This incredible set of tilt-shift aerial images of New York City, snapped by the city’s-based graphic designer and photographer Tim Sklyarov , gives us a real sense of just how many tall buildings are housed on the mighty Manhattan island, and the size of footprint Central Park occupies on it.

Head over to his personal website to see the entire gallery. If you’re interested in a 24×36 canvas print of the image above, head over to Tim’s online store at 500px. You can also follow the graphic designer’s work on Flickr.

SEE AlSO: New York City Skyline Welcomes the Highest Building in the Western Hemisphere

[Images copyright Tim Sklyarov]

Here’s an adorable photo, by Netherlands-based nature photographer Wil Mijer, showing how many exuberant colors there are in nature, through this simple composition of a green-eyed tree frog dangling from a leaf and admiring a blue butterfly.

“I found my passion, macro photography, mostly in nature. I love photographing insects and flowers, but butterflies are my absolute favorite.” - Wil Mijer.

More Pictures of the Day

[Image copyright: Wil Mijer]

In this post, we’ll see how animals blend in with their environment and turn into sophisticated hiders who can change their camouflage in accordance with a change in their surroundings, and sometimes throw predators off by disguising themselves as something dangerous or uninteresting.­

Here are 21 interesting examples of animal camouflage, some of these will give you a challenge!

1. Great Grey Owl

Image credits: Art Wolfe

2. Giraffe

Image credits: Art Wolfe

3. Willow Ptarmigan

Image credits: Art Wolfe

4. Long-Eared Owl

Image credits: eoiarucasadvancedone.blogspot

5. Tropidoderus Childrenii

Image credits: petrichor

6. Stick Insect

Image credits: phasmatodea.cz

7. Spider

Image credits: Piet Grobler

8. Toads

Image credits: photography.nationalgeographic.com

9. Adelpha Serpa Selerio Caterpillar

Image credits: Arthur Anker

10. Seahorse

Image credits: imgur

11. Uroplatus Geckos

Image credits: imgur | Jialiang Gao

12. Hedgehog

Image credits: good-wallpapers.com

13. Great Potoo

Image credits: dailymail

14. Stone Flounder

Image credits: domhyde.wordpress.com

15. Frog

Image credits: earthwatch2.org

16. Stealth Owl

Image credits: P A B S

17. Katydid

Image credits: dailymail

18. Indian leaf wing butterfly

image credits: flickr

19. California Ground Squirrel

Image credits: Art Wolfe

20. Leaf-Tailed Gecko

Image credits: dailymail

21. Common Baron Caterpillar

Image credits: wohinauswandern

SEE ALSO: More Than Human by Tim Flach

[Via: The Huff, Demilked]

Reserve “Stone Graves”

“White Elephant” an abandoned campus of the former Polish Astronomical and Meteorological Observatory, Carpathian Mountains

 Mud hill Obrucheva, Crimea

 Regional Landscape Park “Zuevsky”

 Vorozheska Lake, Svidovets array, Carpathian Mountains

 Reserve “Haphalskyy”

Quiet bay, Crimea

The rocky outcrop of the Upper Cretaceous, Kramatorsk

 Botanical Reserve “Mountain range Tepe-Oba”

 Dawn on Ai-Petri Mountain

Dniester Canyon

Green Island, Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi

SEE ALSO: Breathtaking Time-Lapse Video of Kiev, Ukraine by Efim Graboy and Daria Turetski

Every spring from March through May the Dutch countryside transforms into a sea of colorful rainbow patterns of tulips. The Netherlands is world-famous for its tulip fields. A dreamy ground cover that attract tourists wanting to witness the beauty with their own eyes every season. French photographer Normann Szkop snapped these beautiful images from a small prop plane flown over the fields of the municipality of Anna Paulowna, in North Holland. See the entire 100+ photograph set over on Flickr

SEE ALSO: Netherlands’ Natural Ice Triggers Rare Winter Sports

Google’s latest and most innovative creation, Glass, looks like it’s heading our way as a reality and hitting the shelves very soon. There are already various apps developed for the new smart glasses, including one that can trigger the camera shutter with a wink!

If the gadget is embraced by users and managed to build an audience base, what would photographers look like using the smart eye-winking camera?!

Grovo, in the clip below, offers a humorous look at what photographers would look like if Google Glass becomes widely used as a camera and camcorder.

