It was just a week ago that I wrote a post about a nice advertising campaign, consisting in a wonderfully rendered computer graphics octopus in a kitchen, and today I've stumbled in a pretty similar one.
This time the ad is not playing with the fishy smell of the octopus, but rather with its sticky pads, infact the client is Vileda the famous rubber gloves brand.
©Burrard-Lucas.com
Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas are two brothers from UK and two talented wildlife photographers. A couple of months ago, while they were taking pictures of the wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara region they stumbled across a very unusual guy: a pink hippo!
In Japan there's a huge aquarium, actually the world's second largest behind the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, called Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. The flagship of this aquarium is the main tank, called the Kuroshio Sea, that holds 7,500 cubic metres (1,981,000 USgal) of water and features an acrylic glass panel measuring 8.2 by 22.5 metres (27 by 74 ft) with a thickness of 60 centimetres (24 in), the largest such panel in the world when the aquarium was opened. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept alongside more than 60 other fish species.
©Jacek Yerka
Jacek Yerka is a Polish surrealist painter from Toruń. He mixes his memories from his amazing childhood and creates some beautiful, inspiring paintings, which are exhibited in Poland, Germany, Monaco, France, and the United States, and may be found in the museums of Poland.
©Linh Dinh
All pictures via National Geographic PhotoContest 2010
National Geographic is currently holding the 2010 edition of their famous Photo Contest.
The deadline for submissions is set on November 30th so harry up if you want your chance to get the 10.000$ 1st prize (the winners wil also be published in the NatGeo magazine). Otherwise you can just rate the submitted pictures. In the meanwhile I've prepared a brief selection of water-related picture for you as an appetizer...
Recently, Rip Curl, the famous surf wear maker, realized an advertising campaign called "Mirage" with a video shot in "Bullet-Time". Bulle-Time is the effect that may had first saw in the videogame "Max Payne" and then in the movie "The Matrix", but in reality it's an old (at least as a concept) photographic technique also known as "Time Slice": The bullet time effect was achieved photographically by a set of still cameras
This is one of those amazing story that makes you love the animal world and that so many times I've written about in SeaWayBLOG.This story is set in the Mara River, a river in Africa, flowing through Kenya and Tanzania, that lies across the migration path of ungulates in the Serengeti/Masai Mara game reserves:
Surfers raise their arms in honor of the late Andy Irons during a paddle out memorial service in Porta Del Sol, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010.
A few hundred surfers from the northern beaches community gathered for a tribute paddle-out to celebrate the life of American surfer Andy Irons.
The three-times world champion died suddenly last week, aged just 32, just a month before he was due to become a first-time father. The three-times world champion was found dead at a hotel in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, November 2.
Irons had reportedly been suffering from Dengue Fever in the lead-up to his shock death and had pulled out of a surfing event in Puerto Rico late last month to battle the viral infection.
If we speak about advertising campaigns, in my opinion there's nothing better than PLATINUM FMD, a brazilian studio which has become famous for their visually astounding campaigns realized with a mixture of 3d, Photoshop and studio photography.
All the pictures ©JasonDeCairesTaylor
Jason De Caires Taylor is a sculptor and in my humble opinion a genius. I've already spoken about him and his work a couple of years ago in a previous post.
Sterling Johnson is a "bubblesmith", better, he is The Bubblesmith!
According to his own website he is the only performer who specializes in blowing bubbles using only his hands.
The act of drinking may seem like no big deal for anyone who can fully close his mouth to create suction, as people can. But the various species that cannot do so — and that includes most adult carnivores and our cats and dogs — must resort to some other mechanism, so if you have wondered how our pets drink this is the post for you:
©Karin Brussaard
These remarkable pictures show the moment a tiger shark snatched an underwater camera system from the hands of dutch photographer Karin Brussaard during an underwater diving expedition in the Bahamas. After he took several photos, the shark decided enough was enough and grabbed the equipment in its jaws before swimming off.
ZooBorns is a very very nice blog that I advice you to follow if you are, like me, fond of the animal world. It presents almost daily, cute photos and videos of the newly born animals from zoos and aquariums all over the world. This time it has been the turn of some really unusual pups: Weedy Seadragons babies from the Georgia Aquarium.
(© National Geographic/Paul Nicklen)
I hope that this Sunday you didn't lose the premiere of "Great Migrations" on National Geographic Channel, probably the best and biggest project that National Geographic has produced in the last two or three years: a new seven-part television series about the spectacular migrations in the animal world, and with it, a big campaign to promote it, a special website full of content, and a book.
