[tweetmeme]Tilt Shift is an incredible lens effect that transforms normal scenes into tiny toy worlds. It’s a topic that’s already been shown extensively here on PhotoGuides with tilt shift collections and photoshop tutorials, but these new examples take on a new level of amazingness.

ArtCyclopedia has created an astonishing range of Tilt Shift photographs which apply the effect to some of Van Gogh’s famous paintings. The results really are stunning. Check them out.

[tweetmeme]It amazes me how much abstract architecture there is in a train station. In this collection I’ve put together 16 of the most inspiring train station photos from the web. The next time you’re waiting for a train, pull out your camera and go for a walk. Hopefully this collection will give you a few ideas.

Quick Tips for Train Station Photography:

Symmetry: Almost all of these photos bare a symmetry, and this produces a truly stunning effect when you’re dealing with architecture.

Colours: The majority of these photos are in black and white, or are heavily desaturated with an accentuated blue element to them. This combination appears to be very effective, and adds a cool, crisp feel to the photos.

Abstraction: Look at how the photograph moves. The way the photographers have captured some of the abstract lines in these photos is astounding.

Movement: A train station is a lively place. Try to capture this in your photo

Into the Light by Philipp Klinger

Is Time Linear by Philipp Klinger

Old New York Subway Car by Tara Holland

Diffuse Station by hopefoote

Liège Guillemins by rpbdesigner

Inside the Space Station by yushimoto_02

Grand Central Station by Digital Agent

Liege Railway Station by cedsarlette

Station Story by liquidkid1

Escalator by mickeyxmouse

Symmetry by genr

Subway IV by Dr007

Subway by KYAV

Abandoned Subway by BalchPhoto

Subway song by DinnerSpoiler

The Butterfly Subway by Demyan

[tweetmeme]The Human Eye has always been a fairly incredible thing, but when viewed up close with the detail of Macro and HDR photography, it bares completely new dimensions. The colours and patterns are just mesmerising. Photos like this aren’t that difficult to achieve either. All you need is a Macro lens, Photomatix or another HDR program, and a person who’s willing to let you shove a camera right in their face.

Balloons by TaylorArbolante

[tweetmeme]This time last year I was constantly tapping refresh on every computer and iPhone I could lay my hands on, eagerly awaiting something to appear. One year later and PhotoGuides is now a highly acclaimed photography and photoshop design blog with international authors, a few thousand members and a world class podcast ranked highly in the iTunes store. If someone had asked me what my plans for PhotoGuides were a year ago, I’d have had nothing to say. The success of this online community has blown me away, especially considering that PhotoGuides was nothing like I first set out to create.

It all began on February 7th 2009, a day known amongst Australians as Black Saturday. At 46 degrees Celsius it was the hottest day in Melbourne’s history (and certainly one of the most devastating), which left me stuck inside a powerless house with nothing to do but chew up the battery on my MacBook. Just a few days earlier I’d picked up a copy of iLife 09′, so I installed it, clicked the iWeb icon, and began playing around.

I’d been getting serious about my photography around this time, and I decided I wanted a website portfolio to feature and perhaps sell some of my work. iWeb treated me well. Building my website was quick, simple and incredibly easy, but later on when I started to think like a marketer I began to ask myself “why would anyone want to go to this website?”

My website was boring. It was just a simple showcase of photos – something to skim through, but there was nothing attracting or keeping people on the site. I deemed blogging to be the solution to attract attention and hold people’s interest. Fresh new content would bring people back to the site and develop a bit of a community. This was a concept I liked. The only question was, what would I blog about?

As someone still learning about Photography, I often craved a decent selection of beginners guides and tutorials, but I’d never found a website that held exactly what I needed. My idea? Why not make one myself. Soon enough this concept of photography guides began to take over and eventually I’d developed an iWeb site centred around beginners guides for photography. Think of it as an experimental prototype. It never made it to the public, but for this special occasion I’ve decided to release the first ever PhotoGuides.

iWeb was very limiting. There were simple little things that I couldn’t edit, and the website’s structure was set in stone. This frustration eventually drove me to the WordPress platform that PhotoGuides runs today. The image you see below is the first ever PhotoGuides design. Simple, irrelevant and very difficult to use.

