Forward or Delete?

Yeah, there's Snopes, and they do have a pretty good fauxtography category.

Into this arena, though, comes the Forward or Delete column from Gawker, in which they take four or five photos making the rounds this week and either debunk or endorse their veracity.

For example...delete (not true), forward (true), forward, delete...in that order here...

An inverted Grand Canyon

That happened back in December 2014, and the video was posted on the Grand Canyon's flickr account.

The Quiraing

Just pretty photos today...photos of the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

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Our Pets...a 'free' photo book

Click here to view this photo book larger

I've been collecting MyCokeReward points for a few years, primarily redeeming them to get free magazine subscriptions. A month or so ago, however, Shutterfly offered up a free offer to anyone redeeming some sort of drink points, a free photo 8"x8" photo book.

After shipping, of course, the book ended up costing $7.99 (and the free shipping offers online couldn't be combined with the Coke offer), but I think the book turned out pretty well.

In a week or so, I'll have it in my hands and be able to tell you the quality of a Shutterfly book (in case you were curious, of course.)

Last week's rainbows

This rainbow was hanging over my house last Wednesday.

Or, rather, these three rainbows were hanging over my house last Wednesday...

The highest rainbow, the one going the opposite way from how you would expect, probably came from the ice crystals in the upper atmosphere because we had our first few flakes of snow the night.

...couldn't drag me away...

How gorgeous is that photo (source)?

It's a silhouette of the Wild Horses Monument in Eastern Washington State, and I'm thinking that we've got a new destination for vacation some day.

There are a bunch more photos at this site...

...and video here...

Picture Perfect

Sometimes the photos deserve a stand-alone post.

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Awesome People Hanging Out Together

I'm not always impressed with most Tumblrs as they tend to be image postings with few comments and even less thought behind them.

Occasionally, though, a thematic tumblr is interesting and well-thought-out enough that images are enough. One example of this sort of tumblr is the appropriately-titled Awesome People Hanging Out Together.

Eddie Murphy, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor

Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, and Jay Z

Hugh Laurie, Idris Elba, Benedict Cumberbatch

Louis Armstrong and Niels Bohr, 1959, Copenhagen

Conversation chains

Coach Sullivan sent me the following image of a sign that he found posted to a telephone pole in his neighborhood last week...

The phone number down there would connect you to Silver Creek High School just a bit north of where the Coach lives.

I forwarded the image onward to Calen who commented that, while she appreciated the old-school, subtle joke, she thought the well image would have been better replaced with something like this...

...because it better suggests "the level of curves they’d like for their well cleaner…because, after all, skin shrinks when it’s been removed from its original form."

While I agree that such a thought, I actually like the use of the simple, plain well graphic. It sells the sign as being more real because it seems like what somebody who actually needs a well cleaner would put on such a sign, but not one to be topped, I went searching for a better woman cleaner image. With the search terms "female cleaner", I got a whole lot of images and was amazed at how many different stock images of this woman there were...


I don't always understand the internet or the world of stock photography.

Infinity Imagined

On Saturday I posted a link to an animated gif of the solar system's motion, the sun and planets creating a complex helix as they move through the galaxy. In checking things out, I wandered to the source blog, Infinity Imagined, where the blogger posts some interesting graphics, animated gifs, space photos, and stupid musings on the fact that the universe has patterns and stuff...

The musings are dumb, but some of the pictures are cool...

Hopper To It!

Bismuth crystallizes in gorgeous crystals that have a hopper (like a grain hopper, see?) shape, so they're often just called hopper crystals.

...and they're really pretty...

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Why don't you just take a picture then?

The wikipedia/media folks have a contest currently running (through the end of September) to find the best new photograph of a historical site/building added to their collection.

In the US that means finding a site on the National Register of Historic Places in your state (they even have it broken down by counties - mine, for example), then heading out to take a photo. Yeah, if you're hoping to win the contest (and one of the prizes), you're probably going to need a good camera, great weather, and an eye for photography. If you just want to help them take photos of historic sites before those historic sites go away, however, head out tomorrow and take a few snapshots.

The wikiwhatever foundation is really doing some phenomenal work documenting our world, and this is another example. Help 'em out, would ya?

All the way...

I caught the above image from The Weather Channel's This Week in Pictures feature and went looking for a larger image to use as background on my school computer.

In the process of searching, I found a great photo album of the same double rainbow from all around the San Fran area. Here are a few of my favorites...