Photography
bioephemera | January 23, 2011
Joe DePasquale was a winner of the European Southern Observatory's hidden treasures 2010 competition with this lovely photo. From ESO:
"The pictures of the Universe that can be seen in ESO's releases are impressive. However, many hours of skilful work are required to assemble the raw greyscale data captured by the telescopes into these colourful images, correcting them for distortions and unwanted signatures of the instrument, and enhancing them so as to bring out the details contained in the astronomical data. ESO has a team of professional image processors, but for the ESO's Hidden…
bioephemera | January 23, 2011It might look something like this:
Arm of God
Galacia, Kansas 2009
Mitch Dobrowner
Those of you who enjoyed Sean Heavey's photos of storms in the American West may appreciate this epic, crisp black-and-white storm photography by Mitch Dobrowner.
Vapor Cloud
Near Clayton, New Mexico 2009
Mitch Dobrowner
In addition to his website, you can find Dobrowner's work at Ordover Gallery and John Cleary Gallery, among others. He will be exhibiting in April 2011 at Portland, Oregon's Blue Sky Gallery.
Via NOTCOT.
bioephemera | January 13, 2011
The City: Majestic
miniature diorama
Lori Nix, 2006
The Ruins of Detroit: United Artists Theater
photograph
Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre, 2010
Is urban decay beautiful, heartwrenching, or both?
aardvarchaeology | January 2, 2011
Check out Yves Marchand's and Romain Meffre's poignantly beautiful photographs of abandoned buildings in Detroit! Explains Wikipedia,
Detroit has numerous neighborhoods suffering from urban decay, consisting of vacant properties resulting in low inhabited density, stretching city services and infrastructure. These neighborhoods are concentrated in the northeast and on the city's fringes. The 2009 residential lot vacancy in Detroit was 27.8%, up from 10.3% in 2000, with the population continuing to shrink and foreclosures that exacerbate the problem. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of lots are…
bioephemera | December 26, 2010
Olivier Valsecchi's portraits of the nude human body, caught in motion, haloed in dust, could convey an incredibly complicated subtext. Or not. "Dust" by Olivier Valsecchi, via ChangetheThought via Street Anatomy.
bioephemera | December 22, 2010
National Museum of Health & Medicine has an amazing flickrstream of vintage medical photographs and other ephemera. Lately they've been adding diagnostic/documentary photos of Civil War soldiers, as well as some military propaganda posters (anti-VD and anti-food waste, of all things). This series of photos of a lab setup for measuring cranial capacity are my favorites. Check out the handled basket of skulls! And they're using an "insufflator!" I did not even know that was a word.
Happy holidays to our friends at Bottled Monsters and thanks for all the wonderful photos!
bioephemera | December 3, 2010Some awesome photos from NSF teams working in Antarctica (click for larger versions). This one makes me want to hum "O Little Base of McMurdo, how still we see thee lie. . . "
McMurdo base by night
James Walker/NSF
Palmer Station Sunset
Lisa Trotter/NSF
Aurora australis over McMurdo
Ken Klassy/NSF
Amundsen-Scott Station
Mel McMahon/NSF
Source: 'Dispatches from Antarctica,' a series of posts by Air Force Lt. Col. Ed Vaughan with OPERATION: DEEP FREEZE, the Defense Department's support of National Science Foundation research in Antarctica. Vaughan's ongoing series of posts includes an…
bioephemera | November 30, 2010APOD got some attention yesterday with this stunning photo of a supercell thunderstorm several kilometers wide, brooding over a Montana field:
Mothership
Sean Heavey, 2010
I'm not sure it's possible for a work of art or photography to more effectively convey the grandeur of nature and the awesome power of physics. The image is simply unreal (which is why the title "Mothership" works so well). But Montana photographer Sean Heavey has a whole gallery of these stunning storm photos.
I'm especially nuts about the ominous, Tesla-esque drama of "Base Reflectivity":
And for all you would-be storm-…
bioephemera | November 19, 2010This year's winner of the BioScapes digital imaging competition, Igor Siwanowicz, triumphed with a somewhat unusual portrait. To most biologists, it should be clear what anatomical structures are shown here - but what species could this be?
Igor Siwanowicz, Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology, Munich, Germany.
