Inspiration

Portraits of People Posing with All of Their Possessions

For her project titled All I Own, photographer Sannah Kvist asked her friends to pile up all of their belongings into the corner of a room and then pose with the pile for a photo. The portrait subjects are all Swedish young adults that were born in the 1980s.

Photos of a Lone Robot’s Attempt to Coexist with the Natural World

Photographer Thomas Jackson, whose swarm photos we shared earlier this week, has a creative project titled The Robot that "offers a darkly humorous narrataive about a lone robot's failure to co-exist with the natural world." It's a series of photos that brings a cleverly arranged heap of metal to life.

Beautiful Mosaics of Trees Photographed Across Time

Photographer Noel Myles has been working for the past 15 years on "still films" of trees across the countryside of eastern England. He originally created platinum/palladium prints of the trees around the year 2000, and then photographed the trees a decade later using color film. He then combined pieces from the different photos into single mosaics, which he tells us are "the antithesis of the notion of a decisive moment".

Hovering Swarms of Random Objects

Photographer Thomas Jackson has an ongoing project titled Emergent Behavior that consists of surreal photographs of swarms of various things (e.g. leaves, plastic cups, ping pong balls) in various locations. The images aren't computer generated, but are rather composite images combining a number of photographs -- probably similar to the "flock of phones" tutorial that we featured a while back.

An Insane Non-Manipulated Photograph of a Keel Walk Stunt

This amazing photograph of sailor Alex Thomson walking on the keel of an 8-ton yacht was created with courage rather than Photoshop. It was an ad for fashion house HUGO BOSS, which has sponsored Alex Thomson Racing since 2003. The conditions for the shot had to be just right, and the skipper had to carefully keep the yacht at a 45-degree angle for up to a minute to avoid crushing Thomson and the jet ski driver.

Maddie the Coonhound Balancing on Things Across America

Atlanta-based photographer Theron Humphrey is currently on a year-long trip through each of America's 50 states, and is using a unique photo project idea to document it: he has his coonhound named Maddie -- his travelling companion -- balance on various things in the different places they visit.

LED Light Suit Turns Snowboarder Into a Sole Light Source

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton recently had the idea of capturing "a lone character made of light surfing through darkness". He had designer John Spatcher create an LED enveloped suit, and then had pro snowboarder William Hughes wear it while zipping down the slopes of the Rhône-Alpes region in south-east France.

The Amazing Photo Manipulation Art of Erik Johansson

Here's an awesome TED lecture in which digital artist Erik Johansson discusses creating realistic "photographs" of impossible scenes.

Erik Johansson creates realistic photos of impossible scenes -- capturing ideas, not moments. In this witty how-to, the Photoshop wizard describes the principles he uses to make these fantastical scenarios come to life, while keeping them visually plausible.

Sound Painting Photographs with Paint and Speakers

Photographer Martin Klimas, whose porcelain figurine photos we shared yesterday, has a series of photographs that look like 3D Jackson Pollock paintings. He spent six months photographing portraits of sound by playing music through a speaker that's crowned with paint. Klimas dials up the volume and then photographs the paint coming alive from vibrations caused by the sound waves.

Epic Action Photos of Porcelain Figurines Shattering Against the Ground

For his project titled "Porcelain Figurines", photographer Martin Klimas dropped various porcelain figurines onto the ground from a height of 3 meters and set up a camera to capture photos triggered by the sound of the crash. The result are razor-sharp images of exploding figurines frozen in time -- "temporary sculptures made visible to the human eye by high-speed photography".

Abstract Photos of Faces That Resemble Exploding Fireworks

Photographer and makeup artist Nadia Wicker has a beautiful series of abstract photographs titled Ursides in which she captures self-portraits in which her face looks like exploding fireworks. While her method is secret, Wicker says that she uses her experience with makeup -- rather than Photoshop -- to create the photos.

Long Exposure Photos That Capture the Hustle and Bustle of Big Cities

Metropolis is a project by photographer Martin Roemers that consists of long exposure photographs that show the bustle and chaos of large cities.

Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians, who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. Despite the megacity and its mega-commotion, their environment still maintains a human dimension. I present this by photographing busy locations from above. Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image literally focuses on the small story in question. Every megacity is a theatre and every city has a different stage and different actors, but in the end every single one of them is trying to make its way in today’s modern society. [#]

The project was awarded 1st prize in the 2011 World Press Photo competition in the category "Daily Life".

Photographer Captures Photos Showing the Underside of Giant Waves

You've likely seen plenty of images of giant waves from above the surface of the water, but have you ever seen what it's like to pass under a wave? Photographer Mark Tipple has an amazing project called "The Underwater Project" in which he captures epic photographs of swimmers diving deep in order to survive passing waves, which look like ominous storm clouds rolling overhead.

Gutsy Photographer Captures His Own Feet Dangling Off High Ledges

For his project Life on the Edge, Detroit-based photographer Dennis Maitland seeks out high locations for vertigo-inducing shots of his feet dangling off the edges. Rather than use a remote shutter release, he captures all his photographs by hand. Once an acrophobe, Maitland now craves the adrenaline that comes from doing his photography.

Little Planet with the Aurora Borealis

Swedish photographer Göran Strand created this amazing "little planet" photo (AKA a stereographic projection) that shows the Aurora Borealis overhead. He titled it "Planet Aurora".

Dreamlike Photographs of Insects Found in a Garden

Malaysian photographer Peiling Lee captures beautiful, dreamlike macro photographs of tiny critters she finds in her garden. She uses a Canon 50D and a 100mm Macro lens. Her work reminds us of Nadav Bagim's Wonderland project that we shared last year.

Portraits of People in Two Different Times

AgeMaps is a project by photographer Bobby Neel Adams in which he does "photo surgery" on portraits to show two different moments in a person's life in the same image. For each subject, Adams takes a childhood photo and a current photo, prints them at the same proportions, tears them in half, and glues the halves together. He says that this is to "telescope the slow process of aging into a single picture," and that "a jump of time is established at the tear."

Amateur Astronomer Captures Beautiful Photos of Space from His Front Yard

Reddit user tirceol's father is an amateur astronomer who captures some amazing photographs of space from his front yard by hooking up a camera to his telescope's eyepiece. He uses everything from a webcam to a Meade camera to capture the images, which are sometimes composites created using multiple photos. The above image shows the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away.

Photos of Terrible Explosions Frozen Serenely in Mid-Air

New Zealand-based photographer Geoffrey H. Short has an ongoing series titled Towards Another (Big Bang) Theory that explores "the relationship between terror and the sublime" with images of large explosions frozen in midair. Short hired film industry special effects technicians to create the "big bangs" using fossil fuel mixed with gunpowder.

Ghostly Portraits Captured Using Stencils and Light-Painting

France-based photographer Fabrice Wittner has a neat project titled "Enlightened Souls" that consists of ghostly portraits created by light-painting with stencils (which are themselves created from actual portraits). Wittner first started the project in May 2011 after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.