Iceland’s climate and proximity to the Arctic creates an optimal environment for spectacular waterfalls, including what’s known as Europe’s most powerful waterfall, Dettifoss.
The theme this week was a wet one. You showcased some amazing water photos, and here are our favorites.
A thank you to everyone who submitted their photos. You can check out all of them and follow us on Twitter to see the next challenge directly in your feed. We will be back next Tuesday with the new #TwitterTuesday theme.
By yesterday morning, a coastal storm driven by massive wind gusts along Britain and western Europe killed at least 13. Local London media reported gusts in excess of 100 mph (or about 160 kph) chewed up trees and flooded streets far inland.
– Yahoo News
Our thoughts and best wishes go out to the people affected by this severe storm. Please stay safe!
The ongoing 123-day Olympic Torch Relay will make history by covering 39,000 miles (a distance that’s longer than any relay for the Olympics) when the flame arrives for the opening ceremony at the Fisht Olympic Stadium, Sochi, Russia, on February 7. And on October 19, the Olympic flame reached the North Pole, where torchbearers lit the Celebration Cauldron in the spirit of the upcoming Winter Games.
“As a kid, I liked sneaking into abandoned places and haunted houses,” says photographer Troy Paiva, known on Flickr as Lost America. ”It’s that spooky factor.”
“I guess I just never grew out of that,” he tells The Weekly Flickr in the accompanying video. “Everyday, there’s a never-ending list of unique, strange… or access-sensitive locations for me to shoot… and I love that!”
Wandering the deserted backroads of the American Southwest, Troy has explored the abandoned underbelly of America since the 1970s.
“When I was a kid, my family made road trips all over the West,” Troy says. ”I witnessed firsthand the demise of all these little roadside towns. I was only 12 years old, but was amazed people would just walk away from a whole city like that. Once I began driving myself, I began to explore these sites on my own in a much deeper way.”
Troy started taking pictures of these abandoned towns at night in 1989. He calls his method ‘night photography’ — timed exposures out in the desert, under a full moon.
“There’s only 12 full-moon weekends a year, so there’s a very limited number of days that you can actually do this kind of photography,” Troy says. “I think that’s part of the attraction for me; the rarity of it.”
His technique is very simple. Troy uses a DSLR on a tripod and locks the lens open for two to eight minutes. Many of the subjects he shoots are already gone: bulldozed, burned down, melted for scrap or simply vanishing beneath the shifting desert sand. Mobility is important, because most of the time, he’s sneaking in and out of these locations.
“I have to work fast and light,” Troy explains. “I’ve come close to being arrested dozens of times. I’ve been rousted by every kind of security, from minimum-wage guards to border patrol to even federal agents, but I’ve always been able to talk my way out of it. Once they see what I’m doing, and that I’m just a harmless weirdo taking pictures, usually they’ll say, ‘Alright, have fun. Weirdo.’”
Troy’s colored lighting is done with either flashlights or strobe flashes masked with theatrical lighting gels. While he does minor digital adjustments to some of the photographs, most of the lighting effects are all done on site during the exposure. These images are not Photoshop creations.
“With my lighting, I’m trying to create something that really isn’t there,” Troy explains. “I’m always trying to tell a story, create a mood, and I’m trying to just make people go, ‘Wow’.”
One of Troy’s favorite images is called Mrs. B’s Dirty Washcloth. It’s of a Cadillac interior in a junkyard.
“The thing that caught my eye here is obviously the dirty washcloth,” Troy explains. “I love the mystery and the incongruity of it. Why is the washcloth on the steering wheel in the first place? I’m just fascinated by these weird kind of mysteries and things that you find in abandoned places and junkyards.”
Troy isn’t the only one who has this fascination. His work and style has gained worldwide attention, appearing in major publications and in several foreign museums/galleries. The attraction and interest to his “Lost in America” series has captivated many; a reason, he says, is innately human.
“I think it’s a normal feeling for humans to be mystified and curious in abandoned places,” Troy explains. “You look at the history of humanity and our attraction to places like Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Greek, Roman and Egyptian ruins. They’re all pointing to the fact that we’re obsessed with ruins as a species.”
More than anything, Troy loves the serenity he feels in these places. He explains, “I love that feeling of being alone in a place that was crawling with people but is now empty and filled with their ghosts. And the ghosts of a culture.”
When asked how much longer he’ll continue night photography, his answer is quite simple.
“I’ve been doing this for 24 years now, and I still have the approach of an amateur. I don’t do this to please anyone. I do it because I’m passionate about it, and this is what I love to do.”
Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group, or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.
Our previous Flickr Friday theme was #MayTheForceBeWithYou, and here are our favorites from your submissions.
Naturally, we saw a lot of interpretations featuring Star Wars characters, some of them that took the Star Wars theme to the next level you can see above. Then there were those of you who tried to look beyond the Lucas universe altogether. You showed us magic tricks as well as support you can get from friends and higher powers to take on challenges.
As always, you can dive deeper by visiting the Flickr Friday group pool to check out all the other submissions..
For our new theme we are looking for your take on #The10thFloor. Depending on your take, this can be a very abstract theme showing your apartment on the 10th floor of a building or the view from it over the city. Maybe you can climb up to the roof of your 9 storey building, or you can take an amazing mirror portrait as you pass by the 10th floor in an elevator. We’re sure you get the idea, and we’re even more convinced that we will also see many other amazing interpretations of this week’s theme.
In our 40th week, you have once again time until the announcement of the new theme next Friday to take your shot and submit it to the Flickr Friday group to be featured here on the Flickr blog. If you would like to curate your favorites as well, show us your galleries.
Ominous smoke plumes from this month’s bushfires created a frightening haze across New South Wales, Australia. The blazes consumed swathes of tree groves in the Blue Mountains and destroyed hundreds of rural homes.
Our hearts go out to those impacted by this disaster that has destroyed hundreds of rural homes.
“I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole. It is tall, square, and apricot-colored with faded green shutters, ancient tile roof, and an iron balcony [...]. The balcony faces south-east, looking into a deep valley, then into the Tuscan Apennines.”
These are the words that Frances Mayes uses in Under the Tuscan Sun to describe the Italian landscape so typical for Tuscany. While it may sound like an idealized view of the landscape, it is accurate.
Not without reason was the Val d’Orcia with its farmland, vineyards and olive plantations stretching hills and valleys lined with cypresses as far as the eye can see, which was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2004.
It’s “exceptional reflection of the way the landscape was re-written in Renaissance times to reflect the ideas of good governance and to create an aesthetically pleasing picture” and for the landscape’s celebration “by painters from the Scuola Senese.” Their “Images of the Val d’Orcia, and particularly depictions of landscapes where people are depicted as living in harmony with nature, have come to be seen as icons of the Renaissance and have profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking.”
Enjoy the flair of Tuscany and discover more typical landscapes in our Tuscany and Val d’Orcia image searches.
Photographer Saffron Blaze states the mesmerizing appeal of these seasonal shots well. He titled an afternoon scene (top photo) of reflected colors from shoreline trees as “Nature’s Rorschach Test.” And as you can see here, other nature lovers found special spots at rivers, lakes, and ponds worldwide to shoot amazing landscapes of fall foliage.
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