Inspiration

It’s not uncommon for photographers to want to use their chosen profession as a vehicle to do good. There are a number of photography based charities out there and all in all, they’re in it for the right reasons.

Speaking of the right reasons, if you’re a parent, you will really appreciate Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (NILMDTS). It’s an organization that provides the free gift of professional portraiture to parents who are dealing with the loss of a baby.

Canon Australia has released a new commercial, titled To the Ends of the Earth, and it's just plain awesome. In it, Canon Master Krystle Wright is shown doing what she does best: pursuing adventure one step at a time, almost always with a camera in hand.

In a bid to both inspire you and advertise themselves a bit, Nikon Europe gathered a group of 5 professional photographers who presented at this year’s Photokina and asked them to share their advice on what it takes to become a professional in the world of photography.

Their insights, as you might imaging, are well worth two minutes of your time.

SMWH.RE is an Instagram-based web app designed for those experiencing a slight bout of wanderlust. The well-designed app is simple: it brings the gorgeous landscape photography you see online into the realm of possible vacation destinations by displaying photos alongside their accompanying geographical location and a short description.

Salar de Uyuni is a gigantic salt flat found in southwest Bolivia. Measuring over 4,000 square miles (10,000+ square km), it's the world's largest salt flat. The ground is especially flat and white, and is often used to calibrate instruments on satellites due to its properties.

Japanese photographer Asako Shimizu visited and captured images of this location for a project titled On Her Skin. It's a series of 9 square photographs showing how the flat blurs the distinction between heaven and Earth.

The Aurora Borealis (AKA Northern Lights) often makes an appearance in time-lapse videos of the night sky, but have you ever seen what it looks like in real time? That's what Korean astrophotographer Kwon O Chul was able to capture in the video above.

French photographer Alexandre Bonnefoy traveled to Japan in search of "urban wildlife photographs." He ended up creating a series of photographs showing the stray cats found in the alleyways of various cities.

Rafael Mantesso's dog, an adorable bull terrier named Jimmy Choo, is taking the Internet by storm today after Mantesso's creative Instagram photos of Jimmy caught the attention of the world at large.

An artist and editor, Mantesso draws, dresses and otherwise inserts an unbelievably cooperative Jimmy into countless fun adventures on his Instagram account -- from a screaming vocal performance, to a day spent with troublemaking cartoon duo Calvin and Hobbes.

"One selfie per day" projects require a great deal of commitment but aren't exactly novel these days -- everyone and their mother seems to have hopped onboard the bandwagon after Noah Kalina's everyday project went viral.

Still, there are still the select few that stand out from among the rest. One of them is the video above, which shows 8 years of a young man's life in continuous stop-motion.

Self-help author Wayne Dyer once wrote that, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." Photographer Anelia Loubser of Cape Town, South Africa used this quote as the basis for her project titled "Alienation.

The series consists of contrasty portraits that have been flipped upside down, turning the ordinary faces into strange, alien mugs.

As part of its latest wave of marketing following the unveiling of the iPhone 6 and Watch, Apple has released a creative video advertisement that uses careful camera angles and forced perspective to tell its very Jobs-esque story.

Having a stressful week? Here's a series of images that's perfect for you. It's a set of cinemagraphs (i.e. partially animated GIFs) created by Julien Douvier of Strasbourg, France. Each one features the simple concept of water's movement.

Tyler Stableford is a fine art photographer who recently spend a few months traveling across the United States, in collaboration with Canon, to create a portrait series and accompanying video titled The Farmers.

On September 11th, 2001, photojournalist Steve McCurry found himself in his hometown of New York City when chaos started unfolding around him. Of course, we all now know of this day for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, but at the time, it was a blur of events that even McCurry’s vast experience as a photojournalist hadn’t necessarily prepared him for.

Television personality Jason Silva recently put together a poignant video with Shots of Awe that examines The Instagram Generation, and how this photo-driven generation sees their future as a series of ‘anticipated memories’.

Clouds and the sky often play a major role in time-lapse productions, but YouTube user darwinfish105's latest creation puts them front, center, and all around you in stunning fashion.

California time-lapse photographer Hal Bergman wanted to pay tribute to his homeland using his artistic abilities. And so he spent four years packing as many of California’s diverse environments into one, 4-minute video simply titled California.