Then again, in the beginning my intentions for PhotoGuides were still very unclear. I envisaged it as a personal blog with some occasional guides about photography. Clearly though the website has taken a massive transformation. As you can probably tell, it’s now centred around three basic topics; Photography, photoshop and inspiration. It’s no longer a personal website either, thanks to a few other people scattered around the world that share the same passions as I do, and wish to share their photography and photoshop knowledge with the whole community. Thanks a heap to Amar, Jamice, Patrick and Bert for their contributions to PhotoGuides so far, and thanks to everyone else who has declared interest in becoming a contributor and will write a guide in the future.

There’s no denying that when PhotoGuides was first released I was an internet novice. I didn’t know a damn thing about coding, css, php, html or any internet language. When PhotoGuides first went live there was some database error, and as soon as I saw that error message I was doubtful I’d ever get the thing up. It still amazes me that I’ve managed to get this far. I’m still learning, but I’ve covered the majority of the groundwork. Every now and then I find myself in a bit of a ditch, but I can always rely on my brother James Davies to get me out of it. He’s helped me so much with the development of this website, so this paragraph is dedicated to him as a thankyou. He has a blog, and it’s a bit awesome. Check it out over here.

As for the future, I have a few plans. When school’s over I plan to look at the iPhone and what its App store offers. Book writing is also a form of media I’d be interested in. A PhotoGuides guide to photography is certainly something I’d love to see on bookshelves around the world. For now though, these remain on the to do list, and thanks to year 12 I don’t expect to have anything new and exciting done for the rest of this year.

So that’s the first year in review. Today, PhotoGuides turns one year old, and as I think back to when the website first started I can’t help but realise what an impact this website has made on my life. Of course, one big thankyou I have to give out is to you and the rest of the PhotoGuides community. Thanks for taking an interest in our guides, sharing them, leaving comments or feedback, or any involvement whatsoever you’ve had with this website.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt throughout my one year on the internet though it’s this:
Whatever it is that you want to do, make sure it’s something you love. It motivates you, keeps you interested, and most prominent of all, it’s a huge factor towards being successful. PhotoGuides still has a lot of potential, and even though it doesn’t fully compete with other design blogs out there in terms of traffic, it’s the love for what I do that’s kept me interested, and without that passion PhotoGuides would be nothing like it is today.

Film Camera by theREALantimaster

[tweetmeme]A traditional time lapse involves a stationary camera snapping away at some moving objects. It can look cool, but it’s a bit lifeless. A while ago I had an idea for a time lapse of photos that travelled the world. No photo was planned and the camera was never in the same place twice. What it tells though is an incredible story. It’s the perfect depiction of a snippet of my life, and in this guide I hope to inspire you to create your own, as well as show you how to create it. The best thing is, you’ve probably already got every photo you need to do it.

Here’s some Inspiration

About a year ago while I was flicking through some of my photos I had a realisation. We may take thousands of photos on a holiday or journey, yet we leave it up to a select few to tell the story. We sort through them and pick the prime of the bunch to tweak and share. Probably 95% of the photos we take go to waste and this is a real shame. After all, if the moment is interesting enough to photograph, it should be interesting enough to share.

I realised this during my trip to South Africa on The Simunye Project while I was scrolling through photos on my camera. I hold so many memories from that experience – memories of the children, the people, the animals, the country and memories with my friends – and each memory was coming back as I flicked through my photos. For some reason though I was mentally filtering through all 4000 of them and picking the best based on their artistic qualities. These select photos may have told a story, but it was almost impossible to share the whole experience through a select bunch. A picture may say 1000 words, but in some cases, that’s really not enough.

And then I had this idea.

Why not share all of them? The only real way to understand the experience is to see each and every kodak moment together, because every photo from the start to the finish tells the whole story. So, after finding even more inspiration in a song, I put together this time lapse. If you’re a PhotoGuides regular or if you’ve delved deep into the archives, some of you may have seen this before. It’s called Simunye 3096 (that being the number of photos in it) and I’ve found it to be one of the only ways to tell the whole Simunye story.

It’s one of the few films I never get tired of watching, partly because it’s sentimental, but also because every time you watch it you’ll spot something new.

As I later found out, I’m not the only one who’s played with this concept. One particular film that stands out is ’30 days’ by Michael Mistretta. He bought a Nikon D90 and took over 2,700 photos in the first 30 days with the camera. This film is an incredible display of what he did over those 30 days, as well as of the people in his life. The majority of the photos are of the people around him, and even though you have no idea who anyone is, you sort of get to learn about Michael.

Hopefully you now see the story telling capabilities of Time Lapse photography. Michael probably didn’t even plan to create this. I assume he had a similar epiphany to me when he realised that those 2,777 photos held the story of his 30 days.

