Archive Category: Pictures
Mobile Wedding Chapel
If a shotgun wedding isn’t fast enough for ya, you can get married in the world’s fastest church: a mobile wedding chapel (converted from a firetruck) owned by Rev. Darrell Best.
His 1942 firetruck is by no means a Ferrari, but it is equipped as a fully functioning chapel.
"I’ve had it up to 55 mph," Best said. "It gets a lot of attention on the highway."
Mechanics from the Country Music Television show "Trick My Truck" did the conversion after Best’s family wrote to the program last year. The chapel has stained-glass windows, a pipe organ, an altar and two wooden pews.
Couples recently paid $100 to get married in the tiny church at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. "It fits me, the bride, the groom, the best man and the maid of honor," said Best, of Shelbyville, Ill. "It gets a little crowded, but it works."
Kim Janssen of the LA Times has the story: Link
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Unsettling Old Photos of the “Living” Dead
Is the man in this picture dead or alive? It’s not a silly question. In the early days of photography, dead bodies would be photographed for posterity. Often this would be the only picture ever taken of the person. Sometimes the bodies were posed as if they were alive.
There’s something just unspeakably creepy about this fireman. At first glance, he looks like a normal, awkwardly-posed guy from the 19th century. But upon closer inspection, you notice a few tell-tale signs: a rigid pose and fingers, a stand not quite completely hidden behind his feet, which is holding him up by some unseen armature on his back, liberal amounts of rouge applied to too-white cheeks, and those blank, blank eyes.
This picture is available on eBay. See more possibly post-mortem posed portraits at mental_floss. Link
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Dark Stores
Photo: Brian Ulrich
Photographer Brian Ulrich has spent the last few year examining “the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live.” His latest project captures the beauty and sadness of empty stores and failed businesses.
Most recently a new project began in 2008 entitled Dark Stores, Ghost Boxes and Dead Malls. In the recent economic downturn some of the very stores I photographed at the beginning of the project are now emptied and laid barren in the hulking empty architecture of the big box, mall or store.
Link -via Metafilter
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The Depression-Era Photography of Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange captured some of the iconic images of the Great Depression. As such she became one of the founding figures of the golden age of American photojournalism. From sharecroppers to the Salvation Army, she recorded the times as they were then – and they were pretty harsh if the truth be told.
Lange took to roaming the streets taking pictures of homeless and unemployed people and this very quickly drew the admiration of local photographers. One thing led to another and she found herself employed by the rather harshly named Federal Resettlement Administration, later to become the Farm Security Administration (FSA). He job was to capture the lives and times of those affected by the Depression and to pass these images on – free of charge – to newspapers and magazines. The remarkable image of an ex-slave above was taken in 1938. Just over seventy years separates this shot and the Investiture of President Obama. One wonders if this woman – if informed of this future news by some errant time traveler – would choose to believe the shape of things to come.
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Air Travel’s Glory Years
Flying these days is about as pleasant as a root canal, with security hassles, delays, poor service, expensive or nonexistent food, and cramped seats.
But was it always this way? The answer, of course, is no. And so, we decided to take a look back to the glory days of flight – when the stewardesses resembled beauty pageant contestants, when pilots seemed likes heroes, and when flying still seemed to be an adventure – to remind us, of just how things once were.
Enjoy 50 photos of stewardesses from the good old days of air travel. Link -via Gorilla Mask
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A Brief History of Photo Fakery
Photo: David King Collection, London
The New York Times has a slideshow of famous faked photographs, including Abraham Lincoln’s head on John Calhoun’s body and Stalin’s erasure of his enemies. Shown above is the before and after photo manipulation where Nikolai Yezhov, a one-time head of Soviet’s secret police NKVD and a central player in Stalin’s Great Purge was himself purged – from life and this photograph.