The result is simply gorgeous, and captures everything from Long Beach to Ansel Adams's playground, Yosemite National Park.

I’m not a wildlife photographer…

But I love to shoot the birds and bugs in my backyard.

Daisy Gilardini is a passionate wildlife photographer whose life-long infatuation with photographing bears has lead her to capturing what is arguably the most elusive of them all: the spirit bear.

The folks over at F8 Photography recently got a chance to sit down with well-known, love-him-or-hate-him street photographer Eric Kim. And whatever your opinion of the successful street shooter, the advice he offers in this short video interview about fear, book recommendations, and figuring out the 'why' behind your photography is well-worth 4 minutes of your Saturday.

Annie Leibovitz is known for capturing photographs of the most exclusive and well-known celebrities in the world. So when The Corcoran Group launched their new Live Who You Are campaign to show off their high-end and exclusive brand of real estate, naturally, they called upon the renowned photographer to get the job done.

Ever wonder what it's like to stare out of the ISS cupola -- the massive window-filled module of the ISS, and an ideal spot for taking pictures of the Earth below -- as our planet zooms by below? Well, thanks to a new video from Inside ISS, now you can!

It wasn't long ago that we shared Trent Bell's viral photo series REFLECT with you. But while the photo series itself was an inspiring and beautiful collection of work that made its mark online, it actually started its life as an idea for a creative promotional mailer.

The Cheap Camera Challenge is back, showing us once more that it takes creativity, not expensive gear, to create an interesting photograph. Pairing a cheap camera with a professional photographer, this episode puts a modest Vivitar camera into the hands of commercial and fine art photographer Harold de Puymorin.

Casey Neistat doesn't believe he is the best looking, tallest, most talented, most capable, best funded filmmaker. In fact, he's pretty convinced he's not, and there's nothing he can do about those things. What he can do is be the hardest working person in the room, and the way he sees it, "the hardest working person will always win."

These little nuggets of wisdom and a whole lot more are all shared in the inspirational video above, which Neistat created a couple of months ago for National Geographic and their $50,000 dream expedition giveaway called Expedition Granted.

Dave MacLean from the Center of Geographic Sciences has put together a pretty awesome resource for space photography lovers. He's created an interactive map that lets you browse through over 650 photographs taken by ISS astronauts on Expeditions 40 and 41.

Jaco Marx is a dental surgeon by profession and a photographer and conservationist by passion. Currently living in central South Africa, Marx spends much of the limited free time he has photographing the African wilderness, both to simply enjoy his passion, as well as to document the wildlife and Earth around him. And the results are nothing short of gorgeous.

Editor's Note: Part two of Rfotofolio's interview with San Francisco photographer Fred Lyon

Photographer and mother Holly Spring's photography has always been about her daughter. Born with only one hand and suffering from something known as Hirschprung's disease, little Violet almost died from surgical complications before Holly ever got a chance to take a single picture of her.

Shortly after that, her husband bought her a DSLR, and she has been taking pictures of Violet ever since.

It takes work to stand out among today's wedding photographers. After all, you've got shots like these from Iceland to compete with, so how do you create photos that will widen eyes and loosen jaws?

Well, if you're photographer Josh Martinez from Chugach Peaks Photography, you helicopter the couple onto a glacier in Alaska and let nature do the talking while you take some pictures and ruin a wedding dress.

Earlier today, B&H officially launched a new online resource called the Canon Lens Experience. It’s a dedicated microsite that takes a comprehensive look at the various lenses Canon offers, presenting unique and interactive features that demonstrate the various capabilities.

Even more interesting is the series of interviews which features 15 well-respected photographers from different fields, each of whom talk about their experience as a photographer and how their respective Canon gear have helped them make the iconic shots they’ve captured.

COOPH, The Cooperative of Photography, is back in the photo tip game again, this time showing us 7 smartphone photography tips you'll want to be writing down if you ever shoot with the computer in your pocket.

From unique panorama uses to a clever way to easily take partially underwater photos, these tips are quick, easy and will certainly add a little variety to your Instagram arsenal.