Here are some Tips

Photograph Everything and Keep Everything.
If you’re taking a photo of a person and it turns out blury or poorly exposed, keep it because it’s these photos that add to the character of the film. The same applies with photos where you have about 10 of the same thing.

In the edit, Duplicate Photos you want to Emphasise.
In my Simunye 3096 film I doubled up my favourite photos or photos of a significant event. They then stay on the screen for just a split second longer, and this means they’ll always be noticed.

Pick a Good Song.
The song tells half of the story, both through its words and through its rhythm. Michael Mistretta’s film speaks of memories, and the fast piano acts as a conductor for the photos. It’s the same for my Simunye film. The song ‘Any Other World’ by Mika is so relevant to the nature of South Africa, and its piano beat is perfect for the film. Pick your song wisely because it’s probably the most important part of the film.

8-12 Frames per Second
It may be a personal choice, but I’ve found this to be the optimal range of speed. It’s quick enough so that the viewer doesn’t focus on individual photos, but it’s also slow enough for them to recognise just what’s going on.

And Here’s how to Make your Time Lapse.

FrameByFrame (Mac): This is a cool piece of free software that lets you compile all your photos into a video and set the frame rate. Just drag in your photos into the editing window, slide the frame rate to between 8-12 and click play.

Final Cut: If you’ve got Final Cut Pro or Express then I highly recommend you use it. The best way to create your time lapse is to open up a new project, go into the ‘User Preferences’ menu (press option+Q), select editing and then change the default still/freeze frame duration to 00:02 or 00:03. This means that your photo will be displayed for either 2 or 3 frames out of 25 or 30 (PAL or NTSC dependent). Once you’ve done this, simply drag in your photos and they’ll automatically be set to 2 or 3 fps.

QuickTime Pro: If you’ve got QuickTime then you’re in luck, because it’s got an excellent feature for creating Time Lapse films. You’ll first need to put all your photos into a single folder containing nothing else. Then you can open up QuickTime and click file, ‘Open Image Sequence’ and select the first image in that folder. It should then ask you the frame rate (choose around 10fps), click ok and then it should create your time lapse for you.

VirtualDub (PC): As a Mac user I’ve not been able to try this program out, so I can’t offer any tips on how to use it. It’s been recommended to me by others, so I presume that means it works.

Windows Movie Maker: As much as I hate to admit it, Windows Movie Maker can make a fairly good time lapse. You can drag in all of your photos and then set a duration for each image. There’s a pretty good tutorial for it over here.

Finally, Share your Time Lapse Story.

If you’ve created a time lapse, then I’d love to see it, so if you’ve uploaded it to youtube or vimeo then feel free to share the link. If I like it, I might even pop it up here for everyone else to see.

Time Lapse photography of this nature is very simple. It involves no planning and can only take a few minutes to put together. The story telling capabilities though are astounding, and this form of time lapse can revive memories and tell stories you may otherwise have forgotten.

Good Luck!

[tweetmeme]Here are some of the smoke photographs from my portfolio. Smoke photographs always fascinate me. A sense of anonymity on the type and shape of smoke makes it so unpredictable and poses a challenge, and at the same time increases our creativity to come up with things that match the shape.
To completely understand the process involved in taking a good smoke photograph read my Quick Recipe for Smoke Photography. Otherwise, enjoy 17 of my best smoke photographs.

My kind of torch !

Giraffe on Dope

Buzzz

Array of Colours

Curtain

Red Hot Tea Pot

Rooster House on Fire

Tri Colour

Don’t come next to me

Dream

Lady Lying In Her Arms

Serene

Bat on Flight

Wave

Angel

Eaten

Threesome

All the pictures in this post are copywrighted to AnRb photography and any use of this work in hard or soft copy or transfer must be done with the expressed consent of Amar Ramesh, the author, in written.

[tweetmeme]No matter how many times I see them, Tiny Planets still astound me. Here I’ve compiled 27 of the coolest Tiny Planets from the web. I’ve only chosen the best of the best. Each one made me go wow, and hopefully they’ll do the same to you.

You can also make your own Tiny Planets using this tutorial here. They’re actually really easy to make!

