View allAll Photos Tagged Terrifying
Main background, spiders, casket & cracks from All Hallows Eve by Cryztal Rains
Hands from Hands by Holliewood
Rocks from Thoughts of Thee by Tangie Baxter
Dirt by OnOne
Head & torso from Ultimate Doll Art by Tangie Baxter & SherrieJD
Eyes from Body Farm by SherrieJD
Dead rose from Longing For Past Days by Eena’s Creations
Tree branch and leaves from Flitting Fall Leaves & Drifting Leaves & Plants by Lorie Davison
Rose bud from Vintage Fantasy by Mistica Designs
Font: VCA All Scratched Up One
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) was a researcher in photography who, in 1826, took the world's first photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras (La cour du domaine du Gras).
"Niépce captured the photo with a camera obscura focused onto a sheet of 20 × 25 cm oil-treated bitumen. As a result of the 8-hour exposure, sunlight illuminates the buildings on both sides."
Louis Daguerre, Niépce's sometime collaborator, went on to develop the commercially successful daguerrotype, overshadowing Niépce's innovations.
Jim Lewis' 2002 Slate essay is fantastic.
It's all too easy to think that an interesting picture is a picture of an interesting thing—this is the power of photojournalism, some snapshots, certain forms of portraiture, and so on. But the truth is trickier: The quality of a photograph lies not in its subject matter but in the irreducible entanglement of photographer, apparatus, and image. The most interesting fact to contemplate is that someone had the will and the opportunity to take it at all. You're looking at the specific and fleeting relationship among those three things—artist, camera, world. What makes the aesthetics of the photograph different than the aesthetics of, say, painting are the constraints put on that triangle; there's a different relationship to time, a different relationship to machinery, and, of course, a different (though no less complicated) relationship to truth, to memory, to history, and so on.
For example, consider this: Somewhere Nabokov writes that, while many of us are terrified by the expanse of empty time that awaits us after death, few feel any fear of the endlessness that preceded our birth. But looking at the Niépce picture reverses death's order of sentiments; it induces a deep unease over the blankness of the past. You can't help but think of the things and lives that, before 1826, were never caught on film—all those men and women, with nothing to mark their presence or their passing. It inspires a kind of light-headedness. Photographs are not our only—or even our best—reminder of the past, but they are now our most common, so much so that, from sonograms on, there's probably not a person living in the United States who has never been caught on camera. Look at the world's first gasoline engine, and you may feel a twinge of pity for all the miles walked before automobiles came on the scene; look at the first light bulb, and you may pity all the hours people spent in the dark. But the vertigo experienced in response to Niépce's picture is deeper than that: It's an almost metaphysical awe at the utter newness of the relationship being announced, between representations and the things they represent.
I took this copy here, from the Wikipedia Commons.
Lisa and I spent a chilly Sunday re-exploring the incredible Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, AB.
This is what you look like if you're afraid of heights and choose to follow your American friend up the 272 steps to go to the Batu Caves. :)
The Batu Cave, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, dedicated to Lord Murugan. It is the focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia.
though in the morning on the train before my daily cup of coffee i might think that the quick glances and subtle eye contact is smooth and un-noticed, the reality of it is more likely that i stare at lengths that would make even the strongest shudder in a general uncomfortableness.
sorry in advance
John Smyser’s Terrifying Toronado exhibition car, which, terrifyingly enough, is best remembered for hurtling the guardrail at Irwindale Raceway and scaring the bejesus out of the fans in that section.
By all accounts, Smyser was a very good Top Fuel racer. With Nando Haase driving, his 392 Chrysler-powered Radar Wheels entry won the 1965 Hot Rod Magazine Championships in Riverside, Calif., and he and Harry Hibler were runner-up to Tony Nancy at the 1970 March Meet.
The Terrifying Toronado had its street roots in Olds’ peculiar attempt at a muscle car. With gobs of horsepower under the hood and chain-driven front-wheel drive for better traction, it should have been a huge winner, right? After all, while the GTOs and Mustangs were melting the hides trying to glue their tires to the road, the Olds would hook up just fine, thank you very much. The car was so highly praised that it won Motor Trend’s prestigious Car of the Year award in 1966. Smyser’s car was a ’66 – the first year in a production that ran through 1992 – and shared the same engine as the production car, a 425-cid V-8 powerplant.
Noted speed merchant Don Ratican (of Ratican-Jackson-Stearns fame) built the two Olds engines that, while they retained the stock displacement, were pretty racy, packed with Mickey Thompson pistons with Grant rings, a Racer Brown camshaft, heads ported and polished by Valley Head Service, and, naturally, a 6-71 supercharger.
The front engine turned the front 10-inch-wide Casler slicks on Halibrand wheels through the conventional Toronado automatic transmission and differential while the rear-seat-mounted second engine used a dual-disc clutch and a Schiefer aluminum flywheel to funnel power via direct drive to a conventional Olds rear end.
While the wheelbase remained at the stock 119 inches, the track was widened 8 1/2 inches in front and 2 1/2 inches in the rear, presumably for stability and tire clearance. The rear engine sat in a subframe that was easily removable for repairs (maybe they knew something ahead of time?). The car tipped the scales at a portly 4,500 pounds.
Despite its pedigree, the car may have been one of the more ill-conceived and certainly most ill-handling race cars ever built. Or maybe it was just too far ahead of its time.
The Terrifying Toronado was unveiled at the 1966 AHRA Winternationals at Irwindale and made its first run the following week at the ‘Dale. On its fateful lone pass, Smyser lost the handle early, with the car first darting left for the centerline, then hooking up hard and plunging back to the right into and over the Armco. As the famous photos show, it didn’t make it much farther than the guardrail and fell comfortably short – easy for me to say because I wasn’t sitting in the stands – of the chain-link fence.
It ran a few other times that year but never performed well enough to merit much attention. The car’s final outing came about a year after its debut, at the 1967 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, where the car again ran afoul of the laws of physics. During Saturday qualifying, Smyser made an exhibition pass but again the car got all terrifying on him and busted through the right-side guardrail at speed at three-quarter-track. Fortunately, there were no grandstands that far downtrack. Regardless, it became clear that the Terrifying Toronado was just too terrifying to continue, and the car was retired.
Early "52 Weeks" photo, this is for Week05!
The Red Admiral butterfly landed on my friend's hand up on Snake Island and we were lucky enough to have a D90 and macro lens with us at the time.
"Kids! Spend all your money! In the shops! Don't save! Spend! Now!"
Spotted in the Science Museum shop, oddly enough. There's no word on any followup game where you have to juggle £30k of credit card debts without being declared bankrupt.
This picture scared the hell out out me. How did that bag get up the tree and attach itself to the branches? Nobody knows. It's really weird, too weird and not only is it too weird, it's spooky too, too spooky.