Link via Instapundit
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Waiting for the End of the World
Many folks built small bomb shelters to survive a nuclear attack during the Cold War, but others took the idea to great lengths. Good Magazine has a pictorial taken from the book Waiting for the End of the World by Richard Ross, in which you’ll see the interiors of shelters meant to house people waiting out the apocalypse. From Switzerland to Texas, you’ll see how people prepare for the end of the world as we know it. The underground dining room shown is in Sanpete Country, Utah. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
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Saving The Tamarins By Making Them Into Pets
Tamarins are considered highly endangered in the wild yet they are an increasingly popular pet amongst those who wish to purchase a NHP (Non-Human Primate).
Do you want to help save the Tamarins? Why not adopt one as a pet? Here’s the pros and cons:
Captive bred Tamarins can be hugely rewarding pets and can form a real bond with their owner that will be cherished for many years. The rewards of owning one can be manifold. The real question is not whether this is the right pet for you. The real question is whether or not you are the right owner.
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Mountain Biking Through the Mashatu Game Reserve with Hans "No Way" Rey
Photo: Carmen Freeman / Adidas and Planet Talk
Forget being squished between sweating tourists inside a hot jeep! Mountain bike champ Hans "No Way" Rey found a better way to go tour the Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana: on a mountain bike!
Environmental Graffiti has the story:
When mountain biking legend Hans Rey set off on a safari free-riding trip through southern Africa, he couldn’t know what to expect. “I had ridden amongst wild animals on several occasions over the years, usually in a semi controlled environment, where we either had a vehicle nearby or the chances were unlikely that I would ride into the lion’s den,” says Rey. “Well, this time was different.”
Sleeping in the open bush land – sometimes directly under the star-clustered sky – may sound idyllic, but when hyenas are prowling around close enough to leave pawprints just metres from your camp, reality bites. “We all made sure that we’d stay near one of the rifles at all times,” explains Rey, because if you leave the group you become part of the food chain – meals on wheels as it were.
Link – Thanks Karl!
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Squirrel Lamp
Brett & Kate McKay of the Art of Manliness Blog wrote a neat post about some of the worst products ever created for men, which included dubious products like hair in a can, chest hair toupee, prostate warmer and so on. The popularity of the post got them to write a sequel, listing gems like glow-in-the-dark neckties, paste-on facial hair, and swim trunks that act like floaties.
Photo: Sep 1933 Modern Mechanix
But for reasons unknown, though I assume alcohol was involved, they included this incredibly awesome squirrel lamp – so I am duly forced to rename their post "12 More of the Worst Products For Men Ever Created and One Really, Really Awesome Squirrel Lamp." So there I fixed it.
Link – Thanks Mu!
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10 Extreme Cameras
Gizmodo has a photogallery of ten extraordinary cameras, such as the the above picture of the world’s largest camera. Constructed in 2006, it consisted of a modified aircraft hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. The resulting silver emulsion print was three stories high and ten stories long.
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Insert "The Cheeky Squirrel" Into Your Own Photo
The "cheeky squirrel," originally posted at National Geographic and made famous by Neatorama’s own Upcoming Queue, has now gone viral on the internet.
Hundreds of photos, including many famous ones, have been modified by adding the ground squirrel. Now you can do so with your own photo or one of your favorites from the web.
The simplest generator I’ve encountered is "The Squirrelizer." You cannot, however, upload an image from your computer; you will need to
use one that has a url (stored somewhere on a blog or in an
image library such as Imageshack).
After that, the generator is intuitive. If you don’t have an online account where you can store the image, just take a screen shot of your creation.
Link – via lutralutra
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The Cardboard Tube Fighting League
As a kid, I couldn’t hack at my friends with a real sword, so we used cardboard tubes to fence. Who knew that it was an actual sport? The Cardboard Tube Fighting League has competitions all over the world where people come together to play and show off their homemade cardboard armor.
Official Website of the San Francisco Branch
Link via The Presurfer
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The Mini Turns 50
Beloved of many, that famous icon of Britishness, the Mini, celebrates its fiftieth birthday this month. This is the story of one of the most influential cars in history, from conception to its final British demise in 2000:
Ironically, this little motor owes its existence to a fuel crisis. In 1956 the Suez Crisis brought about a fuel shortage in the UK. The British, although they had been accustomed to rationing everything during the Second World War, found that because of the conflict over in Suez that fuel was once again scarce – and expensive. Sales of car plummeted, but the market for the cheap and small German Bubble car boomed. The then head of the BMC reportedly stated in a fit of uniquely British apoplexy ‘God damn these bloody awful Bubble Cars. We must drive them off the road by designing a proper miniature car’.
