Stargazing

A philosopher once asked,

  

"Are we human because we gaze at the stars,

"or do we gaze at them because we are human?"

Pointless, really-

Do the stars gaze back?

  

Now, that's a question.

-Stardust, Neil Gaiman

Mushrooms!

Nature never ceases to amaze me.... Especially in the ways it can feed us and heal us, if we know what we're looking for.  These are golden oyster mushrooms and they are delicious!  

In the past few years, I've been doing a lot of studying on foraging - for food, for medicines, and just for study.  It was during this research I came across these mushrooms and knew that I had seen them on one of my many forays into the woods.  Next time I went out, I found them everywhere!  I brought some home and tried cooking them in every method possible. I have had them pan fried in butter, deep fried in batter, cooked into beef stroganoff, cream of mushroom soup and dehydrated a bunch of them to last me through winter.  

Remember, if you go foraging, know what you're looking for, don't take anything that is questionable, and always harvest sustainably!

Resources on Foraging:

Foraging for Beginners

Identify that Plant

You've seen it before, but never like this...

Space.

All around us, a cosmic contemplation of our own existence.

And now we can see it, in all of it's glory.  Thank you, James Webb telescope and NASA.  It's so breathtakingly beautiful.

Without the dark... there is no light

Without black, no color has any depth.

~Amy Grant

Sometimes, in life, just as in drawing, we all need to realize that there is no depth or dimensionality if the darkness didn't exist. It's about finding the balance that will bring forth the beauty and unity between light and dark.

Exuberant heat

Cobalt as the midnight sky

when day has gone without a trace

and we lie in each other’s arms

eyes shut and fingers open

and all the colors of the world

pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

-excerpt from Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy

Photoshop Before Photoshop Existed...

These days, photoshop is almost part of everyday life.  Digitally based editing programs can change everything from pictures to video and can alter almost anything in it in every possible way.  Before photoshop, doing such editing was strenuous mixtures of exposures and lots of trial and error.  Here are some of the most unbelievable images that you won't believe aren't real!

General Ulysses S. Grant:

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in front of his troops at City Point, Va., during the Civil War. 

Researchers at the Library of Congress say it isn't real, instead it is a composite of three separate prints. The head is a photo of Grant, the horse and body from a photo of Alexander M. McCook and the background is a photo of Confederate prisoners captured at the battle of Fisher’s Hill, Va.

Abraham Lincoln:

This nearly iconic portrait (in the form of a lithograph) of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is a composite of Lincoln’s head and the Southern politician John Calhoun’s body.

Generals:

In this photo by Mathew Brady, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman poses with his generals. Gen. Francis P. Blair, far right, was added later. The image on the left is from the same sitting, which Blair did not attend.

Cottingley Fairies:

Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins, took a photos that appeared to be of fairies. The public, including Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, loved them. It was decades before the two admitted the images were photos of cardboard cutouts of drawings, and they continued to maintain they had actually seen fairies.

Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis

This famous campaign photograph showing Herbert Hoover with his hand on the shoulder of his running mate, Charles Curtis, was manipulated. One of Hoover's press directors, Edward Anthony, explained in his autobiography, that two separate pictures were used and the hand was painted in by an artist.

Stalin:

Stalin routinely had his enemies air-brushed out of photographs. In this image, a commissar was removed from the original after falling out of favor with Stalin.

Hitler:

The doctored photo is on the left, and the original is on the right. Adolf Hitler had Joseph Goebbels (second from the right) removed from the original image.


Originally spotted at: http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/

Anthill Art

I always knew anthills were large and complex, but I had no idea that they were like this!  Check out this "casting" of an anthill and be amazed at the vast complex these industrial insects inhabit!

Beauty from Garbage- Landfill Harmonic

First World Problems, they always seem so trivial, especially when you encounter something like this.  This community lives near a landfill and they recycle the garbage and sell it for money or make interesting things from it... like this:  



  

Impossible Art

I just discovered this photographer today, and he’s amazing!  If you like optical illusions, fantastical photographs and unique concepts, you need to check out the work of Erik Johansson.  He uses composite imagery to create these unbelievable photographs that will just blow your mind!

Macro Snowflakes

If you’re anything like me, you hate the winter.  When I say hate, I really mean it.  I hate the cold, I hate the snow, I hate winter coats and hats and gloves and boots.  If I could have it be any of the other seasons all the time, I would.  (Which makes me wonder why I live in Iowa and not near a beach somewhere…)  I do, however, love things that are beautiful.  Even though I hate snow, I am forced to admit that these snowflakes are truly beautiful and am just amazed at their unique and striking beauty.  Please enjoy today’s Atmospheric Noise!

Starry, Starry Night

For millennia, humans have been looking to the stars- for life, to travel, to dream.  We have built telescopes, spaceships, and devoted billions of dollars into researching the universe.  I myself have always been interested in the sky, from clouds to stars to moon, though I’ve never been very good at photographing them.  I guess I really should invest in that telephoto lens someday- especially after seeing these images.  These amazing images are done two ways- the first is by doing a single frame long exposure (which is really tricky because you really have to know your camera and plan ahead for the long night of exposing your image) or by doing a multi-image composite.  (I only know this because of my photography background, with my nighttime photographs being a particular influence in this knowledge)  However they’re done, you’re going to be amazed and awed… this I guarantee.

Surreal Landscapes

There are a lot of times that I wish I could do more traveling- there are so many outstanding places in the world that are such a part of nature that you rarely get to experience.  I’ve been compiling a list for a long time of all the fantastic locations that I have found and would love to visit in my lifetime, I hope you enjoy them as I have!

Tufa columns of Mono Lake at sunrise

Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province, China

Tunnel of Love in Kleven Ukraine

Door to hell Karakum Desert

Beautiful green thermal lake called Devils Bath in Wai-O-Tapu Wonderland, geothermal area at Waiotapu, Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand

Tianzi Mountains in Wulingyuan, China

Spotted Lake near Osoyoos, British Columbia, Canada

Lake Hillier, on the Middle Island of the Archipelago of the Recherche in Western Australia

Salar De Uyuni

Why are your eyes so Stupid?

Lets face it, sometimes the parts of our body can't fully reconcile with our brain- we sometimes speak before we think, we move before we look, and sometimes we perceive something different than we're actually seeing.  Your eyes are tricky and as this video points out, they're also stupid.