This shot from photos of the day, a regular online offering from the National Post, gets my vote today. He is shaking it at the St. Felicien Wildlife Zoo in Quebec. According to Environment Canada, 15,000 of the estimated 20,000 polar bear population live in Canada, the others roam around Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Norway.
Image from Reuters/Mathieu Belanger.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a meeting of the minds of like-minded people interested in big ideas. Speakers have 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most engaging ways possible. Surprisingly, people were willing to pay what was then $4400 to attend and hob nob with others also willing to pay to play.
The TED Prize was introduced in 2005. It is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and much more important, One Wish to Change the World. The 2011 award went to JR, a self-styled artivist from France.
I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.
JR has turned number of places in the world inside-out with his black and white portrait projects such as Women are Heroes. It features the faces of resilient women who live in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum; the portraits are super-sized and cut in two. The bottom half of their faces are glued to rooftops on a hillside; the top half of the portraits shows their eyes pasted onto train cars. Every time the train passes, for a few seconds, the faces are complete.
Israelis and Palestinians are together in his Face 2 Face project; JR wall-papered both sides of security fences/barriers with portraits in 8 different cities.
Want to be a part of the art? Join the Inside-Out Project. Take a black and white photo or series of photos. Send it in to be made into a poster, when it is returned decide where you want it to hang. Open to individuals and groups world-wide. As JR would say, It’s a way to stand up for what you care about.
This image belongs to Living Earth, well worth a visit.
Wait ’til M.S. gets a load of these. She’ll be marching all over her place, directing her minions to plug in the generators for a holiday party nestled in the meadow.
The photographer is 34-year-old Rune Guneriussen, a native of Norway. I can imagine while he was growing up, he drove his parents nuts by dragging everything he owned outside to see how it looks in the backyard. Along the way he honed an imaginative way of looking at nature through the most ordinary of lenses. Extraordinary.