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The World's Most Beautiful River
For most part of the year, the Caño Cristales river in Colombia is just like any other river in the world. But when the season is just right, it transforms into the most beautiful river in the world:
During Colombia’s wet season, the water flows fast and deep, obscuring the bottom of the river and denying the mosses and algae that call the river home the sun that they need. And during the dry season there is not enough water to support the dazzling array of life in the river. But during a brief span between the wet and dry seasons, when the water level is just right, the many varieties of algae and moss bloom in a dazzling display of colors. Blotches of amarillo, blue, green, black, and red–and a thousand shades in between–coat the river.
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7 Giant Versions of Everyday Critters
Ever wish that itsy bitsy crab you had for dinner were bigger, so that you could eat more of one instead of ordering another dish? Why not order a coconut crab, a Tasmanian giant crab or a Japanese spider crab? Who knows, with 13 ft of crab to deal with, you might not even be able to finish it all!
(Also available: escargot So big, you can’t even wrap your hands around it.)
This article over at Cracked also features jellyfish, spiders, worms and other creepy crawlies you would love to see magnified.
Puppies, kittens, infants: All adorable. And do you know why? Because they’re tiny. If you start to magnify these things, then you wind up with the substantially less cute wolves, jaguars and teenagers.
Yes, if there’s one thing nature teaches us, it’s that what may start out as an adorable little animal friend can quickly turn into a Lovecraftian horror when its itty-bitty wittle mouth gets big enough to start eating your face. And when the little versions are already a little bit creepy, the big versions are the stuff nightmares are made of.
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Death Masks of the Famous
Before the age of photography, there was a strange custom of making a plaster cast of the face of the recently departed.
These "death masks" were mementos of the dead, though they also had other purposes like for creating portraits or for recording facial records of unknown corpses.
Here’s a collection of death masks of the famous at Socyberty. To the left is Alfred Hitchcock:
Alfred Hitchcock dealt with death any number of times in his films – murder most horrid quite often – and in his death he retains a certain air of petulance.
He had a career that spanned six decades and most people are surprised to hear that he died as late as 1980. He directed over fifty feature films and is regarded by many as the most influential British film maker of all time.
He died of renal failure in California at the age of eighty. It is somewhat ironic that the film-maker who made generations of moviegoers wet themselves with fright should die of a kidney related illness.
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Dancing Caterpillars
Amateur photographer Desmond Cannon of Brae, Ireland caught these sawfly caterpillars eating through a leaf while sticking their rear ends in the air! He shot pictures of the tiny (less than a centimeter long) caterpillars as they ate through the leaf while holding their chorus line pose.
Geoff Read, head of reptiles and inverterbrae at Marwell Wildlife, near Winchester, Hants, said the behaviour was perculiar to sawfly larvae.
He said: “It is a defence mechanism. If you go too near them they rear up like this to try and scare off predators.
“It is only this family of caterpillars that do this – it’s incredible to see.”
(image credit: Desmond Cannon)
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Self-Portrait With Ground Squirrel
Melissa Brandts wasn’t trying to take a photo of this ground squirrel at Banff National Park. She’d set up the camera’s timer so that she’d have a nice picture of herself and her husband, with spectacular Lake Minnewanka in the background.
She hadn’t counted on this ground squirrel hogging the foreground.
Photo by Melissa Brandt, from the Your Shot Daily Dozen at National Geographic magazine
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Where Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors Do Their Work
Where I Write is a photogallery of science fiction and fantasy authors in their workspaces. The photo above is of Piers Anthony, author of the Xanth series. Photographer Kyle Cassidy plans to create a book filled with such images.
