Water, Ice,

and an abandoned town,

 drew Minnesota-based photographer Paul Johnson, to set out during two different seasons, summer (via kayak) and winter, to witness and document a lost community,

 in the northeast corner of North Dakota lies Devils Lake, it is the largest natural body of water in the state, 

 large trucks sit embedded up to their wheel wells in thick ice, 

 and empty houses look across the bleak lake,

 this is the story,

 the lake began rising in 1993 and has risen 35 feet in just over two decades, due to a lack of an outlet for the water and a period of heavy rains in the early 1990’s, the high water simply never subsided, rendering the formerly productive area completely uninhabitable and taking 300 homes with it,

 “Abandoned places hold a wistful appeal to me and I think to many of us,” Johnson shared in an interview with Passion Passport, 

  “They are the final chapters of unknown stories where we’re left to ponder the details. Their quiet stillness can spur thoughts about the nature of time and the processes of decay and reclamation.” If you are interested in further reading about the history of the area, Modern Farmer has a long-form story from the perspective of a Devils Lake native,

in addition to his still photography, Johnson is continuing to work on animated land art which will be compiled into an upcoming short film, you can see more on Instagram and Tumblr, abandoned towns to me always look erie, more so when they are flooded and the water turns to ice.

What Happens When You Hire A Hitman,

to kill your lover and he does not?

in other words the hitman scammed you, the hit was the woman’s romantic partner, who had allegedly scammed her out of more than €60,000 ($60,000) over several years, well the woman who hired this hitman, her son-in-law, was not going to be scammed again, as she signed a written contract drawn up by her son-in -law, Spanish news website Euro Weekly News reports that the 29-year-old hitman even drew up a contract to make the arrangement seem legit. It included several clauses, such as finding the woman’s partner as a top priority, and selling seven of his organs, with the proceeds going to his mother-in-law, according to The Local, the woman told police that her son-in-law, who claimed to be the head of Spain’s secret services, had offered to solve her problems by killing her scammer partner and retrieve the debt she was owed by selling his internal organs, He asked for a down payment of €7,000 ($8,000) to carry out the crime, which the woman agreed to pay, so earlier this month, the unnamed woman and her daughter went to a police station in central Madrid to file two separate complaints, one was against her swinderling partner, and the second was against her own son-in-law who had agreed to kill her partner, the woman and her daughter waited and waited, but eventually realized that they had been scammed once again and that the hitman was never going to carry out the murder, so they finally decided to complain about both con-artists to the police, apparently not realizing that by paying someone to have a person killed they had also broken the law, as you might expect, none of this ended well!

Happy Birthday Diana!

tonight we will be out celebrating,

 back to this morning, I was off and drove to Currys/PC World, to pick up a mains cable for the upstairs computer, a HDMI cable to connect the television/monitor to the computer and a Blue tooth speaker, so I have some music when I am upstairs playing with my infrared photography, 

 next stop IKEA,

 we had planned to put the shoe rack in the wardrobe, but it looked so nice in the hall we left it there, so I called back to buy another one, also I wanted to buy some extension cables, to plug in all of the plugs associated with the computer,

 so shopping finished home I went, for some reason the local council has put double yellow lines along the road in the park, which was rather strange, I bought the flat in the park 40 or so years ago and lived there for several years before moving to Thailand, in all of that time plus the several months we have been living there now I have never seen any cars parked in all of this section of the park road, why? for the simple reason that if you parked a car here the road would be impassable, it may look wide but in fact it is not 2 cars wide, when meeting an oncoming car one driver has to pull slightly into a householders drive to let the oncoming car pass, so double yellow lines totally unneeded, still you know councils, money to burn, next upstairs and fire up the computer, well the sea voyage must have done it good as it all worked, I could not believe it! normally with anything electrical I am the most unlucky person around, but this all working has bucked the trend, I just hope the printer/scanner works when I plug that in the next time Diana is working and I go upstairs,

 in the evening glad rags on,

 and we were off of Bromley, I know I should not take pictures into the sun, but as the newly opened art deco cinema was opposite where we were going, I just had to,

 and this is where we are going, for a change a Chinese restaurant, the Sanxia in Bromley High Street,

 it was the first Chinese meal in a restaurant we have had for a long time, prawn crackers first, 

 for starters, chicken and sweetcorn soup,

 with prawns on sesame seed toast and some rather delicious salty, spicy pork ribs,

 a Chinese meal without a middle course of Peking duck? unthinkable!