First Prize, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.
click through for the answer, and for my picks of the other winners. . .
That's Dr. Siwanowicz' frontal section of Daddy Longlegs (Phalangium opilio) eyes, showing lenses (two large ovals), retinas and optic nerves…
bioephemera | November 12, 2010With a poster titled "WE NEED YOUR BODY! For a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY," microbiologist Steven Park and artist Anne Brodie invited attendees at the British Science Festival to
stand NAKED inside our live bioluminescent photograph booth and have your photograph taken. Enveloped by a living ethereal blue green light, the resulting faint and ghostly image will be used as part of an [art] installation. . .
The eerie results, which look a whole lot like TSA millimeter-wave scans, are appearing in an exhibition at the UK's Royal Institution through December 3. See a slideshow at the Londonist.
bioephemera | October 22, 2010
detail of "Williamsburg Bridge Plaza," Brooklyn, NY, circa 1906
Source: Shorpy
I'm just saying, I don't think that's a speck on the negative. But maybe I'm too cynical.
aardvarchaeology | August 22, 2010
Sunset seen to the NW from the birthday party
Made huntun (wonton) with my wife & kids, "good to eat and fun to make", as the song about cookies that Junior likes goes.
Watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with wife & son. It's a mid-quality Terry Gilliam film, better than the dreary Brothers Grimm that preceded it but not on a par with excellent films like Brazil or 12 Monkeys. Dr. P is beautiful though, and I'm sorry I didn't watch it on the big screen.
Made a mix CD for a birthday boy.
Went to birthday party with the kids, though I had gotten the wrong coordinates and…
elerner | August 20, 2010"Photographic evidence" is sometimes taken as shorthand for cold, hard proof. Seeing, after all, is believing, and if we have a permanent record of an image that anyone can examine, what more verification can be necessary? Of course, we can't really trust our eyes or memories, something that has been exacerbated by how trivial manipulating photographs have become. But even before Photoshop, photographs fooled people. Beyond crude hoaxes, there remains the fact that such images are not simple slices of reality. Intentionally or unintentionally, photographers determine what information from a…
pronald | July 28, 2010George Steinmetz began his aerial adventures on leave from Stanford in 1979. Thirty one years later he has accumulated thousands of photographs from his flying machine. He showed us a sample here at the Aspen Environment Forum, sponsored by the National Geographic and the Aspen Institute.
The Waw an Namu volcano in S. Libya, A 20K peak in the Himalayas, deserts encroaching on farms in China, immigrant tomato pickers in Saudia Arabia, sand basins in the Sahara- all photographed from a motorized paraglider.
The flying man is determined and creative. He has dodged arrows, fled machine guns,…
grrlscientist | July 20, 2010tags: Magnificent Frigatebird, Man O'War, Fregata magnificens, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Magnificent Frigatebird, sometimes known as the Man O'War, Fregata magnificens, photographed at Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary, Brazoria County, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 15 July 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This bird is built for speed and agility in the air and is…
grrlscientist | July 19, 2010tags: Rosa Blume, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, travel, nature, flowers, image of the day, photography
Rosa Blume unter Goldenen Blumen
Image: GrrlScientist, 14 July 2010, Frankfurt am Main, Germany [larger view]
This pink rose was the only one in a sea of gold roses.
grrlscientist | July 19, 2010tags: Reddish Egret, Egretta rufescens, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Reddish Egret, Egretta rufescens, photographed at Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary, Brazoria County, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 15 July 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This lovely species was nearly exterminated in the US by hunters who killed the birds for their plumes. The population is small…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2010tags: Purpur Clematis, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, travel, nature, flowers, image of the day, photography
Purpur Clematis (Clematis species)
Image: GrrlScientist, 14 July 2010 [larger view]
Some of the lovely purple clematis that are growing at the Vietnamese Restaurant near where I live in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
grrlscientist | July 18, 2010tags: Black Kite, Milvus migrans, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Black Kite, Milvus migrans, photographed at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 23 January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D2X, with 600 mm lens with 1.4 extender, ISO 320, 1/350 sec f/5.6.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
You've seen this African species before, but may not remember, but there are plenty of family members in North America that you are familiar with, so if you cannot identify this…