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.

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.

Earlier this week, Amsterdam hosted its very own TEDx event at the Stadsschouwburg (City Theater). TED, for those unfamiliar, is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the spread of ideas. Conferences are held around the world filled with talks from people with “Ideas Worth Spreading,” and this week the event came to Amsterdam.

30 speakers took to the stage to share their ideas, and one group created an online photo book to browse through the speakers. The project is called TEDx Portraits and features sepia Polaroid-style photos of each speaker displayed in a digital flip-book.

The folks over at TAB Worldmedia (makers of the Tweeps Around layer) caught wind of this project and teamed up with the group to bring the TEDx Portraits to Layar! If you open up Layar and search for “TEDx Portraits,” you will be able to browse through the TEDx Amsterdam speakers using Augmented Reality.

“We were totally inspired by this concept because we believe that this is exactly the kind of storytelling idea that needs to be brought to a mobile augmented reality concept,” writes TAB Worldmedia on its blog. The portraits are displayed in a circle around you, and turning in place will display information about each individual.

To see me about this project, head on over to the TEDx Portraits homepage, or check it out yourself in Layar!

As fans of history, we here at Layar see Augmented Reality as an amazing tool for learning more about the past. Already, layers like the Berlin Wall layer allow people to see history come alive through 3D models.

Another fascinating example of this type of Augmented Reality is in the works as part of a collaboration between Lightning Laboratories’ Gene Becker and Stanford University Knight Fellow Adriano Farano. Becker, who is focused on experience design for blending physical and digital storytelling, and Farano, who is looking to find ways to use AR in journalism, have been experimenting with historical photographs in Layar and Hoppala, a tool for creating Layar content.

By making historical photographs viewable as objects within Layar at the locations where they were taken, viewers can achieve a better grasp on history - and the early tests by Becker and Farano look very intriguing.

The pair chose to use historical photos of Stanford as their first test images - specifically those from before a massive earthquake in 1906. Several parts of the old campus were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake, and the evidence of missing architecture comes alive through Augmented Reality.

In the example above, the square structure on the right of the picture is actually the base of the right leg of the arch in the old photograph. Memorial Arch, as it was known, had to be demolished due to damage it received during the earthquake. In another example, a present-day statue is revealed to be the same as one which plunged through a sidewalk after being knocked from its perch during the quake.

The great thing about historical photographs is that there are millions of them in libraries and archives around the world, and dropping them into Layar is not terribly difficult. With Layar Creation Tools like Hoppala (which we will be profiling later this week), this process is even easier. We are excited to see what else Becker and Farano can create with further experiments!

People all around the world share their adventures using Mobypicture to all their social networks. From their mobile phone they easily upload photos, video and audio to their friends on networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, their blog and numerous other social sites and services.

Why build a layer on top of MobyPictures API
Remco: The Moby layer lets you explore the latest picture and video postings of other Moby users nearest to you. You can view the content through the mobile phones’ camera in Augmented Reality, or on a map and there is a List view. Clicking the content gives you more info (comments etc.) and options; the routing how to get to the spot where the picture was taken and a link to the content on the Mobypicture website, where the user can get more info and leave a comment themselves.

In which way is this layer an added value for the services of MobyPicture
Remco: The layer proposition is a powerful solution to engage visitors of events and exploration of brand related content, bringing realtime experiences to like minded people instantly.

What can we expect in the near future from TAB worldmedia
Remco: Today we  launched the first brand extension of the Moby layer for Rabobank Tour de France. This branded Mobypicture layer is part of the MobyNow solution, the social media content aggregation platform Mobypicture recently launched as a managed service helping publishers and brands to regain control of the social media conversation.

The Branded RaboNow layer lets you explore the content around you in augmented reality. Showing you the latest photo and video Mobypicture postings and Twitter updates of the Rabosport Cycling teams and those of the Press and all Fans, nearest to you. The Layer shows all the location tagged content of the realtime platform Rabosport Now.

Mathys  van Abbe, founder of Mobypicture, comments: “The branded Mobypicture Layer solution enables brands to become part of user experiences in realtime. It’s contextual, value added and non intrustive.”