French photographer Cedric Delsaux sees a different setting for the Star Wars saga when he looks through the lens-a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of ruined buildings and bleak landscapes.

It’s the kind of place that seems perfect for devotees of the Dark Side, a world which leaves most droids feeling a bit lost. Here’s a bit on how this photo series came to be:

In his series ‘The Dark Lens’, Delsaux first set out to highlight the decay of the post-apocalyptic modern world, but found the landscapes too plain.

That was when he incorporated notable scenes and characters from Star Wars, with the help of CGI maestro Pierrick Gueneugue, bringing to life two distant worlds.

We’ve featured the works of Cedric Delsaux here on Neatorama  over the years (Link and Link), and now he’s back because his series The Dark Lens has been put together in a book, which features a forward by George Lucas (link).

What an interesting way to put a spin on a sub-genre and sci-fi series which are in danger of becoming an artistic cliche. And I quite like the idea of Darth Vader lording over the reconstruction of a massive skyscraper (Death Star Towers, maybe?), while Jabba the Hut is holed up in some rat infested slums, conducting his dirty business from the shadows.

Link  –via DesignTAXI

These Victorian style portraits of Star Wars characters by Terry Fan lead one to believe that C3PO is powered by steam, and that droids actually enjoy wearing three piece suits. Everyone knows that these things are untrue, of course, but it’s a romantic version of the Space Opera that hasn’t been fully explored yet, so let’s just go with it.

In this series you get Darth Vader looking quite dapper, Yoda with a top hat that somehow makes his head look even smaller (and his ears even bigger), C3apo as a gentleman about town and Boba Fett fresh from overseas service in the military. These portraits  look like they were taken a long long time ago, in a place that’s not so far away after all…

Link  –via Rampaged Reality

Watch out for these guys when you’re out on the race track in your Kart, because they might puncture your tires with their sharp spikes and bad attitudes. Created by DeviantARTist Dragonfly929, they’re the most punk rock father and son duo I’ve seen since the trailer for The Other F Word and they’re out for a bite of Italian.

Bowser is such a bad boy that he must get lots of love from the ladies, so why is he always after the Princess? And isn’t little Bowser Jr. adorable? I guess male pattern baldness starts at an early age for these guys, no wonder they’re so angry!

Link  –via Obvious Winner

Now this is an interesting idea for a photo series-combine recently taken portraits of people with photos from when they were children, but instead of using Photoshop photographer Bobby Lee Adams uses a well placed tear down the middle of the face.

I was amazed at how similar they look when compared to their childhood selves, quite the difference from the other series that have been going around the interwebs lately (soldiers/drug addicts before and after). I guess everyone in this gallery has had a relatively trauma (or addiction) free life!

Check out more of these fused portraits at the link below, I’m gonna go do this with some of my own pics!

Link  –via DesignTAXI

Everyone knows Ansel Adams was a master of landscape photography, a master of black and white naturalist photography, and one heck of an innovative artist. What most people don’t know, however, is that Ansel also enjoyed documenting life in the city through the lens of his view camera.

Flavorwire has posted a gallery of images that were commissioned by Fortune Magazine in the 1940s, in order to document Los Angeles’ aviation industry as only Ansel Adams could.

See what the City of Angels used to look like, compared to what it has become, by taking a fascinating trip back in time through these magnificent photos.

Suggested soundtrack music-Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, or Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition by The Merry Macs.

Link   –image credit: Ansel Adams

The Kodak produced circular snapshots, two and a half inches in diameter. The Kodak was sold already loaded with enough paper-based roll film to take one hundred photographs. After the film had been exposed, the entire camera was returned to the factory for the film to be developed and printed. The camera, reloaded with fresh film, was then returned to its owner, together with a set of prints. To sum up the Kodak system, Eastman devised the brilliantly simple sales slogan: ‘You press the button, we do the rest.’

The idea was resurrected many years later with the “development” of the disposable film camera. Link -via the Presurfer

This series of self portraits by Japanese photographer Mariko Sakaguchi finds her bathing in some most unusual, and quite awkward, places such as: a restaurant, cluttered apartments, a deserted concert hall and a crowded classroom.

This photo series is decidedly Japanese, right down to the fact that the people around her are too polite to react to her presence, and I think the photos not only say a lot about Japanese culture, they also show how easy it is to juxtapose social awkwardness into normally mundane situations by adding even the hint of skin to the scene.

I would love to see her do a series which revolves around her taking a bath on various modes of public transportation-subway trains, crowded school buses, in the back of a limo. Time to take the awkwardness on the road Mariko!