Grovo describes sarcastically:

Here’s someone you’ll be seeing in a few months: the Google Glass photographer. Nature shots, concerts, time-lapse videos, weddings… the Google Glass photographer does it all.

SEE ALSO: A Breathtaking Hyper-lapse Cruise Through Google Street View

The Google Glass photographer, could this be our future?! let us know what you think in the comments.

SEE ALSO: The Three Funniest Google Glasses Parody Videos

The Avengers (2012)

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Sunday In New York (1963)

Spider-Man (2002)

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

Serendipity (2001)

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Men in Black II (2002)

Leon The Professional (1994)

Kill Bill: Vol 1 (2003)

If Lucy Fell (1996)

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

Goodfellas (1990)

Fame (1980)

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Cocktail (1988)

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Bee Movie (2007)

August Rush (2007)

 SEE ALSO: Brilliant Time-Travel Photography of Europe’s World War Era by Sergey Larenkov

For the kicks of having a fun and different type of post, here are some everyday objects looking at you with their epic faces. Enjoy!

1. OMG Wall

Image credits: eworm

2. Pleased Pots

Image credits: knowyourmeme.com

3. Sad Faucet

Image credits: adme.ru

4. Sad Torso is Sad

Image credits: imgur

5. Drunk Octopus Wants to Fight

Image credits: artandesignews.com

6. House With Personality

Image credits: mandragor.de

7. World’s Happiest Airplane

Image credits: imgur

8. Drunk Washing Machine

Image credits: bart

9. Angry Mop

Image credits: imgur

10. My Car Can’t Believe It

Image credits: imgur

11. : P

Image credits: imgur

12. They Know What They’re Going to be Used For

Image credits: imgur

13. Amazed Car Bumper

via: imgur

14. Evil Boxes

Image credits: Barbara Dunkelman

15. Church Chicken

Image credits: imgur

16. Stoned backpack

Image credits: knowyourmeme.com

17. Haunting pepper

Image credits: knowyourmeme.com

18. Sad kiwi is sad

Photograph by mulletarian on Reddit

19. Om nom nom nom

Photograph by Patrick A. Albright, U.S. Army

20. Wall-E

Photograph via PotentialBillionaire on Reddit

21. BBQool

Photograph via Eva-Lotta Lamm (evalottchen on Flickr)

[Via Bored Panda]

Nature is trying to speak out to us everywhere every day. In the image above, a stubborn tree was noticed on April 16, 2013 among piles of used tires in a ten-hectare installation for recycling in Lachapelle-Auzac, France.  The recycling company operating through this location was closed in 2004, yet the tires were never removed.

More Pictures of the Day

[Via WSJ/ Eric Cabanis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images]

New York-based photographer Brian DeFrees has created this vertigo-inducing timelapse video documenting his extensive roadtrip around the US through his car. Traveling 12,225 miles, he crossed at least 32 states in 55 days with his camera was mounted just below his rear view mirror and programmed to snap a photo every 5 seconds. He captured 200,000 individual photographs and combined them into this spectacular video which has turned into a viral hit on YouTube.
Turn on your fullscreen and enjoy:

When he was parked for the night or exploring an area on foot he was constantly time-lapsing. Here is a collection of the time-lapses he captured while outside of his car during the trip:

SEE ALSO: Best Road Trip Routes in the United States

Presenting the unique character of cities with waterfronts, we put together this post featuring 10 images of cities skylines reflected on a water surface. The shape defining the urban landscape reflected on nature’s mirror is just magnificent. These images were taken by different photographers, and according to the source, non of the photos has been digitally manipulated, and are all just taken with a camera and a tripod to maintain the still capture.

Dokkum, The Netherlands by Bas Meelker

Dresden, Germany by Manuel Irritier

Singapore cityscape by WK Cheoh

SEE ALSO: The Lion City Timelapse – Singapore

Seattle, Washington by John G. Cramer 

Groningen, Netherlands by Rayon Hoepel

Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Jacob Rostermundt

Amsterdam, Netherlands by Anna Gett

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Bill Dickinson

Seoul, South Korea by Saik Kim

SEE ALSO: 20 Spectacular Skylines Around the World 

 [Via Architizer, Scene360, Illusion]

Claude Friese-Greene, one of the earliest British pioneers of film, filmed a series of short clips around London documenting major attractions of the city nearly 90 years ago, specifically in 1927, using a primitive color process developed by his father William Friese-Greene.

