Thumbs and Ammo posits the idea: would it be funny to replace guns with thumbs up in stills from movies?
YES!
Rocky Mountain Night Skies Lit by the Northern Lights
Photographer Richard Gottardo on his months in the Rockies hoping to capture the Northern Lights:
"Time after time they prove to be incredibly difficult to forecast."
April 13th and 14th, an enormous solar wind (i.e. a coronal mass ejection or CME) streamed over the Rockies in British Columbia.
Just astoundingly beautiful!
Florida Theme Parks Seen From Above
Aerial photographer Jason Hawke has a really stunning portfolio, but these of the Orlando parks from overhead match the beauty with the disorienting surrealism of Disney.
Finland Winter Photos
In the thick of spring, these photos by Joni Niemela of the Finnish winter seem more beautiful to me than they might have a few months ago.
The Vatican Explained
Seems a much more logical explanation than James Tate's How the Pope is Chosen and fun like this video series' other The Secret City of London.
Fragments of Time - A Very Personal Portrait of Hong Kong
Daniele Manoli describes his short video:
A very personal portrait of Hong Kong shot between 2011 - 2013 featuring the words of my father.
Online Miniseries: ‘The New African Photography’ on Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera English just premiered the first episode of their new show, “The New African Photography.” Aiming to replace the images of famine and war with images that show an emerging 21st Century Africa, the show is told through the eyes of photographers.
TOKYO CITY SYMPHONY: 3D Map Imaging
For the 10th anniversary of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, we are presented this absolutely stunning digital projection mapping project in conjunction with the Tokyo City Symphony.
14ft StoopidTallBike from CicLAvia
Last weekend's CicLAvia 2013 in Los Angeles, CA saw this enormous bike, called StoopidTallBike. Indeed.
Richie Trimble explains his work:
14.5ft at the Seat
Built in 12 work hours
One Huffy beach cruiser, 2" square tubing, 3/4" round tubing, and 1" round tubing
26" single speed coaster brake wheelset
6 1/2 single speed bicycle chains (32.5ft of chain)
Music is "Contact High" by Architecture in Helsinki
Carefully Composed Long Exposure Shots of Gleaming Landscapes
Sydney-based Samuel Burns uses a large format camera set at extremely long exposures (up to eight hours) to create these gleaming landscapes.
He explains:
I hide away behind the camera under a dark cloth to compose each image on a ground glass, seeing the image up-side-down and using old fashioned dials to adjust and refine the composure. It is not unusual for me to spend half an hour setting up a composition, employing large format camera movements such as rise, shift and tilt and then hiding back away under the dark cloth to make sure everything is perfect. It needs to be to make sure the wait is worth it!
Melbourne in Tilt-shift Miniaturism
"A short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. This piece is 10 months in the making and features a range of different events and festivals held in the city throughout the year."
Mini Sculptures On Pencil Leads
Landscapes Made from Shredded Flowers by Gyun Hur
Atlanta-based installation artist Gyun Hur creates arrangements of materials.
She explains:
“Narratives of labor, loss, and place are vital elements in [these] constructions of a specific visual and psychological space. Through the menial process of making, selective collections of found objects transform into a poignant residuum of the past and the present. A sentimental installment of materials and insertion of a physical body facilitate an occupied territory as a platform for opened dialogues, both internal and external.”
Stuff You Can See On Earth
Reading a Poem - B by Sarah Kay - Read by Harper Rose Perez
B
by Sarah Kay
If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”
She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.
And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”
But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.
I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.
You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”
Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
POV Camera from 2013 Coachella
From the video page:
Director Chris Crutchfield shows you the Coachella Music Festival like you've never experienced before. He's strapped a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition camera to his head and headed into the desert for an insane weekend of energy and lights.
Thousands of Plastic Straws Create Evocative 3D Art
Italian artist Francesca Pasquali has created these evocative 3D forms with thousands of plastic straws, with the end result reminiscent of the Organic Forms in Glass we saw a few weeks ago.
The artist explains:
"Even if plastc is a new material, the tecnique of interlacing it in preconstituted nets is connected to the past. It makes it live again in the shape of sculpture, which spreads out towards the space around, creating various texturzsed effects. Observing nature itself, I transfer the essential being of it. The interlacing forms trasform the industrial material into soft and sensual shapes."
Documenting The Decline of the Newspaper Industry
The Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation's third oldest surviving newspaper, moved from its enormous 526,000 square-foot headquarters to a single floor of an office building, and American photographer Will Steacy, whose father had worked for the newspaper for nearly 30 years has created this series of photos from 2009 to 2013 that captures its ebbing in clear visual detail.
Longest Tower Highline in Moab
Highlining is one of those amazing things I love to watch video of (this Highlining Across the Face of the Full Moon for example) but prolly will never bring myself to do.
From the video:
"Andy Lewis takes on the world's longest freestanding tower highline spanning across Moab's beautiful desert terrain to the infamous Raptor Tower. This 80 meter long line (262 feet) was rigged and walked for the first time this past winter during very cold and frigid conditions. After a week of hard work and perseverance on the line, Andy was able to successfully walk its entire length several times without falling in both directions."
Song of the Day - Q.U.E.E.N by Janelle Monae
from Wikipedia:
Janelle Monáe Robinson (born December 1, 1985), known as Janelle Monáe is an American R&B and soul musician, composer and record producer signed to Bad Boy Records and Atlantic Records. After making a mark with her first unofficial album, The Audition, Monáe debuted with a conceptual EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). The EP had a modest commercial impact, peaking at No. 115 on the Billboard charts in the United States.
