Category: Photos & Art

Photo Contest Finalists

We’re proud to announce the winners of our 11th Annual Photo Contest. Our photo editors selected the 60 finalists from over 50,000 photographs submitted by photographers from 132 different countries. Ten were selected from each of six categories: The Natural World, Travel, People, Americana, Altered Images and Mobile, a new category this year.

Smithsonian Magazine

Vote for the Readers’ Choice award.

50 best photos from The Natural World

We share our world with many other species and live in an ever-changing environment. Fortunately, photographers around the world have captured the moments and beauty that allow us to see amazing views of this awe-inspiring planet. This is a collection of favorite photos from The Natural World gallery in 2011, a showcase of images of animals and environment that runs on Boston.com throughout the year. Next week posts will take a look at the year in photos, so stay tuned. -Leanne Burden Seidel (50 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Pearl Harbor 70th anniversary

Some 100 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor will gather in Hawaii today 70 years after the day which drew the US into World War II. The Japanese air and naval strike on the American military base claimed nearly 2,400 hundred lives, destroyed over 160 aircraft and beached, damaged or destroyed over 20 ships. President Franklin D. called it ” a date which will live in infamy” when he addressed the Congress the next day asking to declare war with Japan. — Lloyd Young (35 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Abo Canyon

Longtime reader and commenter Mi3ke took a train ride and came back with a fascinating photo essay. Here’s his introduction, but as his blog’s title says, it’s Things My Camera Sees and the photos tell the story.

BNSF Railroad runs a transcontinental mainline from west coast ports to Chicago.  With all but 32 miles of the track being double track, one of the biggest bottlenecks was a 5 mile stretch of single track in Abo Canyon, just east of Belen, New Mexico.  The track runs 80 to 90 trains a day, about one every 15 minutes. They go through 400 to 500 foot high bluffs, cuts 100 to 150 feet deep and over 9 bridges over 80 feet high and up to 500 feet long. In the train industry, time is money.  This stretch could stop a train for up to 3 hours.  Time to blow stuff up!

Continue at Things My Camera Sees

NMK’s Photo Galleries

Over the years I’ve posted a lot of photos. On a few occasions there were enough to create an album.

NewMexiKen Photo Galleries is a collection of those albums, 11 on two pages.

  • Yosemite Valley April 2005
  • The New Mexico State Fair September 2005
  • Balloon Fiesta and Fais Do Do October 2005
  • A Gathering of Nations April 2006
  • Oklahoma City Memorial June 2006
  • The Great Albuquerque Snowfall December 2006
  • Rocky Mountain National Park June 2007
  • El Morro and El Malpais National Monuments July 2007
  • Mount Vernon February 2008
  • Burning the Zozobra September 2008
  • Cherry Blossoms and Tidal Basin April 2011

2011 Tour de France

The world’s most beautiful stadium – the entire country of France – annually hosts the most important bike race of the year: the Tour de France. Upwards of 12 million fans line the roads to watch the race. For free. No tickets needed. The race traverses over 2000 miles in 21 days of racing. Every year the route changes, but the mountains are a constant: racers must scale absurdly steep peaks in both the Pyrenees and the Alps before a victory race onto the Champs Elysees in Paris. This year’s tour may be remembered most for the spate of horrible crashes that have eliminated many of the top riders. Most outrageously, a media car hit a cyclist at speed, causing a horrific crash that sent another rider cartwheeling into a barbed-wire fence. Both riders remounted and finished the stage. The race goes on through July 24. — Lane Turner (35 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Photos from the Las Conchas Wildfire

The Las Conchas wildfire in New Mexico spread dangerously close to the Los Alamos National Laboratory this week, causing the evacuation of the town and the shutdown of the lab, which is the headquarters for US military research. The laboratory was created during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project and houses highly sensitive materials. As a precaution, scientists are monitoring radioactivity in the air. The fire is the largest wildfire in the state’s history, covering more than 100,000 acres. … (34 photos total)

Wildfire threatens nuclear facility – The Big Picture

Some mesmerizing photos. 100,000 acres; that’s 156 square miles.

The Albuquerque Journal has an outstanding slide show as well, especially some of the shots of people.

Electronic art

This is the third New Yorker cover that David Hockney has drawn on an Apple handheld device. He used to use his iPhone, but he finds the iPad “especially good for luminous subjects or for things like the difference between ceramic and wood or a glass tea cup next to a ceramic mug. Anyway, it’s my sketchbook at the moment.” Hockney has been immersed in iPad projects, and is preparing a 2012 exhibit at the Royal Academy featuring about seventy iPad drawings “that show the winter slowly turning into spring,” he wrote in an e-mail. “They jump off the wall like paintings.”

Check out the slideshow of Hockney’s amazing work — He Draw on iPad : The New Yorker.

Iraqi Child in Acclaimed War Photo Tries to Move On

You will remember the photo taken by the late Chris Hondros in Iraq in 2005. I posted a variation of it here as Today’s Photo on April 20th.

The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.

The girl, now 12, had never seen the photo until this past week. Interesting article.

Iraqi Child in Acclaimed War Photo Tries to Move On

More on White House photos

“The White House continues to debate whether to release photos showing Osama bin Laden’s body. In theory, the photos would be proof to any doubters that the terrorist is dead. But not all photos can be believed — not even when they seem to show the President of the United States making a historic speech.”

Details at Poynter

The Situation Room Meme

The photo of the White House Situation Room during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden stunned the world when it was released. The photo is powerful, and the response to it has been strong. An image this dramatic almost seems taken in a parallel world, one removed from our cubicles and trips to the dry cleaners.

Perhaps, then, it was only a matter of time before the photoshoppers went to work on the iconic image, using it as grist for the always-grinding humor mill of the Internet. Already, Keanu Reeves, the grumpy flower girl, a velociraptor, and the shocked cat have been edited into the photo. The Situation Room has been colonized. It is part of our world. Take a look for yourself:

The Situation Room Meme: The Shortest Route From Bin Laden to Lulz

On a more serious — and more interesting — note, the reaction to the photo from some photo editors.