Looking at this footage almost a century later, it gives an ultimate feeling of precious value, knowing that it was one of the very first colored motion pictures ever made. The father, William Friese-Greene was a British portrait photographer and a well known inventor. His experiments in the field of motion pictures led him to be known as one of the fathers of cinematography.

As described by PetaPixal, One of William’s inventions was an additive color film process known as Biocolour. He exposed every other frame of standard black-and-white film through a different-colored filter, and then stained the resulting monochrome prints either red or green. Once projected, these prints provided an illusion of real color. A process that was used for many films between 1923 and 1943.

In the video below, the British Film Institute used computer enhancement to reduce noticeable flickering that was seen in the original footage, a major downside to the Biocolour method.

1927 London - It’s like a beautiful dusty old postcard you’d find in a junk store, but moving:

SEE ALSO: London eMotion

[Via PetaPixel]

Richard Silver travels the world and documents famous landmarks with an aim to show-off the world from a total different perspective. In his series Tilt-Shift, his goal is to shrink iconic landmarks or everyday street scenes, and give them an unusual feel.

Silver says, “People always ask me, How do I make people look so small or why do I make people look so small? Simple, we are!” Thus, his goal with the project is to “give the viewer a new way of seeing themselves and their place in the world.”

He has captured many famous places and events, including Machu Picchu in Peru, The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Acropolis of Athens. Silver shoots normal photographs and then applies an artificial shallow depth of field to the images using Photoshop during post-processing.

Here are some of our favorite tilt-shift photos of Richard Silver:

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City

The US Open in New York City

The Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem

The Great Wall of China

Teotihuacan, Mexico

Roman ruins

The New York Marathon in 2011

Zocalo, Mexico

The World Trade Center Memorial

The White House in Washington, DC

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Ahu Tangariki

Brooklyn Bridge

Copacabana

Acropolis

Coliseum

SEE AlSO: 7 Most Valuable Monuments in Europe

Balloon Fiesta

Machu Picchu

Dubai, Palm Islands

SEE ALSO: Breathtaking Skydive over The Palm Jumeirah Island in Dubai

[Via MyModernMet]

It all commenced when Nicolas Nixon, a world-renowned photography professor at the Massachusetts College of Art originally photographed his wife and her 3 sisters, who at the time ranged in age from 15 to 25. They were so impressed with the result, they decided to make it a yearly event, the annual family photo. 36 years later, the sisters and Nicolas had all kept their promise, resulting in these 36 beautiful photographs.

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

You can find out more about the fascinating series entitled The Brown Sisters by getting a copy of the book Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters. Thirty-Three Years showcasing these magnificent images in high resolution.

Li Wei, Beijing based contemporary artist, is always depicted as a master of gravity-defying  illusions. He wasn’t interested to stick only to photography but mixing it with performances to come up with unique art work. According to Wei’s statement he doesn’t use any Photoshop or other computer montage or tweaking. His creations come out only with the usage of mirrors, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics. Some of the breathtaking productions were published as cover pages of many magazines and  Li Wei himself was recognized as one of  the “The world’s most creative 31 photographers“ by American Getty in 2006.

An ancient crater in the hard rock, blasted by sand, NE Africa. Maybe a meteor crater?

Antipodes Islands, looking like an island flag

Aurora dances above a ribbon of dawn

The Nile flowing into the delta at Cairo at night, like a living thing

Cape Town, South Africa, the glinting sun highlighting the water

Dubai, the Palm Island like a trilobite in the night

Pillowy farms of eastern Europe, tidily etched in snow

The Florida Keys look especially vulnerable from orbit

Lake Balaton, Hungary. A lovely vacation destination on the water with spring’s new growth visible all around

Las Vegas, with the Strip distinctly standing out from the rest of the city, even from orbit

The Mediterranean’s mouth – Gibraltar, Algeciras, Ceuta

The Moon ushering in the dawn over the Southeastern United States

Moose Jaw, SK, and the airport where I truly learned how to fly. Home of the renowned RCAF Snowbirds aerobatic team

Our Earth is mostly liquid rock. We live on a thin crust, with occasional hot spots, like Mt. Etna

Sometimes Mother Nature uses a protractor, like here in New Zealand’s South Island

North central England in April. A web of roads, railways and light. Do you recognize the cities?

