Erik Johansson creates realistic photos of impossible scenes -- capturing ideas, not moments. In this witty how-to, the Photoshop wizard describes the principles he uses to make these fantastical scenarios come to life, while keeping them visually plausible.

The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.

Nathan Myhrvold talks about a few of his latest fascinations -- animal photography, archaeology, BBQ and generally being an eccentric genius multimillionaire. Listen for wild stories from the (somewhat raunchy) edge of the animal world.

In this deeply personal talk, photographer Ryan Pfluger shares how difficult times prompted him to take a series of road trips during which he discovered the power of photography to foster connection. Describing the tradition's unique place in our image-saturated culture, he explains how portrait photography -- even if its just self-portraiture ...

Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline became an obsession. His years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction or decay. Here, he tells a deeply personal story of the craft that nearly killed him, and shows breathtaking image...

Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography -- to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.

Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, war photographer James Nachtwey shows his life's work and asks TED to help him continue telling the story with innovative, exciting uses of news photography in the digital era.

For years, tactile photographs for the blind conveyed a limited amount of information about the original image and focused mainly on basic descriptive elements. In this talk, artist and photographer Truls Nord describes a printing technique he developed to help blind people experience photography in all its glory.

Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look “around” corners or see inside the body without X-rays.

Nature’s beauty can be fleeting -- but not through Louie Schwartzberg’s lens. His stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, serves as a meditation on being grateful for every day.

Two decades into his career photographer Levon Biss decided to cast aside humans and focus on a new subject: insects. In this visual talk, Biss explains how he developed a fascinating process using composite macro-photography to capture stunning images of creatures that measure mere millimeters.

Artist Ian Strange turns decrepit suburban homes into art. Using paint and chainsaws, photography and film, he interrogates our concept of home and the narratives we build around it. In this talk, Strange discusses the creative and personal impulses behind his work, and invites us to challenge our own relationships with the places we call home.

Our eyes are practically magical, but they cannot see everything. For instance, the naked eye cannot see the moment where all four of a horse's legs are in the air or the gradual life cycle of plants -- but cameras can capture these moments. Bill Shribman gives examples where photography can pick up where the eye leaves off. [Directed by Darcy V...

By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, Alison Jackson explores our desire to get personal with celebs. Contains graphic images.

When photographed under a 3D microscope, grains of sand appear like colorful pieces of candy and the stamens in a flower become like fantastical spires at an amusement park. Gary Greenberg reveals the thrilling details of the micro world.

Angélica Dass's photography challenges how we think about skin color and ethnic identity. In this personal talk, hear about the inspiration behind her portrait project, Humanæ, and her pursuit to document humanity's true colors rather than the untrue white, red, black and yellow associated with race.

When photographer Stefen Chow took his young daughter to a playground for the first time, he was struck by her visceral reaction to the new surroundings. To better understand her interaction with these spaces and to correct his own detachment from them, Chow attached a camera to a drone and launched an aerial photography project about Singapore'...

“Men fight wars, and women mourn them,” says documentary photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind. With stark, arresting images from the Maidan protests in Ukraine, the TED Fellow shows us intimate faces from the revolution. A grim and beautiful talk.

Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects -- from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can't see.

Photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor was living in Afghanistan -- until his risky work forced him to leave the country. But for Batoor, a member of a displaced ethnic group called the Hazara, moving home to Pakistan proved dangerous too. And finding a safer place wasn't as simple as buying a plane ticket. Instead, he was forced to pay a human smuggl...

How did fishermen record their trophy catches before the invention of photography? In 19th century Japan, fishing boats were equipped with rice paper, sumi-e ink, and brushes in order to create gyotaku: elaborate rubbings of freshly caught fish. K. Erica Dodge recounts the story of this competitive fishing culture, plus some tips on how to make ...

Photographer Levon Biss was looking for a new, extraordinary subject when one afternoon he and his young son popped a ground beetle under a microscope and discovered the wondrous world of insects. Applying his knowledge of photography to subjects just five millimeters long, Biss created a process for shooting insects in unbelievable microscopic ...

When Jimmy Nelson traveled to Siberia to photograph the Chukchi people, elders told him: "You cannot photograph us. You have to wait, you have to wait until you get to know us, you have to wait until you understand us." In this gorgeously photo-filled talk, join Nelson's quest to understand -- the world, other people, himself -- by making astoni...

Art fair curator Touria El Glaoui is on a mission to showcase vital new art from African nations and the diaspora. She shares beautiful, inspiring, thrilling contemporary art that tells powerful stories of African identity and history -- including works by Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj and Zimbabwean pai...

You don't need to plan an exotic trip to find creative inspiration. Just look up, says Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. As he shares charming photos of nature's finest aerial architecture, Pretor-Pinney calls for us all to take a step off the digital treadmill, lie back and admire the beauty in the sky above.

Nature photographer Frans Lanting uses vibrant images to take us deep into the animal world. In this short, visual talk he calls for us to reconnect with other earthly creatures, and to shed the metaphorical skins that separate us from each other.

Photographer Lisa Kristine travels the world documenting the unbearably harsh realities of modern-day slavery. She shares hauntingly beautiful images -- miners in the Congo, bricklayers in Nepal -- that illuminate the plight of the 27 million souls enslaved worldwide.

Alexa Meade takes an innovative approach to art. Not for her a life of sketching and stretching canvases. Instead, she selects a topic and then paints it--literally. She covers everything in a scene--people, chairs, food, you name it--in a mask of paint that mimics what's below it. In this eye-opening talk Meade shows off photographs of some of ...

When we witness something amazing, many of us instinctively pull out our phones and snap pictures. Is this obsession with photographing everything impacting our experiences? In a meditative talk, Erin Sullivan reflects on how being more intentional with her lens enhanced her ability to enjoy the moment -- and could help you do the same, too.

The natural world is one of immense, awe-inspiring and even therapeutic beauty that many of us rarely connect with. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg uses bleeding edge nature photography to make a case for the restorative qualities of nature immersion and for technology's potential as our bridge to such experiences.