Inspiration

2013 was a fantastic year for astrophotographer Mark Gee. First, barely one month …

Jimmy Chin -- regular National Geographic contributor, world-class climber, outdoor junkie, and overall genuinely awesome guy -- has the capacity to inspire wanderlust in the most couch-friendly of us. And in the video above, Mashable followed the multi-talented bada** around for a day to show you what a day in the life of Jimmy Chin is really like.

In the US, today is Veterans Day. For those in the British Commonwealth, today is Remembrance Day (also referred to as Poppy Day). It seemed right to end this day with a post that would, in some small way, honor the men and women who serve in the armed forces across the globe.

To that end, we have for you a short, inspirational video by B&H featuring retired combat photographer Stacy Pearsall.

In August, I undertook an exciting personal project, an attempt to create underwater fine art images of a beautiful swimmer arcing alongside enormous whale sharks. After a busy year of shooting, I’ve had a welling desire to create imagery that speaks to my deepest soul; and to forge a large-format print for my house.

Now that we've released the photos, I wanted to share more details about how I captured the images.

Out of tragedy, a small ray of light and corporate kindness shines through today. The eruption of Japan's Mount Ontake on September 27th took many hikers by surprise, claiming at least 56 lives. One of them was 66-year-old photography enthusiast Kazuo Wakabayashi.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has put together an inspirational video that defines and elaborates on vemödalen, “the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist,” using a clever collection of photographs to do so.

There's an intensity on Hawkeye Huey's face as he looks out from Salvation Mountain in California, Fujifilm Instax 210 in hand, goggles askew on his forehead, eyes searching the horizon for the next exposure. It's the kind of intensity typified by at least two kinds of people: 4-year-olds and National Geographic photographers.

Which makes sense, since Hawkeye is the first, and his father, celebrated photographer Aaron Huey, is the second.

Photographer Nick Turpin's series Through a Glass Darkly takes a different approach to candid street photography than we typically see. Turpin captures London bus commuters on their way home after a long day, and his photographs are at once artistically compelling and potentially controversial.

We introduced you to the Light Blaster when it first came out in July of last year. A neat light modifier, it allowed you to use a lens and flash to project all sorts of patterns, slides and other non-digital backgrounds (or foregrounds) into your images.

The creative possibilities are pretty vast, but if you want to see what happens when a professional studio photographer gets his hands on it and starts experimenting, Alex Koloskov of Photigy is more than happy to oblige.

If you're interested in using the many hundreds of thousands of photos taken from the ISS to create a time-lapse -- and people have done a pretty spectacular job in the past -- the bar has just been raised significantly.

The video above, put together by French photographer and filmmaker Guillaume JUIN, is bar none the best edit of ISS photographs and footage we have ever seen.

There is no 'right' way to go about street photography. There's the laid-back, voyeuristic style, controversial in-your-face methods, and more personal relationship-building approaches.

Well-known photographer and blogger Steve Huff prefers the last of these. Rather than trying to capture a candid image or the 'decisive moment,' Huff takes a more humanistic approach by emphasizing making a connection and not just a picture.

Today David Lama is one of the most successful professional climbers in Europe. But at age 19, his climbing career almost ended before it even began.

There are few photographers out there as well-known as the iconic Steve McCurry. His Afghan Girl portrait earned him world-wide fame and recognition, but all of his work -- from the most iconic to the largely unseen -- speaks to his uncanny eye for capturing emotion and composing portraits that are second to none.

And now, four decades of the great man's work is being summed up in a 150-portrait retrospective called Oltre lo Sguardo, on display at the beautiful Villa Reale di Monza in Italy until April 6, 2015.

In 2012, photographer Kelly Lewis and her husband adopted young Alice Lewis into their family. Between Alice’s dream of becoming a model/actress, Kelly’s passion for photography, and the entire family’s love of cosplay, the trio quickly found the mutual ground that would forge a deep bond between Alice and her adoptive parents.

Gear does not make the photographer, allow me to state that for the record before we dive in here. A talented artist can make an image with whatever falls into their palm, but for those of us who have the luxury of choice, be it the pocket sized Ricoh dangling from Moriyama’s wrist, or Crewdson’s cherrywood 8×10, a powerful image is about the framing of a moment, the machine it is seen through when chosen properly, serves to simplify and streamline the process.

Conveying the grandeur of the Aurora Borealis is a serious challenge for a photographer. How are you supposed to capture the splendor of the event, give it a sense of scale, and somehow imbue that photograph with the emotion involved in actually witnessing the polar spirits for yourself?

There probably isn't a magical mixture of ingredients that will yield the ideal northern lights photograph, but the image above by photographer Max Rive is one of the closest we've seen, and he was kind enough to share the details behind it with us.

