How advertisers make food look appetizing

Migratory birds hitch rides on merchant ships

The awesome beauty of a lightning storm

Click to enlarge

Gabriel Zaparolli took this striking long-exposure photo of a lightning storm over the outskirts of Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, during the evening of June 10, 2018.   I found it on the kottke.org web log.

A brave little kidney bean becomes a plant

I found this video on the kottke.org blog.  It is a time-lapse photo of a kidney bean sprouting into a plant, shot at the rate of one shot every 9 minutes 36 seconds and played at the rate of 30 frames per second.

The little bean seems strangely gallant to me.  It makes me feel proud to be a carbon-based life form.

Cute harvest mice among the tulips

These cute pictures were taken by a British animal photographer named Miles Herbert.  Looking at them made me smile.  He does business as Captivelight. His other specialties are frogs, reptiles and birds of prey.

 I found this set of photos on the Bored Panda web site, which posted a gallery of 20 of Herbert’s mouse-and-tulip photos in all.

30 days of a cargo ship at sea

I found this on the deMilked web site.   It consists of time-lapse photos of the travels of a cargo ship from the Gulf of Aden to Hong Kong, with stops along the way.

Winter in Japan

In pursuit of American stormscapes

These amazing time-lapse videos were created last spring by Mike Olbinski, who chases storms each spring on the Great Plains, and has a second job as a wedding photographer in Phoenix. Arizona.   I came across his work on a National Geographic web site.

Fall foliage in New York’s Central Park

These time-lapse photos were taken by Jamie Scott. over a period of six months in Central Park in New York City.  He visited 15 locations, two days a week, just after sunrise, from August, 2011, through January, 2012.   The music is by Lower Dens.  I found this video on the Colossal website.

Wit and wisdom on church signs

These photos of church signs were collected on the Bored Panda website.

A cloud inversion in the Grand Canyon

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.

Flowers that bloom in the spring

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.

The strange beauty of the Martian landscape

Hat tip to kottke.org.

Click on this and this for more by photographer Jan Fröjdman.

The beauty of fog

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.

Seeing with an eye of an eagle

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.

A photographer who paints with light

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.

Kittens in mid-pounce

These photographs are from the Pounce portfolio of Seth Casteel.

Winning underwater photography of the year

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.

Moon over Australia

Hat tip to my expatriate e-mail pen pal Jack and his friend Marty.

The beauty of the night sky

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.

Vertical panoramas of churches

Source: Incredible Vertical Panoramic Photos of Churches by Richard Silver.

The wonders of weather

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.

The world at night

Source: Louder Than Words via Random Fandom.

I hope the lights stay on.

Is this the most beautiful library in the world?

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).

Something you don’t see every day

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.