Breathtaking Aerial Photographs By Alex Maclean

Alex S. MacLean is an American photographer who’s best known for his spectacular aerial photographs. Since getting his flight permit in 1975, MacLean has been flying around America on his four-seat Cessna 182 taking pictures of the American (and European) landscapes.

Here is a small collection of some his stunning shots.

B-52 “Bone Yard” Tucson, Arizona

Baseball field

Bathers in Wave Pool Orlando, Florida

Betsy Ross Bridge I-95

Blue Tankers in Train Yard Wheeling, West Virginia

Flower Fields Carlsbad, California

Dinghies Clustered Around Dock Duxbury, Massachusetts

Dryland Farming

Agriculture Field Pattern

Golf Course at Waters Edge Fort Walton, Florida

Grain Silos

Hay Bales in A Cash Valley Field

Haystacks

Auto Junkyard With Access Road Ayer, Massachusetts

Picnickers Watching Live Concert

Piles of Topsoil

Railroad Turntables

Abandoned Steel Mill

Deserted Steel Mill

Surfers Behind Breaking Waves at Sunset Beach Oahu, Hawaii

Trains in Marshalling Yard

Waterslide in an amusement park

Alex Maclean’s website

Sleeping Security Guards

I always knew. Trusting them is foolish.

The Motorcycle Without Spoke Wheels

Engineers of Amen Design and Engineering have created a motorcycle whose wheels have neither spokes nor discs. Such type of hubless designs were seen earlier only on concept bikes, but this could be the first hubless bike to hit the road.

Creative and Unusual Cakes

Amazing food landscapes by Carl Warner

Carl Warner is a British photographer who takes the art of food decorations to a new level. Carl isn’t content with carving fruits and vegetables to make birds and butterflies, he creates entire worlds out of food. Every piece of item in his unbelievably deceptive landscapes are made of nothing but food. You have to see it, to believe it.

In the picture above, a pea pod becomes a boat, bread and potatoes are turned into land and the sea is salmon.

The rocks are bread and the cloud peeping between the hills is cauliflower.

A farmland with coconut haystacks.

Often scenes are photographed in layers from foreground to background and combined later. Here, hot air balloons made of a variety of fruit and vegetables soar over fields of asparagus, courgettes, beans and corn.

Parmesan cliffs with sweet potato boulders and cress and savoy cabbage foliage under a red cabbage sky

Broccoli trees and flowing granulated sugar for the waterfall.

This landscape features rocks made of oyster shells and crab claws, boats made of marrows and asparagus, and a shining, silvery, slippery sea of fish.

A market scene

A kitchen. The houses seen through the window are bread.

A stormy red cabbage sea.

An underwater cave scene, complete with carrot stalactites, a pea pod boat, and sea life made of exotic fruits, cauliflower and broccoli.

Often these photos need retouching, like the floating clouds.

Salami trees inspired by movies like The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Carl Warner’s personal website

[via Telegraph]

22 Best And Funniest Sport’s Shots

Shanghai: Where Bomb Shelters Become Bars

Shelter: Image by: Santo Chino

When you hit the town in a major world city, you look for certain things in the bars and clubs you go to: perhaps a cool underground vibe; or a place that you know is safe and relaxed even if otherwise the night out is blast. Well, in Shanghai you can be doubly sure of ticking these boxes by frequenting one of two nightspots there that in times past led a rather different life as a bomb shelter.

Underground vibe: Shelter

Image by: the tattooed tentacle

The straightforwardly named Shelter is a cavernous, down to earth dive that draws a mixed crowd and isn’t recommended for the claustrophobic. Clubbers enter a narrow room containing the bar and dance floor via an even narrower winding passageway. The low curved ceilings are constant reminders of the purpose this space once served.

Ooh la la: drag party at Shanghai Studio

Image by: monkeyking

The city’s other best-kept secret hotspot comes in the shape of Shanghai Studio. It’s less dingy and earthy than Shelter, and not quite as proud of its previously more sheltered existence. Inevitably, though, it’s a subterranean labyrinth of a club to explore, this time with art adorning the corridors, and catering to a more flamboyant clientele.

Burrowing back in time

Image by: Shamus Sillar

The story behind Shanghai’s hidden haunts goes back to the bygone era of 1930s, as Newsweek reported this week. Bomb shelters were dug when the Japanese carried out air raids during their conflict with China, and through the later years of Civil War and then Cold War insecurity many more were built.

