Unfortunately there won't be any new posts for about a week as I'll be relaxing in one of the most beautiful places in Ontario (Camp Manitou on the north shore of Georgian Bay - see photos below).  The week after I'll be at a conference in Quebec City and won't have much time to post either...but I'll try!

'til then, cheers!

-Jonathan

Look at these photos below.  At a quick glance, they look like simple photographs until you spot something a bit off - that something is Liu Bolin, a Chinese artist who has become known for taking photographs of himself, painted almost perfectly to match the background.  His exhibition 'The Invisible Man' is currently at the Eli Klein Fine Art Gallery in New York City through September 28, 2011.

This is a pretty fascinating interactive website that has two 'columns' of countries.  If you click on a country on the left, the graphic visually shows where people from that country are emigrating to.  If you click a country on the right, it shows what countries people are immigrating from.  The proportion of people is represented by the thickness and colour of line.  Pretty neat to visually see where everyone is from/going to!

Check it out at Peoplemovin

Looks like companies are catching on to this whole shadow art thing!  Here is a pretty neat beer billboard from downtown San Diego:

Here is a set of incredible photos where random objects are stacked/placed in a way that the shadows produce detailed images.  Unfortunately many sites showing the photos provide no credit to the original artists but one site mentioned the names of Kumi Yamashita, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Shigeo Fukuda, and Larry Kagan. 

Pretty amazing stuff.  (click on the thumbnails below to view the rest of the set)

Thanks Matt M. for the link.  Source: All Photoz and Buzzfeed

Here are a few amazing shots taken high above the landscapes in hot air balloons.  

Don't forget to look to the skies tonight - you should be able to see some nice shooting stars (see this previous post for more info).  Hopefully the moon won't be too bright...

-Jonathan M.

Ok so this post doesn't have much to do with photography, science, or technology - but it was too cool not to share. I came across these amazing sculptures created by artist Dalton Ghetti made from carving the tips of pencil lead!  I can barely sharpen a pencil without breaking the lead.  Here are some of his carvings and a short video below showcasing a bunch more.

Ok, admittedly that title doesn't sound overly interesting, but this is actually pretty amazing.  GelSight Inc. has developed a thin block of clear rubber  with a skin of metallic paint.  When pressed against an object, the gel conforms to the texture/shape in such detail, that even the smallest features that would normally require the use of a microscope to see, are visible to the naked eye (or in this case, a camera).  Check out the demo video below - mind blowing.

Read more about it (and watch a few more videos) over at the GelSight website.

Source: Photoxels

On August 6, 1945 at 8:15am, the USAF dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan as part of their WWII offensive - six months later, three American, and one Japanese photographers documented the destruction by taking 5 different panoramas around the city.  These photographs have recently been compiled into interactive 360 degree panoramas by 360cities.net.  The destruction is unimaginable...hard to believe this was a full city before the explosion.  Let's hope we never see anything like this again.