These are a touching series of pictures about a baby dolphin, probably just ten days old, which has been found by tourists on a beach near Montevideo, Uruguay.
What I love more about internet is the ability to mobilize millions of people towards a common target. I'm one of those. who think that web and new technologies will save our world.
In California, every citizen with an iPhone can make his contribution to monitor water quality and alert authorities to problems:
A new iPhone application, called Creek Watch and created by IBM, is now available in Apple’s App Store. The first state to partner with IBM to use this data to monitor the thousands of miles of creeks and streams in their jurisdiction is California’s State Water Control Board.
Developed by IBM Research and available for free at Apple’s App Store, Creek Watch is an easy-to-use application that allows community members to snap a photo of a creek or stream and answer three simple questions about the particular waterway. The data is uploaded in real-time to a central database, accessible by water authorities responsible for monitoring local water supplies.
According to the United Nations, contaminated water kills more people than all wars, crimes and terrorism combined; every 20 seconds, an infant dies from polluted water. While most agree that water is among our most precious resources, what many do not realize is that we walk over and drive past our drinking water everyday, making valuable observations about the water’s condition as we do so. Creek Watch makes it easy to capture these observations, providing water resource managers with additional insight and data to better ensure a sustainable water supply.
Creek Watch uses a combination of the iPhone’s built-in location sensor and user contributed data to provide information that is valuable for water management analysis – e.g., at what times of the year specific creeks begin to run dry or when the water levels are at capacity.
Contributing water data with IBM’s Creek Watch app requires just four easy steps:
· Use the iPhone’s built-in camera to snap a photo of a waterway
· Specify the Water Level: Dry, Some or Full
· Specify the Flow Rate: Still, Slow or Fast
· Specify the Trash Level: None, Some or A lot
Another WWF advertising campaign entitled "What will it take before we respect the planet?" for Biodiversity And Biosafety Awareness
This boat may look like it's sinking fast, but don't worry, it's perfectly upright. That's because this boat, called "Love Love," was designed by artist Julien Berthier to look like it's in the process of going under!
Every time I saw one of those cages that are used to allow people to see the great white sharks in their own environment I've always felt a mix of adrenaline and fear, it should be absolutely fantastic but also scaring as hell... well, after seeing this footage from a 2007 accident, I've finally decided: Cage Diving is not for me!
Read here what happened in the words of the protagonist, cameraman Patrick Walsh:
Lüderitz is a harbour town in south-west Namibia, lying on one of the least hospitable coasts in Africa. It is a port developed around Robert Harbour and Shark Island but most of all Lüderitz is home to the Lüderitz Speed Challenge, the only international sporting event held in the town. This is an annual month-long speed sailing event held in the last quarter of the year under the auspices of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC).
©Getty Images
Sometimes, while I'm writing this post it has been raining for the last three days, we are used to think that autumn is the grayest of seasons, but skillful photographers easily show us that Fall has got instead a rich and
colourful palette. Enjoy a gallery from this first month of Autumn coming from all over the Boreal Emisphere:
©GETTY IMAGES
Huntington Beach hosted the second annual Surf City Surf Dog competition last Sunday, raising money for animal charities while letting dogs strut their stuff in a costume contest, a one-mile walk, and of course, a surfing competition.
The most famos Paul after Sir McCartney, also known as the Oracle Octopus, passed away in the night aged two and a half years, when all three of his hearts ceased to beat at once. He was unmarried and leaves no larvae so unfortunately he couldn't transmit its magical genes leaving the world without its unerring forecastings.
©Massimo Santoni
Another amzing picture from the Your Shot section of National Geographic website. The photographer, Massimo Santoni, shot this boy using a coffin as a boat in the holy Bagmati River, at Pashupatinath, Nepal.We don't know anything more about the story behind, but probably this just adds some mistery to this wonderful shot.
©Carl Warner
I've always been a great fan of Carl Warner's foodscapes, those wonderful landscapes made up with just... food!
He is getting more and more famous thanks to his creative idea and many food-producing brands has used his masterpieces for their advertising campaigns. Obviously at the same time many other photographers are trying to copy the idea but, as usual, Warner's work, with ten year experience and a lot of passion, is always the best.
I've seen many many bizarre umbrellas in my life, but this is by far the most unconventional one and, if it works, I really would like to have one!
Imagine the faces of your friends, when during a rainy day you draw an umbrella with no canopy... you push a button and a sheet of air becomes a barrier between you and the raindrops!
