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Home » stunning photography

Impossible Photography and Defying The Rules of Physics

March 5, 2014 By Vernon Gadson Leave a Comment

As you all know, we love art and especially photography, as even if a picture wouldn’t be worth a thousand words, a good picture, just as a good painting, can transport you to a different world, give you another perspective, change something about the way you see the world or report yourself to it. Art history knows plenty of famous photographers who managed to stand the test of time and become legends in their field. As where as impossible photography is concerned, maybe we don’t use the term correctly, but we have some explanation for it: let’s say that a picture is meant to capture reality. A photo turns immortal a person, a life’s moment, a landscape, a scene, an object and so on. This is why we still use photography as witnesses, as time – standing pylons that prove without a doubt (and in the absence of photo tampering and manipulation) that at some point in time, reality was in a certain way. By impossible photography, we understand those art works that even still capture reality as it is, but which defy the known laws of physics either because they are thoroughly manipulated, either because the artists have a fine skill of playing with our minds. Today we will take a look at the works of two photographers who managed to impress us with their impossible photography skills and let you decide if defying the laws of physics is a matter of artistic talent or just good photo manipulation software skills.

The impossible photography of Michael Rhode

This German artist is the possessor of not only a talent to blow our minds with his photography, but also an interesting background. His art, called by the experts Impossible Perspectives, apparently has roots in Michael’s history of being a homeless and living in all sorts of places in Berlin. The way he “sees” space and objects is definitely revolutionary and the hard work behind all the juxtapositions he did is breath taking. But what is Michael’s impossible photography anyway? According to Katie Hosmer’s article on My Modern Met,

To create the photographs, the artist merged hundreds of individual images into one composition. The space is disorienting and viewers will remain captivated as they attempt to make sense of each arrangement. We are visually led to believe that the foundation of a floor has been eliminated and are thus faced with quite the challenge of deciphering the scene. Objects that normally rest on the floor seem to be happily hovering in a weightless room and Rohde provides us with the unique opportunity to gaze, with ease, underneath desks, chairs, tables, countertops, and even a refrigerator!

We’ll take a look over some of Michael’s brilliant impossible photography and invite you to take a look at a more extended gallery. And if you like his works, you should know that others are challenging themselves with messing up with our perspective on reality too. Another German artist, Menno Aden is offering us also “from above” photos to actually give us a height freight.

Michael Rohde

Michael Rohde

Michael Rohde

The Art of Kaija Straumanis

Kaija Straumanis is a young female photographer who took art and fun to another level and publicly released an impossible photography project where she is captured on camera… being hit in the face by different objects. Now what is amazing about her photos is that they make you wonder how many shots were necessary to get those pictures and… wasn’t she hurt by those objects? Of course, it is hard to believe that somebody actually threw a glass at her and broke it against her temple, but as impossible photography goes in our book, she did indeed mess up with reality. Perhaps these pictures won’t be used in any court of law as undeniable proof, but the fact is that her project may become a source of inspiration for other artists to “manipulate reality” even for the sake of fun and originality.

kajia straumanis

kajia straumanis

kajia straumanis

If you have other examples of impossible photography that sometimes fools the eye and defies the laws of physics, don’t hesitate to let us know. We love a good challenge and let’s face it: a new perspective is always welcome in a world obsessed with selfies and Instagram shootings of breakfast dishes and cats.

Filed Under: art Tagged With: stunning photography

Lake Natron Turns Animals into Stone? Not Quite, but it’s Still Stunning.

February 12, 2014 By Fred Mitchell Leave a Comment

stone_animals_lake_07

Have you ever heard about Lake Natron? It is one of the most serene lakes in all Africa, but it is also the source of some truly eerie photographs. You might have seen them circulating on the internet, and if you didn’t, we will share them with you. Lake Natron may be beautiful, but it seems that it holds a deadly secret: it turns animals that touch it into stone. Ok, it’s not really stone, but something very similar. The internet has a funny way of taking a story and transforming it into something completely fake, so before you read on, we urge you to check out this article, where the process of preservation and the ecosystem of the Natron Lake is explained. The stone that we were talking about earlier is actually a chemical process to which the animals were subjected (much like Egyptian mummification). The calcified animals were found by National Geographic photographer Nick Brandt, who supposedly found the dead animals floating around in the water, or washed up on the shore.

stone_animals_lake_08

I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry.

I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death. (Source: Nick Brandt)

stone_animals_lake_02

The lake, with its incredible properties (which can be explained by its chemical make-up: the alkalinity varies between pH 9 and pH 10.5) has preserved these creatures. Let it be noted, however, that Lake Natron’s harsh conditions do no turn any animals that touch it into stone, but only the ones that are not adapted to them. There are still plenty of animals that did not have any problem venturing in its waters. As a matter of fact, the people living near the lake have reported that certain birds and bats have actually crashed into the water (probably confusing it with the sky), and probably died from the crash. Furthermore, as morbidly beautiful as Lake Natron’s mummies can be, they aren’t truly calcified, but rather coated with a sodium carbonate or bicarbonate solution.

“There is almost no calcium in the lake, although the inflowing fresh waters have calcium, which precipitates as it mixes with the high-pH alkaline waters of the lake.”

Let’s take a look at some of the main subjects that Nick Brand uses as photography models:

1. Bat “Mummy”

stone_animals_lake_04

This 2012 portrait of a calcified bat, from Lake Natron isn’t actually the stone creature that people expected it. According to Jaimi Butler, of the Great Salt Lake Institute in Utah, the shoreline of the northern arm of the Great Salt Lake is littered with birds that are “pickled”. This means that they were encrusted in salt, and you could pick them up without altering their position. He also added that many healthy animals visit the lake and aren’t turned to stone, so the ones found calcified, are probably sickly ones that were preserved within the waters.

2. Floating Flamingo

stone_animals_lake_03

Arguably the most powerful image in the collection, the Floating Flamingo, with its beautiful reflexion in the water (notice how perfectly clear it is), was taken back in 2010. Lake Natron is an important habitat for lesser flamingos (3/4 of the bird’s population uses this location for its abundant food supplies and as a breeding place).

3. Regal Eagle

84105678_1330357620_Elena_Vizerskaya_3

Brandt truly managed to bring this eagle “back to life”, by putting it in such a proud position. Another interesting piece of trivia about the lake is the fact that it is not only salty, but also extremely hot. Daily temperatures can reach even 40 degrees Celsius.

In conclusion, the lake may not have turned anyone into stone yet (at least not instantly), but the animal mummies that it managed to create are still morbidly fascinating. These photographs stand testimony at the incredible things that nature can create.

stone_animals_lake_06

Filed Under: strange news Tagged With: animals, calcification, Lake Natron, morbidly beautiful, stunning photography

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