Inspiration

What do you do when you get spam emails from imaginary people that try to separate you from your hard-earned money? If the email is lucky enough to get past spam filters, it's usually immediately recognized and deleted by the recipient.

If it ends up in the inbox of photographer Christina De Middel, however, it gets turned into a photograph. For her project Poly-Spam, De Middel took her spam, carefully noted the details within, and created fictitious portraits of the imaginary senders.

Photographer Michael Salisbury is a determined Chicagoan with a desire to slow down and capture the world around him in the most vivid and compositional of ways. It was last month, after a string of severe storms, that he had the opportunity to combine his love for the Windy City’s architecture with some surreal fog that coated the beaches and skyscrapers of Chicago like a blanket. The series is titled June Fog, and the results are astounding.

If there is a path that music photographers usually take to make it big, it's not the path Marcus Haney chose. Rather than start at the lowest levels by shooting smaller gigs to build a portfolio and reputation, Haney decided to start things off by sneaking into Coachella as a faux credentialed photographer back in 2010. He was only a junior studying at USC.

The trailer above is for an upcoming documentary titled No Cameras Allowed, which chronicles Haney's unconventional journey into the world of concert photography.

Australian-based photographer Brendon Borellini sees the world differently than most of us. In fact, he doesn’t really see it at all. This is because Borellini was born with congenital deafness and partial blindness, which has since turned into complete blindness.

You're probably thinking to yourself that these disabilities aren’t exactly conducive to becoming a photographer, but Borellini has overcome them, making the most of every ounce of life doing what he loves.

For going on four years now, casual photographer and shop teacher Aaron Cyr's mom has been bugging him for a graduation photo. By this year, he was already two degrees in and about to get his third, but he just couldn't make himself pony up for the standard, banal grad photos he saw his peers getting.

Still, you can only tell your supportive mom 'no' so many times, and so this year he delivered... on his own terms.

Instagram is a powerful tool that professional photographers must take seriously if they want to be discovered via the platform – because just like every other person with a smart phone, photo editors from major publications are on there too. It’s a way to stay top of mind and connected with the photo-editors you’ve previously worked with, and to share work that can catch their eye and could inspire your next assignment.

Have you ever looked up and noticed that a particular cloud looks like a face, a dog, a ship, or some other object? It's a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia, where the human brain takes randomness and tries to turn it into something significant and known.

Andy Huot's project Cheese Curl Art revolves around pareidolia, but instead of spotting things in clouds, Huot photographs Cheetos. Recognize the Cheeto above? The photographer captioned it, "Sasquatch."

Edward Ranney has been photographing pre-Columbian sites in Peru for over fifty years. His book Monuments of the Incas was released in 1982, reprinted in paperback in 1990, and re-released in 2010 by Thames and Hudson in an expanded edition, with updated text.

His monograph The Lines, being released in August by Yale University Press, presents pictures of geoglyphs created by the Nazca culture in southern Peru, and other cultures in Chile's Atacama desert.

St. Petersburg-born photographer Alexander Dragunov has found his niche in the photography world, photographing the surreal, beautiful -- and often empty -- subway stations of Sweden’s capital in a project titled Stockholm Metro.

Oftentimes looking like something straight out of a sci-fi film, these caves-turned transportation hubs create mind-bending compositions when lack of commuters and symmetry gets involved.

Five years and 74 truly stunning (not the click-bait type) photographs later, photographer Kirsty Mitchell and the heroine of her story, Katie, are both bidding a fond farewell to Wonderland and everything it has meant to them over the past half-decade.

Neil Gaiman is an author, a writer whose work you have probably read at some point or another, but the advice he offers in this 20-minute commencement address is as applicable to photographers as it is to any other creative who is embarking on (or currently in the middle of living) a life whose goal might be best summed up by the phrase 'make good art.'

Now there's a family portrait you don't see every day. Photographer Kelly DeLay captured the photo above showing himself and his family standing in front of a gigantic supercell at sunset with a large lightning strike illuminating the horizon.

"Inspirational" probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind when you think about laundry, but for photographer Yvette Meltzer, that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Shirts strung over a clothesline, laundry being sloshed around with suds, and most recently, piles of clothes being tossed about inside the confines of a dryer.

In the world of macro photography, the speedy hummingbird isn't the easiest subject. With a little patience, however, you could nail a shot that reveals details you normally can't see when tracking the bird with your eye.

That's what photographer Chris Morgan was able to do on a recent vacation in Bosque De Paz, Costa Rica (a 3,000 acre biological reserve).

As much information as we’re able to pull in through the Internet, there is one thing that can never be obtained through words or pictures on a screen: experience. Through time and experience, information turns to knowledge, and we begin to wrap our heads around the complicated concepts that baffled us in the beginning.