The 9-day Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is the largest hot air balloon event in the world, and as such it's also one of the most photographed events in the world. Because of this, Albuquerque native and photographer Knate Myers knew he had to capture something special if his time-lapse of the event was to stand out.

"A whole lot of work (and very little sleep)," later he had achieved his goal in spades, creating this Technicolor dream of a time-lapse that gives you every angle you might hope to have on the event.

If you want to get a great candid engagement shot, you have to be good at hiding. But how far would you go to get a great angle of a private engagement at a park without being seen? Canadian photographer Chance Faulkner was willing to go further than most... right into a tiny trashcan under a nearby tree.

With the photograph above, titled "Stinger in the Sun," 9-year-old Carlos Perez Naval from Spain recently claimed the title of Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. He beat out kids almost twice his age, and has earned himself the kind of recognition and praise many wildlife photographers can only hope for.

Los Angeles-based photographer Matthew Jordan Smith has long been photographing some of the best known celebrities. In this video, Smith retells the story of one of his most timeless images, a headshot of Tyra Banks captured using only a simple ring flash.

Skateboard company Element recently put together a wonderful little mini-documentary titled The Road to Wolfboro. In it, a dedicated film crew follows photographer Brian Gaberman around as he shares his fascination of wet plate photography and captures some of the most beautiful scenes across the east cost.

For the Adobe Remix project, talented light painting artist Janne Parviainen painstakingly combined forced perspective drawing with light painting to create something really special.

Elizabeth Gilbert -- the author best known for her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love -- once wrote that fear and creativity are conjoined twins. In other words, you don't get one without the other. If you kill fear, you kill creativity.

For his book 13: An American Horror Story, photographer Seph Lawless visited a number of real life "haunted houses" across the United States. The houses are crumbling on the outside, and the insides were the stage for some some of the creepiest crimes and incidents throughout history.

The house above is Milan Mansion found in Ohio. The locals claim that the owner was a practicing witch.

Drone's aren't allowed within a 5-mile radius of medium-to-large-sized airports in the United States. As a result, the Internet isn't exactly teeming with photographs or videos taken from a drone's perspective above those areas.

The video above offers a look at what you'd be able to capture if you were allowed to fly your camera drone around in a large airport. It was made in Mexico.

Everyone has fears, even the most successful photographers in the business. The key to overcoming those fears is to …

If you've ever used an underwater housing, you know what it feels like to dunk your several thousand dollar DSLR underwater for the very first time. You know it's safe, you double checked everything, you probably already tested the seals, but the moment of truth still frays your nerves.

Imagine, then, how filmmaker Chris Bryan felt when he put his $50K Phantom Flex, $45K Phantom Miro M-320S, and $140K Phantom 4K Flex inside his own custom-built underwater housings and took them out into the waves for the first time?

OK Go is known for its creative music videos that often feature single takes and innovative camera techniques, and the band's latest video continues that trend in an impressive way.

Released today, the "I Won't Let You Down" music video has already amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Give it a watch above and you'll quickly see why.

Reminiscent of the much-loved "The Gap" monologue by NPR's Ira Glass, photographer and educator Mike Browne recently produced an inspirational video that tackles the topics of expectations, practice, and how to be happy with your photos as you continue on your photographic journey.

Here’s a little inspiration and my answer to why we stay out late in the cold and the dark.

I was recently reminded of my first really successful attempt to photograph the Milky Way. I remember making that photo very clearly. Or rather, I remember not wanting to make it at all.

If you've been dreaming of making photography your full-time occupation, photographer Scott Robert Lim has some no-nonsense, sugar-free advice on what it takes to become, not just a better photographer, but a great photographer who can compete in the landscape today.

Have you ever noticed how, in every photo of an astronaut using camera gear in the International Space Station, there's pretty much never a tripod or monopod or special mount in sight? They're always just handholding this massive camera with a 400mm lens attached.

So how, then, can they capture incredibly crisp photos of the Earth when they're flying above it at 4.8 miles per second? In the video above, iconic Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield shares the fascinating answer.

Israeli director Vania Heymann has created a new music video that brings famous artists to life in their album cover photos. Shown above, it's a video for the beatboxed song "Mayokero" by Israeli artist Roy Kafri. Rather than Kafri beatboxing, however, we're treated with the wonderfully bizarre sight of the album covers making the music.

This is a story about networking, giving back, friendship, trust, #sharingiscaring and steampunk.

Before I moved to Cardiff, Wales, I decided that I wanted to do some "pro bono" projects since I’ve noticed that they provide inspiration and sometimes good things you didn’t even expect.