Photograph by Mike Sutton Brown, via NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM
A wonderful shot of an Atlantic Tarpon hunting a school of Silversides. The picture was taken by Mike Sutton Brown and uploaded on the Your Shot section of National Geographic website, a place where it's possible to submit a favorite photo for possible publication in National Geographic. Just like in this case you can find many wonderful and ispiring shots there. You can also download this photo as a wallpaper.
The picture was taken at Eden Rock, Grand Cayman. For just a short time every year these silversides swarm caves and swim-throughs at Cayman's dive sites. The picture was taken late afternoon just as the sun was going down. The photographer was hiding behind the silversides, low in the rocks. As the tarpon swam through the silversides, they eventually saw him and turned away. Just like you see in the picture.
Have you ever wondered how big is the skull of a blue whale? well the answer is in the picture here above and it's a BIG answer...
After all, Blue Whales at over 33 metres (108 ft) in length and 180 metric tons (200 short tons) or more in weight, are the largest animal ever known to have existed (that means also larger than Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus and Whatever-saurus).
After all, Blue Whales at over 33 metres (108 ft) in length and 180 metric tons (200 short tons) or more in weight, are the largest animal ever known to have existed (that means also larger than Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus and Whatever-saurus).
Photo: Banksy.co.uk
Banksy, the famous British graffiti artist, political activist and painter, whose identity is unconfirmed, has always had environmental issues as one of his favourite themes.
This time he has cleverly "reconditioned" a dolphin shaped kiddie ride in a anti-BP statement with the help of an oil drum and a tuna net.
Photo: © Carlo Borlenghi
Try to imagine a wonderful, extreme, sport challenge taking place in one of the less known but most beautiful and intriguing areas of the world. What am I talking about? simple: Mongolia Bike Challenge, a brand new 12 legs Mountain Bike race across Mongolia, a place so wild and untouched by humans that every leg takes place in a different environment: from sand dunes
National Geographic delights us with this first ever video of sea lions hunting a large octopus. The footage is from a project intended to help save the endangered sea lions, in part by uncovering where and how the animals eat. It has been realized thanks to a Crittercam, the small package of instruments including a camera that can be attached to a wild animal to study its behaviour in the wild. Crittercam was invented by National Geographic marine biologist Greg Marshall in 1986. Since than it has been employed in studies on over 40 marine and terrestrial animals and on the Emperor Penguin obtaining the footagr used in the Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins.
©Guido Trombetta/b-plan
Last weekend I was in Lerici for the first event of the 2010 edition of the Audi Melges 32 Sailing Series. Very strange conditions: huge waves and very light wind:
©Carlo Borlenghi
If you are close to the Alpina Hütte, Corviglia, St.Moritz, Switzerland and skiing in one of the most beautiful mountains all over the world isn't fun enough for you, you may evaluate the idea of taking part to the Alpina Surfover. What is it?
©Flipped Out
If you're one of the readers of SeaWayBLOG, looking at the picture here above, you may think that I'm going to speak about some environmental issue concerning river chemical pollution but if you're a Chicagoan you already know that this is a completely different (and more pleasant) story...
Two days ago it was St.Patrick Day, the yearly holiday celebrated on 17 March, named after Saint Patrick (AD 387–461), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland. It began as a purely Catholic holiday and became an official feast day in the early 1600s. However, it has gradually become more of a secular celebration of Ireland's culture.
During their celebrations Chigaoans dye their river green and have done so since 1962 when sewer workers used green dye to check for sewer discharges and had the idea to turn the river green for Saint Patrick's Day. Originally 100 pounds of vegetable dye was used to turn the river green for a whole week but now only forty pounds of dye is used and the colour only lasts for several hours.
Chicago is not the only American city celebrating this way:
Indianapolis also dyes its main canal green. Savannah dyes its downtown city fountains green. In Jamestown, New York, the Chadakoin River (a small tributary that connects Conewango Creek with its source at Chautauqua Lake) is dyed green each year. Columbia, SC dies its fountain green in the area known as Five Points (a popular collegiate location near the University of South Carolina).
The picture above and the two following were taken on this year celebration. Unfortunately weather was dark and gloomy.
©Getty Images via Daylife
©Getty Images via Daylife
The following pictures instead were taken in previous editions and the sun makes them really spectacular:
©multisanti
©multisanti
©jshueh
©jshueh
©multisanti
©yuan2003
©Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov
A nice little set of "liquid sculptures": flowers and a star created with water splashes.
The authors are Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov, a russian couple of advertising and fashion photographers. You can check their portfolio in their website: DOBERMANSTUDIO.RU
©Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov
©Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov
©Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov
©Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov
