Astronaut Paolo Nespoli’s Photos of Earth From Space

ESA’s astronaut Paolo Nespoli, while working and living on the International Space Station, started sharing his experience with the world via a constant flow of beautiful photos and tweets. Nespoli remained in space for 159 days, with a hectic schedule of working on experiments, doing International Space Station (ISS) housekeeping and maintenance, supporting the docking of two cargo craft and conducting robotic work, as well as daily training. But he has still found time to capture beautiful pictures. (also see Astronaut Douglas Wheelock Shares Amazing Photos From Space)

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Iron Wire Sculptures by Mattia Trotta

Italian sculptor Mattia Trotta creates amazing sculptures from wire meshes, which at first glance, I mistook to be that by Ivan Lovatt who works with almost the same materials. While Ivan Lovatt creates sculptures from chicken wire, Mattia Trotta uses steel. Both artist also employ different techniques. 

Trotta starts from a skeleton of steel wrapped around with wire. One by one, these wires are tangled and compacted to fill the casing. As a skilled tailor who, with needle and thread, sew a dress that fits perfectly on the body, Mattia Trotta with iron creates a kind of dress that can give fullness and thickness to thought and emotion, as he himself says: "Every wire and twist is given a reason to exist.”

Brought to completion the iron figure undergoes further treatment with acid to prevent corrosion and to extract the natural shades and colors of the wires.

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Dirk Skreber’s Car Crash Sculptures

German artist Dirk Skreber’s paintings and sculptures have consistently mined the catastrophic- either in the aftermath of a devastating flood, crumbled body of a car following a violent accident or aerial views of the potentially disastrous, such as a nuclear power plant in Iran. For Skreber, natural disasters, car crashes and near-miss train accidents become monumental icons of beauty.

At Saatchi Gallery in London, is displayed the mangled wrecks of two sports cars – a red Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and black Hyundai Tiburon - violently wrapped around a pole.

Skreber, 49, bought both the cars "as a regular client" with the intention of smashing them. He found a vehicle-testing facility in Ohio and choreographed both accidents.

"It was fun to do, awesome and super-intense," he said. "If you pass an accident and see a car like this, it's occupied by tragic thoughts for the people that would be involved, and you might see blood. This work gives you an opportunity to see the things like in a dream. It's clean and polished and abstract."

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Magnificent Photos of Grimsvoetn Volcano Eruption in Iceland

The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Saturday, sending clouds of ash up to 12 miles into the air. The amount of ash spewing from the volcano tapered off dramatically on Tuesday, however, said Elin Jonasdottir, a forecaster at Iceland’s meteorological office. She added that because the plume has decreased in height – it’s now at about 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) – the ash won’t travel far and will most likely fall to the ground near its source. Although not as huge as the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, in April 2010, the eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano, under the Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland on May 21, 2011 has caused hundreds of travel delays.

Below are some stunning pictures capturing nature’s most violent phenomenon.

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The Postman Who Built a Palace With Stones Collected Over 33 Years

The story begins in 1879. Joseph-Ferdinand Cheval (1836 - 1924) , then 43 years old, had been working as a rural mail carrier in the southeast of France for 12 years. Because his daily routine involved walking about 20 miles (32km), mostly in solitude, he did a lot of daydreaming. One day he tripped over a small limestone rock. Astonished by its shape and form, he took the stone home. Soon he started to collect stones during his walks to deliver letters and brought them home in his pockets. Collecting stones became an addiction. When his wife became tired of mending his pockets, he changed the mode of transportation and took a basked with him, and later when the stones became bigger he took a wheelbarrow.

Over the next 33 years he and his wife constructed, from the stones, one of the oddest monuments of all time, the ideal palace or Palais Idéal. By his count it took more than 9,000 days or 65,000 hours and it still brings about 100,000 visitors a year to the otherwise forgettable village of Hauterives north of Valence. "I wanted to prove what willpower can achieve," Facteur Cheval wrote.

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Evolution of Type: Anatomy of Typography

Graphic artist and sculptor Andreas Scheiger came across the book “The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering” (1918) by famous type designer Frederic W. Goudy, which analyzes the alphabet and compares letters to human organisms. Goudy compared letters are organisms and typefaces to species and classified them similar to biological taxonomy. Scheiger was fascinated by this notion and decided to translate the idea into a literal representation, seen in his Evolution of Type series.

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Child Labor in Indian Coal Mines

Times photojournalist Daniel Berehulak, along with Mark Magnier, reported a fantastic photo essay on the mining situation in the Jaintia Hills district of India, located in the northeastern state of Meghalaya. Perhaps as many as thousands of underage workers as young as 8, lured by the wages, leave school to work in coal mines under perilous conditions. The country officially upholds mining safety standards and forbids child labor, but loopholes in state laws allow widespread abuses. The young miners descend on rickety ladders made of branches into the makeshift coal mines, scrambling sideways into “rat hole” shafts so small that even kneeling becomes impossible. Lying horizontally, they hack away with picks and their bare hands: Human labor here is far cheaper than machines.

