SLIDE

martes, 30 de junio de 2009

Happy Dolphin!


Happy Dolphin!, originalmente cargada por princessangel.

Dolphin in the Dolphin pool at Seaworld Orlando.
EXPLORE 2006


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Breaching Hourglass Dolphins

Two Hourglass dolphins breaching, Southern Ocean
27/02/2007




© Dave Walsh

Update for January 2008: Since late December, I've been back in the Antarctic again,defending whales. I'll be putting photos here in a new set.


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viernes, 26 de junio de 2009

RIP Michael Jackson - FILES-BRAZIL-MUSIC-JACKSON


FILES-BRAZIL-MUSIC-JACKSON, originalmente cargada por Leonardo G. Ponce.

(FILES): This February 12, 1996 file photo shows US pop star Michael Jackson (L) performing during the filming of his video "They Don't Care About Us" in Rio de Janeiro with a view of the city in the background. Pop icon Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 after suffering a cardiac arrest, multiple US media outlets reported, sending shockwaves around the entertainment world. AFP PHOTO / Files.


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Michael Jackson : A small tribute to "The KinG Of PoP"


Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene at the age of 11 as a member of The Jackson 5 and began a solo career in 1971 while still a member of the group. Referred to as the "King of Pop" in subsequent years, his 1982 Thriller is the world's best-selling record of all time and four other solo studio albums are also among the world's best-selling records: Off the Wall(1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995).

In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African-American entertainer to amass a strong crossoverfollowing on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and Thriller—widely credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool into an art form—helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced many hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists.

Jackson donated and raised millions of dollars for beneficial causes through his foundation, charity singles and support of 39 charities. Other aspects of his personal life, including his changing appearance and behavior, generated significant controversy, damaging his public image. Though he was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993, the criminal investigation was closed due to lack of evidence and Jackson was not charged. The singer had experienced health concerns since the early 1990s and conflicting reports regarding the state of his finances since the late 1990s. Jackson married twice and fathered three children, all of which caused further controversy. In 2005, Jackson was tried and acquitted of further sexual abuse allegations and several other charges.

One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records—including one for "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles in his solo career—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era and the sale of 750 million records worldwide. Jackson's highly publicized personal life, coupled with his successful career, made him a part of popular culture for almost four decades. Jackson died on June 25, 2009, aged 50. The specific cause of death has yet to be determined. Prior to his death, Jackson had announced a 50 date sell-outThis Is It comeback tour, in London, England.


Steve Huey of Allmusic asserts that throughout his solo career, Jackson's versatility allowed him to experiment with various themes and genres. As a musician, he ranged fromMotown's dance fare and ballads to techno-edged new jack swing to work that incorporates both funk rhythms and hard rock guitar. Unlike many artists, Jackson did not write his songs on paper. Instead he would dictate into a sound recorder; when recording he would sing from memory Several critics observed Off the Wall was crafted from funk, disco-pop, soul, soft rock, jazz and pop ballads. Prominent examples include the ballad "She's out of My Life", and the two disco tunes "Workin' Day and Night" and "Get on the Floor".

According to Huey, Thriller refined the strengths of Off the Wall; the dance and rock tracks were more aggressive, while the pop tunes and ballads were softer and more soulful. Notable tracks included the ballads "The Lady in My Life", "Human Nature" and "The Girl Is Mine"; the funk pieces "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"; and the disco set "Baby Be Mine" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)". With Thriller, Christopher Connelly of Rolling Stone commented that Jackson developed his long association with the subliminal theme of paranoia and darker imagery. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted this is evident on the songs "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" In "Billie Jean", Jackson sings about an obsessive fan who alleges he has fathered a child of hers In "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" he argues against gossip and the media. The anti-gang violence rock song "Beat It" became a homage to West Side Story, and was Jackson's first successful rock cross-over piece, according to Huey. He also observed that the title track "Thriller" began Jackson's interest with the theme of the supernatural, a topic he revisited in subsequent years. In 1985, Jackson wrote the charity anthem "We Are the World"; humanitarian themes later became a central component of his life and music.

