National Geographic Best Photo Collection.
Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Nature at its Best
Friday, December 2nd, 2005Science & Photography Through the Microscope
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005They say everything looks better from a distance, but here’s proof that it’s not always true. While no one’s itching to get close to the mosquito, when it’s magnified a couple of thousand times, the notorious pest begins to look almost…beautiful. With this site, you can zoom in on the detailed anatomy of a black ant or fruit fly, simulate the use of a scanning electron microscope to magnify a bee’s eye or a carpet beetle (up to 4000x), discover the 12 Most Wanted bugs (like our old pals the cockroach or the cat flea), and browse “over 1500 micrographs of scientific, biological, and medical subjects photographed with light and electron microscopes.” So if you don’t know an ant’s, er, rear end from its abdomen…don’t worry, you will.
spoof signs
Monday, November 28th, 2005A new book, Signs of Life, by Dave Askwith and Alex Normanton, features spoof signs which lampoon officious notices and labels that inform and instruct.
Nature pics of the Week
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Photographer of the Week
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005[Flash site] Some absolutely stunning shots.
National Geographic’s WildCam Africa
Saturday, November 5th, 2005We admit, there are days we wish we’d followed our nine-year-old aspirations and wandered off to Africa to study the animals. This is one of them. Pete’s Pond was created by Pete Le Roux, the general manager of Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve. Because poachers frequented the nearby Limpopo River, Pete decided to help repopulate the reserve by digging a pond to provide an alternative watering source. And with some technical help from a webcam, you can see what kind of crowd now hangs out at Pete’s Pond. Get sighting updates,
or just check out what the elephant and leopard researchers are spending their time on. And if you can’t tell a steenbok from an eland or an African civet from a large-spotted genet, the animal gallery can help you out. If you happen to catch the pond at a slow moment, you can relive busier times with video highlights. But in only one hour, we saw a herd of elephants, a sprinkling of zebras, a variety of birds, and one lone warthog. We were working, we swear!
Botany Photo of the Day
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005
Inspired by NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, the gardeners and plant enthusiasts at the University of British Columbia’s Botanical Centre have grown their very own photo blog. The first entry, on April 5, 2005, of a Chinese parasol storax, let it be known that these pictures would be painterly and lush. From a close-up of ferns, a Himalayan blue poppy, or this delicate fragrant granadilla, the diverse plants of Canada and the plentiful holdings of the UBC garden bloom forth. Categories include mosses, conifers, and the always-popular flowering plants. If you’re the type who thinks fungus is don’t-touch-that gross, dare to view these beauties. The garden syndicates its content through RSS, so plant a feed and see a new picture blossom each day.
60 second story
Monday, August 29th, 2005This literary contest asks writers to compose a short story, then record themselves reading it (in roughly 60 seconds) with a digital camera. The resulting low-bandwidth video clips are then posted online, and they are generally pretty strange. Most contestants place their cameras on top of their computer monitors and read aloud, lending themselves a strange blue-green pallor. Some of the more tech-savvy have constructed short films, with quick cuts and zooms. While the rules state that the stories must be “complete” and have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a lot of them lean towards the abstract. Our favorite story is “Charles,” about a fire-breathing Japanese monster with a Godzilla complex. We also really dug the auteurism of “Pillow, Pillow” by Jason Nelson. Decide for yourself.
Photospot
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005A photo blog about learning Photography using Digital Camera! Check out it is a place to share tips, tricks, techniques, tutorials, ideas, experiments and experience related digital photography, including digital cameras, image processing software and photography in general.
photography Chinese style
Friday, March 11th, 2005
Their Circular Life
Monday, March 7th, 2005
We’re not sure what to call this one. Interactive time lapse photography? Visual urban ambience? Regardless, it’s clever, evocative, and strangely calming. Here’s the premise: stationary cameras took several hundred images throughout 24-hour periods in five urban settings in Italy. Using a tool akin to a virtual iPod click wheel, you can scroll through the day’s events in a train station, two public parks, a traffic intersection, or a canal in Venice. This soothing meditation on urban life is as much about sound as it is pictures; depending on the time of day, you hear birds twittering, traffic roaring, children playing, etc. Feel free to speed things up, slow things down, or stop time altogether. Can we settle on “visual haiku”?
