Still in Love with Polaroid

Italian artist  Giuseppe Colarrusso has created puzzling images using photos of household objects. Some common, some less so, but all are recognizable. The photos below look real enough, so when you really study the image, you wonder why in the heck people would have bought those items or even have them in the house. (Hint: they are not real.) With his mastery of photo manipulation, Colarusso has stitched or built seamless photo-realistic images. He calls the series  "Improbability" because the situations are "unlikely, but not impossible." See what you think!  This one below is his interpretation of a VERY useful spray can. Maybe one day someone will manufacture it. all photos copyright Giuseppe Colarusso You can see the Before and After photos on his website by clicking here . (I don't know about you, but I finally figured out these were photo manipulations and not just a new product prototype was on the pepper/fire extinguish

Happy Monday! Here's your dose of spider for the week: Not sure what this bug is, but it kept hiding under the leaves from me: An old broom... Some bokeh from water droplets on leaves after the rain: I also was able to catch one of my cats in a rare moment of immobility as she sat entranced by something outside. www.amyhefterphotography.com

As a lifelong lover of cameras, I seek out the most creative camera products to add to my home collection. I already have a photo album, earrings, a ring, plates, cups, a kitchen timer emblazoned with or fashioned from camera parts. Take a look at some adorable camera "slice" bracelets and other products below: Cuffs designed by Stefaan DuPont Average price for one bracelet: $250.00 I will be accepting these as birthday presents all throughout the year :-) via thisiscolossal and SDPNT Canon decal for MacBook: $9 Handmade by Nicko Gutierrez buy it on Etsy.com Vintage Wooden Camera Tape Dispenser: $24 buy it on anthropologie.com Polaroid One Step Camera Pillow: $65 buy it from the International Center of Photography   Viewfinder Frame: $30 buy it from the Museum of Modern Art   Desk Style Steampunk Clock: $45 buy it from Etsy.com

Too often do I see posts on Facebook about people dropping their phones in the toilet, bathtub, or ocean, and their desperate plea for friends' numbers. But what if you dropped it in water and it dissolved??  I see this in the next James Bond or Mission Impossible movie: After making a call, the spy drops his phone into his glass and the phone dissolves, leaving only a clear glass of water behind. Professor John Rogers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has created a prototype for a silk-based micro chip - the beginnings of a wave of electronics that, he hopes, will catch on as being temporary. The plan is to have the electronics only have a set amount of "life" time and then the device will break down in water. How do you feel about this? We hope that the electronic devices will be made from biodegradable material, so there shouldn't be any toxic traces in the water. via designtaxi and treehugger

Water is so interesting. The two little hydrogen and one little oxygen molecules flow together in solid (ice), liquid (water), or gas (vapor), and can also pick up traces of sediment or leftovers, depending on which environment it runs through. When water is cast off from something, it can behave in different ways. See my  previous post for some odd water behavior. Below are some examples of photographers capturing water being cast off in a logarithmic spiral: spiral from here photo by Arvin Rahimzadeh photo by Cody Slinger photo by Naveen Shunmuganathan via thisiscolossal  and flickr Photographers also have captured paint, milk, coffee, and other liquids demonstrating this phenomenon. See their incredible photographs below. photo by Manon Wethly   via thisiscolossal  and junkculture photos and video by Fabian Oefner See more photos on  thisiscolossal

Hungarian photography student,  Madhava Kalmar , presented a series of black and white photo pieces called "Stone and Silver." It is extremely difficult to print clear images on uneven and especially 3-dimensional surfaces, but it is doable, using a product called Liquid Light . Liquid Light is bottled photo emulsion, and you can paint, spray, dab, or dump it on any surface that you want to print an image. The application should only be done in complete darkness, because Liquid Light will start to react to any amount of light. Most likely, Kalmar worked intensively with this compound to create such clear images on his stones. buy Liquid Light at B&H Photo He says that his project focuses on identity, a theme that emerges from the uniqueness of each stone: texture, coloration, and uneven edges. Photos by Madhava Kalmar via Michael Zhang on PetaPixel.com

This Spider Monday post kicks off with a little guy whose got a sinister design on its back. I noticed that it looked like a skull, but that may just be my imagination... I found a different spider, intent on devouring the insect that was caught in its web. I watched it for a while, and when I came back later, the insect was withered, sucked dry of its juicy life. Finally, I spotted a peculiar little guy (only a little more than 1/16" wide) with a pattern on his back resembling a tiger face. What do you think? Finally, there is this guy, who looked like a cross between a baby praying mantis, a thin stinkbug, and a stickbug. www.amyhefterphotography.com

Australian photo artist  Meg Cowell  has been focusing on photographing vintage dresses (complete with bustles) and undergarments  in an unconventional way: underwater. She submerges the dresses and photographs them against black velvet as they float. The series is called " To The Surface ," and each dress took a few days to conceptualize and shoot.  Listen to her interview  with Jennie Lenman   while you look at the images below. " I installed a 1000 litre pool in my inner-city backyard, in which I suspended and arranged my selected garments, using water as a medium of buoyancy and illusionistic display. I select my subjects for their associations with the icons of rites-of-passage in Western myth, specifically the ‘princess’ archetype and its contemporary manifestation in the ritual of the white wedding dress." - Meg Cowell The photographs will be on display at the Dickerson Gallery in Australia from July 24 - August 15, so if you happen to be on that con

National Geographic's Photo of the Day team selects an image to be posted online every day. These images can come from staff NatGeo photographers or from online submissions from amateur or professional independent photographers. Take a look below at some incredible shots from May and June. Some of these jumped out at me from the simple beauty of the image, while others struck a different chord: the Apples, Baku image reminded me of a past season of the “ Amazing Race ” during which the contestants had to search through a car like this one to find the one marked apple. The Eastern Screech Owl photo is such an incredible study in the combination of textures and patterns: the soft feathers of the owl mesh perfectly with the hard, cracked bark of the tree in which it’s sitting. See a new photo every day. MAY 1, 2013 Surfer, Australia Photograph by Alex Coppel , My Shot This Month in Photo of the Day: The Stories Behind Your Shots "During my summer holidays I s