In what turned out to be one of the more difficult Cheap Camera Challenges DigitalRev has put together so far, AFP photojournalist Alex Ogle was forced to trade his D810 and 35mm f/1.4G lens for a digital camera in the most basic sense of the term.

Here's a glimpse into a day in the life of a New York Times staff photographer. The behind-the-scenes video above follows 64-year-old photographer Ozier Muhammad as he covers the People's Climate March in New York City last month for the Times with a Canon DSLR and a pair of Leica M rangefinders.

Google has teamed up with the Jane Goodall Institute to bring their Street View Trekker cameras to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a place made famous by world-famous primatologist Jane Goodall and her research of the local chimpanzees.

Step by step, the Google Street View Trekker camera retraced the steps Goodall took during the 54 years she spent studying the social behavior of chimpanzees.

Two months ago we featured the work of Fan Ho, a Chinese photographer who spent much of his life documenting the streets of Hong Kong. His photographs were, to put it lightly, a hit with everybody who saw them. Strong composition and an incredible understanding of light (if you'll allow the pun) shone through in every frame.

Today, we get to go a little bit deeper thanks to the show The Art of Photography, who recently took a closer look at Fan Ho’s work, taking the time to point out what it is that sets his images apart from the many others out there.

Fifteen of the world’s most talented time-lapse artists are currently collaborating to try and shed some light on Earth's most fragile and at-risk environments. The group is called CodeX, and the feature they hope to create together is going to be called X-plore.

Recently I gave a short 2-hour presentation on street photography at one of the photography clubs at UC Berkeley. It was great being surrounded by students again– with all of the energy, enthusiasm, and passion that college kids have.

Some of the students asked me how I went from college to surviving off photography full-time as a living. I gave some of my personal experiences -- and I had the realization: perhaps this was information that may be useful to other college students (who want to make photography their living), or anyone out there with a day-job who wants to make photography their living.

When Benjamin Von Wong was commissioned to do a series of black and white portraits of SmugMug employees for the company’s gym, he knew he wasn’t going to be taking the easy route. But just because he was going to try to do something really cool, didn’t mean things needed to get expensive.

To spice up the sporty portraits, Von Wong decided to add water into the equation, and thanks to some help from the folks at SmugMug, they were able to make it rain for only $20.

Less than a month after the total lunar eclipse and blood moon made for some spectacular shooting opportunities all across the US and Asia, the cosmos is treating us to another eclipse. This one, the final eclipse of 2014, will be a partial solar eclipse that will be enjoyed by pretty much everybody in the United States.

In the above video by filmmaker David Sandberg, we see once again how, as with many things in the creative world, simple is quite often better. The behind-the-scenes video shows how he used nothing more than an IKEA lamp, some existing lights in his house, a coffer, and a bit of clever editing to put together a quality short horror film.

Legendary writer and actor John Cleese is known more for his sense of humor than almost any other attribute. But as he demonstrates brilliantly in the above video, he also has an inspirational outlook and deep interest in the subject of creativity.

Spanish creative agency Lola recently started a moving 3D printer project titled Touchable Memories. The goal: to let those who are blind or nearly blind 'see' some of their most cherished photographs once more.

The Study of Pose is an upcoming book by photographer Steven Sebring and supermodel Coco Rocha, who's well known for her ability to "freestyle" various poses in rapid succession (some people call her the "Queen of Pose"). The book is packed with 1,000 different black-and-white poses by Rocha displayed on over 2,000 pages and serves as something of an encyclopedia of poses.

The Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco recently shared this interview with photographer Nicholas Nixon about his well known project The Brown Sisters.

Since 1975, Nixon has been shooting a portrait of four sisters once a year, every year. This year saw the creation of the fortieth portrait in the series.

UK-based photographer Bertil Nilsson's project "Intersections" is a blend of two photographic subjects: urban landscapes and dance.

When Geneva-based photographer Alex Teuscher found himself in New York City for 10 days this last April, he tried to capture some of the most iconic, tourist-packed locations on the globe from a new angle. It's a testament to his skill as a photographer that he succeeded to such a great extent.

The resulting shots have been compiled into a series he's calling "New York City: Above as Below," and consist of a mix of street (below) and architectural (above) photography that's best described as 'moody.'

We've seen and shared some pretty great time-lapses. From last week's unique 'layer lapse,' to the 'flow-motion' hyperlapse of Pyongyang in August, standing out in the genre has become a matter of doing something new and unique... something that will earn you headline words like 'breathtaking' and 'jaw-dropping.'

But the team at Fourth Dimension Video took a very different approach with their latest landscape time-lapse. Shot this last June at Scotland's Isle of Skye, it's done entirely in black and white.