What to do next time you're bored on a plane? Take 15th-Century Flemish-style self portraits in the lavatory, of course!

The phrase "shot with a drone in Pakistan" brought something else to mind, but it's nice to see one of the upsides to drone technology: awesome mountaineering footage. I want one!

Photographing light in slow motion: the line in the video which puts it in perspective is that at this time scale, watching a bullet move through that coke bottle would be a year-long movie.

Yes, the eclipse indeed occurred.

Added to sidebar: Rock Art Photo Blog. Need I say more?

Photo gallery: 2011 in Volcanic Activity

I went out to photograph yesterday's lunar eclipse in the New Mexico badlands, with some success. Enjoy!

In which Odious, Proclus and I visit the Truchas Peaks:

Two Oddities of the Snake Range

I recently enjoyed an overnight backpack in eastern Nevada's Snake Range (probably better know as Great Basin National Park). Anyone interested in seeing my attempts to capture Nevada's beautiful landscapes would do well to look in on my photoblog (and keep checking, I've got quite a backlog). But two things I've learned since I returned merit mention here on Odious and Peculiar.

What do Neal Stephenson's Anathem and the Snake Range have in common? They're both connected to the 10,000 Year Clock project:

...a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines.

Read the whole thing. I don't generally care for people mucking about with the landscape in indulgence of their own obsessions (see Christo and his planned hybrid of nuisance and eyesore which he wants to inflict on the Arkansas River), but this is pretty damn cool:

Carved into the mountain are five room-sized anniversary chambers: 1 year, 10 year, 100 year, 1,000 year, and 10,000 year anniversaries. The one year anniversary chamber is a special orrery. In addition to the planets and the Earth's moon, it includes all of the interplanetary probes launched during the 20th century, humankind's first century in space. Among others, you'll see the Grand Tour: Voyager 2's swing by of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Clock will activate and run the orrery once a year on a pre-determined date at solar noon.

It's one of the better things I can imagine filthy rich people doing with their money. And in regard to the Nevada site, as much as I love the wilderness of the Snake Range, the area they're talking about is already impacted by mining and attendant road access. This is probably the only time rich outsiders purchasing an old mining claim might be good news. Mount Washington, the planned clock site, is visible below, towards the right, three ridges back and lighter than the other peaks (limestone, not quartzite).



Seems like a good site to me. And the Texas clock will surely be the coolest thing in the state, and may even provide some public access to a region that's mostly off-limits.

For those who haven't read Anathem, the Stephenson connection is that he was asked to imagine such a clock, and those imaginations developed into the central conceit of the novel. (And what's more, I have just learned of the existence of Anathem music.)

Only vaguely apropos, on my recent sojourn in the Snakes I photographed an odd timberline flower which caught my eye, and only later realized that it appears to be Holmgrem's buckwheat (Eriogonum holmgrenii), an endemic unique to the Snake Range:

A photographic treat to brighten up your day: Paul Nicklen’s gallery of leopard seals. Amazing!

Reaching the edge of the Nyiragongo lava lake

Pyrard de Laval says in 1616: ‘(in Goa) they have no glass windows, instead very fine and straight oyster shells are used, inserted into wooden frames, allowing the light to come in as if it was of paper, as they are not as transparent as glass.'

Photographer Rajan Parrikar has some pictures of Goan nacre windows, though only from the outside, alas. I imagine that accurately rendering the quality of interior light filtered through the shells would be a consummate challenge for any photographer. It brings to mind the large sheets of mica used for window panes in Spanish missions in California, another effect I would love to see in person.

I highly recommend a look at Parrikar's blog and photo galleries. The twin poles of his world seem to be Goa and Iceland, an unusual combination to say the least, but he does excellent justice to both.

Finally took some real pictures, of some honest New Mexico hinterlands in decent light. Check 'em out: Rio Puerco Volcanic Necks.

Results:

Wee, Sleekit, Cow’rin, Tim’rous Beastie

The Secret Lives of Harvest Mice

Very cool, and an example of really bravura wildlife photography. They still look like treats for pythons, though.

Hallbjörn Hjartarson, the king of Icelandic country music. You can listen to a song here.

Hat tip to Rajan Parrikar, an excellent photoblogger who seems to split his time between Iceland and Goa. I definitely recommend clicking a good ways into his archives.

We've blogged Ted Hughes splendid autumn poetry before. But here's my personal take on it:

October Dawn in the Southern Rockies

Some good news for Desolation Canyon. Plus new photos.

An amazing set of photographs from throughout the Russian Empire, taken from 1909-1912:

In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.

There's a lot of shots in there from Central Asia, the Caucasus and eastern Turkey, besides Russia proper. Truly an incredible record!

What I did instead of watching the Perseids on Thursday night: Previewed Ragnarok in the Pecos.