Photoshop is an incredibly powerful piece of photo editing software, enabling genuine artists to use it to create incredible pieces. But have you ever looked at a photo and thought it must have been created entirely in Photoshop, because there's no way it would be possible to create without it?

That's exactly what these following 10 photographers want you to think. All their work is created using some clever camera trickery, with maybe the odd bit of Photoshop just to merge different photos together.

Apart from that, they are formed without photo manipulation. Amazing.

Felix Hernandez

It would be fair to call Felix Hernandez an artist, rather than just a photographer. He uses scale models to create his work, and the lengths he goes to to create the perfect picture are mind-boggling.

Without seeing how his photos are made, you really would be forgiven for thinking they were made entirely using photo manipulation. He occasionally uses Photoshop to merge his photos together, but all the smoke and weather effects are created using products such as corn flour.

Michael Lamoller

Michel Lamoller creates his Tautochronos series of photographs by shooting the same location at different times and printing them out. He then takes a scalpel and cuts them in various ways, before placing all the layers over the top of each other.

He takes a photo of this final piece to give the resulting image. The effect of people melting into their surroundings is said to depict the fact people are always changing over time.

Alexander Augusteijn

This Dutch photographer has mastered the art of high-speed photography. You may be happy taking a photo of a moving car, or someone running, but Augusteijn takes photos of bullets going through drops of water, lightbulbs, glasses and practically anything he can lay his hands on. He doesn't use Photoshop at all, just a lot of patience to get the right set up.

Kirsty Mitchell

British fashion designer turned photographer, Kirsty Mitchell, used the pain of losing her mother to cancer to embark on a six-year project to create Wonderland. It's a series of 74 photographs that are inspired by her mother's love of books.

Some shots would take months to produce, as Mitchell wanted to wait for the perfect location. Her fashion experience allowed her to create the exuberant costumes. Because of the colours used and the overall perfection of each photo, it can be easy to assume they were made using Photoshop.

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade takes what could be seen as a simple practice to create some fantastic photographs. Her images combine the 3D world, with what initially appear to be paintings that you think have been superimposed in. That's not the case though, as the painted subjects in her photos are physically painted with colours to represent the real-life colours they're replacing. Everything she wants to paint in a scene - a person, furniture, food, for example - all gets painted to give the illusion of 2D and 3D worlds merging together.

Julia Fullerton-Batten

Julia Fullerton-Batten's "Teenage Stories" series looks like it could have easily been created using Photoshop. However, she actually uses real models, and actual handmade sets, albeit scaled down considerably. The series was created to depict the transitional period for girls, from the teenage years into womanhood.

Patrick Rochon

Patrick Rochon is a light painter who uses moving objects to create his art. His projects have included attaching over 2,500 LEDs to three Infiniti cars and having them drive around in patterns, to a campaign for his work that used 24 cameras placed in a circle and triggered all at once to create a long-exposure shot.

www.patrickthelightpainter.com

Stenograffia

Anna Hristova And Dmitry Chabanov image 1
Anna Hristova and Dmitry Chabanov

Russian artists Anna Hristova and Dmitry Chabanov, under the collective name of Stenograffia, used a series of techniques to make their picture actually look as though it was produced in Photoshop. A team of artists painted a graffiti-covered abandoned car and dumpster white, traced outlines of a checkerboard pattern, and then painted it to make it appear as though it's a deleted layer.

Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin places himself in his photos, but on first glance, you might not notice him. He paints himself to look exactly like the background he's replacing, to completely blend in and appear invisible.

Adam Makarenko

Makarenko's images look as though they could have been taken from spacecraft, but they're actually a mixture of foam spheres, cement and clay.

Even a turntable is sometimes used to help create a planet's rings. His landscapes are sometimes so big he has to shoot them in sections and the only time he uses Photoshop is to piece all the images together.