Everybody knows that Asia is full of beautiful picture perfect scenery- from the ancient architecture to the natural wonders that abound, the colorful wildlife and the equally colorful populace. Much of the continent still looks like it has for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, so a photo series based around beautiful Asian scenery is a no-brainer.

What makes this series by photographer Weerapon Chaipuck different is the fact that these scenes are being shot by a native, someone who knows the land and strives for these ideals with every shoot:

To create a project, you must do homework about the place; which season and period of time are optimal for taking photographs, what is the vantage point, which lens should be used, and what your post production process is going to look like...

Weerapon's images have been enhanced by Photoshop, although he claims:

When shooting landscapes, it is 100% natural, and pinpointing the exact time of day to shoot, whether that be 30 minutes before the sun begins to rise or 30 minutes before sunset, is a constant challenge.

-Via Bored Panda

This isn’t the street art you’re used to- it isn’t created with spray paint or stencils, and it doesn’t mar the face of the urban environment in Paris. In fact, this unusual form of street art beautifies the cityscape, replacing advertising eyesores with classical works of art.

This is the work of street artist/city beautifier Etienne Lavie, who is on a mission to replace billboards all over the city of Paris with something people actually want to look at, such as classical paintings like "Liberty Leading The People" by Eugene Delacroix, in a project called "OMG who stole my ads?"

Eugene's cause is truly noble, although it's doubtful that the advertisers will agree when they find out that their billboards have been appropriated.

-Via Flavorwire

(Video Link)

Model train builders generally start with a small track and a few plastic trains bought at the local toy store, but for those who feel the calling of those tiny rails in their blood model trains soon become a lifetime obsession.

Flemington, New Jersey is a mecca for model railroaders, thanks to hometown hero Bruce Zaccagnino, a fairly obsessed mini railroad man who has been working for over a decade on his mindblowing 52,000 square foot railroad paradise known as Northlandz.

Here's what visitors to Northlands can expect to see:

a vast network of mountains, bridges, and sky scrapers, all with tiny trains snaking along on the miniscule landscape.

The museum as it now stands is a maze of rooms, tracks, and tiny scenes. There are little plane crashes, cemeteries, and factories — it's way more than just a train going around a track with some fake trees alongside of it.

Miniature photographer Matthew Albanese went to Northlandz with the Sony QX-100 lens-style camera, and while the video may be a glorified commercial for the camera it's certainly an effective way to sell your product!

-Via Studio@Gawker

As a frequent thrift store shopper I’m always coming across terrible paintings being sold for a few bucks because nobody else wants them, a sad testament to the time and energy spent by a budding artist who had no idea of the cruel fate that awaits their painting.

Luckily there’s a good Samaritan named Dave Pollot shopping thrift stores and bringing a geeky new life to reject paintings. With the simple inclusion of pop culture icons like Darth Vader, Bender from Futurama and that cute little Android spokesrobot Dave gives these abandoned works of art a new life.

Dave’s appropriated paintings may not land him in the MoMA, but they’re sure to get him some geek love on the interwebs.

-Via Nerd Approved

Olympic figure skaters may look like the picture of grace and sophistication when they’re skating for the gold, but these high speed photographs show the derpy side of figure skating.

Their facial expressions seem to say “oh god, this is going to hurt!”, “why are you hitting yourself?” or “boy are these pants tight!” but they’re probably just trying their hardest and caught up in the moment, oblivious of the derpy look on their faces.

But whether they’re making faces because they’re exerting so much energy and concentrating so deeply, or because they just don’t care about the cameras flashing all around them, one thing’s for certain- any one of these derpy photos would make a great new Facebook profile pic!

(Image via Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Star Wars went from being the stuff of geek dreams and a surefire way to remain abstinent to a pop culture phenomenon accepted and enjoyed by all. It’s no longer totally geeky to declare your love of Star Wars, and now it has even become an inspiration for a line of dresses from fashion label Rodarte.

Designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy were fans of the space opera before they became fashion designers, so it’s only fitting that they explore their geek roots and create a couture collection featuring iconic images from their beloved Star Wars.

Now you can say “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” while pointing at your dress and the uninitiated will actually get the joke!

-Via Gamma Squad

(Video Link)

(Video Link)

Creating good looking CGI artwork, models, shorts, etc. requires a lot of experience, some technical know-how and a good eye for detail. But creating utterly terrible CGI works can be an art in itself, or simply an (un?)happy accident along the way to your final 3D destination.

The folks behind Really3D are trying to create “The best 3D animations of the world!”- in other words 3D shorts that are so bad they’re grrrreat!

Watch as they bring a horrible mutation of Jurassic Park to life, complete with a lumbering cantaloupe, err, I mean Brontosaurus.

Stare in amazement as classic Mickey incarnation Steamboat Willie is brought into the digital age, with just a bit of chromosomal damage along the way.

Wonder why you’re watching such deliciously bad CGI animation, then keep on watching until it looks good!

-Via Gizmodo

(Images via Fubiz)

There’s a city in China that is sure to become the number one destination for scuba divers and adventure seekers from all over the globe, a place that’s not likely to be overrun by tourists because it lies over 30 meters below the surface of Qiandao Lake in Zhejiang, China.

