Vibrant Macro Photographs of Coral by Felix Salazar

LA-based photographer and composer Felix Salazar recently captured some wonderful macro photos of several inhabitants in his salt water aquariums. The shocking variety of color makes the coral look like digital renderings, but Salazar assures me each is a unique photo selected from hundreds of attempts to get just the right shot as he experimented with focus and light. You can see many more on his website. (via my modern met)

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Joni Niemelä’s Macro Photographs Capture Carnivorous Plants’ Alien-Like Structures

Joni Niemelä captures the moments within nature often looked over, the extreme details seen best through macro photography and an imaginative eye. One of Niemelä's photographic obsessions is the carnivorous plant Drosera, more commonly known as the "Sundew," a nickname which refers to droplets that collect on the plant similar to morning dew.

Read more... http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/07/carnivorous-plants-joni-niemela/

9 Photo Composition Tips (feat. Steve McCurry)

Great tips for photo composition!

This gigantic LEGO American flag will give you all the patriotic feels

Because it's July 4 weekend, we're giving you this really, really big LEGO American flag. You're welcome.

Measuring 9½ feet tall and 14 feet wide, the ginormous, 546-pound red, white and blue monster — the largest LEGO American flag ever, by the way — was built Wednesday by more than 15,000 visitors at Washington's National Museum of American History using 100,000-plus LEGO bricks. (The build was created to celebrate the grand opening of the museum's brand-spankin'-new Innovation Wing but also because, hey, YAY AMERICA.)

Read more... http://entertainthis.usatoday.com/2015/07/03/july-4-lego-american-flag-exclusive/

Artist Drills Coconuts into Lamps That Shine Gorgeous Patterns of Lights

Artist Vainius Kubilius carefully crafts lamps that project visually exciting and exotic patterns of light on adjacent walls. Unlike your typical light designer, Kubilius doesn't simply work with metals and manmade materials. Instead, this creative innovator incorporates coconuts into his products, which he designs under the label Nymphs. "The head of the lamp is made out of coconut," Kubilius tells us, "but after careful shaving, waxing, and drilling, it shines like some sort of jewel."

Read more... http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/vainius-kubilius-nymphs

Picasso and Giacometti Artworks Top $120 Million Each at Christie’s Sale - NYTimes.com

To a medley of whoops, hollers and gasps on Monday night, Pablo Picasso's 1955 painting "Les Femmes d'Alger (Version 'O')" sold for $179.4 million including fees at Christie's "Looking Forward to the Past" sale of artworks spanning the 20th century. The price was the highest on record for a work of art sold at auction, the company said, and was well over its estimate of $140 million.

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A Rothko Tops Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Auction

It was a hard act to follow. Just one day after Christie's raised $705.9 million from its experimental auction of cherry-picked 20th-century masterworks, Sotheby's responded with a mainstream evening sale on Tuesday that aimed to remind the art world that there is more than one auction house in New York.

Sotheby's auction of American-oriented contemporary pieces raised $379.7 million with fees from the 63 lots offered, seven of which failed to sell. The company had predicted a total of $320 million before fees. The total was a marginal improvement on the $364.4 million the company achieved at its equivalent sale last year.

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