In Bad, Jackson's concept of the predatory lover can be seen on the rock song "Dirty Diana". The lead single "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" was a traditional love ballad, while "Man in the Mirror", an anthemic ballad of confession and resolution, improved on his earlier "We Are the World". "Smooth Criminal" was an evocation of bloody assault, rape and likely murder. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine states that Dangerous presents Jackson as a stark paradoxical individual. He comments the album is more diverse than his previous Bad, as it appeals to an urban audience while also attracting the middle class with anthems like "Heal the World". The first half of the record is dedicated to new jack swing, including songs like "Jam" and "Remember the Time".The album is Jackson's first where social ills become a primary theme; "Why You Wanna Trip on Me", for example, protests against world hunger, AIDS, homelessness and drugs.Dangerous contains sexually charged efforts like "In the Closet", a love song about desire and denial, risk and repression, solitude and connection, privacy and revelation. The title track continues the theme of the predatory lover and compulsive desire. The second half includes introspective, pop-gospel anthems such as "Will You Be There", "Heal the World" and "Keep the Faith"; these songs show Jackson finally opening up about various personal struggles and worries. In the ballad "Gone Too Soon", Jackson gives tribute to his friend Ryan White and the plight of those with AIDS.

HIStory creates an atmosphere of paranoia. Its content focuses on the hardships and public struggles Jackson went through just prior to its production. In the new jack swing-funk-rock efforts "Scream" and "Tabloid Junkie", along with the R&B ballad "You Are Not Alone", Jackson retaliates against the injustice and isolation he feels, and directs much of his anger at the media. In the introspective ballad "Stranger in Moscow", Jackson laments over his "fall from grace", while songs like "Earth Song", "Childhood", "Little Susie" and "Smile" are all operatic pop pieces. In the track "D.S.", Jackson launched a verbal attack against Tom Sneddon. He describes Sneddon as an antisocial, white supremacist who wanted to "get my ass, dead or alive". Of the song, Sneddon said, "I have not—shall we say—done him the honor of listening to it, but I’ve been told that it ends with the sound of a gunshot". Invinciblefound Jackson working heavily with producer Rodney Jerkins. It is a record made up of urban soul like "Cry" and "The Lost Children", ballads such as "Speechless", "Break of Dawn" and "Butterflies" and mixes hip hop, pop and rap in "2000 Watts", "Heartbreaker" and "Invincible".

Vocal style

Jackson sang since he was a child, and over time his voice and vocal style changed noticeably, either through puberty or a personal preference to align his vocal interpretation to the themes and genres he chose to express. Between 1971 and 1975, Jackson's voice "descended ever so slightly from boy soprano to his current androgynous high tenor". In the mid-1970s, the singer adopted a "vocal hiccup" as seen in "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)". The purpose of the hiccup—somewhat like a gulping for air or gasping—was to help promote a certain emotion, be it excitement, sadness or fear. With the arrival of Off the Wall in the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; Allmusic described him as a "blindingly gifted vocalist". At the time, Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder. Their analysis was also that "Jackson's feathery-timbered tenor is extraordinarily beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly".1982 saw the release of Thriller, and Rolling Stone were of the opinion that Jackson was then singing in a "fully adult voice" that was "tinged by sadness".

The release of "Bad" in 1987 displayed gritty lead vocals on the verse and lighter tones employed on the chorus.[20] A distinctive deliberate mispronunciation used frequently by Jackson, occasionally spelt "cha'mone" or "shamone", is also a staple in impressions and caricatures of him.The turn of the 1990s saw the release of the introspective album Dangerous; here Jackson used his vocals to intensify the split themes and genres described earlier. The New York Times noted that on some tracks, "he gulps for breath, his voice quivers with anxiety or drops to a desperate whisper, hissing through clenched teeth" and he had a "wretched tone". When singing of brotherhood or self-esteem the musician would return to "smooth" vocals. "In the Closet" contained heavy breathing and a loop of five scat-sung syllables, whereas in the album's title track, Jackson performs a spoken rap. When commenting on Invincible, Rolling Stone were of the opinion that—at the age of 43—Jackson still performed, "exquisitely voiced rhythm tracks and vibrating vocal harmonies". Nelson George summed up Jackson's vocals by stating "The grace, the aggression, the growling, the natural boyishness, the falsetto, the smoothness—that combination of elements mark him as a major vocalist".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson


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jueves, 4 de junio de 2009

DIVISION***


Division***, originalmente cargada por yoshiko314.