Morning in NYC. Downtown Manhattan casts quite a shadow

Ships waiting their turn at the Panama Canal’s western mouth

Paris, well-named City of Light. Even from orbit the brilliant Champs-Elysees is visible

Warm brown textures of the Patagonian Andes

Morning jet traffic over San Francisco

These mouthwatering generous folds of icing are actually Saudi sand

St Lawrence’s mouth, where the Great Lakes pour into the sea

The Australian Outback is effortlessly crazily beautiful

The Nile and the Sinai. One sweeping glance of human history

Twin cities, so close that they are one. St Paul and Minneapolis, USA

Winnipeg, Manitoba, incredibly clear. The river floodway diversion looks smart from space

The river hiccups like a zipper on an old coat

Shanghai, China. Home to more than 23 million people. Vibrant, cosmopolitan port at the mouth of the Yangtze River

Fogo, Cape Verde – a volcano so big it peaks above the Atlantic

For more inspiring imaging taken by Hadfield from space, make sure you follow him on Twitter

See also: Astronaut Wringing A Wet Towel In Space Will Make Your Jaw Drop!

Hadfield was the first Canadian to walk in space. A former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, he has flown two space shuttle missions, STS-74 in 1995 and STS-100 in 2001, and served as capsule communicator for both Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) expeditions. On 19 December 2012, Hadfield launched in the Soyuz TMA-07M flight for a long duration stay on board the ISS as part of Expedition 35. He arrived at the station on 21 December, as scheduled, and became the first Canadian to command the ISS when the crew of Expedition 34 departed.

See also: Astronaut Andre Kuipers Shares Stunning Images of Earth from Space

UPDATE: After 146 days in space, Chris Hadfield, Roman Romanenko and Tom Marshburn  undocked from the International Space Station, where they lived for 144 days and landed safely in Dzhezkazgan, Russia, around 10:30 p.m. EDT Monday May 13, 2013. The crew is now back home safely.

 [Image & Caption via Hadfield's Twitter Account, quoted text via Wikipedia]

This breathtaking image is a result of composing 25 separate images of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory from April 16, 2012, to April 15, 2013 made by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly where the sun is captured every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths. The work presented here is based on a wavelength of 171 angstroms, which is in the extreme ultraviolet range and shows solar material at around 600,000 kelvins (about 1.08 million F). The result image is extremely stable despite the fact that SDO orbits Earth at 6,876 mph and Earth orbits the sun at 67,062 mph.

The images have regularly caught solar flares and coronal mass ejections in the act, types of space weather that can send radiation and solar material toward Earth and interfere with satellites in space. SDO’s glimpses into the violent dance on the sun help scientists understand what causes these giant explosions — with the hopes of some day improving our ability to predict this space weather.

NASA‘s SDO also revealed a video which captures three years of the sun’s activity at a pace of two images per day starting from the spring 2010.  There is a slight  change in size of the sun during the video due to the distance variations between the SDO spacecraft and the sun.

More Pictures of the Day

London, the one city that has it all, the aim of millions of visitors annually, and the hub of major cultural, social, sports, commercial, etc.(you name it) events. Located on the Thames river, London is the largest urban zone and metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the European Union by most measures.

UK-based, Italian-born photographer Mattia Bicchi shared with us his latest creations, this gorgeous timelapse short film, showing off the beloved city in all its aspects. Bicchi tried to capture the variety of the weather and the emotions that make London such a beautiful city. Roaming the city using public transport, he shot 10,230 pictures, taking him a total of 2 months for shooting and the post-production. Enjoy the heartwarming video:

The gear used is the new Canon 6D, and the PocketSlider for the motion. Hats off to an amazing piece of artwork. For more works of Bicchi, make sure to check out his website and vimeo page.

The moment I discovered the existence of this product, I instantly fell in love with the idea as much as the results. The GoPro camera is literally the imagination of an adventure camera simplified and put to work, it just makes me want to mount it on my bike or helmet and get out there and start doing crazy things. The potential of creativity it puts in your hands is undeniably immense.

Out of my love for this camera I’ve decided to compile this adrenaline-rushing list of 10 of their best short videos shot by a GoPro, so grab on to your seat and enjoy this brief ride:

Avalanche Cliff Jump with Matthias Giraud

Red Bull Rampage TV Commercial

The Rubik Juggler

Peace Barrels TV Commercials

Balloon Backflips

A Blonde and a Great White Shark

Vertical Skydiving World Record 2012

Surfing Iceland

Ken Block in Russia

My GoPro Array

And here’s an 11th bonus video to calm you down now!

