Awesome Photography

Mehdi Sadaghdar from ElectroBOOM has made a career out of playing with electricity. He teamed up with Gav and Dan of The Slow Mo Guys to shoot some high-voltage sparks from his tesla coil and Marx generator. They managed to capture some incredible shots at speeds up to 1,750,000 frames per second. Here’s Mehdi’s video.

Photographer Joerg Daiber takes us on a trip to Munich for an aerial, tilt-shifted view of the third-largest city in Germany. Along the way, you’ll see some of the city’s parks, beaches, waterways, cafés, and industry, along with a look at a miniaturized Oktoberfest celebration.

This compact, tubular light adds a splash of color to photographs or can set the mood of any setting. It offers adjustable color temperatures, RGB color, and effects modes. A strong magnet and tripod thread provide versatile mounting options. Depending on brightness, it can run from 2 to 15 hours per charge.

Photographs that capture a split-second of action can be pretty amazing. The guys from COOPH put together this excellent tutorial video that shows techniques using powders, fluids, glass, and filters to capture crisp and detailed photos that seem to freeze time. Having a good flash and remote trigger can definitely help.

If you’re looking for tips and techniques for shooting great photos, look no further than COOPH. Their YouTube channel is packed with great tutorials like this one which shows how to shoot a photo of a miniature Ford Mustang launched off a ramp. This shot required multiple exposures to layer in the sparks, smoke, and dust.

Filmmaker Thomas Blanchard is back with another experimental film of fluids interacting. He created the hypnotic scenes by mixing paint, oil, and liquid soap, swirled together in a circular motion. The crisp and colorful macro footage is accompanied by a smooth an ethereal soundtrack by Alexis Dehimi.

Google is working on an AI-powered system that can take a single photograph and allow you to fly into a synthetic world. Infinite Nature uses machine learning to extrapolate hidden areas and areas outside of the image, while increasing the resolution of details. Two Minute Papers explains this fascinating technology.

The guys over at COOPH are always sharing interesting photography tips and tricks. This time, they’ve posted a series of playful ideas you can replicate using just your smartphone, miniature figures, and everyday objects to create tiny worlds of whimsy that play with our expectations of scale.

You can create some amazing visuals by shooting long exposures. COOPH teamed up with Brazilian artist and photographer Vitor Schietti for a brief series of eight ideas to help up your night time photo and light painting game. We like how he goes beyond through-the-lens techniques and delves into his creative process.

While diving in the Gulf of California, nature photographer, Sea Legacy co-founder and NatGeo contributor Paul Nicklen captured this awe-inspiring footage of a massive school of mobula rays – aka “devil rays.” It’s an amazing sight that reminds us how important it is to protect our oceans and the species that live beneath its surface.

Last week, the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted not far from Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Keflavik International Airport. Photographers descended on the area, including Jakob Vegerfors, who captured this extraordinary footage of fiery lava exploding into the air and a river of lava flowing around the eruption site.

Looking to add some interesting analog effects to your photography? COOPH’s handy tutorial video shows us eight ways to use common household items to create lens filters for any camera on the cheap. The plastic cutout ones are our favorites with their dreamy look.

The tilt-shift lens technique is known for making real-world locations look like miniatures. Flurdeh applies the same effect to video games, offering up tilt-shift takes on Fallout: New Vegas, Bioshock Infinite, CyberPunk 2077, and Skyrim and more. We loved watching tiny street fights break out in Batman: Arkham Knight.

NASA and the University of Arizona’s HiRISE camera system aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been capturing some extraordinary images. Seán Doran combined and enhanced a series of these images into a spectacular fly-over that showcases the textures of the dunes on the planet’s surface.

This special edition instant film from Polaroid produces unique duochrome images in tones of black and green. The experimental mix of yellow and cyan chemical paste results in a distressed, mottled look for added effect. The film is compatible with Polaroid 600 and i-Type cameras, and the Polaroid Lab printer.

Artist and filmmaker Sebastian Jern creates amazing miniature scenes which he brings to life with lighting and practical effects. Here, he shows off a tiny tribute to Stranger Things, with dark and puffy cotton clouds and a terrifying monster lurking within. His miniature Mount Everest and Moon scenes are similarly phenomenal.

The Laowa 24mm Probe Lens has enabled some pretty amazing views of the world. Jens from Another Perspective stuck the long and skinny macro lens inside a piano to give us an up-close and personal look at its strings, hammers, and other mechanical components.

Sriram Murali of Saving the Dark takes us to the Anamalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, India for a look at one of the most amazing sights on Earth. As night falls, millions of fireflies illuminate the forest, blinking their bioluminescent bodies in synchrony. Murali’s instagram features some incredible long-exposures of the insects.

For aviation safety reasons, there are strict limits on how high you can fly a drone. But the guys at IronMan FPV got special permission from local authorities to take their DJI FPV drone to an altitude of 4500 meters – or nearly 15,000 feet. They put it into a freefall at around 3:13 to save battery on the way back down.

We recently shared a great time-lapse video from photographer Kien Lam documenting his travels around the globe. It turns out he also brings a drone with him, and created this video that offers a captivating view of the world from above.

This silent, motorized camera rig helps you capture smooth dolly shots on any flat surface. It drives along circular or linear paths or a pre-set route you draw with the Trexo mobile app. An optional turntable kit lets it turn 360º either on a tripod or as a base for objects. It can also be programmed without a smartphone.

MTB photographer Sterling Lorence walks us through his efforts to capture the perfect shot. To get there, he headed to the mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore and followed riders Brett Rheeder and Jackson Goldstone into the misty woods. A great documentary about the creative process from Anthill Films for Ride Shimano.

The MagStick is a pro-quality tripod designed for iPhones and other phones with the addition of a metallic ring. A powerful magnet holds phones in place firmly, while a clamp adds security. It works as both a selfie stick and a tripod, has mounts for a light and a microphone, and has a Bluetooth remote in its handle.