The Orchid Show
Tuesday, March 1st, 2005
February 26 to March 27, 2005
Imagine this: You are a conservationist rushing down the Amazon River in a dugout canoe, surrounded by dense, almost impenetrable jungle. You paddle over to the muddy riverbank and begin making your way through the trees and vines. And suddenly you see it: the rare orchid you’ve been hunting for months, ready and waiting for you to uncover its secrets.
Want to continue the journey? Then visit The Orchid Show at The New York Botanical Garden. This year’s show will transport you to exotic, orchid-packed places on two continents. You’ll wander through the jungles and cloud forests of Asia and the Americas, where thousands of brilliant orchids—delicate, elegant, fascinating, bizarre—drip from the vines and nestle among the ferns. Visit the camp of a botanist who’s tracing the orchid family tree, and learn how one particular variety ends up in your ice cream. You’ll not only discover the sensual allure of orchids, you’ll learn what’s being done to protect these precious plants and their natural environments.
The Orchid Show experience includes tours, gardening demonstrations, lectures, family fun, and a vast array of orchids for sale at the Shop in the Garden.
Orchid Collection
Some are no bigger than your thumbnail, while others are the size of your hand. Some mimic bees and butterflies, while others resemble a lady’s slipper. And some simply defy description. Throughout the year, you can see the seductive stars of the Garden’s tropical plant collections—orchids from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas—in changing displays in the Conservatory and the Orchid Terrarium in the Library Building. Marvel at rare orchids growing as they would in nature in the Conservatory’s rain forest galleries. In March, celebrate their spectacular beauty and diversity with the annual Orchid Show, where thousands of orchids, from miniatures named ‘Pinhead’ to giant violet vandas, fill a luxuriant tropical landscape.
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Aerial Photography
Friday, January 28th, 2005
Super-cool aerial photographs. Go to the “Portfolio” page and keep clicking through.
Andy Goldsworthy
Sunday, January 9th, 2005
A new kind of poetry is created when Andy Goldsworthy works with stone, wood and water — our world never looks quite the same again.
Goldsworthy regards all his creations as temporary. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever he notices: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns.
I like all his work but one of my favorites is ‘Wall‘. Come walk alongside Andy Goldsworthy’s extraordinary Storm King Wall. Created over a two-year period, the 2,278-foot-long site-specific sculpture was made using stones gathered from the Art Center property. The first part of the wall weaves in and out of trees, following and extending the path of an old stone wall that had existed previously on the site, meandering downhill to a nearby pond. The wall’s second section emerges out from the other side of the pond, continuing its westward “walk” uphill. According to historical maps, another wall originally existed in this vicinity, but its remnants are gone. The wall’s full extension physically links disparate areas of the property, from the trail overlooking Moodna creek to the south fields and the western border.
10×10
Monday, December 27th, 2004
Described as “an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time,” 10×10 is the brainchild of graphic designer Jonathan Harris. The site automatically collects and graphically displays the most important words and photographs from three of the Internet’s top news sources (Reuters World News, BBC World Edition, and New York Times International News). The result is a grid of 100 images, each connected to a single word. Click on an individual photo, and the image enlarges in a pop-up window that includes a series of related headlines linking to the day’s news reports. Images and articles are updated hourly, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Because it runs without human intervention, it reveals the most important issues of the moment — free of bias, politics, and hidden agendas. Take ten for 10×10 and see what’s happening now.
Lake Effect Snow on Earth
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
Credit: SeaWiFS Project,
NASA
Explanation:
What are those strange clouds stretching out from these lakes? The clouds are caused by cold air moving over a warm water and result in bands of lake-effect snow. The rising bands of moistened, warmed air that drop lake-effect snow alternate with clear bands of falling cold air. During a winter, such bands can create hundreds of centimeters of snow more than upwind areas only a hundred kilometers away. During this lake-effect snowfall of 2000 December 5,
practically all of the state of Michigan, USA got covered. A cold northwesterly wind over Great Lakes
Superior and Michigan
created the unusual clouds. The above image was taken with NASA’s SeaWiFS satellite.