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If Star Wars Was Real
If Star Wars Was Real is a photoshop gallery of images which imagine a synthesis of human history (particularly in the 20th Century) and Star Wars. Well, I think that it’s photoshopped. The hosts are a bit more ambitious:
Our mission is to compile any evidence we can find to prove that Star Wars is real. So far, we have several contacts around the globe studying photographs and artifacts for any shred of evidence they can find. However, since most of the evidence seems to be hidden away by some sort of worldwide government consipracy, we need your help to find the truth!
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Don't Judge My Hair
From the people who brought you There, I Fixed It, Don’t Judge My Hair is a photoblog of disasterous hairstyles, cuts, and colors.
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Spiderman Saves the Day!
I don’t know where this photograph originated, but I love it! How can you beat the implied story of Spiderman holding back a van full of kids to protect a flock of ducklings? Link to full size version. -via Buzzfeed
Update: This award-winning photograph was shot by Deviant Art member Samlim. (Thanks, inebriator!)
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10 Types of Comic Con Fans
If you missed Comic Con, you missed more than just the costumes of course. You also missed the array of personality types that seem to pop up at these large-scale geekfests.You may think you know about the attendees, based on the stereotypes, but really, there’s a lot more too it than you thought.
The Stereo-typical Geek
These are the kids that smell like they haven’t bathed in a week and still get giddy over the concept of seeing a girl “IRL.” While revolting to everyone around them, they still think they’re total studs and try to chat up the illustrious booth girls somehow hoping their Jedi mind tricks will actually help convince the girl they are cool. Even if you don’t see many of these geeks, you most certainly will smell them, as this sign helps demonstrate.
The Twilight Fans
These are the newest breed at the convention and their presence actually worried organizers. There was even talk of organizing things so the panels and booths these tweens were expected to visit would be super far away from the things the geeks were expected to be interested in. Fortunately, these fans actually blended in just fine and were largely the same as the Harry Potter fans that have become a fixture at the convention. While it’s impossible to say how long these fans will stay in the scene, it will most certainly not be a problem having the around.
The Booth Babe
These are professional hotties who actually have no interest in anything geekish, particularly comic books, video games and even shows like “Heroes” or “Chuck.” While they would normally never be willing to be seen with the average people visiting these conventions, they’re happy to chat with them and pose for photos as long as there is a nice check of at least $200 a day in it for them. In more recent years, the standard booth babes have been reduced, thanks in part to Suicide Girls, who tend to have far more of an interest in these type of activities. In fact Suicide Girls even had a pre-Comic Con collection of Cosplay shots just to emphasize the girls’ natural geekiness.
The Cross-Over Costumer
Like Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes? Why not be Jedi Sherlock? What about cooking and Star Wars? Chef Darth Vader of course. One of the most famous crossover fans is Elvis Storm Trooper (to the left), who not only has his own website, but also travels to as many conventions as possible every year. Of course, he always makes it to the San Diego Comic Con every year.
The Star Wars Fans
Comic Con has always been a huge supporter of Star Wars, and not only because it’s a scifi classic. You see, George Lucas actually gave a preview of the movie to fans in 1977 before the movie was released and before the convention was even a big deal. The cult following was inevitable.
Of course, modern day Star Wars fans at the convention tend to be extreme. There are fans who make up their own characters as part of their own fan fiction and there are people dressed as characters who were only shown for a matter of seconds in the film.
The Trekkies
Image Via Stately English Manor
Despite the stereotypes of comic conventions loaded with Klingons, the Trekkies were actually a dying breed for the last ten or so years. But not this year. Since the newest movies are always a major inspiration for costumes (last year The Dark Knight was huge), Star Trek fans were everywhere this year. Interestingly, it was easy to spot the old-school Trekkies, who had only put their gear on the shelf for a few years, and the new-school Trekkies.
The Guy Way Too Into His Character
These guys can be more than a little scary. While a lot of people get into character and enjoy acting their roles, there always seems to be at least a few costumed villains that seem to be living out their character’s lives. Unfortunately, there’s no psychological test given to people dressed up as villains prior to entry.
So far no one’s been severely injured, but it’s only a matter of time.