Link  –via DesignTAXI

Who knew that pokeballs, the devices used by the characters in the anime series Pokemon to capture their little critter pals, would be so beautiful in real life? Created via photo manipulation by DeviantARTist wazzy88, their elemental contents look so real, like they could burst out at any moment in a surge of bling. No wonder Pokemon don’t mind being trapped inside those things for hours on end!

Link   –via Rampaged Reality

These couples have been sealed in plastic to preserve freshness, to illustrate that sometimes love can be an uncomfortable feeling, and to show how smothering each other can make it really hard to breathe.

From the twisted imagination of Japanese artist Photographer Hal (yes, photographer is part of his name) comes this wacked out portrait series called Flesh Love, which are part S&M, part avant garde, and all totally mind-blowing, as you struggle to make out where one person ends and another begins.

How’d ya like to find one of these in your school lunchbag, kiddos?

Link  –via DesignTAXI

This one’s for all you science studs, because we all know that the sexiest organ in the human body is the brain.

And, while keeping your eyes glued to a textbook doesn’t help your body get into shape, it will work wonders for your self esteem, and someday your pocketbook, if you’re lucky!

So, put on your space themed tie and some blue jeans and show the world how sexy science can be.

Link

1968 Saigon - FATESCAPES/Osudové krajiny

If that photo above looks strangely familiar, that's because, chances are, you actually have seen it before visual artist Pavel Maria Smejkal artfully erased the people in Eddie Adam's General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon.

James Estrin wrote this interesting post for The New York Times's photography blog Lens:

“Fatescapes” examines both the role and limitations of the photographic image as a historical document. “I remove the central motifs from historical documentary photographs,” Mr. Smejkal wrote in an e-mail. “I use images that have become our cultural heritage, that constitute memory of nations, serve as symbols or tools of propaganda and exemplify a specific approach to photography.” [...]

Using a simple Photoshop tool, Mr. Smejkal has reshaped these images and challenged us to confront the relationship of photographer, image and history in a manner that is profoundly unsettling. Viewing “Fatescapes” encourages you to wonder if it even matters whether Mr. Adams’s general was misrepresented or if Mr. Capa’s photo was not what it purported to be.

Who says Photoshopping ain't art? Link | Artist's gallery at Photo Art Centrum

Previously on Neatorama: 13 Photographs That Changed The World

It’s hard to make heads or tails of these photos, because photographer Philippe Ramette has manipulated them to create an uneasy sense of gravity defiance.

They provoke a feeling of vertigo in some viewers, and your mind will race to separate the elements of the photo and make sense of which way is up.

I really enjoy the clever way in which the people are worked into each scene, and how they often seem to be hanging out on the edge of nowhere.

Link –via DesignTAXI

No, it’s not really a rose being liquified. It’s a composite photograph of 17 different images of a crystal rose with colored water being poured down the surface. My hat goes off to Anthony Chang for having the patience to put together this gorgeous art project.

Link Via Laughing Squid

The blokes in these pics aren’t characters from a Guy Ritchie movie, they’re real-life British gangsters, captured in intimate moments by Jocelyn Bain Hogg, presumably between heists.

These photos show us a rare, intimate glimpse into their lives-relaxing, cutting loose at a disco, or acting out physically like their usual, maniacal selves.

There’s an energy in these photos, an edginess that makes you want to look away, but then you’d be missing out on a moment you might not have the chance to witness ever again.

Link –image credit: Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Firm

The old timey photos in this series all have one eerie quality in common-the mother’s identity has been concealed. Whether with shroud, or by simply scraping the face away, erasing their identity seems like an odd thing to do when they’re posed for a picture with their children.

Maybe they were having a bad hair day, or woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but isn’t wearing a shroud over your head at a photo shoot an extreme reaction to not looking your best? If anybody has any insight into this strange trend in portraiture, please share! Otherwise, enjoy taking a look back at when people were really weird about having their picture taken.

Link –via Flavorwire

Taking a cue from such classics as Alice In Wonderland and Jack and the Beanstalk, photographer Jean-Francois Fortou places normal sized people in giant or tiny sets to create a sense of wonder and dimensional irregularity.

The photos are simple and digitally untouched, and their simplicity is the key to making the whole concept work, I mean, how easy would it be to use Photoshop to simply shrink the subjects?

But that wouldn’t look as cool as setting a normal sized man inside a tiny dollhouse then snapping away as he curls up in a ball, covered in tiny furniture, now would it?

–image via Jean-Francois Fortou –via Flavorwire

Alan Sailer is no stranger to shooting things, both with a pellet gun and a camera, but this time around he’s making a pretty little mess in his series called The War On Christmas, which features Christmas ornaments frozen in time as they explode in a million shiny little pieces.