Autumn Planet by LunaNegra

Snowy night Tiny Planet v1 by vxside

Tiny Planet 1 II by Sloves

Octopussy Planet by HamburgerJung

Manhattan Skyline polar Panorama 2 by Athalfred

Planet Treehouse by VMOS

Parking Planet by Zuiun

Balonismo “weeplanet” by Mário Moreno

Abandoned Farm Planet by FallStand

Antena by Jamescrowle

Planet Brooklyn :: Grand Army Plaza by Sam Rohn

Planet New York :: Unisphere by Sam Rohn

Planet Chicago :: Millenium Park – Gehry by Sam Rohn

Planet New York :: Hayden Planetarum by Sam Rohn

Small Planet #2 by bass_nroll

Eglise Notre-Dame by Jeromebg

14 Juillet by Jeromebg

Spider by Goodolger

Butterfly by Goodolger

Space Shuttle Launch by Goodolger

La Géode by Gadl

Casa del Balboa Planet by Candace Van Assche

Saguaro Planet by theellsworth

Rode Garden by bkueppers

Planet Toronto at Night by scienceduck

Rue du vieil Angers [ Angers's old street ] by Jeromebg

Botanical Garden (Stereographic) by Martin Heigan

[tweetmeme]Aurora Borealis, also known as Northern Lights, are incredible natural light displays seen in the sky. They’re caused by the collision of Solar Wind particles which are accelerated along the earth’s magnetic field. Green displays are caused by oxygen particles, and blue and red displays are a result of nitrogen.
But complicated cause aside, Aurora Borealis is simply beautiful. Here I’ve compiled 33 of the best photographs of these breathtaking events. It really is clear to see why they’ve been nicknamed “The Dance of the Spirits”.

Sweep Over Mt. Esja by Orvaratli

Vífilfell Erupting by Orvatatli

Moonshimmering waterfall and Aurora Borealis by Arnar Valdimarsson

Aurora Borealis by Bia Nicastro

Northern Light on Iceland by Hörður B. Karlsson

Northern Lights Easter 2006 by Artic Pj

Northern Lights by LaStef

Straumer Revisited by Orvaratli

Needles in the Sky by MichelangOle

Northern Lights 37 by Kerstin Langenberger

Northern Lights 02 by G1G0

Northern Lights and Horses by Discover the World

Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) by Cosmic Kid99

Northern lights by LiluSkitten

The Northern Lights by Shadow Wolf200

Northern Lights by GingerSpice019

Northern Mania by esreverdaer

Auroral Reflections by tfavretto

Northern Lights by eliteracer

Aurora in the Sierras by revolution man

Aurora Borealis by keenonphotography

Dancing in the dark by uberfischer

Evening Light by uberfischer

Bursting Aurora by Orvaratli

Aurora Reflected by Orvaratli

Straumur Aurora by Orvaratli

Aurora by unneva

Aurora Borealis by Jan Hugo Andersen

Aurora at Thingvellir by hauxon

Skywatching Pinetrees by Orvaratli

Magnetic Storm by Orvaratli

Magnetic Fields by Orvaratli

[tweetmeme]Tilt Shift photography is becoming a bit of a trend lately, with a great deal of photographers using the technique to transform normal scenes into a tiny toy world.
Here I’ve compiled the best Tilt Shift photographs on the web. I’ve searched for different, unique photos which use the technique in a way that just makes you go ‘wow’. Hopefully they can act as inspiration for your own tilt shift photography.

Be sure to check out the PhotoGuides tutorial for photoshopping tilt shift. It’s really very easy and the results are stunning.
Enjoy!

Old Gaffers Festival by alastair_mitchell

minigolden by californiabirdie

Kleiner Harz von oben by JoHa-.-

Tilt Shift City by AshDav

Tilt Shift Town by AshDav

Tilt-Shift by WatchinDworldGoBy

Mini Multnomah Falls by pforbinesque

The Pitch by californiabirdie

Faux Tilt Shift 1 by pathandpixel

Tilt Shift by wakeboy

You Can Tell by B Tal

Tilt Shift Fairgrounds by yarnzombie

My Miniature City of Sydney by :chris:

Tilt-shift Madrid Masters by envisionpublicidad

Cleveland Clinic Miniature by House Photography

Fake Miniature – Roller Derby 2 by baldheretic

Little Game by pattagon

Eiffel Tilt-Shift II by ArnarBi

Mini Airlift by dutchb0y

Gold Dust Saloon by wmandra

Miniature Tate Modern by jeangenie

Tilt-Shift Serpentine by Harald_Kirr

Miniature Airport by C.S. 2.0

Fake Miniature Astronaut by Grimmwire

Little Boats by Tom Crease

Flower Maze Resize Tiltshift by gordon67

Tilt Shift Grid by mre1965

AdVantage…Stop n Go by pic fix

Tilt Shift Fun by DanielloPL

Tilt Shift Football by fadeddays