Inspiration

The photographs in Nadav Bagim's project "WonderLand" might look like paintings or computer generated images, but they're actually real photographs captured at home using ordinary objects and creative artificial lighting. His tools and props include things like vegetables, plastic bags, flowers, and leaves, and he captures the images using a Canon 60D and 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. Getting his "subjects" into the positions and poses he wants requires countless hours of patient encouraging.

For 25 years, YouTube user spoonito‘s father would record footage of spoonito and …

Flickr user Chris captured this remarkable photograph of the Eiffel Tower at night …

Here’s a fun idea for a weekend project: take pictures of smoke, think …

Photographer Anthony Chang created this amazing image of a liquid rose without any computer-generated trickery. He hung a glass rose upside down and snapped photos while pouring food coloring onto it.

Colin Mika and Brandon Vedder of All Cut Up Films created this amazing …

Light painting master Dennis Calvert (whose work we featured back in October) created this interesting time-lapse making of video showing how he created one of his epic photographs, titled "Thermodynamic Engineering".

For her project titled Marked, photographer Claire Felicie shot close-up portraits of the marines in the 13th infantry company of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps before, during, and after their deployment from 2009-2010. She then arranged the portraits into haunting triptychs that show the toll war has on a person's eyes and face.

Upon first glance, photographer Frank Kunert's photographs may look like they show pretty ordinary places. Look a little closer, however, and you'll start to notice that each one has something wrong about it, and that none of the scenes would actually exist in the real world. They're actually miniature scenes that are meticulously built by hand!

Photographer Jim Sanborn has a project titled Topographic Projections and Implied Geometries Series in which he casts complex patterns over vast landscapes using a projector, and uses long exposure times to capture the scenes. The projector and camera are, on average, half a mile away from his landscapes, and on moonless nights he uses a searchlight to illuminate the scene.

Freeway Interchange is a series by Canadian photographer Peter Andrew consisting of birds-eye-view photographs of freeways around the world.

Here’s a simple yet brilliant stop-motion video showing a person sitting at a table plays with shapes. Instead of …

Photographer Zander Olsen creates amazing optical illusions by wrapping trees with white linen, lining up the ends of the material with the horizon line in the background.

For his project Alter Ego, photographer Robbie Cooper traveled around the world to shoot portraits of online gamers. He then combined his portraits with screenshots of the gamers' avatars in the various games they play, showing an interesting side-by-side comparison of what the people look like in the real world compared to what they choose to look like in their fantasy worlds. The project got its start back in 2003 after Cooper did a shoot with a CEO who used the game Everquest to communicate with his children after getting divorced.

Norwegian photographer Rune Guneriussen photographs man-made objects in nature as if they belonged there. The objects are arranged to look like packs of animals, humans, and natural formations.

Photographer Tome Lowe has spent the past two years working on TimeScapes, his …

Diane Arbus might have one iconic photograph of identical twins, but Spanish photographer Maria Zarazua has devoted much of her career to finding and photographing them. Her goal is to show the intimate relationship between them, and their individualities despite being genetic carbon copies.

For her project titled "Elderly Animals", photographer Isa Leshko found and photographed various animals in the twilight of their lives.

Photographer Alexander Harding has a beautiful project titled "Visible Light" in which he turns light itself into the subject of photographs.

Adde Adesokan of Germany captures beautiful portraits of strangers by snapping three photographs of their head, hands, and feet. The frames are then arranged as triptychs that creatively reveal who the subjects are.

National Geographic photographer William Albert Allard has written …

These photos might look like they were computer generated, but they're actually unmodified photographs. Ron Brinkmann took 6 mirror tiles and made a box with them with the help of some duct tape. He then placed a camera inside and triggered shots using the timer.

Here’s an old clip in which Steve Jobs talks about how he sees the world: When you grow up …

Here’s an amazing time-lapse video that was made using time-lapse photography shot over six months in the beautiful state …

Falling Apart is a series by Japanese photographer Yuya Takeda that consists of synthetic photographs of apartment buildings. It's reminiscent of Andreas Gursky's sweeping architectural photographs.

Evolution is a series of photographs by photographer Ted Sabarese showing people with fish they resemble.

