I took this photo in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was scorching. We drove past this lone giraffe that was getting shade and shelter from the sun by standing under this beautiful Acacia tree.

We stayed there for a couple of minutes admiring the beautiful animal in complete silence. It was a peaceful moment and one I’ll always remember, as it gave me time to reflect and appreciate how fortunate I was to be in such a location in the presence of such a beautiful creature.

Situated between the Bronx and Riker’s Island is a small parcel of land in the East River known as North Brother Island. The island is small, measuring approximately 400 meters x 250 meters. Together with its smaller counterpart South Brother Island, the two have a land area of about 20 acres (81,400 square meters). You can see the island on Google Maps here (and above).

North Brother was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital moved there from Roosevelt Island. According to Wikipedia:

“Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases. Typhoid Mary (the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier) was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938.
 
The hospital closed shortly thereafter. After World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges, along with their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was once again abandoned.
 
In the 1950s a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts. The facility claimed to be the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this island and locked in a room until they were clean. By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close.
 
Now a bird sanctuary, the island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospitals’ buildings still stand, but are heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapse. A dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings, and from the 1980s through the early 2000s it supported one of the area’s largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron. However as of 2011 this species has abandoned the island for unknown reasons. [Source]

Four months ago, Reddit user Victav posted an incredible 41-picture gallery to Imgur. The album has been viewed over 230,000 times to date.

Victav says he and a friend kayaked to the island and spent three hours exploring and documenting North Brother. For any would-be urban explorers, Victav warns that due to the island’s proximity to the city, airport, power plant, water treatment facility and prison (Riker’s), it is strongly monitored by both the NYPD and coast guard. So if you want to visit, you must be very sneaky.

[via Victav on Reddit]

Located in Nahuel Huapi, Argentina’s oldest national park, is this gorgeous hiking trail known as Sendero de Los Arrayanes. The photo was taking by Flickr user Adry, and she says it winds from Puerto Pañuelo to Lago Moreno.

At this particular spot, with the trees branches arched over, the trail takes on the shape of an eye.

Established in 1934, the Nahuel Huapi National Park surrounds Nahuel Huapi Lake in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes. The largest of the national parks in the region, it has an area of 7,050 km2 (2,720 sq mi), or nearly 2 million acres. [Source]

Tess Jakubec is an artist and student currently attending the UBC (University of British Columbia) in Vancouver, Canada. In the series below, Tess washes away dirt and grime from walls to create her street art landscapes. Similar to scrawling on a dirty car by simply wiping away dirt with your finger; Tess uses a combination of water, stencil, brushes and rags (and probably some kind of cleaning solution) to create what’s known as reverse graffiti.

[via fishgoesmoo]

The Problem

Bicycles are a popular form of transportation in Japan. However, when parked they can take up a lot of public space that could otherwise be used by pedestrian foot traffic, small storefronts, etc.

The Solution

Rather than take up valuable real estate above ground, store them safely underground where they are protected from the weather and would-be thieves, while freeing up valuable public space.

 
The ECO Cycle is an automated underground storage system for bicycles. Designed by Giken, it has a capacity of 204 bicycles and can retrieve a person’s bike in approximately 13 seconds.

1. IC tag fixed on front frame of bicycle is read automatically by the sensor in front of the Entrance Door, and then the Front Wheel Shutter opens automatically. Then, the front wheel should be placed into the open space.

2. After the front wheel is fixed by the Clamp, step away from the mat and then press “the Loading Button”.

3. The Entrance Door opens automatically and then the bicycle is conveyed into the Eco-cycle. The door closes automatically. It is the end of loading operation.

4. Transporting Tray brings the bicycle down with revolving action to a vacant pallet.

5. The Transporting Tray slides to place the bicycle at the vacant pallet. It is the end of loading bicycle.

- Earthquake-proof wall composed of pressed-in piles which form cylindrical wall
- The Eco-cycle is completed by using prefabricated materials
- Max bicycle weight 30kg (66 lbs)
- Parking capacity: 204
- Retrieval speed: 13 seconds
- Depth: 11.65 meters (38.22 ft)
- Diameter: 8.55 meters (28 ft)

1. Pressing-in piles to form cylindrical wall by using a dedicated designed Silent Piler

2. Excavation inside the shaft to create the underground space

3. Installation of Mechanical parking system inside the shaft

4. Installation of the prefabricated entrance booth

In this photograph by Pedro Szekely we see the city of La Paz, the second largest city in Bolivia after Santa Cruz. It is located in the western part of the country at an elevation of roughly 3,650 m (11,975 ft) above sea level, making it the world’s highest de facto capital city, or administrative capital, with Quito, Ecuador, being the highest legal capital.

