-transparent image would then be hung from a stand, and the subject rephotographed while standing behind it.

3D Glass Plate Photos From the 1930s

Paris-based photo enthusiast Alexis was passing a thrift store near his home recently when he noticed some strange looking optical equipment. Upon entering the shop for a better view, he discovered that it was an old stereograph viewer with ground glass in the rear. The store owner informed him that the viewer came with a box of roughly 50 glass plates made in France in the 1930s. Alexis jumped on the deal and, upon returning home, was pleasantly surprised to find that the images were beautiful 3D photographs of what living in France was like nearly a century ago.