Steve Roe is a street photographer who specializes in stylized shots of Asian cities at night. He's been experimenting with some crowdfunded fractal lenses that add neat effects. Read the rest

This whimsical series of images by Filtre Studio imagines Queen Elizabeth straightening paintings and vacuuming up after her dogs. What's most interesting is that the entire room was created digitally. Read the rest

Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy creates strange and wonderful images of building facades by digitally removing everything else, making them look like weird and wonderful Potemkin villages. Read the rest

Yan Wang Preston left a medical career because she was drawn to nature photography. Her fascinating shots of old-growth trees replanted in urban areas is both beautiful and depressing. Read the rest

Birgit Schlosser specializes in spare, clean architecture photography, and that aesthetic is also in play in Volcanic Dreamscapes, a new series of works depicting the beauty of sparse volcanic ecosystems. Read the rest

In certain circles, it's become popular for brides to ruin their wedding dress after the wedding, leading to more and more elaborate and risky photos. Pierre Violle specializes in the genre, and he's captures some amazing underwater couples over the years: Read the rest

Astronaut Alexander Gerst captured the above photo of Northern California's Carr and Ferguson fires five days ago. Below is the blanket of smoke from the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest fire in California's history, as imaged by the Aqua satellite. Horrifying and tragic no matter how you see it.

From NASA:

Details of the actual fire as well as the ground are obscured in NASA's Aqua satellite image due to the heavy smoke coming off the Mendocino Complex fires as well as several other extremely large fires across California.

Today's total of acreage consumed by the River and Range fires is 300,086 and the fires are 47% contained. The Mendocino Complex Fire doubled in size over the last few days and the Ranch and River Fires combined near Clear Lake to form the largest fire in California history. Weather concerns continue with a warm and dry ridge of high pressure continuing over the fire areas today. Fuel moisture recovery continues to be poor overnight. A red flag warning is predicted from Thursday through Saturday. This is the 13th day of this ongoing blaze. Over 4,000 firefighters have been involved in fighting this fire. There are still over 10,000 structures that are in danger. Yosemite National Park has been closed indefinitely due to the fire.

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With L.A.'s iconic Eddie Blake's Tail o' the Pup hot dog stand set to reopen, LAist posted a brief photographic history of the city's fantastic history of "'programmatic architecture,' buildings designed to look like food, animals or other items."

"LA's Awesome History Of Weird, Food-Shaped Restaurants" (via NextDraft)

images: Los Angeles Public Library Collection Read the rest

Daniel Mercadante uses colored lights and long exposures to create his Rainbow Roads series of photos. Read the rest

Librarian Thomas Guignard (a.k.a. timtom) has a wonderful collection of Creative Commons photographs of libraries he's taken over the years. Read the rest

Photographer Brandon Burton's This Must Be the Place series examines abandoned buildings, often framed within a sweeping rural vista. Read the rest

German photographer Stefan Eisele and Markus Weber spend most of their time doing commercial shoots of high-end cars, but they have also created a remarkable series of street shots that capture LA car culture. Read the rest

Lala Abaddon takes her lovely photos and cuts them into long strips, then weaves them with another set of strips to create striking geometric patterns. Read the rest

Conservationist, entomologist, and photographer Phil Torres recorded this enchanting slow-motion video of hummingbirds in the cloud forest of Sumaco, Ecuador. He used Moment lenses Read the rest

The Royal Museums Greenwich announced the shortlisted images from their Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2018 and the photos are absolutely breathtaking. They'll announce the winners in October. See more at: Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2018 shortlist gallery

Above: "RS34358_NGC 6726 and NGC 6727" by Mark Hanson, Warren Keller, Steve Mazlin, Rex Parker, Tommy Tse, David Plesko, Pete Proulx.

Below: "Aurorascape" by Mikkel Beiter; "Expedition to Infinity" by Jingpeng Liu

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Postcolonial Enlightenment is an exhibition of churches and movie theatres that were built in the wake of independence in 1947, with a bold new aesthetic in mind. As the curators describe: Read the rest

Dillon Marsh (previously) documents interesting types of utility poles around the world, including ones colonized by birds in the Kalahari desert: Read the rest