Today I bring you a few ‘fun-with-photos’ links.

The Infinite Photograph from National Geographic’s Green Guide — You’ve probably all seen those really cool photocollages: VanGogh’s Starry Night redone through tiny pictures from NASA, Yoda reconstructed with a million Star Wars screencaps, etc.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve wished over and over for a magnifying glass while you were looking at them–fortunately, the folks over at NG seem to be a lot like me.  *wink*  Their Infinite Photograph gives you an opening scene, into which you may zoom to see how it is constructed out of hundreds of other photographs, and keep zooming in until you get an entirely new scene–then start zooming all over again from there.  Not just a really whizbang techno effect, it’s also a collection of incredibly beautiful images from all over the world.  And if you’re lucky, it will also inspire you to pick up your camera and head outdoors.

Miniature Art — I happened across this collection of photographs/miniatures by accident while working on an Inventors’ Workshop challenge.  There’s something fascinating about seeing the world from the Brobdignagian point of view, and though some of the pictures in this collection are clearly the work of a somewhat quirky sense of humor and propriety, they’re fascinating, fun, and a great way to start a discussion about scale in math, form, function, and design in science, point of view in literature or art, and ‘just why are the Belgians so fond of Mini-Europe anyway?’ in geography.  🙂

Behind the Scenes at the Harvard Museums — Have I mentioned yet my firm belief that a lot of us who work in museums do so because we really like getting to go through the ‘staff only’ doors to see the cool hidden stuff?  Wired Science brings us some really beautiful photos of some of the strangest, coolest, most random hidden favorites from the Harvard Museum of Natural History.  (I notice they do not include the classroom where I had my Urbanization of Ancient Cultures class.  Which was cool.  And dusty.)

And finally, a graphics resource, just for the heck of it.  You have a pretty cool picture for an exhibit/mailing/program/birthday card, but really don’t know how to frame it or what color scheme to use?

Check out Pictaculous, which allows you to load a picture and then will give you a selection of color palettes from which to choose for further graphic design.  It’s a fun tool, and if you’re feeling really brave you can screencap your favorite palette and drop it right into your photo editing program to have available for your color selection tool.