The official blog of The Daily.
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Collages by Nacho Ormaechea.
Today is Monday, the first school day since the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that claimed so many young lives last week. Like millions of other American parents, I sent my kids off to school today knowing that the difficult family discussions we had over the weekend will continue in the classroom, as educators and students address yet another tragic outburst of violence in our schools. Today, the first of many funerals will take place in Newtown, after a weekend of vigils and mourning. President Obama visited Newtown on Sunday, speaking before an auditorium of grieving parents. “We can’t accept events like this as routine,” he said, “These tragedies must end, and to end them, we must change.”
See more. [Images: Reuters, Getty, AP]
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That’s the sound of the countdown to the close of the 2013 Sony World Photography awards, which will stop accepting submissions on Jan. 4.
Here’s a sampling of what you’re up against. Now get snapping!
Planning a holiday party? Spice it up with a crazy quirky DIY photo booth!
These playful African monkeys put on quite the acrobatic show for wildlife photographer Manoj Shah in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.
Remember the Chinese home that stood in the middle of a highway? As of yesterday, sadly, it is no more.
The owners refused a government offer of $35K, but settled for $41K soon after, allowing authorities to raze their home — which cost them $95K to renovate.
Celebrated National Geographic photographer George Steinmetz spent the last 15 years paragliding high above the world’s “extreme deserts” for a stunning new photography book.
Don’t blame Photoshop! Turns out, photographic manipulation is as old as photography itself.
Bet you’ve never seen nude photos like this before.
Photographer Shinichi Maruyama turns intense, hurried movements into static form, creating these beautiful, almost liquified images of people dancing.
[via designboom]
Talk about dedication! It took photographer Robert Buelteman 13 years to create these eye-popping images of electrocuted flowers.
He didn’t use a camera, but rather a painstaking photogram process involving plexiglas, silicone and 80,000 volts of electricity — a technique first developed in the 1930s by Russian inventor Semyon Kirlian.
First he whittles flowers down to transparency with a scalpel, and places them between color transparency film, a diffusion screen and sheet metal, all of which floats in liquid silicone sandwiched by plexiglas.
Then Buelteman shocks the prepared materials with 80,000 volts from an electric pulse, shooting electrons through the sheet metal and flower. Finally, he uses a hair-thin fiber optic flashlight to develop the image, leaving what Kirlian called the “aura,” or “life-force” of a living organism.
“I decided I wanted to approach photography as more of a full self-expression, without regard to realism or capturing images that are recognizable,” Buelteman told The Daily. “This world is about the world as sensed, it’s beyond description and beyond meaningful interpretation.”
