[notjustgraphics]

A milder effect similar to what you've shown can be achieved with 'Fish Eye' lenses which are available for SLR Cameras.

Alternatively, you can play with the Filter --> Distort -- > Spherize tool in Photoshop OR the Filter --> Distort --> Lens Correction.

Both will allow you to achieve a sperhical effect on a photo, but i recon some further processing will be needed to achieve the results shown in your post.

I also suspect there are plugins for Photoshop that improve the spherical distortion ability.

In playing with the idea myself, i found that if i increased the canvas size and applied the Filter --> Distort --> Spherize filter 3 or 4 times, i could get a very dramatic effect.

I noticed some loss in sharpness though, but my source image was minimal to begin with.

Regards,

Mike.