Every morning, I check the condition of the Cosmos flowers and divide each of them into the best vases/pots.

I hope them to keep their lives as long as possible!


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HEADS UP !


Heads up !, originalmente cargada por Villi.Ingi.

I was about to take a minimal picture of a white wall but my cat had other ideas and stuck it´s head in the frame so I ended up with a out of frame, minimal cat portrait :)


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Steel Giraffes Jungle


Steel Giraffes Jungle, originalmente cargada por DanielKHC.

Explored #1.

I counted over 40 cranes in this shot. You can also have a glimpse of the giant Burj Dubai tower, which height is currently above 675.3 m (2,215 ft) with 177 completed floors. As a reference, the Taipei 101 (today's tallest building on Earth) stands at a height of 509.2 m. The final height of the Burj Dubai still remains undisclosed. It's due to be completed in September 2009.

My dear friends, I am still in the middle of (slowly) catching up with your streams. Tomorrow, I am moving to my new apartment, and will be unpacking my shipment which has arrived from Singapore. So I won't be much online for the next few days...

Dubai Set | HDR Set | Most Interesting shots | Explore Front Pages

Buy my art at Imagekind! 


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730 meters and still growing...


730 meters and still growing..., originalmente cargada por DanielKHC.

Explored #32. Thanks!

A little break in my cold Finnish seascapes...Back to some hard core urban architecture shots! ;-)

As of October 19th 2008, the height of the Burj Dubai is estimated at 730 meters (2395 feet). Speculated final height: between 800 and 950 meters...Anyway, there is already another project of a 1000 metres tower in the pipe, also in Dubai!

This is a handheld (40mm at f/8 with my Tamron 17-50mm) 5exp tonemapped HDR. This had to be shot very fast as the car was stopped on the emergency lane of a busy highway! 

Dubai Set | HDR Set | Architecture Set | Most Interesting shots | Explore Front Pages

Buy my art at Imagekind! 


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Country Road - Summer (Image 2)


Country Road - Summer (Image 2), originalmente cargada por bossbob50.

Country Road – Summer (Pt. Two - continued from Image One) ~ Somewhere near Aroma Park, (pop. 850), Kankakee County, 55 miles south of Chicago, Illinois. 

Driving along the back roads, time shifts. It ceases to run by my watch; moving instead at the speed of the sun inching across the sky, and of shadows creeping – molasses slow - across the ground. ~ View On Black

Different sounds – grasshoppers, cicadas, birds, the rustle of plant and leaves – replace the sound of the radio and my precious jazz. I have to turn it off, lest I miss nature’s own symphony of the subtle, the intermittent and the natural. Sounds without melody can be cacophony; in the city they are. But here - unscripted, unrehearsed, eons old – they are harmony.

“Who lives out here,” I wonder, as I pass neat and tidy, 100-year-old white-washed frame houses with swing-benches and flower pots hanging serenely on the porches. On occasion, one sees a sign of life; someone in a tractor way out in a field or watering a garden near the house. If you wave at them, they’ll usually wave back. “What are their lives like?” I try to imagine “these lives” as I drive along these quiet little roads nestled between rows of corn stalks setback along roadside buffer strips of hay-like mown grass. Sometimes, I think can. Usually, I can’t. Perhaps I am just romanticizing the whole thing.

Eventually though, dusty, lonesome, black-topped roads evolve into paved streets with divider lines, stop signs, stop lights and names instead of numbers like 50525 S. The streets lead to highways and speeds of 75 miles-per-hour. The windows go up, the air conditioning and music go back on, and big green and white signs point the way to Chicago. 