Photographer Ho Fan has been shooting black and white street photography since the 1950s. At the time, he was living in the poor, rundown Central neighborhood of Hong Kong. The streets, filled with food and trinket vendors, captured the recent Shanghai transplant's attention. It was with this fascination that Fan took his camera to the streets, documenting the intriguing life around him.

Summertime is quickly turning into Autumn. Before we know it, the sunshine and green tones that surround us will transform into fiery hues, with plenty of rain and wind to follow. But that hasn’t stopped Polish photographer Izabela Urbaniak from attempting to eternalize the carefree nature of summer in a beautiful black-and-white photo series titled Summertime.

If this video doesn't make you want to go out and buy a Pentax 67, nothing will. Paris is beautiful enough as-is, but there's something about exploring it through the viewfinder of a classic medium format camera that will tug at your photographic heartstrings and have you nostalgic for the good ol' days.

Watches, glasses and combs... these are the kinds of everyday objects that photographer Ziyah Gafić has spent a great deal of time photographing over the past few years. They're objects that are seemingly mundane and unimportant, but in fact tell a tragic story that Gafić's work seeks to reveal and preserve.

What do you do when you're in Israel with Benjamin Von Wong, Rebecca Litchfield, Simon Pollock, Mike Kelly and Adam Lerner and Jared Polin, and you have some free time on your hands. Why, you think up and plan a crazy photography challenge of course!

Over the past week, the #ALSIceBucketChallenge has gone above and beyond viral, bringing people from all over the world together to support and raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

270 photographs and a total exposure time of two hours and fifteen minutes went into creating this stunning composite photograph of an Indonesian landscape complete with an erupting volcano, a steaming caldera, a meteor, copious amounts of fog and beautiful light trails created by cars traveling below the fog.

The Photo Society, a website run by a collection of National Geographic photographers, took the time a while back to put together a wonderful little tribute to photographer Wes Skiles, who passed away doing the work that he loved.

In tribute, the photographers compiled a 'Reality Check' list of all the crazy, strange and sometimes horrifying things that have happened to them on the job.

Photographer Lukas Gawenda has been a landscape lover since he was 10 years old. And even though he's photographed everything from US National Parks, to his home country of Germany, to the tiny worlds of macro photography, none of them quite match the majesty he captures when he takes to the skies over Iceland.

Outdoor brand Mammut recently teamed up with avid climbers Dani Arnold and Stephan Siegrist to document and create an incredible interactive 360º climb up the side of Eiger: a 13,000-foot tall mountain in the Alps.

In their most recent episode of the video series "About a Photograph," the folks over at Think Tank Photo decided to pay tribute to the late, great Robin Williams in their own way, speaking with a photographer who was fortunate enough to capture the comic genius on film.

It's getting to the point where you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't already know about Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton's project turned photobook turned international phenomenon. But that became even harder this week when Stanton took the project on the road with the UN and delivered some of his most powerful portraits from the streets of, not New York City, but Iraq.

Many wedding and engagement photographers want (and advertise) their photographs to be 'timeless,' but Detroit-based Jeffrey Lewis Bennett of JLB Weddings actually does offer a style of time-less wedding photos: the animated GIF and the cinemagraph.

I’m colorblind.

There it is, I said it. I’ve been holding it back for years, before I even knew I wanted to be a photographer and it feels good to put it out there. I’ve told exactly two photographers about my handicap before tonight but I feel like its time to put it out there publicly. I was ashamed of it but I’m not anymore. It’s part of who I am.

Photographer Benjamin Von Wong recently took some time out of his incredibly busy schedule to warm our hearts and give a talented, chronically ill fan of his the birthday surprise of his life.

Wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas -- of adorable Meerkat photography fame -- recently went on a trip to the Republic of Congo to photograph a wild silverback gorilla. He came back with some awesome photos, which you can see below, but not without putting himself in a teensy bit of danger along the way.

Most people see me as a “professional”… as someone who is smart, who has their act together or as someone who knows what they’re doing all the time.

This makes me laugh.

I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who is trekking through the process. I’m not sitting on a high horse. I can’t even afford a horse.

It is often said that you have to be partially insane to be a creative. I’m not sure if that idea is influenced by the odd forms of modern art, or if someone recognized the risk of choosing fields with high unemployment rates.