Photographer Grover Schrayer captured this amazing photograph of a rainbow in candle smoke.

Social Lights is a project by photographer Seymour Templar that's like a nighttime version of Joe Holmes' Texting series that we featured earlier this year. Templar documented social life in NYC by snapping portraits of people interacting with others through their cell phones. Each individual unwittingly helps out by lighting their own faces with their phone displays.

Photographer James Loveday has a portrait project …

During a 2001 launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, NASA photographer Pat McCracken captured this amazing photograph of the …

Here’s another beautiful example of why you don’t need to shell out $100,000 for a pro-grade high speed camera …

For a fine arts project at his university, art student Joel Brochu spent a whopping 8 months meticulously recreating a photograph using tiny nonpareils (the tiny sprinkles used on cakes and donuts). 221,184 individual sprinkles were placed on the 4-foot-wide board, which was covered with double-sided tape and a thin layer of glue. Each sprinkle was placed by hand using jewelry tweezers.

Shape is a series by French photographer Quentin Arnaud that consists of minimalistic portraits shot with low-key lighting. The stark lighting highlights the shape of the head but completely leaves the face void of any details, giving a creepy and ominous look to each of the photos.

“The Beauty of a Second” is a short film competition asking people to …

Did you know that Pablo Picasso was a light painter? His most famous light painting image shows …

After seeing a video on YouTube of an Indonesian toddler who smokes 40 cigarettes a day, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens decided to respond to a general smoking ban introduced in her country recently with a series of photos showing children smoking.

Here’s an amazing time-lapse created using NASA’s Earth Observatory photographs of our planet.

For her 3rd year dissertation project Katy Beveridge set out to find a …

Here’s an amazing clip from the BBC series Frozen Planet. The film crew …

Jasna Hodzic, the photo editor of the student run newspaper at UC Davis, has been covering the Occupy UC Davis movement since its inception -- before the pepper spraying incident became international news.

Fine art photographer Mitch Dobrowner wanted to photograph storm systems, so he partnered up with Roger Hill -- regarded as one of the top storm-chasers in the world -- and was introduced to Tornado Alley. Dobrowner writes,

Words are inadequate to describe the experience of photographing this immense power and beauty. And the most exciting part is with each trip I really don’t know what to expect. But now I see these storms as living, breathing things. They are born when the conditions are right, they gain strength as they grow, they fight against their environment to stay alive, they change form as they age… and eventually they die. They take on so many different aspects, personalities and faces; I'm in awe watching them. These storms are amazing sights to witness.... and I’m just happy to be there—shot or no shot; it's watching Mother Nature at her finest. My only hope my images can do justice to these amazing phenomenona of nature.

His images certainly do them justice -- the stormy landscape photographs Dobrowner has made through these trips are jaw-dropping.

Address Is Approximate is a beautiful and creative stop-motion video by Tom Jenkins of …

Photographer Carolyn Marks Blackwood's Birds project contains photographs in which birds dominate the frame.

We've seen that Google Street View imagery is capable of winning photojournalism awards, but how would the camera-equipped cars do as fine art photographers? Photographer Aaron Hobson has a fascinating gallery of fine art-style photographs found in Street View -- cinematic photos that would look great blown up and exhibited on museum walls.

French animator and photographer Micaël Reynaud took a large number of black & …

For his project Infra, photographer Richard Mosse photographed landscapes, villages, and people in Eastern Congo using Kodak Aerochrome infrared film.

While most 14-year-old boys are hooked on things like video games, Laurent V.

Brian DeFrees spent two months between August and October of this year driving a giant loop around the United States on a 12,225-mile-long road trip. He captured a photo every 5 seconds using an intervalometer with his Canon 60D while in his car, and by creating individual time-lapse videos when parked or exploring an area. The result is this epic 5-minute long time-lapse.

European Southern Observatory photo ambassador Yuri Beletsky shot a series of epic photos showing astronomers shooting powerful laser beams into the night sky. The photo above showing a laser beam pointed at the center of our galaxy was voted as last year's Picture of the Year over at Wikipedia.

Ken Murphy has completed his ambitious “A History of the Sky” project, which …