These ornaments look so cool being blasted that i’m tempted to take a few off my own tree and blow them to smithereens!

Link –via Flavorwire

The paper strip style is created by using 3d modeling software to re-design the models, then the photo details are added to the stripped model, resulting in these uniquely deconstructed portraits. You can see more of these intriguing artworks at the Flavorwire link below.

Ayaka Ito Randy Church –via Flavorwire

Got an embarassing drunk photo of yourself posted on Facebook? You're in good company:

On average, adult users of the social networking website said they were under the influence of alcohol in 76 per cent of the pictures in which they were "tagged".

With Christmas party season in full swing, more than half of those surveyed said that there were photographs of them on Facebook they would not want colleagues or employers to see, and 8 per cent admitted to appearing in pictures that could get them into "serious trouble" at work.

Despite such fears fears for their own image online, the poll also found that two thirds of Britons had intentionally tagged friends in embarrassing photos so other friends would be alerted.

Link

These delightfully awful Christmas card photos put the hohoho! back in the holidays. If you don’t like the way you look in your photo this year, take a gander at this wacky gallery and feel better about yourself.

Link

Remember when celebrity portraits weren’t photoshopped, and the stars were allowed to relax and be themselves, rather than posing on ridiculously overdone sets in the latest couture ensemble?

This series by Norman Seeff finds celebs relaxing, goofing around, and occasionally just hangin’ out in full outfit and makeup (I’m looking at you KISS). Take a stroll through the rest of the images at the link below, and reminisce about a time before John Travolta found Scientology, the Jackson 5 sported afros, and the Rolling Stones still had their edge.

Link –image credit: Norman Seeff

That’s because she used spices and other ingredients for cooking to recreate the scenes, and the textures feel much more like the original paintings than most recreations i’ve seen. And when she’s done snapping pics of the scenes she’s created, she can cook up a tasty meal!

Link –via DesignTAXI

We’ve featured some of photographer Slinkachu’s work here before, but of all his Little People Project creations, the Worst Wurst might just be the most disgusting. That’s because it features tiny people harvesting rat poo and then selling it at a food stand. The photos are great, but you might want to avoid looking at them while eating lunch.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Have you ever wondered what people would look like if they could create their own ideal physical form, or what the heroes in their imagination look like as opposed to their everyday appearance? Well, this series by Robbie Cooper, entitled Alter Ego, explores the dynamics between the fantasy and real life forms of avid gamers.

This series made me think “when I create an avatar, what physical traits do I normally care about, and why?” What about you, do your custom made characters resemble the way you actually look, or an idealized form?

Link –via Flavorwire

No matter how much you love or hate these celebrities, you never want to see them this close up, believe me.

Some of the images in this gallery will give you a good laugh, others are the stuff nightmares are made of (Iggy Pop). Check out the rest of the gallery at the link below. I didn’t realize that Zooey Deschanel is so fuzzy!

Link

Photographer Toss McLellan has a great photo series called “Everyone Has A Piece of the Puzzle” wherein he dissects and lays out the parts of commonly used electronic items. The pictures look great and give us an all new look at items we use every day.

Link Via BoingBoing

Michael Beitz is quite skilled at turning ordinary objects into otherworldly art pieces. While my personal favorite is this great jointed tree, there are plenty more amazing objects at the link.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Why are Nic Cage, Holly Hunter and the baby from the 1987 movie Raising Arizona on the cover of this Serbian biology textbook? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d be willing to bet this image wasn’t used with the studio’s permission!

Link

Tastes change from decade to decade, but I can’t imagine that the album covers in this gallery were ever considered to be very cool. These are the album covers your Polka loving uncle might have owned in the 1970s, with covers cheesy lovable enough to overshadow whatever terrible music is pressed onto the record.

Link

It’s funny how much personality you can add to inanimate objects simply by attaching a pair of cartoon eyes. Cookie monster trash cans, hungry trash cans, bashful locked outlets, Timm Schneider’s street art would be a pleasure to come across in the urban jungle.

Link –via Laughing Squid

This woman appears to be floating above the sand, Star Wars skiff style, an optical illusion caused by the shadow of a flag. For her next trick, she will make a day at the beach super boring with the power of  her speech!

Link –via BuzzFeed

You would think that Japan’s overpopulation problems would force them to hang on to every bit of inhabitable land they own, but these images show otherwise. Hashima Island, nicknamed Ghost Island, was abandoned entirely after the mine which had been running for over 80 years was closed in 1974.

The black and white photos add a sense of despair to the abandoned cityscape, and although Hashima Island has been covered before here on Neatorama, I think the beautiful photographs in this gallery warrant a second look.