The Weirdo Hippie Guy
This guy’s a rare breed, but there always seems to be at least one of them at the Convention. They all seem to have taken a few too many acid hits. No one, particularly these guys themselves, actually understands why they are so interested in showing up at the convention every year, but the overall accepting attitude of the attendees makes it a welcome place for these “unique” individuals.
The Steampunks
Steampunk inventions and costumes have been featured many times on Neatorama, but the number of posts is nowhere near the number of steampunks at Comic Con. These guys have always been at the convention, but this last year they’ve really stepped up their numbers. If you’re interested in learning more about the steampunks at Comic Con this year, there is a great article over at KPBS.
The Lolitas
I have to admit, these are some of my favorite Comic Con fans because I just can’t get enough of the outfits. Just like the steampunks, lolitas have always been around at Comic Con, but their numbers really shot up this year. While many people associate the lolitas with gothic culture, the ones at the convention are more of the Japanophile sort and frequently flock to Giant Robot and other Japanese toy booths to see the newest and hottest imports from their country of choice.
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Comic Con 2009 Costumes
If you missed out on the San Diego Comic Con this year, you weren’t alone -tickets sold out months in advance, leaving a whole lot of people locked out. If you were one of the many who wanted to go and couldn’t, or if you just are interested in the event, now’s your chance to see one of the best parts of the con -the costumes. These pictures include my top 20 favorite costumes, but there are a whole lot more out there. If you’re interested in seeing more convention pictures, be sure to use the links at the bottom of the article.
There’s always a lot of cross-over costumes at Comic Con and for some reason, they tend to mostly involve Star Wars. These guys were seventies Darth and Boba Fett. I missed out on the opportunity of getting a picture of another one along these lines, the storm troopper with a gold, disco-ball tiled helmet.
More Great Costumes Behind The Jump
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Exploding Water Balloon Photos
These fantastic shots of water balloons taken with a high speed camera are just fantastic. Who knew water could look so fascinating?
They bring back memories of when you were a young scamp, mischievously dropping water bombs on hapless cyclists from overpasses, or soaking whole streets in drive-by drench-athons – but those days of innocence are gone now. So, it just leaves us to sit back and wonder at the beautiful physics of the things – as well as the devilish uses to which they can be put.
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ZeroEdge Aquarium
It’s a good thing that I’ve completely given up on aquariums (mine was cheekily named "The Last Stop Before Fish Heaven"), because this one by ZeroEdge is absolutely gorgeous. With its overflowing water, it’s what you get when you cross an infinity edge pool with an aquarium … Link
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Soap Bubble in Space
You would be forgiven if you thought this picture was a soap bubble in front of an astronomical picture. This is a picture of a planetary nebula that was overlooked until this month. Astronomers say it is either spherical or column-shaped, in which case the camera is looking down the barrel of the column. Records indicate that the nebula, officially named PN G75.5+1.7 and nicknamed the “Cygnus Bubble”, was recorded sixteen years ago during the second Palomar Sky Survey, but was overlooked at the time because it was so faint. Link -Thanks, healthylivinggal83!
(image credit: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)
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Woodstock Lovers Still Together
Photographer Burk Uzzle took plenty of photographs of the Woodstock music festival in August of 1969, but none are remembered better than the young couple wrapped in a blanket that became the cover art for the record album, and later the poster for the movie.
Forty years later, the couple in the photo – Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60 – remain together. They married two summers after the fabled weekend, and they still live less than an hour’s drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up.
Nick Ercoline works for the Orange County, N.Y., Department of Housing. Bobbi is a resident nurse at the elementary school in their hometown of Pine Bush.
The two weren’t even aware of the photograph until they saw the album cover. Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Harbus for News)
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Russian Terminator
A Russian hobbyist put together a diorama of World War II action figures assembling a terminator to fight the Germans. Oh, this isn’t just one scene, but a series of photographs that tell the story. I particularly liked the part where the commanding officer selected a face for their creation. The title of the post is “Laughter is Stalin’s Secret Weapon”. Link -via Metafilter
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