Few who've joined picture-based social networking sites like Instagram, or installed photo-centric apps like Hipstamatic, wouldn't 'fess up to the pleasure — however guilty — of getting artsy with snapshots. Even professional photographers have channeled the funky filters and zany lenses to create quick, cool perspectives. But only now have some creative minds thought to seize an obvious Internet presence and turn it into photogenic dynamite. We can thank Guilhem Nicolas aka Jadikan-LP, Damien Leleux, and Nicolas Bernard for turning some of Google (News - Alert) Street View into pure photo gold.

The three French photographers have taken Google street view shots of a La Bifurk, a skate park and concert venue in Grenoble, France and transformed them into luminous portraits, The Next Web reports. The artists implement a photographic style known as "light painting," for which Jadikan-LP has become famed, to literally light up random images of people skating at the site.

By using long shutter speeds and casting a motion of light throughout the frame, the trio of photographers makes it look as though light is blazing off the skaters' boards, capturing the trajectory of their movement, slowing down time. In some images the light is a ropy blue flame, in others it’s a burst of orange sparks. A normal day at the park is now a psychedelic light show. 

Jadikan-LP and company could apply this method to just about any outdoor scene to infuse it with an hypnotic element, but more importantly, they have opened the door for other photographers to apply a creative touch to Google Street View, which has always been a fascinating look into other lands, but has never held any artistic license. Could so-called neighborhood selfies be the next big thing? It would be interesting to see what novice "smartphone photographers" could do with Google Street View using the artistic vision that's been tapped into with apps like Hipstamatic.