Whether you’re a pro yourself, or your own photography skills begin and end with Instagram, everyone has looked at an incredible photo and wondered “How’d they get it to look like that?!?”

Multi-national camera and lens manufacturer Nikon is committed to answering that question in order to help less experienced photographers improve their skills, and (much to our delight) they’ve used Layar to create a mobile Augmented Reality experience aimed at educating amateur photographers.

Nikon Spots is a collection of photographs taken throughout the Netherlands (mostly Amsterdam and Rotterdam, at the moment), by members of Nikon Professional Services (NPS), that are geo-located to where they were shot. Each photo includes details about the camera settings used to take it as well as tips regarding position, composition, light and more.

The layer creates a highly-informative mobile experience regarding how to shoot a great photograph in your current surroundings, but if you want to see the full-sized photographs the content is also available on the Nikon Spots website.

Nikon’s NPS photographers will be continuously adding photographs to the layer in these cities and more, so there’s always something new to learn! You can also “Like” their Facebook page to get notifications when new spots are added.

From Jan Rothuizen’s AR(t) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum.

A healthy number of museum-related layers already exist on the Layar platform. The Andy Warhol Museum layer displays important Warhol points around the city of Pittsburgh, Jan Rothuizen’s ARtours layer augments the Stedelijk Museum here in Amsterdam and Sander Veenhof and Mark Skwarek’s “uninvited” exhibition is on display at MoMa in New York City.

While most of our early adopters have focused on art museums, AR has a massive amount of potential for all types of museums.

If you’re not yet convinced, take it up with Paul Stork and Ebelien Pondaag of  Fabrique, members of the Layar Partner Network. The pair is presenting a paper titled Augmented Reality and the Museum Experience (which you can read here) and is hosting a workshop this week in Philadelphia at the Museums and the Web 2011 conference.

We’ll post Fabrique’s presentation slides later this week, so keep an eye out.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the protests and uprisings that are sweeping through North Africa like wildfire. Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have all seen massive movements of civilians protesting their government, thanks in no small part to the presence and organizational power of social media.

When a dictator’s first strike against protestors is to shut off the Internet, you know that the age of the digital revolution has arrived. The social web is not just helping to fight these battles, but also to remember them.

John Craig Freeman, a digital artist and new media professor at Emerson College, has created several layers promoting social awareness and memorializing pivotal moments in history, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square “Tank Man” incident.

The morning after the Chinese government forcibly removed protestors from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, an unknown man blocked a column of Chinese tanks simply by standing in front of them. Images of the tank vs. man standoff became a well-known symbol of the struggle between the Chinese people and their government at that time.

Freeman has allowed this moment in history to live on through augmented reality. With his Tiananmen SquARed layer, visitors to Beijing can see a 3D representation of the incident appear right before their eyes.

“Although it has been more than twenty years since Tiananman Protest took place in 1989, the authority persistently uses all means erasing the facts that Chinese people pursued democracy in this democratic and anti-corruption movement,” says Freeman in the layer’s description. “History should not be forgotten.”

Freeman’s other layers include “Décharge De Rebut Toxique,” a toxic waste art installation; and “Azadi SquARed,” a digital memorial to Neda Agha-Soltan, an Iranian citizen gunned down during the 2009 Tehran protests.

If you have watched the beautiful, brand new Layar video which we introduced yesterday then you undoubtedly spotted a very interesting layer found only in San Francisco. No? Missed it? Well then be sure to re-watch the video and scrub to around the 48 second mark.

See it now? The layer is called “Historic Market St.” and it was produced by bigBigBang. Using public domain archival footage from 1906 (okay, not exactly 1899, but I was only seven years off), this layer allows you to take a leisurely stroll down Market Street in San Francisco and view video clips showing what the street looked like over 100 years ago.

The video was shot from a camera placed on a street car, providing an interesting point-of-view as the car rolls east down Market Street. The street is filled with people milling about, children running, chaotic horse-drawn buggy traffic jams and these radical new inventions terrorizing the streets - automobiles!

As you walk down Market Street, different segments of the video begin playing, unveiling the early days of the centuries-old street right before your eyes.

The video is part of the archives of Rick Prelinger, a filmmaker and archivist whose massive collection was acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2002. Many of the films of the Prelinger Archives were placed into the public domain by way of the Internet Archive, including the video featured in the Market Street layer.

The Prelinger Archives contain over 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial and amateur films - over 2,000 of which can be accessed on the Internet Archive. Wouldn’t it be great if some enterprising individual decided to gather these films, geotag them and place them in a database connected to a layer? History would come alive on more streets in more cities, not just one main drag in San Francisco. We at Layar think this would be a terrific project.

Looking into the past is one of the truly fascinating and thrilling uses of Augmented Reality as we mentioned not long ago with the use of historic photographs in Layar. Historic Market St. allows you to immerse yourself in the San Francisco of 1906 - just watch out for those darned horse-drawn buggies and crazy drivers!

To view the entire 1906 Market Street film (all 14 minutes of it), be sure to visit the Internet Archive where the video is available to watch or download.

Here on the Layar blog we have featured many layers that help us peer into the past with photographs and historical information. Augmented Reality has enormous educational potential both in and out the classroom, and one layer is helping visitors of old battlefields to envision history.

The layer “Battle of Franklin Sites” shows Layar users POIs associated with the historic American Civil War battle in Franklin, Tennessee. These include historic buildings, military cemeteries, medical facilities, locations of notable deaths, and even models of the front battle lines. Some practical tourist information, such as the location of nearby public restrooms, is also included.

Tourism officials in Franklin are hoping that using emerging mobile technology like Augmented Reality will help attract and engage visitors as the 150th anniversary of the war approaches in 2014. Why visit an old battlefield only to stand around and imagine what happened where? With this layer, visitors can use their mobile phones to see exactly where the battle lines were drawn.

Interestingly enough, this isn’t the only project using Augmented Reality in conjunction with the history of the American Civil War. The Civil War Augmented Reality Project is an effort by teachers in Pennsylvania to use the technology to enhance student experiences at historic Civil War sites. Along with mobile applications, the group hopes to install stationary “pay binoculars” which they hope will attract less technical visitors to engage with Augmented Reality.

These historical sites are prime targets just waiting to be enhanced by great Augmented Reality experiences. Soon, gone will be the days of tour guides saying, “A long time ago, important evens transpired right here on this ground.” Instead they will allow the visitors to see for themselves with Augmented Reality.

Layer: Battle of Franklin Sites
Location: Franklin, TN, U.S.A.
Required: iPhone or Android device
Developer: GDM