Ladrymbai, India — Shyam Rai, 22, from Nepal makes his way through a "rat hole" tunnel inside a coal mine.

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Impressive Paintings by Dan Witz

Dan Witz is one of the most prolific artists working on the streets of New York City today. Witz, consistently active since the late 1970s, is considered one of the pioneers of the street art movement. Apart from street art, Dan Witz also does realistic paintings involving night scenes and low-light portraits. I found his Mosh Pits series particularly curious because it was realistic and surreal at the same time.

Mosh Pits

Witz was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. He was educated at Cooper Union and Rhode Island School of Design. Dan Witz paintings have been shown in galleries worldwide; including: Jonathan LeVine Gallery, in Chelsea, New York; Stolen Space Gallery, London, England; Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Addict Galley, Paris, France; White Walls, San Francisco, and DFN Gallery New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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World Beard and Moustache Championships 2011

The World Beard and Moustache Championships is a biennial competition in which men with elaborate beards and moustaches compete with each other in 17 different official categories ranging from natural goatee and sideburns freestyle, Hungarian and Fu Manchu moustaches to Garibaldi and Imperial style beards. The event which began in 1990 has been running regularly since 1995. This year it was held in Trondheim in Norway on May 15.

Pia Weis prepares her husband Hans-Peter for the freestyle full beard event

Over one hundred and fifty contestants from 15 countries descended on the Prinsen Hotell in Trondheim, Norway this weekend to get down to the hairy business of who exactly has the world's best facial furniture. The coveted prize was taken by a German hairdresser Elmar Weisser, 47,  with his elaborate facial hair sculpture of a moose. It is the third time Mr Weisser has emerged as champion.

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Pulp Fiction Meets Simpsons

In this hilarious series, an anonymous animator at Film Roman (the production company behind The Simpsons) sketches famous Pulp Fiction scenes with Simpsons characters to play its badass characters. Also see Cool Movie Illustrations by Josh Cooley

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Real-Life Locations in ‘Fallout: New Vegas’ Video Game

London copywriter Chris Worth, inspired by the futuristic role-playing game Fallout: New Vegas, set out to explore the Mojave Desert and discover just how close to reality the game really is. Three thousand dollars, a week's preparation and after five days of touring, he posted the results, as well as notes from his trip, on the falloutnewvegastour.com blog.

Even though it's set in an alternate version of the real world, the Fallout series still features many locations and buildings that exist today. In New Vegas, that means areas like the Las Vegas Strip and towns including Nipton and Goodsprings. Mr Worth travelled to 34 of those locations to take photos and place them side by side with screenshots from the game to see just where the line between fact and fantasy was drawn.

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World's Largest Video Game Museum in Berlin

The world's largest video game museum was opened early this year in Berlin. The Computerspielemuseum (Computer Game Museum), located on Karl-Marx-Allee, unveiled a new permanent exhibition, Computer Games: Evolution of a Medium. Previously, the museum had only temporary displays while the bulk of the museum's collection was dedicated to several touring exhibits.

Over 300 video and computer systems and stand-alone games dating from 1951 until the present obtained from around the world are on display at Computerspielemuseum, many of which are playable.

Among the products on display are the Nimrod--an incredibly rare game-playing computer from 1951, the first ever arcade game, 1971's ComputerSpace which guests can play, Cold War-era strategy game Balance of Power and numerous rare video games from the former Eastern Bloc.

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Portraits of Authors in Their Own Words

American artist and author John Sokol creates portraits of literary greats in which the lines of their faces are crafted from the author’s own works.

G. B. Shaw as "Arms and the Man"

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Bureaucrats Around The World: Photo Series by Jan Banning

Bureaucratics by Dutch photographer Jan Banning is a comparative photographic study of the culture, rituals and symbols of state civil administrations and its servants in eight countries on five continents. Jan traveled to Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, Yemen and the United States to snap photographs of civil servants – from fiscal authorities to police, from governors to local clerks – seated behind his or her desk. The result is a fascinating look at the lives of bureaucrats.

Jan Banning said in an interview to The New Yorker, that it started with “the most horrible assignment” he had ever received. Banning’s editor had asked him to shoot pictures for a story on the decentralization of the administration of Dutch development aid. “It seemed to be un-photographable,” Banning recalls. But what started as a tedious project ended with an introspective reflection into bureaucratic methods around the world.

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Same Hill, Different Day by Paul Octavious

Chicago based photographer Paul Octavious documents the life of a single hill in Chicago through a series of photographs in a project entitled Same Hill, Different Day.

