Martian sand art

Does anyone remember those sand pictures that looked a bit like landscapes and the landscape changed when you tipped them up the other way? Well does this look at all familiar?

Landscapes of Mars

Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to these astonishing photos of Mars, taken over the last 3 years by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They really are breathtaking, go have a look!

Rather him than me

Photographer and mountaineer Alexandre Buisse has this page of breathtaking images taken while climbing in Peru. He says he takes about 300 shots a day while climbing! To me it sounds, and looks, quite impossible. Kudos to him for bringing back such amazing pictures for non-climbers to enjoy. :-) Thanks to Ben for the link.

Pretending it's fake

Check out TiltShift, the website that helps you make your photographs look faked! The TiltShift software gives your landscape photos shallow depth of field, creating the impression that you have photographed a scale model. The results are remarkably convincing! Have a look, here. If you don't want to use your own photos, you can play around with theirs.

Robin Morrison: Photojournalist

NZ On Screen has a 20-minute chunk of this excellent 1981 documentary in which Robin Morrison talks about his work. It's well worth a look. Hat tip to Russell Brown for the link.

Hallucinating Tony Fomison

These pictures are also from Tunnel Beach. As I say, it's a magical place.

Tunnel Beach

I was at Tunnel Beach recently, and it really is an amazing place. It's just South of Dunedin city, seaward from the suburb of Green Island, and it costs nothig to visit. Try to visit when the tide is out, as you will be able to explore more of the beach. Reasonable fitness is required as the path is steep: you realise exactly how steep, on the way back :-)



There are fantastic cliffs:

The beach access is through a short tunnel carved in the limestone. The walls of the tunnel have a wonderful texture:

On the beach, there are more amazing cliffs:

Some of the eroding limestone cliffs take fantastical shapes:

Imaging alien worlds

Chesley Bonestell's paintings of space exploration and alien worlds are recognisable to any science fiction fan. (if you don't believe me, look here) He was able to paint such fine details of imaginary things because he made exacting models of many of them first: have a look at the creation of his classic image Saturn as seen from Titan. And here are some other fascinating models. And this group is particularly impressive, although I can't imagine how he found the time to do all that modelling.

A recent panoramic view of Mars taken by the Mars Exploration Rover was named in honour of Bonestell and his work.

On the theme of other worlds, for anyone who missed the amazing photographs of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft, look here. And there's a magical view of the dark side of Saturn, also taken by Cassini, here.

New Zealand landscapes: Northland to Antarctica

There have been a lot of books published about the New Zealand landscape, but none are like this one! Grant Sheehan has assembled a stunning collection of fresh images and new angles on areas he obviously knows intimately. Sheehan's landscapes are not the sort you find on postcards; instead, he picks out rich colours and textures: lichen on a fence, crops in a field, layers in rock, reflections in water, clouds soaring in the sky. He captures the atmosphere of a place more than recording its landmarks.

Grant Sheehan's images are perfectly complemented by a CD of son Rhian Sheehan's ambient music, included with the book. Rhian Sheehan's spacious soundscapes recall Brian Eno in his Music for Airports period: they're lush but subtle, and they fit the New Zealand landscape so well.

You can order the book from the publisher, Phantom House, here.

I hope the book is a wild success for the Sheehans -- it deserves to be.

You can find out more on Rhian Sheehan's music here, and you can listen on his MySpace page.

And here's a video to be going on with:

Atmospheric optics - what an amazing site

Anyone interested in clouds, rainbows, ice halos, the aurora, green flashes, or any other crazy optical effects happening in the atmosphere will love this site.

Honestly, it has so many pages full of information and stunning photographs that I have only looked at a small portion! Which means I have a lot more to look forward to. :-D

The page that I first looked at is of rare ice halos photographed over Antarctica in 1999. Truly staggering images! And the site explains the more common halos to look out for, as well as fascinating speculation on the ice halos that might be seen on other planets, where the airborne ice crystals are made of methane, ammonia, or carbon dioxide!

That's it, I'm moving to Norway!

I thought new Zealand was beautiful, but check out these amazing photos of Norwegian landscapes! (clicking the link opens a slideshow, or you can open a static page here)

Ladislav Kamerad

Takes amazing landscape photos. Particular favourites of mine are his pictures of Namibia and New Zealand.

Edward Burtynsky

This Canadian photographer documents the massive transformations of the Earth by heavy industry. From opencast mining, quarries and railway cuttings; to oilfields, refineries, dam building and coal depots; to vast factories, shipyards, recycling depots and rubbish heaps, Burtynsky's large-scale photographs are panoramas of human endeavour.

The images have a brutal grandeur, recalling Piranesi, Gustave Dore, and Franz Kafka.

This site has more information on Burtynsky and examples of his work.

There is a documentary film, Manufactured Landscapes, showcasing his work and exploring some of the bizarre places he has visited.

Burtynsky's own website is here.

Absolutely stunning!

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's photographs of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula have to be seen to be believed. See them here. There's more information on Salgado and his work here. And more of his pictures here.

Victoria Ginn

Figure in the New Zealand Landscape isn't like any other landscape photography book I've ever seen! Vicotoria Ginn uses New Zealand locations in ways you won't have seen before. This is one of my favourites. And this. They're all fascinating, though.

Ginn shows dancers in staged tableaux of various kinds: some enact historical events or myths, some are visual jokes, some are evocative and enigmatic; each shot is a carefully-composed moment of stillness. Over them all is an air of drama and strangeness: the landscapes look both familiar and alien.

Ginn describes herself as an "Ethnographic Art Documentary Photographer". Her work certainly defies the usual categories! Her biography and a history of her practice is here.

Rakiura: the wilderness of Stewart Island

On the subject of landscape, Craig Potton Publishing has recently put out this sumptuous Rob Brown book on Rakiura/Stewart Island. Brown took the jewel-like photographs over many years while tramping Rakiura's back country: beaches and forests, mountains and tussocklands. The pictures are accompanied by a thoughtful text on Rakiura's history and his experiences there.

I was fascinated to read that all the photographs were made on medium-format transparency sheet film in a fully-mechanical camera, and with the use of a hand-held light meter. He certainly hasn't taken any easy options! He says what with the heavy sheet-film in his pack and all the lenses, it was sometimes a conflict between carrying enough food or enough film. He says it's less painful to be hungry than to run out of film. :-)