 onto our main course, chicken in black bean sauce with peppers,

 special fried rice, which tasted a lot nicer than it looks in the photograph,

 and bean sprout chow mien, 

 so eyes down and tuck in,

 the meal was excellent, 

as was the decor, we both liked these slightly different Chinese lanterns, including service charge the meal came to £80.00, next for us the bus home, 

and a walk through the park, arriving home it was feet up for a very large Morgan's spiced rum, to accompany a couple of Game of Thrones, the countdown has now begun, to Diana's next birthday! and with that we were off to bed.

As Monty Python Said,

'and now for something completely different',

and this is, in his recent short film LUFTRAUM, Basel-based artist Dirk Koy utilized a drone to capture buildings and busy roundabouts from above, these roads and structures were then isolated and stacked to create a perpetually spiraling collage of disorienting urban infrastructure, 

Koy founded the office Dirk Koy Bild und Bewegung which focuses on experimental films and motion graphics, and over the last few years he has created music videos for Boris Blank and Five Years Older, You can see more of his video mash-ups and edits, such as his playground-based short Time Machine, on Vimeo and Instagram, as Monty said, completely different!

Here Is A Neat Idea,

instead of packaging a product,

 why not use the product as its own packaging?

 Mi Zhou, a student in the Central Saint Martins Material Futures master’s degree program, re-imagined the disposable nature of toiletry containers by turning the vessels themselves into usable products,

 and I have to say how nice they look,

 Zhou’s creations are made of soap, in soft shades of mint green, peach, and yellow, the translucent containers sport sophisticated designs that bring to mind classic shapes of perfume bottles and powder boxes,

to complete her concept Zhou consulted with Yanhao Shi, a soap artisan, and Luis Spitz, an expert in the soap industry, you can read more about Zhou’s project on the Central Saint Martins Material Futures catalog, what a neat idea.

Before Barcelona,

there was a village known as Gràcia,

and in it the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Casa Vicens, the city of Barcelona has since been built up to surround Casa Vicens,

 architectural photographer David Cardelús recently completed an assignment for In the grand tradition of ornate “cottages” commissioned by society’s upper class, the 1880’s home was designed and built by Antoni Gaudí for a wealthy broker, Manuel Vicens,

 the home is considered the first architectural work of note by Gaudí, and one of the pioneering buildings in Europe’s Modernism movement,

 it features many Islamic and Oriental architectural motifs, and vibrant colors from cadmium red exterior trim to cerulean blue ceilings bring personality to every corner of the home, 

 not only does it look stunning at first glance,

 the attention to detail is remarkable,

  You can see more of Cardelús’s photographs on his website and Behance,

 and learn more about Casa Vicens (which is now a museum) on their website,

I wonder how many visitors to Barcelona have missed this beauty?

If You Like Slow Motion Photography,

this post is for you,

Thomas Blanchard documents the life cycles of insects and flowers,

time-lapse allows the viewer to see a caterpillar metamorphose into a chrysalis,

in this GIF a flower opening,

and a snail giving us a look over,

and a butterfly emerging,

by using solid fields of color as his background, Blanchard allows the focus to stay on the impressive transformative moments, the insects were filmed in video at 8K shot over the course of seven months, and the flower blooms are assembled from hundreds of 5K photographs, music for -N- Uprising is by Alexis Dehimi, I have downloaded a low-res video, but to look at it is full size you can see it and more of Blanchard’s videos on Vimeo.