Awesome Photography

During 2020, photographer and filmmaker Dustin Farrell spent the better part of six months, driving more than 38,000 miles to chase down storms and shoot footage. The end result, 101 incredible shots of nature’s fury in action, compiled into an epic 3-minute short film.

Photographer Jens Heidler spent more than 30 hours standing in frigid temperatures to shoot this amazing macro imagery of ice crystals as they formed on soap bubbles. Once the bubbles are encased in ice, their texture works like tiny prisms, revealing a rainbow of colors. He also shared some tips and tricks for shooting your own.

Photographer Brandon Rieck of Wanderlust Imagery captured this glorious FPV footage by flying his drone along the top of an ore dock in Marquette, Michigan, then diving down to follow a hockey player skating on the ice below. The transition from above to below is buttery smooth. (Thanks Craig!)

Photographer Joerg Daiber of Spoonfilm takes us on another eye-opening virtual vacation, this time through the hills and mountains of Romania. Along the way, you’ll visit Maramures, Bucharest, and the surprisingly idyllic region of Transylvania, along with both the fake tourist trap “Dracula’s Castle” and the real one.

Nature photographer and traveler Petr Podroužek takes us on a virtual trip to one of Iceland’s many natural wonders. The so-called “Diamond Beach” is a strip of black sand located in a glacial plain. Here, chunks of crystal clear glacial ice wash up on the beach, creating a beautiful contrast of light against the dark background.

When it comes to photography, you can go crazy with lighting, filters, lenses, and post-processing, or you can keep things simple. COOPH’s latest photo tip video shows off some simple, yet effective techniques for creating dramatic images with a minimum of embellishment and effects.

Artist Roman De Giuli is known for the eye-catching moving images he makes by mixing paints and inks. His latest work is a sequence of images that resemble satellite photography of the Earth. This time, he made custom paints using materials like pigments, sand, and finely ground stones to create the rich palette of earthy colors.

Filmmaker Seán Doran processed about a week’s worth of data captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to create this awe-inspiring UHD video of the Sun’s activity. Max out the resolution, go full screen, dim the lights, and crank up the audio for a truly hypnotic journey to our Solar System’s number one life-giver.

YouTube channel Macro Room is known for their incredible macro and slow-motion photography. To celebrate their 1 millionth subscriber, they created this video in which a man sits still as their face is barraged with paint balloons. It’s also an impressive demo of the Chronos 2.1 HD slow-motion camera system.

Nature photographer Marco Valk captured some incredible footage of starling murmurations in the sunset skies over Geldermasen in the Netherlands. The birds travel in massive flocks to provide safety from predators and warmth at night while at the same time offering humans one of the most spectacular shows on Earth.

Filmmakers Vincent Urban, Max Neumeier & Tim David Höddinghaus of 27km created this amazing short film that offers a glimpse into the vast and varied nation of Russia. From the cosmopolitan chaos of Moscow to the icy and unspoiled Lake Baikal, the film is like a candy sampler box packed with all kinds of tasty visuals.

Head to the Pacific Northwest in this epic snowboarding film from KORUA Shapes. The black-and-white photography evokes quite the mood as boarders take to the slopes in the days before the pandemic lockdown. The title is based on the nickname for Washington state’s Ranier Beer, which served as lubricant for the cast and crew.

After seeing a slow-motion video where the pattern from dust on a tennis racket appeared to hang in space, Kuma Films wanted to see if they could do the same. With the help of a pricey Phantom high-speed camera and some colorful powders, they replicated that along with a few other visuals based on viral videos.

Norman Reedus is beloved for his portrayal of Darryl Dixon on The Walking Dead. Reedus is also an avid photographer, and he took advantage of his time deep in the woods of Georgia to capture intimate, humorous, and macabre portraits of his co-stars, film crew, and friends. Available in Hardcover or a Collector’s Edition.

While travel is on hold for many of us these days, we rely on videos like this one from Little Big World to keep us inspired. Joerg Daiber takes us on another tilt-shift trip – this time to the Eastern European country of Bulgaria, with its dramatic landscapes, bustling cities, ancient fortresses, and abandoned Soviet monuments.

This high-tech camera gadget is designed to help photographers capture challenging shots with ease. It mounts on the hot shoe of most cameras and can trigger when lightning strikes, shoot various timelapse styles, combine multiple exposures into HDR, snap high-speed freeze-frames, and more using its companion mobile app.

Camera rig and drone maker DJI sent photography expert Peter McKinnon one of their RS2 stabilizing rigs along with the simple instruction “Blow our minds.” Naturally, Peter obliged and put together this fantastic reel of talented dancers and athletes showing off while the camera smoothly tracked their movements.

Photography expert Jens Heidler of Another Perspective shows off a neat effect you can create using various mixtures of liquid soap and sugar to create bubbles across the top of a drinking glass. The macro footage reveals all kinds of groovy patterns and gradients of color in the bubble slicks.

Nature photographers John Downer Productions flew a realistic, robotic hummingbird deep into a forest packed with hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies. The drone captured amazing footage of the swarm as they awoke from their long winter’s nap in Mexico. From the BBC Series Spy in the Wild.

Combining time-lapse, hyper-lapse, and some more experimental post-production techniques, FilmSpektakel takes us on a fast-paced trip to Southern California. They captured over 155,000 photos and spent 64 days editing the footage to produce the short film you see here. Learn more about the production at Time Lapse Magazine.

Seán Doran combined images captured by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from the ESRSU image archive to take us on a serene flight above the Southeast corner of North America, passing over Florida, the Bahamas and Cuba for a view of their blue-green waters. Want more? Watch Heaven: The Inner Sound of Outer Space.

This flat-pack wooden kit not only comes together to look like a camera, it actually works. Rather than using a lens, it has a small pinhole opening which captures fuzzy, but artful images onto 35mm film. The 79-piece plywood kit takes about 2 to 3 hours to assemble, and the camera even has a tripod mount.

Wally Koval and the followers of the Accidentally Wes Anderson Instagram page are on a mission to find real locations that capture the fastidious and whimsical style of filmmaker Wes Anderson. This 368-page book chronicles some of these wondrous destinations through images and stories, along with a foreword by Anderson himself.