The massive underwater ruins of a city dubbed “Shicheng” (“Lion City”) were discovered by archaeologists in 2001, and even though the city was built in 208 A.D. and has been underwater for over 50 years it is remarkably well preserved, with stunning examples of ancient architecture and intricately carved arches waiting to be discovered by anyone willing to throw on some scuba gear and pay the sunken city a visit.

-Via DesignTAXI

Viewers are obsessed with the latest incarnation of that most famous of detectives- Sherlock Holmes as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, and since audiences can’t get enough Benedict’s face is starting to show up in all kinds of unusual places, from Sesame Street to fun photo shoots to classical works of art.

Let’s Draw Sherlock is a Tumblr site dedicated to art featuring Benedict's beloved mug, with various projects like replacing the subject of many famous works of art, like Modigliani’s “Franz Hellens” and Lempicka’s “The Blue Scarf”, with Mr. Cumberbatch's face, and drawings featuring Sherlock and Watson attending historical moments, just to name a few.

Whether Mr. Cumberbatch's fifteen minutes of fame extend ad infinitum, or he ends up shying away from the spotlight, these remixed artworks bearing his instantly recognizable face will live on.

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

There's a park in Vancouver which sports a most unusual name on its official sign- Dude Chilling Park.

The park was originally called Guelph Park, but a crafty individual named Viktor Briestensky replaced the boring original with a more appropriate sign, based on a piece of public art found in the park that looks like a dude chillaxing on the grass taking in the scene. (Previously on Neatorama)

Park officials promptly took the sign down, but due to a petition signed by 1,500 residents in favor of the sign the park has been permanently renamed Dude Chilling Park, making it the mellowest park in all of Canada!

-Via Booooooom!

(Images via Christopher Morris)

People are constantly complaining about the poor conditions, rude people and general discomfort experienced when they ride the subway around New York City every day, but if they could see what the NYC subway system looked like back in 1981 they’d probably stop whining and appreciate how far those railcars have come.

Photographer Christopher Morris captured the seedy nature of subway travel back in the early 80s, spending six months purposefully documenting the decrepit state of affairs found aboard New York City’s subway system.

Christopher recently discovered some photos from the series that hadn’t been published, so he shared them with TIME Lightbox in hopes that people will see how far those MTA rapid transit cars have come in the last thirty years.

-Via Laughing Squid

Forensic artists can’t come across a skull, or skull shaped decanter, without wondering what that person’s fleshy face looked like when they were among the living, and there’s no better testament to your artistic skills than creating a skull sculpture from scratch that actually looks like a human being when clay skin is added.

Some hitherto unnamed forensic scientists couldn’t help themselves when they saw a bottle of Crystal Skull Vodka sitting on the shelf at their local liquor store, they just had to see what that laughing face would look like properly skinned.

So they bought a bottle and went to work properly replacing layers of muscle and flesh until they revealed the face of a drunken fool, very appropriate for the spokesskull of a popular alcoholic beverage!

If anyone knows the name(s) of the forensic scientists behind this project please share in the comments below!

-Via Cheezburger

Update: These photos came from Crystal Head Vodka’s Facebook page. The forensic artist who did this is Nigel Cockerton.  -Thanks, kdub!

(Images via Romain Veillon)

Ghost towns are the product of a booming then bottomed out economy that causes people to abandon the town, and when the people are all gone the town has nowhere to go, it merely bides the time until it all comes tumbling down in decay, or until the earth has finished reclaiming the space for its own.

The German settlement Kolmanskop resides in Namibia, serving as a testament to the European exploitation of resources in Africa and the fleeting nature of communities based around diamond and gold mining.

Abandoned in 1954, this series of pics by photographer Romain Veillon appropriately entitled Les Sables Du Temps (the Sands of Time) shows the town sixty years later, as it's slowly devoured by the desert sand.

-Via Dangerous Minds

Previously on Neatorama- A Ghost Town Buried in the Sand

Here to demonstrate that even a robot could have written scripts for the sitcom Friends is the Infinite Friends Machine, a bot programmed to write an episode of Friends and may be credited as the creator of a sequel series called Frenemies. Okay, that last bit may not be true, but the fact that a bot and a bit of coding is all it takes to write your average sitcom isn’t really earth shattering news.

 Creator of IFM Tom Armitage explains how he used a program called Plotagon to create the strangest episode of Friends ever made:

The machines does a few simple things. First, it scrapes Friends transcripts. For now, it works for most of Series 1. It then parses those scripts and chops them up into episodes, scenes, and lines attributed to individual characters. It also strips out some directions. Then, using all that, it offers ways to generate new scripts.

Is this the future of televised entertainment, with rooms full of sketch writers being replaced with server racks and script writing code? I certainly hope not...

-Via Gawker

To an inmate waiting for the inevitable conclusion to their sentence, namely death by one of the five legal methods of execution, their last meal is guaranteed to be the best thing to happen to them since they were sent to death row.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves finds the whole practice of public execution to be "a remnant of an earlier era", which compelled him to recreate the last meals ordered by notorious death row inmates like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh, photographing the recreated meal next to a card that details info about each prisoner.

Each meal says something about the man who placed the order, and whether they used it to make a profound statement or simply wanted one last chance to chow down the meal will go down in history as part of their dark and mordid story.

-Via Beautiful/Decay