For the past 3 years Paul has been visiting a beautiful mound of earth that he has come to call “the hill.” Ever since he found the hill in 2007, he’s photographed it hundreds, probably thousands of times. Yet every time, the hill looks different. From snow falls, kite festivals, outdoor movies, to even Ghana World Cup team practicing on the hill one foggy day – Paul has captured it all.

I have never seen a hill presenting so many different looks.

When I first started photographed the hill there was no intent to photograph it for as long as I have been doing it. My weekly walks would always lend it self to being on the path the hill was located on.

There was something so intriguing about how the locals would interact with it. I soon realized that's the hill was stage and the locals the actors in this on going play, that’s when I fell in love.

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‘Jetman’ Yves Rossy Flies Over The Grand Canyon

Swiss pilot and stuntman Yves Rossy (previously featured) who is nicknamed Jet Man for being the first person to fly using a jet-powered engine on his backpack, flew over the Grand Canyon in a jet suit, last Saturday. Rossy soared 200 feet above the Canyon rim to complete the eight-minute flight over a five-mile radius.

The custom-built jet suit that Rossy wears on his back weighs 120lb and has a 79" wing span. It averages speeds of 125mph and has four engines.

The 51-year-old had stepped casually onto the side of a helicopter before it took off and into the sky above Guano Point on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Once it had reached 8,000 feet Rossy, who flew fighter jets for 17 years in the Swiss Air Force, simply let go, plummeting to the earth below before firing up his engines. Then, looking like a high-tech, Lycra-clad Icarus, he soared 200 feet above the canyon rim reaching speeds of up to 190mph before opening his parachute and landing safely on the canyon floor.

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‘In Your Fridge’ by Stephanie de Rouge

New York photographer Stéphanie de Rougé allows us to have a peek into the contents of people’s fridges through her photo-series ‘In Your Fridge’. “From Paris to New York, I opened more than 45 fridges and discovered quite amazing worlds,” she says.

For now she has been photographing fridges of only New Yorkers and Parisians. She hopes to extend the adventure to another 19 megacities in the world, “to complete the map of a playful and poetic universe that murmurs endlessly the secrets of the citizens of the world.” (Similar concept: What's In Your Refrigerator?)

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Prison Beauty Contests

Life behind the bars is bleak when you have to share the place with convicted murderers, thieves and drug dealers. Glamour is the last thing you would expect in a place like this. But inmates at a Siberian women’s correctional facility, Rio de Janeiro's Talavera Bruce prison, Carandiru women's detention center in Sao Paolo, El Buen Pastor women's prison in Bogota and numerous other prisons around the world have something to cheer about. These prisons have been staging beauty pageants for past several years to find the most beautiful woman behind bars. Winners often receive cash prize, but in some cases the winning prize is something far more precious: a ticket to early freedom.

Contestants at a beauty pageant in a Women's prison in Bogota

Held under various titles such as Miss Penitentiary (Sao Paolo, Brazil), Miss Captivity (Lithuania), Miss Prisoner (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Miss Spring (Siberia), prison beauty contest are gaining popularity around the world.

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Long Exposure Shots of Airline Takeoffs and Landings

San Francisco International Airport between 10 PM and 11 PM on July 17th, 2009. Image credit

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World's Largest Miniature Airport Opens in Germany

The world's largest model airport has opened at Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, which is also home to the world’s largest model railway landscape.

The model airport is based off of Hamburg's Fuhlsbüttel International airport. It includes a whopping list of accessories, including 40 planes, 40,000 lights, 15,000 figurines, 500 cars, 10,000 trees, 50 trains, 1000 wagons, 100 signals, 200 switches and 300 buildings. The display took 7 years and roughly $4.8 million to build.

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Giant Trees At the Cambodian Temple of Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm is a temple at Angkor, Cambodia, built in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Located approximately one kilometer east of Angkor Thom and on the southern edge of the East Baray near Tonle Bati, Ta Prohm has been left in much the same condition in which it was found. Huge trees, reminiscent of ancient redwoods and oaks, are blended into the walls, and rocks hugging the giant roots gives the temple a surreal appearance. The photogenic and atmospheric combination of trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings have made it one of Angkor's most popular temples with visitors.

Ta Prohm was built by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university. After the fall of the Khmer empire in the 15th century, the temple of Ta Prohm was abandoned and neglected for centuries. When the effort to conserve and restore the temples of Angkor began in the early 20th century, it was decided that Ta Prohm would be left largely as it had been found, as a "concession to the general taste for the picturesque."

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Skydreamers: History of Flight Exhibition in Los Angeles

The fantasies and realities of flight and space exploration, as depicted through art and photography in the West and around the world, went on display in the Autry National Center’s new 'Skydreamers' exhibition in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. The exhibit focuses on the history of flight as seen through the eyes of photographers and artists throughout the years. More than 150 items are on display, including rare original high-quality photographs, as well as works on paper, paintings, posters, and memorabilia drawn primarily from the extensive collection of flight and space material in the Stephen White collection. The exhibition will run from April 29 through August 21, 2011.

