Tag: beautiful

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Incredible Macro Photography by Igor Siwanowicz

If you have a penchant for macro photography like I do, you’re sure to love the exceptional talents of Igor Siwanowicz. There isn’t much information about the photographer so his photos will have to do the talking. The subjects in front of Siwanowicz’s lenses include all manner of amphibians, insects, and reptiles. He captures the everso cute expressions on the faces of the chameleons and the Kung Fu poses that praying mantises are fond of.

Have a look at some of his stunning macro photos after the jump.

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Arty Eating and Drinking Featured Photoworthy

Booze is Beautiful Under the Microscope

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.” While you may be aware that alcohol can bring out the beauty of a great many things, you may be surprised to know that there is an inner beauty to it. American firm Bevshots from Tallahassee, Florida creates wonderfully psychedelic artworks by placing a variety of alcoholic beverages under the microscope.

To create their images, a drop of the drink — be it a beer, a Bloody Mary, coffee liqueur, Zinfandel, or just straight whiskey — is placed on a slide in an airtight container and dried for up to four weeks. The residue is then viewed under a laboratory microscope and magnified up to a 1,000 times. The resulting micrographs show the crystallised carbohydrates that have turned to sugars and glucose. Each drink seems to have a wonderfully unique and colourful structure to it. Have a look at some of these alcoholic works of art after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Featured Photoworthy

Beautiful Macro Insect Photos by Leon Baas

If you liked Miroslaw Swietek’s shots of dew-covered insects, you make take a shine to the macro photos by Leon Baas.

The Dutch photographer has always been fascinated by insects, and with the help of books, he taught himself how to take close-up photos. Afters years of experimenting with different lighting methods and equipment, Baas says he has managed to develop a style of this own. Have a look at his some of his wonderful macro insect photos after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Beautiful Bird Photography by John&Fish

Ornithology…it’s for the birds. John&Fish are a brother and sister team from Taipei City, Taiwan and since 2005, the duo have been keen bird photographers. They travel together, snapping photos of the wonderfully colourful birds that inhabit different areas of their home island. They hope that their photographs look like paintings that inspire people to see the world and nature in a different way. Have a look at their beautiful bird photography after the jump.

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Arty Sports Video Clips

Breathtaking Footage of the Cape Town Stadium

Time really has flown by, the 2010 Soccer World Cup is just two weeks away. Within 33 months, the brand new 68 000-seater Cape Town Stadium was erected. Made out of 93 000 cubic metres of concrete, some 9 000 glass panels, and the sweat of 2500 workers, the stadium is quite the spectacle. The bill for this massive project was a an equally whopping R4,4-billion.

African Renaissance, a local film production company has put together fantastic time-lapse footage that not only shows the beauty of the stadium but of the surroundings of Cape Town itself. Check it out below.

More facts about the stadium can be found at Cape Town Travel. Incidentally did you see the GIANT VUVUZELA mounted on the unfinished section of highway in town?

[via Wezzo | 10and5]

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Inspirational Designs Weirdness

Spectacular Organic Origami

Goran Konjevod is a professor of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It’s a good thing that he also loves origami otherwise we’d have a tough time convincing you how awesome computer science is.

Channeling his keen mathemagical energy, Mr. Konjevod has made some fantastic 3D paper (and copper) sculptures. He says this about his creations:

Most of my pieces so far are abstract shapes naturally formed by the tension of the paper when multiple layers of paper are arranged according to regular or irregular patterns. In that sense, they could almost be said to be discovered, rather than invented or designed…

…I try to restrict myself to working with single uncut sheets of paper or other foldable material (such as copper), and for the most part use very simple “pureland” folds. Normally, this last restriction would imply that the resulting forms are flat. However, a real sheet of paper is always three-dimensional—even when unfolded—and its thickness brings about a much more obvious three-dimensionality when multiple layers are present.

We think his abstract origami should do all the talking. See a few of them 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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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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Arty Awesomeness Featured

Michael Paukner And His Esoteric Subjects

I think I am in love. The more time I spend on Michæl Paukner’s Flickr stream, the more I am drawn into his visual style. He creates a selection of posters and infographics that seem marry science and design in the most beautiful ways. He illustrates some heady, complex stuff that I certainly don’t understand, like the Dymaxion Map and the Antikythera mechanism, they’re all so fantastic to look at.

See some of his art after the jump.

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Arty Featured Inspirational Designs Music

Soy Tu Aire: An Interactive Music Video

In one of the most striking music visualizations I’ve seen, the video for the single “Soy Tu Aire” by Spanish band Labuat lets you use the mouse to control the movement of an inked line as it moves across the canvas. The site records your effort and at the end of the song, you can re-play it.

It’s beautiful stuff. Check out Soy Tu Aire and let us know what you think.