But, my mind’s eye usually holds onto those little “country road – summer” images for the rest of the drive home. 


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martes, 2 de junio de 2009

THE LOTUS LANTERN FESTIVAL!


The Lotus Lantern Festival!, originalmente cargada por The Scalpel Master.

It was such a good timing during our visit since it fell on the time the Lotus lantern Festival also took place! Here you can see these colorful lanterns hanging around the Yeondeung Buddhist Temple!

----               ....                       ----                                 ....

Buddha's Birthday (simplified Chinesetraditional Chinesepinyin dànCantonesefātdáan), the birthday of the Prince Siddhartha Gautama traditionally celebrated in East Asia on the eighth day of the fourth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, is an official holiday in Hong KongMacau, and South Korea. The date varies from year to year in the Western (Gregorian) calendar:


India

The birth of the Buddha is often celebrated by Buddhists in India for an entire month in the Buddhist calendar. The actual day is called Buddha Poornima (or Buddha Purnima), also traditionally known as Vaishakh Poornima. Although the day marks not just the birth of Shakyamuni Gautam Buddha, but also the day of Enlightenment, and Mahaparinirvana. But as a gentle effect of West, the event of Birth is given paramount importance.

The event is celebrated by gentle and serene fervour, keeping in mind the very nature of Buddhism. People, especially women, go to common Viharas to observe a rather longer-than-usual, full-length Buddhist sutra, as something like a service. The usual dress is pure white. Non-vegetarian food is normally avoided. Kheer, a sweet rice porridge is commonly served to recall the story of Sujata, a maiden who, in Gautama Buddha's life, offered the Buddha a bowl of milk porridge after he had given up the path of asceticism following six years of extreme austerity. This event was one major link in his enlightenment.

It is said that the Buddha originally followed the way of asceticism to attain enlightenment sooner, as was thought by many at that time. He sat for a prolonged time with inadequate food and water, which caused his body to shrivel so as to be indistinguishable from the bark of the tree that he was sitting under. Seeing the weak Siddhartha Gautama, a girl named Sujata placed a bowl of milk in front of him as an offering. Realizing that without food one can do nothing, the Buddha refrained from harming his own body.


Japan

In Japan, Buddha's Birthday is also celebrated according to the Buddhist calendar but is not a national holiday. On this day, all temples do celebratory events/festivals called Kanbutsu-e (Japanese灌仏会), 降誕会 (Goutan-e), 仏生会 (Busshou-e), 浴仏会 (Yokubutsu-e), 龍華会 (Ryuge-e), 花会式 (Hana-eshiki) or 花祭(Hana-matsuri, meaning 'Flower Festival'). The first event was held at Asuka-dera in 606. Japanese people pour ama-cha (a beverage prepared from a variety of hydrangea) on small Buddha statues decorated with flowers, as if they bathe a newborn baby.


Korea

In Korea the birthday of Buddha is celebrated according to the Lunisolar calendar. This day is called 석가탄신일 (Seokga tansinil), meaning "the day of Buddha's birthday" or 부처님 오신 날 (Bucheonim osin nal) meaning "the day when Buddha arrived". Lotus lanterns cover the entire temple throughout the month which are often flooded down the street. On the day of Buddha's birth, many temples provide free meals and tea to all visitors. The breakfast and lunch provided are often sanchae bibimbap.


Sri Lanka

This is one of the major festivals in Sri Lanka. It is celebrated on the first full moon day of the month of May[citation needed]. People engage in religious observances and decorate houses and streets with candles and specially made lanterns.


Other Countries

Some places have a public holiday one week later, on the fifteenth day of the fourth month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar, to coincide with the full moon. For instance, Visakha Puja inThailand or Lễ Phật đản in Vietnam was such a holiday on May 12 in 2006. Other countries including Singapore and Malaysia also celebrate Vesak Day on the fifteenth day of the fourth month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar, a public holiday in these two countries.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha's_Birthday



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