Michael Kenna has very high contrast images. His photography is often taken during dusk or at night with up to 10 hour exposures. I will have agree that the burned in skies in Michael Kenna’s work is gorgeous and works because of that soft hazy effect that is in many of his photographs. 
Kim Høltermand does exactly what I hope to do with my own photography. I love the very graphical feel to his more industrial pieces and the dirty texture that the concrete has. The images pull the subject outside of their location, making it generic and recognizable to any location. And I know that Garth doesn’t agree with me, but I absolutely love blown out skies. I feel that they give the image a more bold and graphic feel.
Also, trees because Høltermand does awesome photography outside of his more industrial/architectural work. 
http://www.behance.net/Holtermand
Another Iphone app I found! (So you can now stare at my PC keyboard instead of my laptop from my previous post about the instagram.)
Camera Awesome by SmugMug is essentially the same thing as instagram. You take your picture, then you have a list of filters you can choose from. Camera Awesome gives you more variety for your filters (although some you have to pay for). Once you’re satisfied with the result, you’ll probably spend about a minute twiddling your thumbs as you wait for the file to save.
In the end, Camera Awesome gives you more variety of filters then instagram does, but takes a bit more of your time and is less convenient. It lacks the function to post your images onto facebook/twitter with ease. If you’re really going to spend the time on Camera Awesome to create a pretty photo with some pretty filters you might as well bring your fancy camera and throw the image into photoshop.
CGtextures is another great resource that can be used in other mediums. It’s photography specifically taken in mind to be used in 3d models. The images are very accessible to artists looking for texture images to use for their works, “the textures may be used for free in 2D or 3D computer graphics, movies, printed media, computer games and 3D models. When bundled with a 3D model or scene you are allowed to sell it as a package.”
I’ve used these images to create texture in a few of my illustrations. The images are very clear and crisp and ranges from anywhere from paper and paint splatters to landscapes and elephants.
Book Heart by Eric Martin
I’m sure many of you have seen an image that use Bokeh. I honestly had no idea what it was called till now though. Bokeh is a term from the Japanese word “boke” which means to blur. In photography, we use the word Bokeh for parts of an image that may not be in focus.
The Bokeh can be easily created in many different shapes using just a sheet of black paperboard. You can find a tutorial on how to do so here.
Bokeh has a lovely graphical feel to the photo, creating a surreal, dreamlike feel to the image. It can also have a highly textual feel.
Bokeh by Mohammed Bin Ghulaitah
I thought I’d see what all the hype was about with the Instagram app. Voila, my first Instagram photo! =D
It’s basically an app that has you take your photograph, insert a filter, then post to facebook, twitter, etc. Instant shiney beautiful filtered photo :3
If nothing, the app lets you post the image quite a bit easier then through the iphone camera and would be quite nice as a one a day project. And your iphone is likely to be on your person when you happen to go for a nice walk through town.
I retook the photo, showing another of the filter effects (they also add these border things) and the original file. If you try it and are attached to your original unedited images, make sure not to add the filter before saving the file. You can always choose an image and add a filter to it afterwards.
Bjoern Eweres directed these beautiful photographs of inside musical instruments for an advertising campaign for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I love how soft the lighting is within the images, and how each one looks like a large room rather then a cramped space that could be held in human arms. Also, after seeing Miyazaki’s new film Arrietty, all I can see is a small person climbing, dancing, or sitting within these spaces.
Alessandro Calzolaro (known as Storvandre on Flicker) is a Service Delivery Manager.
His photography seems to encompass everything, landscapes, architecture, flowers, clouds, murals, statues, and more. However, the images that caught my eye were his photographs of old historic buildings and statues (which I have streamed on my iphone through flipbook’s “Art History Images” =D).
If you’ve noticed, I like a lot of artwork that can serve as an inspiration or reference for other art. Calzolaro’s artwork looks like it can serve not only as a beautiful photograph, but as documentation.
http://www.pixheaven.net/galerie_us.php?id=22
Moon Games is a lovely set of photographs by Laurent Lavender. The idea is a simple one, the photographer plays with the figure and the moon, much the photographs tourists take of themselves tipping over or holding up the leaning tower.
Each set of photographs tell a tale. A man plants the moon, or children at play pass the moon much like a volley ball to each other. In many of the photos the figure is a silhouette (and if you were in my body shots group you’d know that I’m a sucker for silhoettes). I feel that the set titled Moon Games (where the figure is cutting the moon with scissors or catching it with a net) worked the best out of the series as the dark contrast of the figure and ground against the blue sky and moon was the most visually striking.
I mentioned Marcus Ranum in one of my previous posts and decided to elaborate on the artist.
Marcus J. Ranum is a computer and network security researcher credited with innovations in firewalls and intrusion detection systems. He has a large stock photography account on DeviantART that he keeps as a hobby. Basically his gallery is full of the body shot project, his subjects ranging from classical nude photography much like what you would see in a figure drawing class, motion studies, to just about any prop that you can think of.
He makes his work extremely accessible to artists to use in photo manipulations and are great as reference photos for artists learning anatomy.
http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/
Ranum sets his entire gallery as mature in protest to DeviantART’s censorship, stating that “a regime of self censorship is a greater attack on artistic creativity than totalitarian control would be; it forces the artist to victimize themself.”
If anyone is interested in going back into the light room and doing more body shots, I highly suggest that they take a look at Ranum’s tutorials. He also has a lighting guide for photographers seeking to create their own light room on a budget and shows that low budget lights can still create beautiful photos.