You may have seen this amazing animation and thought it took an impossible amount of work to create, but there are multiple sites tools, and do-it-yourself tutorials that greatly simplify the process. This particular piece, which has been circulating the web, is a GIF from the music video below (scroll a few minutes in to see various examples).

Popular enough now to warrant its own definition and description, here is a summary of the trending phenomena: “Hyper-lapse photography [is] a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point-of-interest.” Other names for this include: Walklapse, Spacelapse, Stop-Motion Time-lapse, Motion Timelapse and Moving Timelapse.

As for those wishing to follow suit and create something similar: the Google Street View Hyperlapse creator is by far the easiest online generator for these kinds of panoramic captures – you simply set start and end points as well as a point of focus then click a button. Be warned: experimentation with this tool may be habit-forming.

Per this tool’s creators, who have made their API-based work openly available on GitHub, “creating them [can] require precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations. We aimed at making the process simpler by using Google Street View as an aid, but quickly discovered that it could be used as the source material. It worked so well, we decided to design a very usable UI around our engine.”

For those who want to customize their work and take it to the next level, the video above walks creators through a more direct use of Google Maps, screen captures and more nuanced edits. While their approach presumes you have and know how to use a video editor (higher barrier to entry), they also go into more detail about how to pick the perfect shots. For instance, their video explains how to line them up and utilize motion blur effects in the foreground to enhance the visual experience – all techniques that can be applied in Photoshop or a similar program to GIFs as well as videos.

Finally, lest you think this is a brand-new fad, consider Devil’s Circuit from Takashi Ito, which took the same wraparound approach to buildings in 1988 – the big difference now is simply the accessibility and ease of tools with which anyone can make something of this kind.

Like a flip book, there is no text, and each page of these volumes contains a slightly different scene. Except instead of paging through them rapidly to reveal the story, the ‘reader’ unfolds the entire book at once into a dynamic panorama.

Artist Yusuke Oono has a whole series of these 360-degree books telling stories of daily home life, remote jungle adventures, and everything in between.

Each one unfolds into a three-dimensional scene, created using CAD-derived designs and laser-cutting programs, completed with a splash of color.

The resulting negative space allows viewers to see through pages and visualize scenes, assembling them from the two-dimensional information on each layer – like rotational cut-outs of some miniature reality (or slices of life, if you like).

Ground, trees, walls and roofs provide the context – small figures of women, men and children tell silent stories that change with perspective and light. Each page is both a moment in space and in time. Brilliant, beautiful, simple.

There are more ways than most people realize to map a flat image onto a sphere – though the results are invariably surreal and often incredible. These five phenomenal photographers take amazing panoramic images and wrap them to create fantastic floating planets from simple scenes. How small is your world?

Wonderfully Elegant Little Worlds by Gadl:

Alexandre Duret-Lutz – aka “Gadl” – started with the old point-and-shoot approach just a few years back but has since graduated to spherical panoramas and spirals. In a short time, he has gone from capturing ordaniary scens to carefully and selectively exagerating key elements in his complex spherical compositions, playing with tone, contrast, foreground and background. Gald also has a number of helpful links for people who want to create planets of their own.

Beautiful HDR-Edited Scenic Spheres by Heiwa:

Heiwa is a Japenese photographer who layers iterative editing methods to create complex visual compositions from simple or even otherwise dull-seeming scenes. Sometimes he plays up a single element, allowing it to press out of the core ‘planet’ of his spherical shots. Other times he adds HDR and other effects to enhance tones and heighten surrealistic effects.

Vibrantly Colorful Natural Mini-Planets by Seb Przd:

These wonderful seasonal planetoids are far from Seb’s only impressive photographic works. In fact, he bends and twists images in all kinds of ingenious ways. His experiments with conformal mappings have carried him far beyond spherical compositions and he has, at times, explored dozens ingenious alternate ways to represent a single scene or recreate as single image.

Urban and Rural Spherical Scenes by Boltron:

Nate Bolt – aka “Boltron” – is an adept photographer even when he is not tinkering with complex three dimensional view of beautiful rural landscapes or stunning city centers. His spheres, however, have a way of showing the most urban and rural extremes and of highlighting critical elements, from tall buildings to landmarks, that fall within the scope of his photos.

In-Your-Face Spherical Panoramics by Vitroids:

Masakazu “Matto” Matsumoto – aka Vitroids – is a self-proclaimed “maker, programmer, wanderer data-miner” this Japanese photographer takes an upfront approach to creating his little worlds, bringing elements sharply into the foreground to confront the viewer. In some cases this involves letting structures envelop the scene and in others this means taking photographs from seemingly impossible viewpoints.

(Article in part thanks to Fred Yake of the Digital Imaging Association)

One of the limitations of photography has always been the camera’s limited field of view.  Even the fanciest and most technologically advanced camera can’t match the ability of the human viewer to see the entire landscape around them.  Since the birth of photography, photographers have been looking for a way to make the photo viewing experience more dynamic and inclusive.

Panoramic photography is the usual choice of photogs who want to give their pictures a wider frame.  However, there are several ways to define panoramic photography.  The methods used to create panoramas range from the simple piecing together of overlapping prints to wide-angle cameras to sophisticated computerized 360-degree virtual reality (VR) photos, and everywhere in between.

Special cameras make panoramic shots simpler for the photographer than methods like segmented panoramic or full rotation panoramic photography. Fred Yake uses a variety of cameras to produce his stunning panoramic shots all around the world. These wide-angle photos appear to have been produced with the use of a fixed-lens or wide-field camera. This type of camera allows the photographer to take advantage of a wide frame, capturing more of the subject without the difficulties of taking multiple shots.

Photographs like these by London photographer Will Pearson are a great example of the unique perspective that can be gained with the use of fisheye lenses and some special software. These images turn mundane landscape photographs into absolutely amazing one-of-a-kind works of art.

Panoramic photos open a whole new world of possibilities to photographers.  It’s possible to depict an entire scene as though the viewer is right in the middle of it. These images of Burning Man 2008 by Brad Templeton draw you into the picture as though you’re seeing it all first-hand. (Click each photo to see the full panorama.)

The 360-degree interactive panorama gained popularity as a way to provide virtual tours of real estate and places of interest. Today, the method is used for a variety of causes. Jook Leung’s photos of the World Trade Center site memorials and NYC New Year’s Eve celebrations let people all around the world experience these events without making the trip to New York City. (Click each photo to see the full interactive panorama.)

Panoramas by Rolf Ris take the method to new heights. His technique makes every photo seem like its own little world. With a wide variety of subject matter and interesting locations, his panoramas are among the most interesting and visually stimulating out there.  (Click each photo to see the full interactive panorama.)