Wellcome trust employee Zoe Middleton poses behind an artwork entitled “My Soul” by Katharine Dowson, which consists of a laser etched lead chrystal glass formation in the shape of a brain, and was created using the artists own MRI Scan, at Wellcome Collection on March 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

“I was born in the United States in 1985. As early as I can remember I’ve been a “doodler”. From even the early days I’ve always loved strange, offbeat, beautiful, and slightly melancholy things. Something about the mixed grabbed me. My love for sketching carried on throughout my high school days. Which is when I took a small class on watercolor. Watercolor is what birthed my passion for mixing colors and how a color can tell a story. In year 2009 I discovered digital painting and my new found passion for the medium. It’s been the favored medium for the past years since. I’ve used online tutorials and videos to help me learn along the way and then in late 2011 I took a workshop called Becoming a Better Artist. The beginning of 2013 I won a class from The Art Department which will start this spring.”

Anil Saxena from Mumbay, India creates amazing photo manipulations using Photoshop. These surreal photos will truly amaze you. Anil started out doing conventional darkroom photo composition and retouching them before moving these skills over to Photoshop. He is a true perfectionist: “If the image is a success but my work goes unnoticed, I’m doing my job well.” says Anil. I think we definitely should notice these works, because what he does is amazing!

Situated in the Pacific Ocean some 620 miles (1,000 km) from the South American continent, these 19 islands and the surrounding marine reserve have been called a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution”. Photo: “Close-up. We had a juvenile Red-Footed Booby come visit us on the sun deck. I got some closeups with my ultrawide 11-16mm Tokina”. (Photo by Carl Fredrickson)

Italian photographer and illustrator Giulia Pex has made a statement to the world using her dual crafts. She declared boldly “Dad, You Are My Favorite Superhero” by taking a series of family photographs of her father in ordinary settings.

A) 1st place WINNER – Roy Rimmer. “This rat was in an outdoor set I made, the set up is two meters long and a meter wide made of Perspex,it has a plywood front with holes cut in for my camera and flash guns, I placed two rusty paint cans in the set up and the rat would leap from one can too the other, I had to use flash to freeze the action”.

Blizzard in the High Peak, Derbyshire, by John Finney: “After a difficult journey in the snow, I made my way from Mam Tor down onto the Great Ridge. As the clouds got darker, I placed the tripod and camera at just the right angle to avoid snow getting onto the lens, and used a flash gun and a relatively slow shutter speed to highlight the fast motion of the blizzard”. Classic view, adult class – winner. (Photo by John Finney/Landscape Photographer of the Year)

I wanted to create the smoke effects on animals I used on some few of my female subjects.
The hardest part was that while there were only faces, here there was the whole body that needed to be “smokeified”.