One phenomenal example of a man who has accrued more experience than most is renowned portrait photographer Gregory Heisler, and in the interview above with Maine Media Workshops + College, he shares valuable insight and advice for photographers both young and old.

The World Cup is over. Germany came out victorious over Argentina, with a final that managed to bring in …

It's true that the Internet can be a stupid and cruel place -- read any comment section on a controversial news piece for proof of that -- but it can also be a wonderful place that occasionally brings you to tears... in a good way.

This is a story about the best of the Internet: about a grieving father, a heartfelt request, and an overwhelming response.

There are few enough times when the words haunting and portraiture truly go hand-in-hand, but the work of Polish-born, Germany-based fashion photographer Sylwia Makris fits this description perfectly.

Her dreamlike photographs take you into a strange, twisted world full of sculpted subjects under the most mysterious of lights and costumes.

Have you ever come across an artist’s work and thought, "Wow, I would love to work with them!" Well, that is exactly what went through Benjamin Von Wong’s mind after seeing Michael Rosner’s work.

Fast forward two years and Von Wong finally got his wish, creating some beautiful and inspiring untraviolet photographs in the process.

It’s not about the camera, it’s about the light. Here to prove that is photographer Miguel Quiles. In the above video, Quiles proves you don’t need the best camera or lens to capture amazing results. You only need to understand how important light is and learn how to use it to your advantage.

Since 2003 astronauts have been snapping up photographs of our beautiful planet from the International Space Station. All of these photographs have been archived together into a resource called The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. It’s through the utilization of this resource, as well as a database compiled by Spanish Astrophysicists that a little project called Cities at Night exists.

Erik Kim is one of the best-known street photographers out there, today. In his continues efforts to shoot and share, Kim has put out the full presentation he used in his Introduction to Composition for Street Photography talk at Gulf Photo Plus 2014.

This short inspirational video by the folks at video production company Fidelity Format …

Once you've been shooting for a while (and becoming good at it) someone will inevitably ask you if you are interested in shooting something for a fee, either for a commercial or editorial job (but for the sake of discussion I am labeling any paid shoot as a commercial shoot).

Your first paid assignment will certainly be very exciting, but there are a few things you should know before saying yes.

In the world of analogue photography, the larger you go in format, the more time, discipline and resources it typically takes to capture and develop your photographs. And while the age-old technique of developing film takes due diligence no matter the format, large format photography in particular has a certain quality to the process that makes it stand out from the rest.

Despite the early sunrises, late sunsets and harsh daytime sunlight of summer it’s still one of our favorite times for photography. Being outside with your camera in the warmer months just feels so good.

If you’re struggling to come up with creative ideas during summer, however, we’ve got a few tips that might help.

If you enjoy strange and experimental photography, Nathaniel Stern's work should delight you.

For the past ten years, Stern has been creating experimental image-capturing devices using a conglomeration of hacked-together desktop scanners, battery packs and other various computer components. Once created, he straps these machines to his body and takes them from location to location capturing images unlike any other camera out there.

More so than just about any other form of content, the Internet lives and breathes images. So it's only natural photographers -- and photography as a whole -- have an inherit grasp on exploiting the networking, publishing and sharing capabilities the World Wide Web has to offer.

There's also no denying that some have learned to exploit it better than others, and so WiFi SD Card Maker EyeFi teamed up with marketing agency Evolve! to find out who the 30 most influential photographers across social media are. And while many of the names on the list are obvious, some might surprise you.

Here’s a short jealousy-inducing behind the scenes look at some of what storied underwater photographer …

Polish husband and father-of-two Sebastian Łuczywo is a business advisor for his day job. But when he's not at work, he's capturing incredibly heartwarming portraits of his family and their animals.

With his rural home in Poland serving as a backdrop for these images, his photographs of his family -- including his two four-legged children -- seem to be a conglomeration of many styles, from surrealism to straight up candid. And it’s this unique blend of styles, along with the intimate touch, that takes his photographs to the next level.

We're trying, we really are trying to stay away from the word-inflation, click-bait terms like 'jaw-dropping.' But dang it if this hyperlapse by photographer Rob Whitworth didn't actually have us staring at the screen wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

In an age where social media fatigue is a real and prominent problem, photographer Erik Almas tries to stand out from the crowd by means of the age-old print portfolio. Detailing the ‘whys’ and ‘whats,’ he briefly goes over what it is that made him decide to go back to the physical portfolio and how his work is organized in the interesting video above.

Photojournalist Ed Kashi has received many accolades over the course of his photojournalistic career, and in this short interview with Marc Silber, he shares some of what he's learned about light and the art of photojournalism.

NASA is known for using some impressive optics for its telescopes. But with amazing optics come some logistical limitations.

