Bird’s Eye: Three different members of the same species: 360º photos that allow you to pan around, zoom in or out. They have different controls, as listed… but they’re all amazing looks at places worth seeing a second time.
* Egypt. Very interactive panoramic
Cursor keys, control, shift
* Angel Waterfall of Venezuela – The World’s Highest Waterfall
Cursor keys, control, shift
* Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel
Cursor keys, +, –
Bird’s Eye: Because of war, nuclear meltdown, or economics, people abandon the places they once lived. A set of photographs of the ghost towns is all that’s left.
* A World Without People In Focus
* Urbex – The Art of Urban Exploration Kuriositas
* The Dead Cities of Syria Kuriositas
Bird’s Eye: Lots of dark, with sparkly lights, whether they’re fastened to dancers or to sheep, made by fireflies, LEDs, or satellites.
* Choreography + El Wire = Awesome Dance Party Boing Boing
Here’s Japan’s Wrecking Crew Orchestra performing some pretty wonderful dance moves made all the better by their electroluminescent wire garments, which cause them to seemingly wink in and out of existence on the dark stage.
* Dreams of Electric Sheep Wimp (Thanks, Spidey!)
* Satellites Around the Earth via reddit
“Sky-blue sky. satellites are out tonight.” Laurie Anderson
* Lighting Up The Night: Time-Lapse Images Of Fireflies Mail Online
* A Cathedral Made from 55,000 LED Lights Colossal
Bird’s Eye: We entered spring this week (if you’re in the Northern half). So some photo spreads on spring, and flowers… including a most marvellous installation.
* The First Day of Spring In Focus
* Signs of Spring: 2012 The Big Picture
* 28,000 Potted Flowers Installed at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center Colossal
In 2003 a building housing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) was slated for demolition to make way for updated facilities…. How does one memorialize a building impossibly rich with a history of both hope and sadness, and do it in a way that reflects not only the past but also the future? …The concept was simple but absolutely immense in scale. Nearly 28,000 potted flowers would fill almost every square foot of the MMHC including corridors, stairwells, offices and even a swimming pool, all of it brought to life with a sea of blooms.
* Living Color Flowers The Presurfer
Bird’s Eye: A set of photos of the world as we don’t see it. The unknown always has a bit more power, in photographs as in everything.
* Mist Is Trickster Weather More Intelligent Life
* The Ghosts of Antarctica Dark Roasted Blend
* Dakuwaqa’s Garden The Presurfer
Underwater footage shot whilst scuba diving in the Fiji islands and Tonga. Featuring colorful coral reefs, huge schools of tropical fish, sharks, humpback whales, underwater caves, scuba divers and much more marine life from the south Pacific.
* Arabian Seas National Geographic
* Spider Web Forest Is Beautiful And Terrifying Buzzfeed
The severe flooding in Australia isn’t just impacting humans, it’s also forcing spiders to vacate their homes along swollen riverbanks. Here are creepily pretty photographs of a sort of spider refugee camp near an inland residential area.
Bird’s Eye: We’re used to carved wood, or marble. Here are a few unusual objects for carving: books, eggs, tires. Wow!
* Book Carvings (Thanks, Oriah!)
Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.
Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms.
Bird’s Eye: Travel vicariously with us, from the non-cheesy image of Asiago, Italy, to the cheesy murals of Hollywood. An Arizona photo-essay shows some of that state’s great natural beauty, and we end with proof some cities are surely more colourful than others.
* Asiago Plateau, Northern Italy Eyewitness, The Guardian
* The Terribly Wonderful Storefront Murals of East Hollywood myopia
One of my favorite parts of East Hollywood has always been the murals, specifically the bad ones. There are plenty of totally decent murals in East Hollywood, and tons of murals across Hollywood at large, but there’s a special flavor of mural that seems to proliferate north of Melrose and east of Western. They’re mostly painted on storefronts, seemingly by artists of widely varying skill-level, and often contain extremely specific depictions of products and brands.
* Arizona Turns 100 ~ Kuriositas
* 11 of the Most Colorful Cities in the World The World Geography
Bird’s Eye: This week marked the start of Lenten penitence, which meant that last week was the occasion for a spate of carnivals world wide. We start with a single photo from the most bizarre and pointless carnival custom you may have ever seen, in that centre of world carnival madness, Warwickshire. Then we go into two In Focus Carnival features (the first is mostly Brazil; the second is mostly not.) Big Picture’s Carnival feature has a few overlaps, but also some glorious different shots. (None of Quebec anywhere, Bonhomme was sad to note.)
* Warwickshire, UK Eyewitness
* Carnival 2012 In Focus
* More From Carnival 2012 In Focus
* Carnival 2012 The Big Picture
Bird’s Eye: We start with those who have boldly gone, up out, or down places where other more sane folks wouldn’t. Then a video you will not believe, of a man riding a motorbike on a snow-covered mountain peak. Seriously mad. But why limit excess to humans? Dogs diving is the third section, with magnificent photos. And something to aspire to for the rest of us: can you meet the dormouse challenge?
* 11 Daredevil Stunts That Pushed Human Limits Mental Floss
(with videos for ten of them) An Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner plans to break the world record for highest skydive in August. After taking an air balloon to 120,000 feet, he’ll step out of his helium cocoon at the edge of space and break the sound barrier on his way back to earth.
Sound exciting? It’s already been done. Here’s a list of eleven impossible stunts pulled off by very real human beings.
* Driving On Mountain Top YouTube
* Underwater Dog Photography(Thanks, Diana)
* Snoring Dormouse YouTube
He’s a dormouse. Dormice hibernate in the winter in nests that they make hidden away on the ground. In Britain the dormouse may spend up to a third of its life in hibernation. Dormice usually enter hibernation at the time of the first frost, when nearly all food is gone.
Bird’s Eye: Three yummy treats giving an overview of our life and times in 2012. The film in part one has brief time-lapse shots of 179 locations, each with a number in the lower right. You can try and identify them, if you’re so inclined; we link to the key. Some of the In Focus news photos are graphic, but they’re protected behind a screen.
* Welcome to Earth – Universal Time-lapse- Zapatou – YouTube: 4 minutes
There are 179 locations in the film. The small numbers in the lower right hand corner let you answer the “Oh, was that…?” questions by clicking here.
* Visions of Earth National Geographic Magazine
* World Press Photo Contest 2012 In Focus
Bird’s Eye: If time-lapse film speeds things up, what does slow motion do to time? Time-crammed? All three distort time (whew!) to show fascinating perspectives we don’t see otherwise.
* The Alps At Night The Presurfer
* Moscow Time-Lapse The Presurfer
*Condit Dam Breached: A Slow-Motion Video Offers A Different View National Geographic
National Geographic has posted a time-lapse video showing the explosion that breached Washington’s Condit Dam and the draining of Northwestern Lake, which was created nearly a century ago by the dam’s construction
Bird’s Eye: Pictures of extreme festivals, freezes, rivers, and ancient things.
* Deep Freeze Spreads Across Europe In Focus
* 9 Rivers of Superlatives The World Geography
* 22 Incredibly Old Living Things
Rachel Sussman has been traveling the world for the past few years photographing some of the oldest living things on Earth. Here’s a look at some of what she’s found.
* Chinese Lantern Festival 2012 In Focus