Below is a handful of exhibit displayed in the exhibition.

Balloon ascension, Ferndale, California. Unknown photographer, 1871

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Al Farrow Makes Religious Sculptures From Guns And Ammo

American sculptor Al Farrow creates models of churches, temples and mosques from bullets and gun parts highlighting the disquieting relationship between war and religion. In the words of the artist:

I am perpetually surprised by the historical and continuing partnership of war and religion. The atrocities committed in acts of war absolutely violate every tenet of religion, yet rarely do religious institutions speak against the violations committed in the name of God. Historically, Popes have even offered eternal salvation to those who fought on their behalf (The crusades, etc.).

In my constructed reliquaries, I am playfully employing symbols of war, religion and death in a facade of architectural beauty and harmony. I have allowed my interests in art history, archeology and anthropology to influence the work. The sculptures are an ironic play on the medieval cult of the relic, tomb art, and the seductive nature of objects commissioned and historically employed by those seeking position of power.

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Stunning Cloud Photography by Rüdiger Nehmzow

Düsseldorf photographer Rüdiger Nehmzow captured these gorgeous photos of clouds four miles above the Earth in a prop plane with the side door removed.

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High Speed Photography by Alan Sailer

Alan Sailer was an obscure photographer working in his garage in Camarillo, United States, shooting stuff with a pellet rifle and photographing the results with a home built flash. Then in early 2009, someone linked one of his pictures to a social networking site. Soon he was flooded with emails from magazines and newspapers pressing for interviews.

“Now I'm a slightly less obscure photographer,” says Alan Sailer.

Here is a collection of some of his very colorful high-speed photographs. Catch the rest on Flickr.

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Monowi: The Town With Population of One

Monowi is a village in Nebraska, United States, whose only remaining resident is a 77-year old woman named Elsie Eiler. Eiler lives in a mobile home a half-block from the only business left in Monowi, a dark, wood-paneled tavern, thick with smoke  which Eiler runs. She also runs the town library, a tiny building jammed with 5,000 books left behind by her late husband who was a devoted reader. Elise is also the mayor of Monowi.

Elsie Eiler poses with the town population sign outside of the village of Monowi, Nebraska (Rick Wilking / Reuters)

Monowi's peak years were in the 1930s, when it had a population of 130. Monowi, like many other small communities in the Great Plains, lost its younger residents to cities that were experiencing growth and offering better jobs. During the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 2 -  only one married couple, Rudy and Elsie Eiler. Mr. Eiler died in 2004, leaving his wife Elsie Eiler as the only remaining resident.

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Captain Robert Scott’s Hut in Antarctica

Robert Falcon Scott’s hut is located on the north shore of Cape Evans on Ross Island in Antarctica. It was erected in 1911 by the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910–1913, also known as the Terra Nova Expedition. Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott and his four comrades all perished from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold. His hut survived.

After 1917 the hut remained untouched until 1956 when US expeditioners dug it out of the snow and ice. It was found to be in a remarkable state of preservation, and included many artifacts from both the earlier expeditions. While some artifacts were taken as souvenirs at the time (and since), this hut remained largely as it was in 1917.

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World Celebrates Death of Osama bin Laden

Late Sunday night, President Barack Obama announced that U.S. forces had killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during an operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden reportedly died in a firefight, shot in the head, following which his body was recovered and was buried at sea. Reactions erupted in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere as people came out in the streets in large numbers chanting pro-US slogans.

The following image gallery shows people’s reaction across the world.

Crowds gathers outside the White House in Washington early Monday, May 2, 2011, to celebrate after President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden.

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Roter Sand Lighthouse Turned Hotel in Germany

Described by some as the “loneliest hotel in Germany,” the Roter Sand lighthouse, some 30 miles off the coast of Bremerhaven, Lower Saxony, has been welcoming guests for over 10 years. But the lighthouse itself is 125 years old.

The Roter Sand was built in 1885, and was considered a technical marvel at that time as it was the first ever structure built on the sea floor at a depth of 22 metres. For almost 80 years the red, white and black lighthouse was the first thing sailors saw on their way into the port city, and the last thing millions of emigrants saw before their ships reached the North Sea on their journey to the New World. But by 1964 its steel foundations became unstable and the lighthouse was decommissioned.

In1987, a spectacular rescue action restored the 31-metre tall building’s foundation, and following a restoration of the interior, the German Foundation for Monument Protection (DSD) worked to open the protected lighthouse to the public. Since the first visitors scaled the stairs of the Roter Sand in 1999, the lighthouse has welcomed some 5,500 day trippers and 800 overnight guests.

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