Art & Photography

The images that you see before you appear to be different things to different people. Because of my obsession with the National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, to me, the images below appear to be some newly discovered creatures from the deep sea or images released by NASA of newly discovered galaxies.

These stunning images are taken by British photographer, Mark Mawson, who has been taking pictures for over 22 years and specializing in shooting under water scenes. For his Aqueous Series, he takes several drops of colored paint and drops it into a tank of water. As gravity goes to work, so does Mark Mawson. He uses a strobe light to light up the scene and captures the scene as the paint disperses. The results are very cool. If any of you have any interest in photography, this might be a good project to try to duplicate as a challenge to yourself.

We’ve featured some pretty awesome images of Disney Princesses over the last little while, and they’ve been ridiculously popular. These imaginary ladies have been the inspiration for many… adult re-imaginings of our favorite fairytale characters, and Thomas Czarnecki is a photographer who’s joined in on bringing the pretty princesses to life. And by life, I mean horribly depressing deaths, but let’s not get hung up on wording. Pair a world class photographer with beautiful women, a bunch of Disney costumes, and a slightly twisted point of view; you get a set of photos illustrating what it would look like if our enchanted childhoods ended in the real world.

I’ve never been much into the street art scene. In fact, I haven’t really been into it at all. If you were to ask me to name five street artists off the top of my head, I could only name three. Two of them, because I wrote about them (Os + Gemos) and one because he’s very well known; Banksy. Though my knowledge is lacking, I love much of the work I see, and slowly but surely I’m exposing myself to more of it. Today I’m showing off an artist I found who goes by the name (street name?) of ROA. His work is incredible, especially if you like animals.

This entire set – if you can call it that – is of ROA’s work from Australia, and the animals are appropriately Australian themed. ROA’s work features Bilby’s, which I had never heard of, and more wholesome animals, such as

Creativity and its child artwork are funny things. You see, many would say that the quality of artwork can’t be determined objectively; it comes down to personal preference, and a slew of other things. That may be true for some things, but I can confidently say that this Light & Shadow exhibit by Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita is objectively awesome.

Using only a single light source and a range of different trinkets, such as wooden letters, numbers, and pieces of paper, Kumi is able to create incredibly life-life portraits and silhouettes. Whether she has a specific method for achieving the effect, or whether it’s simply a case of trial and error, I couldn’t say… but what I do know is that something like this would make for an incredible installation in one’s home. Kumi, are you for hire?