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Defying Gravity

Tokyo Photographer ‘Levitates’

Natsumi Hayashi makes flying look easy. But these defying gravity self-portraits that seem to show the Toyko photographer levitating above the ground are actually the result of a lot of hard work.

“Sometimes I need to jump more than 300 times to get the perfect shot,” Hayashi told MSNBC.com on June 8.

Hayashi blogs a levitating picture-of-the-day each day on her website, http://yowayowacamera.com/. Either working with an assistant or using a self-timer, she uses photography to freeze herself hanging in the air in diners, phone booths and on Tokyo sidewalks.

Hayashi makes no bones about her levitation being an illusion.

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High Voltage Powerlines

In 2002, the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum produced an IMAX film called “Straight Up: Helicopters in Action.” A brief clip from that film shows in extreme close-up how a high voltage cable inspection is performed by a lineman on a helicopter.

The unnamed lineman narrates his job description against the incredible aerial backdrop. No harm in touching 4.16 kV high voltage power lines once the helicopter has equalized with the power line.

Hoovering high in the sky closing in on segments of line needing service observation. “Courage is not about not being scared. It’s about being scared and doing it anyway”.

There’s only 3 things I have ever been afraid of: Electricity, Heights and Women and I’m married too.

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Keira Knightley

Keira Knightly’s impressive appearance in David Cronenberg’s Jungian psychological drama A Dangerous Method

She smoulders in this provocative shoot for GQ. Beauty notwithstanding her *prattling* magazine remarks.

GQ always pulls the most ironic quotes.

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Ugly boots

What happened to the unfashionable brand they dimly call ugly-boots?

Lifestyle branding with a certain style and grace.

For somebody very disconnected with the product I’m not exactly the target audience for this campaign. But let us be honest, this is amazing work. Stunning and very classy:

I’m guessing it all hints at the brand suggesting that it’s in touch with peace with nature, sympathetic living and a life rooted by the goodness of the outdoors!

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Chaise Longue

Photographer Marlena Bielinska

“The model should be confident with her own sensuality. She must be sensual – sometimes that only shows in her eyes of pose. Confidence must exude from my subject every time I shoot. Even in a simple catalog shot, just the way the model moves her legs, arches her back or smiles – She should perspire assertiveness.”

Backstory: In the late she 80′s went to New York to model. In 1993 she was fascinated by photography and already she began photographing models. Since then her work has appeared in more than 20 U.S. magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Elle, Playboy, Glamour, Cosmopolitan. She was born in Poland and educated as a psychologist. 

Purveyor of the provocative. Beautiful work.

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Power plant

I’m truly in awe of industrial machinery/factories and this one caught my attention. It left us speechless at the sheer magnitude of how we contribute to global warming (but was perversely struck by the haunting image of smoke stacks billowing in the sky.)

Stunning aerial photography of power plantsThis is just awe-inspiring. Simply amazing cinematography from aerial photographer Jason Hawkes

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Daring Acts of Rescue

December 2009 – A RAF rescue helicopter rescues people from their homes in the centre of Cockermouth in Keswick, United Kingdom. A major rescue operation is underway after severe weather conditions caused floods cutting off villages and towns in England’s Lake District. Wast Water is the deepest Lake in the Lake District and is over looked by Scafell pike which at 3206 feet is England’s highest mountain. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)


Hard to imagine that the Life Boat crews would be rescusing folk from the downtown streets. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

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Hubble Space Telescope

space

Only image ever taken of a transit of a space shuttle (Atlantis) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in front of the Sun, during the last repair mission of Hubble, obtained from Florida at 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis.

Transit duration: 0.8s. Transit bandwidth on Earth: 5.6 km. Altitude: 600 km. Speed: 7 km/s (25000 km/h). Length of Atlantis : 35m, length of Hubble : 13m. Transit forecast (place, time…) calculated by www.calsky.com. Special thanks to Chuck Shaw (SM4 Mission Director) and to Arnold Barmettler (Calsky) for their invaluable efforts to provide the accurate data essential to successful transit images. And many thanks to everyone at the KSC press site for their help and their kindness.

Takahashi TOA-130 refractor (diameter 130mm, final focal 2200mm or 3400mm) on Manfrotto video tripod, Baader solar prism and Canon 5D mark II. Exposure of 1/8000s at 100 ISO, extracted from a series of 16 images (4 images/s) started 2s before the predicted time.

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Dance of the Spirits

Northern Lights

JPG magazine is one of my favorite web projects. Simple online idea with a smartly executed physical magazine. I stumbled across this [amazing] image capturing those elusive Northern Lights. Full credit to Shawn Tan who supplied the necessary brilliance. Wiki have a beautiful example taken in a frozen landscape.

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Steve Howdle

From the looks of it, the wind swept winter day may have become a surprising advantage to this inspiring fashion image. Photographer Steve Howdle from the UK using PhaseOne with just one strobe light. Nicely done.

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Sunnys Bar

Sunny's Bar Red Hook

Sunny’s last of the longshoreman’s bars in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They are only open a few nights per week, the only visible sign of life is a sign stating the not-so-obvious status as a ‘bar’. Know for poetry readings, stage occasional plays and music gigs.

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Smoke without fire

It was in 1966 that Yves Saint Laurent’s introduced his first “le smoking” – a classic three-button dinner jacket, worn with a frilled white silk blouse, tied with a black ribbon at the neck, and mannish trousers featuring a satin side-stripe.

The look – at once androgynous, mysterious and alluring – was immortalized by the late Helmut Newton in 1975, with his black and white photograph of a model in the rue Aubriot in Paris, wearing that season’s “le smoking”, with her hair slicked back and right hand clutching a cigarette. It became one of YSL’s most recognizable signatures.