Fakefunk Jump Project
Tuesday, December 21st, 2004
Some people will jump at the chance to have their picture taken. And for others, the jumping is the whole point of the picture. Displaying a variety of inspired techniques in exotic locations, these jumpers conquer cheerleading’s Russian split on an airstrip in Indiana and the hurdler in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. In Stockholm a palace guard remains cool in the presence of one determined jumper. Individuals, small groups, and even newlyweds and their wedding guests are taking part. We don’t know if this is the start of a worldwide trend of leaping for the camera, but if so, this site will be the first to take the joy of jumping to new heights.
Picture Book
Monday, December 13th, 2004Every once in a while there comes a ad which catches my attention. In recent days one such is HP’s “Picture Book” (Artist: The Kinks). I think it is brilliantly creative. This is my favorite but you can check all of them out.
Picture yourself when you’re getting old,
Sat by the fireside a-pondering on[? ].
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago.
Picture book, of people with each other, to prove they love each other a long ago.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Picture book.
Picture book.
A picture of you in your birthday suit,
You sat in the sun on a hot afternoon.
Picture book, your mama and your papa, and fat old uncle charlie out cruising with their friends.
Picture book, a holiday in august, outside a bed and breakfast in sunny southend.
Picture book, when you were just a baby, those days when you were happy, a long time ago.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book,
Na, na, na, na na,
Na, na, na, na na,
A-scooby-dooby-doo.
Picture book,
Na, na, na, na na,
Na, na, na, na na,
A-scooby-dooby-doo.
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago.
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
National Parks
Sunday, December 12th, 2004Picturing America’s National Parks
Quang-Tuan Luong became the first person to photograph all 58 US national parks in 2002 and continues to do so, with over 3,600 photographs of them online. Last month, Scott Parker completed his two-year project of visiting all the national parks and documenting them in paint and pastel.
Reuters 2004 Pictures Of The Year
Saturday, December 11th, 2004You can browse your way through the Reuters 2004 Pictures Of The Year over at Yahoo! News. They also have a Slide Show For Easier Viewing. They range from the Puzzling, to the Amusing, and Sad or kinda Creepy. Some took incredible Timing or Good Luck to capture. I only spotted a couple that looked familiar, including the kite surfing Kerry. My favorites, 2 men on fire, one Literally and one Figuratively.
The Color Of Bhutan
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004
Check out the third exhibition of Audrey Topping’s photo artwork of “Bhutan, The Kingdom Of The Thunder Dragon” in New York, capturing her impressions of Bhutanese life, religion and culture in a series a dramatic photographs.
A prize-winning photojournalist and author of six books, Audrey has exhibited her photographs and lectured in numerous galleries and universities, notably: The Metropolitan Museum, Hallmark Gallery, Overseas Press Club, Explorers Club, Harvard University, Katonah Gallery of Art, Royal Ontario Museum and Westchester Community College. Her articles and photographs have been printed in major publications in The United States and abroad. Including two cover stories as photographer and writer for National Geographic Magazine. The New York Times Magazine published 17 of her articles, including 10 cover stories from China and Russia. Her China photos were featured on the covers of Life and Newsweek. Other work has appeared in such publications as Time, Readers Digest, Science Digest, Art in America, GEO, Foreign Affairs Magazine, Toronto Star, Le Temp Strategic. 
Audrey attended the University of Nanking, China, UBC in British Columbia and studied art in Berlin and London, where she exhibited her sculptures at the Royal Academy of Art. She received an honorary Doctor of Arts from Rider College N.J. In 2000 Audrey and her husband, Seymour Topping, were awarded the first annual Greenway-Winship Award for their significant contribution to a better understanding of world affairs. She is a member of The Council of Foreign Affairs, Asia Society and the Society of Woman Geographers. Toppings have 5 daughters and live in Scarsdale NY.
The exhibit in the Bhutanese Mission on first Avenue is worth a trip to see. Audrey Topping’s photographic and photo-oneiric images, as brilliantly colorful as the Buddhist culture they represent, will utterly defeat the endless grey of December. They are full of motion and beauty and humor, and will tell you something about a happy and ancient culture that is worth knowing. All the two hundred images at the exhibit are for sale, and the proceeds go to aid in the Queen’s efforts to help Bhutanese children.
The exhibit is at the Permanent Mission of The Kingdom of Bhutan to The United Nations 763 First Avenue United Nations Plaza between 43th and 44th st. NY 10017. Open until December 14th 2004, Monday to Friday from 11AM to 4PM.
(click on the links to view images)