Link

These strange photo-manipulations look like a Photoshop lesson gone wrong. Photographer Nacho Ormaechea carefully selects the subject, cuts them out then replaces their form with random images that add a sense of depth, and mystery, to the scene. This is a refreshing take on portraiture, but I wonder how the models/subjects feel about being replaced?

Link –via DesignTAXI

What if the main characters on the Walking Dead tv show hadn’t survived the worldwide zombification? Well, this nifty little gallery shows us how cool they’d all look as zombies without ruining the show. Biggest LOL-Glenn as a floater!

Link

Even if you’ve never been to New York, you’ve certainly seen enough movies and tv shows filmed there to get an idea of what it looks like these days. If you want to see what it looked like around the early half of the last century though, you might want to head to The Jewish Museum New York’s website and enjoy some of their featured photos taken by The New York Photo League. Of course, if you’re in the city, you really should head to the museum itself to enjoy the full gallery in person.

Link Via BuzzFeed

Katie O'Beirne has an idea so simple it's downright brilliant. She leaves a disposable camera in the park, tied to a park bench with a twine, and then waits to see what develops.

She posts the wonderful photos taken by random strangers on her tumblr blog New York Shots - via Kickstarter blog (with video interview of Katie)

As it gets closer to Thanksgiving, some of us look forward to the public spectacle of giant balloons floating through NYC streets that is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

This vintage shot from the 1940 parade shows a simpler balloon version of the Man of Steel taking his place in the parade. Boy, parade balloons sure have come a long way!

Link

I’ve lived by the ocean my whole life and have visited the ocean over and over, but I’ve never seen a wave from this angle or one that looks this amazing. Clark Little’s takes pictures like these inside of waves up to 40′ tall and the results are simply stunning. Don’t miss the link for more unbelievable shots.

Link

Stark landscapes populated with impossible combinations of wildlife, vulnerable humans and ominous weather-these images are the stuff of dreams if you live on the dark side, beautifully photographed and digitally manipulated by artist Sarolta Ban. Check out the gallery, its full of images that seem like they were shot on location at the edge of limbo.

Link –via BuzzFeed

Photographer Dennis Ziliotto is a great artist and these surreal shots featured on BuzzFeed, inspired by Alice In Wonderland, are simply stunning.

Link Via BuzzFeed

They are decorated with flowers and coca leaves, given cigarettes and sunglasses to make them look stylish, and lavished with praise by citizens who believe this celebration makes their afterlife more enjoyable. A celebration of life that centers around the skulls dead loved ones, sounds like a strange way to par-tay!

Link –image via Reuters/David Mercado

This is what Flickr user clickflashwhirr looks like when 500 portraits of her, which she takes every day like the world’s most dedicated narcissist, are averaged into one angelic looking photo.

The guy who put the photos together might be stalking her on Flickr, but I’m sure she will be flattered to see the result of her years of vanity rendered into the perfect self portrait.

Link

Here you get a sneak peek at National Geographic’s new book Visions of Earth. The focus is on photography, but there are plenty of facts and information about our world. Link -Thanks, Carrie!

Russia seems like a chaotic place to live, with giant pigeons lurking around every corner, blighted urban landscapes full of dogs getting it on, and an extremely diverse citizenry trying their best to act like nothing’s wrong.

These photos capture a side of Russia few outside the country ever get to see, and each image has an interesting story to tell.

Link

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Brian Hart creates these really cool light painting photographs by using exposure times up to 20 minutes long. Now that’s what I call bending light! These images are so detailed that I can’t help but wonder what sort of reference he uses while the shutter is open.

Link

Artist Alan Sailer likes to fire air rifles into different objects in his garage, but unlike most shooting enthusiasts, he is able to make brilliant photos by using a laser that triggers the flash to go off at the perfect second. The resulting images are simply stunning.

Link

Was a spell cast upon the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which turned them into trees, or is this tree just a really big fan of the series? This tree with a face would have fit in quite well on the set of the Dark Crystal.

Link

This baby just might be the most powerful being in the universe, since she has harnessed the power of all Lantern Corps. emotional color spectrums!

Readers of the DC Comics Green Lantern series (among the many other Lantern Corps. related titles) know that it doesn’t stop with the power of green, but no one has ever harnessed all of the spectrum powers at once, and looked so cute wearing them all!

She even has the dreaded Black spectrum suit, but you’ll have to head to the link to see her scary side.

Link

Photographers have taken pictures of Paris in every way imaginable, but photographer Philipp Klinger aims to show us all just how symmetrical and full of patterns the City of Light really is, if you see the city through his viewfinder.

There’s an optically pleasing gallery of images to be seen at the DesignTAXI link below, try to keep your eyeballs in your head!

Link –via DesignTAXI