Ground-based lenses used by NASA can be as massive as needed, but are limited due to atmospheric distortion. Those used in space-based telescopes such as Hubble, on the other hand, must be much smaller, capable of being launched into space and fixed on-the-fly. This leaves NASA with a little Catch–22.

A Catch-22 they’ve managed to find an answer to in the form of SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy): a Boeing 747 with a 17-ton telescope packed inside.

It’s safe to say we’ve all seen our fair share of night-sky time-lapses. Most often, they tend to show off grandiose views of mother nature as the stars (seemingly) rotate in the background. But the truth of the matter is, we’re the ones rotating, not the stars.

So what would happen if a night-sky time-lapse photographer used the stars – or more precisely a star – as a fixed axis, instead of Earth? Well, you would end up with a trippy time-lapse like the one you see above.

Welcome to South Tyrol, a province at the northernmost point of Italy located entirely in the Alps. A rough, mountainous region, your tour guide through the spectacular vistas offered by this province is 23-year-old landscape and urban photographer Lukas Furlan.

Some contend that there are no fireworks shows that can best mother nature's display during an intense thunderstorm, and the video above by Chicago-based videographer Craig Shimala goes a long way in confirming their belief.

21-year-old Rebecca Brown is an English filmmaker, artist and avid creator of YouTube videos. Over the past 6.5 years, she’s photographed herself almost every day, and she recently put the resulting images into a time-lapse. But, as the video goes on to explain, this isn't just a time-lapse showing off a myriad of physical changes throughout the years.

We promise we didn't plan it, but after sharing Josh Newton's amazing wildfire wedding photographs last month, we've managed to stumble across their antithesis today.

Last month it was wedding photos in front of a raging wildfire. This month we give you another beautifully-shot set of wedding pictures, this time taken inside a bonafide, had-to-kayak-to-get-there ice cave.

As part of Nikon’s continuing effort to promote its gear and ambassadors while teaching you something at the same time, the company has put together yet another inspirational and educational video we felt was worth sharing with you.

Featuring outdoor and editorial photographer Corey Rich, the above video walks you through the process of setting up and shooting a night sky time-lapse.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is a name forever engraved on the face of photographic history. Known for his humanist approach to photography and the world around him, the so-called father of street photography defined his photojournalistic style with each snap of the shutter.

And while his individual photographs are something to marvel at in their own right, one of the greatest contributions he ever gave the world was a book called The Decisive Moment, which you can now once more own without spending $500+ dollars.

When capturing a photograph, something many of us meticulously try to account for is the lighting -- more specifically, how much light is coming from what sources.

Using ratios, a bit of rough math and a pen & paper, you could write it down. But sometimes numbers don’t directly translate into results. Here with an ingenious way to properly capture the lighting in a scene is Felix Kunze and Sue Bryce.

Taking a picture has never been as easy as it is now. But just because you can snap a photo doesn’t mean you’re going to capture a photograph that’s thought provoking and tells a story the way many of the best images do.

Montreal-based photographer Benjamin Von Wong's underwater fantasy fashion shoot in a Bali shipwreck has quickly become the most popular project he has ever released. And even though he shared some behind the scenes details when the series first debuted, he's back today with a much more detailed look at how exactly these now-viral photos came to be.

Created by Brandon Li, Dreamwalking Barcelona is a beautifully shot video that takes us on the strange, backward journey of a young woman in Spain. As she walks forward through the world, the rest of the world moves backwards around her.

Paris-based artist Sébastien Del Grosso combines his talents as an illustrator and photographer to create incredibly creative self-portraits. Taking on an almost cartoon-like aesthetic, the series is titled “L’esquisse d’une vie,” translating to “The Sketch of a Life.”

There are a few subjects that lend themselves particularly well to time-lapse photography -- think: sunsets, aurora borealis, the night sky, and the hustle and bustle of a city -- and so, naturally, they are the most frequently used subjects.

Another of these is flowers opening. Not quite as common anymore, it's nevertheless still familiar to anyone who has spent any time exploring the world of time-lapse photography... so why is it that this creation by photographer David de los Santos Gil is still so captivating?

Are you sick of the standard arm's-length selfie? Or even the remote-triggered self-portrait? Well, photographer and talented Photoshop artist Martín De Pasquale was, so he turned his self-portraits up to eleven and created some reality-bending images that make that make those bathroom mirror selfies look even dumber.

It might not be one of the best-known or most popular genres of the trade, but cave photography is an actual thing... and it’s not easy.

In the behind the scenes video above, Knoxville-based photographer Chris Higgins shows us just how much dedication, discipline and dirt it takes to get incredible photographs of the mysterious worlds hidden within the Earth.

It’s Friday. And after some potentially unfortunate news, it might do to share something that will help you start the weekend off on a better note. So, without further ado, we present you with a collection of photos that put a cute, SFW spin on HBO’s blockbuster show Game of Thrones.