you are beautiful

Look up !

Then take a picture ! But wait until Friday :) Skywatch Friday, a really fascinating blog of pictures and videos that people from around the world send in of their skies. A simple but inspirational idea that produces some amazing photos. What a wonderful idea ! I love the Zen Moment pictures ...


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The premise is simple, the new round for submissions starts each week, Thursday at 7:30 GMT. Simply take a picture which includes the sky, post that picture on your blog, then come to the Skywatch Friday site and put your picture, link and name (or pseudonym) in the relevant place :

Edward Burtynsky

Oil Sands

Here at work, our 'Sustainable Development' division is offering a showing Manufactured Landscapes, a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

From his website:

"These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

...I hope I have time to catch it tomorrow ... His still pictures are really, truly striking so I can just imagine what the movie will be like.


Tailings

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop

LifeClever has put together a nice list of 10 free Web-based applications which can be used for photo-editing. Be sure and check out the full post for screenshots of each:

1. Picnik
2. Splashup
3. Phoenix
4. Photoshop Express
5. Snipshot
6. flauntR
7. Pic Resize
8. Pixenate
9. FotoFlexer
10. Phixr

Whoever the brains are behind iLibrarian : You rock

Online Digital Image Collections

Anne Blecksmith at CR&L News compiles a listing of seventeen digital image collections available on the Web from universities, public libraries, historical societies, archives, and Library of Congress, including the New York Public Library Digital Gallery with over 600,000 digital images.

To those, I’ll add a couple of places that I visit to find hi-res images:

ARS - Agricultural Research Service image gallery with over 2,000 hi-resolution photos available for download free of charge in subjects such as crops, animals, and insects.

GRIN - Great Images in NASA is a resource with over 1,000 hi-resolution photographic images available free of charge in subjects including space, aeronautics, and Soviet Spacecraft.

NOAA - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s collection of over 30,000 hi-resolution images in albums such as the Coral Kingdom with underwater images of plants and creatures and the National Sever Storms Lab with tornado and other storm photos.

NPS Digital Image Archives - The National Park Service offers this image resource with hi-resolution photos available free of charge. The archive is searchable by park.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Image Library - Thousands of free, hi-resolution photographs of wildlife and plants.

Ruby Island

I can't wait!!!

Good Day Sunshine

Wicked Photoshopped Images : Vertus Fluid Mask Top 40

These pictures are absolutely incredible. I've clipped and posted my current favourites, but check out the whole list at : Our Top 40 Photoshopped Images from the VertusFluid Mask Discussion blog. (And no, I have no idea what Vertus Fluid Mask is or means :P Pics are cool though aren't they?)

Rock ON Grandma!!!

Lac Seul 80 ?

A Fall morning

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

Peter Drucker