Category: Photoworthy

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Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy Science & Technology

Spectacular Solar Images and Videos

On February 11th, NASA launched the the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft designed to study our sun. It’s on a five-year mission gathering data that will aid scientists to better understand how solar activity affects our climate and our lives. The highly advanced SDO is said to take images that are 10 times better than current HD TVs and will be sending back a whopping 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth each and every each day!

The solar-observing spacecraft has been beaming back early images and videos and they look quite amazing. Have a look for yourself, after the jump.

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Arty Photoworthy

Watch the Paint Dance!

We quite like the beautiful shots that people are able to take using macro and high-speed photography. You might remember our post on Miroslaw Swietek’s dew-covered insects and fotoopa’s high speed water figures.

Like the photo grandpa, a biochemist-turned-photographer by the name of Linden Gledhill also dabbles in high-speed photography and makes paint dance to her tune. She uses water-based paint and photographs them as they respond to sound emanating from a set of speakers. The resulting sculptures are quite crazy-cool. Check out her work after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Miroslaw Swietek & His Dew-Covered Insects

I’m not that great at macro photography, but of the ones I have taken with my aging Canon G6, I’m very keen on this one – the gold beetle. Amateur photographer Mirosław Świętek is anything but amateur when it comes to snapping close-up shots.

Between the wee hours of 3am and 4am, Mirosław takes a trip to the forest near his village of Jaroszow, Poland, and photographs slumbering insects covered in the early morning dew. Whilst the insects are in a state of torpor, which is insect’s equivalent of sleep, he using a torch to seek them out and then sets up his camera and flash right next to them. The results are nothing less than spectacular. See a selection of our favourites after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy Science & Technology Weirdness

Zoom and Enhance: Incredibly Close-up Insect Images

Word around the scientific cooler is that the Scanning Electron Microscope (or SEM) can magnify images 250 times better than a light microscope. The expensive bit of kit valued up to 500,000 pounds blasts materials with a high-energy beam of electrons and the messages sent back build up a super-detailed image.

Retired scientific photographer Steve Gschmeissner gets to play with this high-tech toy and has produced some amazing close-up images of insects. Check out some of his shots after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Inspirational Designs Photoworthy

Mui-Ling Teh’s Ever So Tiny Origami

I haven’t met Mui-Ling Teh, but I can assume she has the most dexterous fingers.

The 23-year old Canadian artist has always been a fan of paper craft and in 2008, she began creating origami on a truly miniature scale. She folds the 15×15mm paper with her fingers and only uses tweezers for the last few folds. Her paper art is millimeters in size and usually captured with a hand-held camera in super macro mode, or shot through a magnifying glass. Her smallest work to date is a crane folded from a 3×3mm piece of trace paper.

Have a look at some of her incredible miniature origami after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Photo Grandpa!

Old people, they are cunning and resourceful. Take this retired gentleman from Belgium. Going under the moniker fotoopa (“photo grandpa” in Dutch), he uses a complex laser-triggered camera rig (that he built himself) to take high-speed pictures. During the winter fotoopa takes photos of water figures indoors and during the summers, he is outside snapping up insects in mid-flight.

The combination of mechanics, electronics, and photography produces the most amazing results. Check out some of his work after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

The Wonderfully “Strange Worlds” of Matthew Albanese

Matthew Albanese had me fooled. Mind you it I’m easily aroused duped.

The 26-year old artist creates the most spectacular realistic-looking landscapes through the use of clever photography and everyday objects. The miniature models contain an astonishing amount of detail. Consider my jaw dropped. Check out some of his “Strange Worlds” series after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

The Amazing Serpentine Photos of Guido Mocafico

I got this from Lucy Furr’s twitter (she is known as FurryLuce if you’d like to follow her) and it was too beautiful not to post here. When Lucy and I went to Thailand in 2006, we visited a snake park and it was such a depressing situation seeing these beautiful creatures cooped up in dirty glass boxes; some of the poisonous snakes had bleeding gums, presumably from the frequently milking they were subjected to.

It’s just something painful I remembered when I saw the amazing shots from Italian photographer Guido Mocafico. In his two-part Serpens series, Mocafico photographs snakes in a color-neutral, enclosed space to bring out their hypnotic beauty. The patterns and colours that result are amazing to say the least. You’ll find some of the photos after the jump.

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World AIDS Day 2009

I know I come across as a misanthrope because I am one, but I wouldn’t wish HIV or AIDS on my least favourite people (not going to mention names because I just don’t have the money to hire a good lawyer right now and the list would take up loads of space and you’d get bored and probably scared reading it). So peeps please practice safe sex on World AIDS Day and everyday – it’s really not that difficult. Oh and for those smart arses reading this, I know that HIV can be spread other ways, but unprotected sex is the most common way it’s transferred.

On a related note, Prawn and I were at the Ocean View police station last night – long story – and I was really pleased to see that they had loads of free condoms and femidoms prominently displayed right next to the front desk. I couldn’t resist snapping a photo of a rather amusing visual pun created by the profilactics and the station’s notice board, check it … after the jump.

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Arty Featured Movies Photoworthy

365 Days of Stormtrooper Photos

When stormtroopers aren’t spending time fighting in battles, and not finding the droids they are looking for (even with the help of Google), what do you think they do with their free time?

Star Wars fan and photographer Stéfan Le Dû seeks to answer that question by giving this toys a life of their own and photographing them daily for a whole year. Started on April 3rd 2009, Stéfan’s Stormtroopers 365 project currently contains 285 photos of the troopers generally monkeying about. Have a look at some of the humorous shots after the jump.

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