Industry to art: steel factory turned sculpture space

Image by: Lowcola

According to Newsweek, these days things are different, and the repurposing of abandoned structures in Shanghai isn’t limited to bomb shelters. A recent design revolution in the city has seen a slaughterhouse reborn as an art hub, flourmills moulded into art galleries, warehouses revamped as rock clubs, and a steel factory reshaped into a sculpture space. Yes, as China opens up to the world, industry is moving to the city’s outskirts, while creativity and commerce take centre stage.

A picture preserved: old cinema still in use

Image by: meckleychina

Good architects appreciate the value of preserving the original character of a building even when it is restored to perform a new, modern function. If the history of the Shanghai Studio and Shelter nightclubs has survived their respective transformations, then thankfully no nights here will ever bomb out badly.

Shanghai old and new

Image by: Kunal and Sumona

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Deaf dog learned sign language for deaf

Deaf puppy breed Jack Russell terrier learned a few commands in the sign language for deaf after his owners whether the asylum.

A deaf puppy, named Snowy received a new chance for life after the learned sign language for deaf.

Snowy’s owners brought him in the asylum, because they are not able to deal with deaf dog.

For three weeks, 4-months white puppy, breed Jack Russell terrier, learned a few commands in the sign language for deaf, such as standing, go, lie down, turn.

“Snowy is very clear doggy. Very quickly learned several commands,” say people who care about him in the asylum, and hope that he will soon find a new home where it will go and watch over him.

Parking On Neighbor’s Car

Clumsy woman driver from Britain …

Bad British woman driver, instead of parking on approach of house,she parked on car of her neighbour. Was accidentally hit the brakes instead of gas.

– You will not believe this, said my wife, so I run to the window in the bathroom through which I saw this scene. I run quickly to help the woman get out of the car. Could not get out because it was two meters above the earth – tell the owner of the damaged cars, American Robert Den Hartag.

He said that to clumsy woman nothing reprimanded.

– The lady who lives a few houses from us, simply turns and instead, click the brake, she gave the gas. Her husband came by it, we sat down together and drinking tea, everything was very British. All time she apologized . Came and the police, but have not raised any application. In fact, and I was not angry, but I will have to buy a new car, because this is quite scrapped – concluded Robert.

World’s Most Evil Caterpillar Invades Liberia

Image: E journeys

Every few decades, the army worm Spodoptera frugiperda strikes somewhere in the world, in the form of millions of caterpillars creating havoc among crops. This time, it has hit Liberia, where the situation has gotten so bad that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president declared a state of emergency. International experts are gathering in Monrovia to aid the government’s containment, elimination and prevention efforts. And this is only the first wave; it is expected that the second wave of the hungry pests will be even more devastating.

Army worm nest that has taken over a host plant; the black dots are caterpillar faeces

Image: Anna Perkins

Around 400,000 people in more than 100 villages have been affected so far. And not only by the complete devastation of crops like plantains, bananas, coffee and cocoa, but also because the drinking water, taken from creeks and rivers, has been contaminated by the caterpillars’ faeces. The Liberian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) is also advising the population not to eat dead chickens, birds or fish as they may have been infested too.

Both Liberia and neighbouring Guinea, which is also affected, have carried out aerial sprays with insecticide but it is feared the worst is yet to come as the caterpillars are reaching pupa stage. As pupae, they will stay in the soil for 7-12 days before they emerge as adult moths that can lay up to 1,000 eggs a week, ready to grow into new caterpillars within days. Predicts Ibrahim Shamie, an expert from at-risk Sierra Leone: “We had the experience in Sierra Leone, in 1979, about 30 years ago… When the second emergence occurs, that will be the biggest population.”

Sometimes even the army worm gets infested: parasitic wasp larvae emerging from army worm

Image: Agriculture Western Australia

Like true camouflage experts, army worms feed at night and hide during the day, so the problem is often not noticed until severe damage occurs. When the caterpillar invasion started in Liberia about two weeks ago, a seven-person MOA-team had been deployed, which has now grown to 35 people. It is headed by entomologist Gregory Tarplah, who said: “The swarm of worm-like caterpillars are consuming all vegetation in their path and are polluting all creeks and running water with their faeces.”

What boggles the mind is how exactly they do the latter – and here the research is very thin. One wonders whether the caterpillars produce more excrement than usual because of the abundance of food, or whether it’s just the sheer numbers that produce such a heap of you-know-what. Then there’s the question of how all the excrement gets bundled together so that it can clog rivers and creeks? Basically, how much faeces can a caterpillar that is only five cm (two inches) long produce? A whole lot, it seems.

Source: 1, 2, 3, 4