On rare days, cold air is trapped in the Grand Canyon under a layer of warm air which, in combination with moisture and condensation, create what’s called a full cloud inversion, which resembles something in between ocean waves and fast-moving clouds. Beautiful!
Click on Colossal for still photos and background information.
These time-lapse photos were taken by Jamie Scott over a period of three years. The background music is an original composition by Jim Perkins. I found this video on the Colossal and kottke.org web sites.
Hat tip to kottke.org.
Click on this and this for more by photographer Jan Fröjdman.
I never thought of fog as beautiful. Or that it could come in waves.
These photographs were taken by Nick Steinberg over an eight-year period in the San Francisco Bay area, using high peaks such as Mount Tamalpais as his vantage point. What a labor of love that must have been!
It’s good to remember that there are other things in the world besides politics and economics.
An eagle with a Sony video camera flew off the top of Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest building, in Dubai, enabling us to (sort of) see what an eagle in flight sees. It’s too bad there is no footage of the eagle’s last few feet of flight before landing, but the footage is still something to see.
North of the Arctic Circle in Finland, there is a period of about 50 days when the sun never rises above the horizon, known as the Polar Night.
Artist and photographer Hannu Huhtamo uses this period of darkness to paint with light. He makes his strange and haunting works of art by making a long-exposure photograph of a moving bright light source against a dim background.
LINKS
Hannu Huhtamo Photography. His website.
Light Painting Artist Hannu Huhtamo | Light Painting Photography. An interview.
This Photographer Paints With Light in the Finnish Polar Night by Lisa Lanot for Konbini.
Polar Night and Midnight Sun articles on Wikipedia.
Organizers of the 2016 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest shared some winning entries with The Atlantic’s In Focus feature.
Davide Lopresti’s photograph of a seahorse was the overall winner. It was taken off Trieste, Italy, in a part of the Mediterranean set aside for the restocking of this endangered species.
Hat tip to my expatriate e-mail pen pal Jack and his friend Marty.
Bertrand Russell once wrote that when he was depressed about the follies of the human race, he restored his spirits by contemplating the beauty and majesty of the starry heaves and distant galaxies.
For more pictures like this, click on Photographer Dave Lane captures beauty of Milky Way above US National Parks from the Daily Mail Online.
1. Brinicle
Brinicles are the underwater equivalent of icicles. They form beneath ice when a flow of saline water is introduced to ocean water.
2. Volcanic Lightning
Volcanic plumes produce immense amounts of electrical charge and static. In rare cases, this can spark a violent lightning storm.
3. Sprites, Elves and Blue Jets
These colorful shapes are the result of electrical discharges in the atmosphere.
Source: Bored Panda.
I like libraries and bookstores, and I like to post pictures of libraries and bookstores.
Above and below are pictures of the Klementinum Library in Prague, established in 1722 as part of the Jesuit college there. It houses an estimated 20,000 books (I’d guess there are more).
Photographer: Greg McCown.
Hat tip to Mike the Mad Biologist.
There are more things in heaven and earth worth noticing than the crimes and follies of the powerful.
Hat tip to kottke.org.
Source: The Top Tenz
The Danyang-Kushan Grand Bridge, completed in China in 2010 and opened to traffic in 2011, is 102.4 miles long. It is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest bridge in the world.
It crosses rice paddies, canals, rivers and lakes in southeastern coastal China, and provides a link in the Shanghai-Beijing High-Speed Railway.
Source: Wikipedia.
The world’s second longest bridge, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the Tianjin Grand Bridge, also a link in the Shanghai-Beijing High-Speed Railway. It is 70.6 miles long.
Salmon Street, Portland, Oregon
De Varrtkapeon, Brussels, Belgium
Rundle Mall, Adelaide, Australia
Click on 25 of the Most Creative Sculptures and Statues From Around the World for more like the ones above.
Monks in Kandze monastery in Ganzi, China
When a photographer named Colin Miller visited Chengdu, China, he was struck by the colorful beauty of the nearby Buddhist temples and monasteries. He spent two and a half weeks traveling through small towns in Sichuan province, taking pictures.
My expatriate e-mail pen pal Jack, who called my attention to these photographs, said many of these temples are Tibetan, or at least are dedicated to the school of Buddhism found in Tibet.
The lavish beauty shown in these photos is a contrast to the austere beauty of Zen temples and gardens in Japan. Any religion that can inspire such beauty must have something good about it.
Hat tip to my expatriate e-mail pen-pal Jack C
I like time-lapse videos. They show me the world in a unique way.
I got a link to this one from my expatriate e-mail pen pal Jack C.
Ladakh is the northernmost region of India. It is part of Kashmir, high in the Himalayas and close to the Chinese border. According to Wikipedia, it is inhabited mainly by Shia Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists, who live in peace—most of the time.
Interior of Shah Cheragh mosque in Shiraz, Iran
More photographs can be seen on this Slate web site.
Courtyard of Nasir al Mulk mosque in Shiraz, Iran
When I look at these, I think about the devotion and care that went into creating so much beauty.
Prayer hall of Vaki mosque in Shiraz, Iran
Source: Atlas Obscura via Slate.
Self-portrait of Sergey Prokudin-Gorky
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorky was a Russian pioneer in color photography who flourished in the early decades of the 20th century. He received permission from Czar Nicholas II to document the Russian Empire, traveling in a special darkroom mounted on a railroad car.
My friend Jack Clontz called my attention to 30 Rare Color Photographs of the Russian Empire from 100+ Years Ago, which is a sample of Prokudin-Gorky’s work. The photos give an idea of the size and diversity of old Russia. Not every subject of the Russian Empire was Russian.
Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara (1911)
The great photographer Inta Ruka has been documenting ordinary life in her native Latvia for decades—since before the tiny Baltic nation gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The video above is a trailer for a documentary film about her life and work by the Swedish filmmaker Maud Nycander. Click on The Photographer from Riga to see the entire film. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the least interest in photography or in a profile of a remarkable person. (Hat tip to Jack Clontz).
Cathedral of Saint Francis, Quito, Ecuador
These photographs of Baroque churches in Europe and Latin America were taken by Cyril Porchet as part of a book entitled Seduction.
You don’t have to be a Catholic or even a Christian to appreciate the love, talent and hard work that went into creating such beauty.
Asam’s Church in Munich, Germany