Dubstep Baby – Super Bowl Commercial 2013

Hope you enjoyed!

We previously featured their latest device, the Hero 3 HD, upon its release here and here, also my good friend Abd El Rahman Gabr of Koree films has utilized it in some of the scenes in his latest timelapse project, Egypt HD.

[All videos via GoPro on Vimeo]

Photographed by Chris Carvalho, The Mesa Arch in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park is one of the finest places for a photographer to start the day. This 4×5 negative was exposed with an old lens, a 121mm Schneider Super Angulon. It was a favorite of Ansel Adams. While an excellent optic for its time, it only had single-layer coating and was subject to more flare than modern lenses. In this instance, it created a starburst pattern with rainbow streaks that add greatly to the character of the image.

[NatGeo]

More Pictures of the Day

Today’s Picture of the Day goes to the Boston Magazine brilliant cover with this touching photographed composition of Boston Marathon’s shoes, shaping a negative-space heart in the middle. Inside the heart, a powerful headline reads, “We Will Finish the Race.” photographer Mitchell Feinberg took this aiming to create an iconic photo of the events.

As Boston Magazine editor John Wolfson states,

“To me the cover is about two things: perseverance and unity. By itself, each shoe in the photograph is tiny, battered, and ordinary. Together, though, they create something beautiful, powerful, and inspirational. Remove just one shoe and you begin to diminish, in some small way, the overall effect. Collectively, they are the perfect symbol for Boston, and for our response to the bombings.

“This city is my home. I live in it because I choose to. My love for it is boundless and, at times, irrational. This staff is filled with people who feel the same way. Our home is hurting right now, and our hope, together, was to produce something that reflects the intensity of affection and pride that all of us here in the region feel for Boston.”

The colored shoes are placed in the middle on purpose, to give the feeling that the heart is “almost beating.” Read more of the behind-the-scenes story at Boston Magazine.

[MyModernMet]

More Pictures of the Day

Karin Thorell, a Swedish wildlife photographer, that has dedicated her life to photographing birds insects and the amazing species of our nature. In a photo-shoot of a Golden-eye Duck colony, Thorell captured this momentous photograph of  2 baby common golden-eye ducks leaving the nest and taking to the air for their first ever flight. The expressions on their face are priceless!

The Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) is a medium-sized sea duck. Adult males ranges from 45–52 cm (18–21 inches) and from 888 to 1400 grams (1.9 to 3.1 lbs), while females range from 40–50 cm (16–20 inches) and from 500 to 1182 grams (1.1 to 2.6 lbs). The species is aptly named for its golden-yellow eye.

[Via Twisted Sifter]

A few weeks earlier we posted the official teaser of the  time-lapse short film entitled ‘Egypt HD’, along side some of the photos used in the movie that were sent to us by the makers. Well, this morning photographer, director and editor Abd El Rahman Gabr, of Koree Films, and Qube Productions (previously featured here and here) has released his masterpiece after months and months of hard work.

Gabr, started traveling and shooting in September 2012, he later joined efforts with Mahmoud Zahran, who together, roamed the country shooting some 50,000 images to create their first ever professional time-lapse.

The movie is primarily aimed at exploring the most amazing and exotic locations in Egypt, in efforts to promote the country’s tourism. The film comes in the perfect timing, specially with tourism in Egypt hitting a record low after the ousting of Mubarak and the instability the country has witnessed over the past 2 years.

There are hundreds of location that I could’ve shot , but due to the country’s situation and that the project is funded from my pocket everything was really limited. I am planning to do a Volume two next year, So I hope this message can reach sponsors or producers so we can make a volume two with more advanced gears and show everyone in the world the beauty of Egypt. Gabr says

Sit back, maximize your screen, turn up the volume and ENJOY!!

Locations:
Siwa – Aswan – Luxor – Fayoum – Taba – Dahab – St. Catherine mountain

Stay tuned for EGYPT HD – Volume II. Don’t miss our updates by following us on Facebook and Twitter

[Copyrights: Abd El Rahman Gabr, Koree Films, Qube Productions]

[Via ArtPics on Facebook]

In this breathtaking image the brilliance of a moon-rise is caught on camera over Los Angeles, California. The footage was captured by Dan Marker-Moore, a motion designer and artist from LA. The time sliced image above is a collage of 11 photos taken over 27 minutes and 59 seconds.