Overlooking the city is the triple-peaked Illimani moutain, which is always snow-covered and can be seen from several spots of the city. [Source]

In the Flickr photo description, Szekely describes his thoughts as he arrived in La Paz for the first time:

“Arriving to La Paz by land is quite an experience. La Paz is in a valley, but it overflowed into the Altiplano. In South America, the outskirts of the big cities are very poor. The peasants coming from the countryside looking for jobs settle there. So, your first contact with La Paz is quite shocking, as you see the extreme poverty of the people who live there.
 
The bus then winds down the road into the very crowded La Paz. The streets are narrow and lined with little stores that sell everything, the traffic and pollution are horrible, and there are lots of people. It is picturesque but unsettling. I live in Los Angeles, but I am from Colombia and I have seen my share of poverty. La Paz is something else.

Nguyễn Hùng Cường is a Vietnamese origami artist from Hanoi. Cuong tells All Things Paper that he has been folding since he was five years old, creating his first original design in 1999 when he was only 10; a simple pig based on the work of John Montroll.

Although not a full-time origami artist, Cuong says it is more than just a hobby for him and he one day hopes to publish a book and inspire others with his incredible origami designs.

On his Flickr profile, Cuon explains why he is drawn to origami:

“What I love about origami is that I can make anything from one piece of paper just by folding it. Since I’m not good with words, I use origami to share my idea, how I feel and how beautiful this world is.”

To see much more incredible work including non-animal origami, be sure to check out his entire portfolio on Flickr.

[All Things Paper via Colossal]

Between 2004 and 2007, photographer James Mollison attended concerts across Europe and the USA with a mobile photography studio, inviting fans of each music star or band to pose for their portrait outside the gig.

He subsequently combined portraits of eight to ten fans for each performer into a single lineup, making a single panoramic image in each case. With a total of over 500 individual portraits, in 62 panoramic images, The Disciples is a fascinating take on contemporary music culture and the tribalism invoked by popular music stars.

On his website, Mollison remarks:

“As I photographed the project I began to see how the concerts became events for people to come together with surrogate ‘families’, a chance to relive their youth or try and be part of a scene that happened before they were born.”

Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England. After studying Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, and later film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design, he moved to Italy to work at Benetton’s creative lab, Fabrica. Since August 2011 Mollison has been working as a creative editor on Colors Magazine with Patrick Waterhouse. In 2009 he won the Royal Photographic Society’s Vic Odden Award, for notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer aged 35 or under. His work has been widely published throughout the world.

[via BlankGrizzly]

In this vintage photograph we see the original cast of Sesame Street which aired from 1969-1970. Most notable is Oscar the Grouch’s orange fur which would switch to the more recognizable green in the second season.

According to the Muppet Wiki:

The character of Oscar was inspired by a nasty waiter from a restaurant called Oscar’s Tavern in Manhattan. While Jim Henson’s first Oscar sketches were colored purple, the original Oscar puppet was orange (Henson later said in an interview that this change was made because the early cameras weren’t good enough to capture the color right).
 
An early version of the green Oscar debuted on The Flip Wilson Show in 1970 and Oscar’s explanation for that was that he had vacationed at Swamp Mushy Muddy, where the dampness had turned him green overnight. In a 2003 appearance, Oscar stated that while his time in Swamp Mushy Muddy made him appear green, he is still in fact orange underneath all the slime and mold. (With an exception, he’s just never taken a bath). [Source]

The series has now produced over 4,300 episodes. The original has been televised in 120 countries, and more than 20 international versions have been produced. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street had won 8 Grammy Awards and 143 Emmy Awards—more than any other children’s show in history. [Sources 1, 2]

Photographer Anna Eftimie and her husband are the duo behind Cute Moments Photography, an award-winning baby photography studio based out of San Jose, California. In a series entitled Blackboard Adventures, Anna imagines what a newborn child may be dreaming of as they lay asleep. She illustrates their dreams on a chalkboard located directly underneath the sleeping beauties.

As per the Facebook album description:

“These are the adventures of a little guy on a blackboard. When we say “little”, we mean it: He was 5 days old in the one with the stork,and three months in the last one. How we did it? Simple! We just made the drawings with real chalk on a real blackboard, like we used to do in school. Then, we took the photos of the baby while sleeping on a soft and warm cloth on the blackboard, right in the middle of his own story. Even though our son looks like sleeping directly on the blackboard, he always had something soft underneath him.”

For more creative portraits from Cute Moments Photography, be sure to check them out online at the links listed below.

[Blackboard Adventures Facebook album via Laughing Squid]