(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

Photography is a very powerful medium and a very difficult craft. Excellent photos don’t only display some facts — they tell stories, awake feelings and manage to share with the audience the emotions a photographer experienced when clicking the shot button. Taking excellent pictures is damn hard as you need to find a perfect perspective and consider the perfect timing. To achieve brilliant photography you need practice and patience. However, it is worth it: the results can be truly stunning.

Below you’ll find 50 brilliant photos and stunning pictures — some pictures tell stories, some are incredibly beautiful, some are funny and some are very sad.

All pictures are copyright of their respective owners. Please explore the further work of the photographers by browsing through their work. We’ve tried to cover different themes so that everybody will find something interesting and spectacular for himself / herself. All screenshots are linked und lead to the pages from which they’ve been taken.

You may also want to take a look at the following posts:

• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers covers desktop wallpapers related to typography, art, technology, photography and abstract themes,
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures presents 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures.

(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

1. Water and a Girl
Beautiful composition, excellent scenery, amazing play of colors.

2. The Ball is Coming!
Analogue shot with Seagull 6×6 (Chinese clone of Rolleiflex), made in 1983. “The gulfball is suspended on a fishing line in front of the camera. It was a stormy day. So I had to shoot 5 or 6 films for getting one image with the ball in the center position AND a light reflection on the golf club.”

3. Sky
The sky is reflected in a drop of water. Beautiful scenery.

4. Returning to the same ocean
Beautiful sand textures, beautiful composition and somehow a very sad story hidden behind the image.

5. Tree
A colorful tree from a different perspective.

6. Gizmo
How adorable is that?

7. Glittery Ball
“The reflection in this water droplet, it looks like the glitter is stuck to the water, but NO, it is reflections from the glitter on the feather.”

8. Yaw? Weeeee
You probably shouldn’t try this in your local trains. Such pictures are unforgettable.

9. Leap of Faith
What does being one step away from falling into the abyss feel like?

10. Astronaut Self-shot Over Earth
Could this be the best self-shot ever? It’s truly out of this world.

11. Autumn in red
Pure beauty. No words are necessary.

12. FlickrMeeting - Genova - G3
Blue baloon, a small detail, gives the picture an incredible power.

13. Sea in the sea
Incredible scenery. Apparently, the shot was made on the boat in the middle of the sea.

14. If I was an old building…
“If I was an old building I would want to be by the ocean. Till’ the end of times”. Photographed at the old fishing piers of the Texas Bolivar Peninsula.

15. Bee the Cat
“It’s hard to get the right exposure, with them being white, and with the fact they don’t stay still unless they’re sleeping.”

16. Passing the Golden Gate Bridge

17. Glow
Smoke from a leaf pile.

18. Swimming pool
Taking a look at the swimming pool. From a quite different perspective.

19. Reflect
A reflection from the louvre’s pyramid.

20. Time To Go Home…
“Tthe way the birds are lined up makes the composition extraordinary fantastic.”

21. Seagull on a sign
This seagull seems to have its own personal understanding of human’s rules.

22. Marshmellow girl
A beautiful composition.

23. Refashioned Dahlia
Photo taken at Duncan Garden in Spokane, WA.

24. Bird and Meat

25. Water drop
A photo taken at the exact right time. Available as a desktop wallpaper in various resolutions.

26. Mt. Fuji
Mountain. Cloud. And a beautiful blue sky. The photo is taken in Japan.

27. Two ways at looking at a fish

28. Blessed fog
A shot of Grande Madre di Dio in Torino, Italy.

29. Family of bugs

30. Pigeon Point Lighthouse
“Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the weak insipid modern (presumably electric) light and switch over the the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago.”

31. Fire Shot
Location: Changa Beach, Coquimbo.

32. A conversation
Fox, bird and snow. This picture is titled “Good afternoon, my name is chikiricuatro”.

33. Shanghai - Acrobatic
Picture taken during an acrobatic show in a Shanghainese theatre.

34. Northern lights as seen from space

35. Red October Rise
Sunrise over Bogie Lake, Michigan.

36. Crystal clarity

37. Skier’s Paradise
“Climbing partner at 17,000′ on Denali carrying his skis down to around 16,200′ where he will be able to ski down the rest of the way to base camp at 7200′.”

38. Bird and Water

39. Photograph Taken at the Exact Right Time

40. All alone.
This shot is taken on a Norway’s cliff Prekestolen (also known as Preacher’s Pulpit).

41. Looking out of the window

42. Above the clouds
The shot taken during the flight from Vienna to Frankfurt, approaching Frankfurt.

43. The Waves

44. The Waves. One more time.

45. Cockfight
Taken by Jan Sochor.

46. Polar lights
Öxarárfoss in Iceland - Aurora Borealis taken by Arnar Valdimarsson.

47. Concentration

48. Cat and deer

49. Here floats a bubble in the air…

50. A girl portrait

Sources and Resources

You’ll find many more excellent photos, illustrations and pictures on the following sites:

• Pixdaus.com
  A social community dedicated to sharing photos. Pixdaus is a place where anyone can post his pictures, photos and others rate it. If it’s cool it gets to the main page and more people can enjoy it.
• Ffffound.com
  Image bookmarking. An invitation-based service.

Related posts

You may also want to take a look at the following posts:

• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers covers desktop wallpapers related to typography, art, technology, photography and abstract themes,
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures presents 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures.

Making the Web prettier — with one article at a time. Spread the word via Digg, please. Thank you.

Technorati Tags: Smashing Magazine,50 Stunning Pictures & Photos

 

TIPA Photography Award Winners Announced:

Nikon Goes Away Happy

By Charlie Sorrel April 25, 2008 | 8:46:06 AMCategories: Cameras

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) has announced to results of the annual camera Oscars. The European awards are coveted by manufacturers, mostly because they get to stick the TIPA logo on the camera box and thereby shift more units.

This year, Nikon scooped the Pro and Expert categories with the D3 and D300 respectively. We know that both are good, and probably the two main reasons that Nikon is gaining ground against its old rival Canon. Canon, though, also managed to win a gong for the best “advanced” DSLR with its EOS 450D, not a bad feat as for a camera that started shipping a few days ago.

Check the link for the full list of winners.

Award page [TIPA]

Technorati Tags: TIPA Photography Awards 2008,Wiered,Nikon

 

Start packing Don’t skimp on memory cards when jetting off

 

 

 

PIXELS PLUS LEN WAGG Sun. Mar 2 - 6:09 AM

Don’t put your camera away when the sun goes down. Buy a small tripod that fits in your pocket and use the camera on night mode to capture moody scenes, such as this hotel in Cayo Coco, Cuba. (ALL Photos by Len Wagg)

THE CALCULATIONS for the vacation usually start out something like this:

• •Airfare — $1,500
• • Hotel — $700
• •Car rental — $450
• •Meals — $500
• •Entertainment — $700
• •Camera memory card — $40

OK, so check out the list and see what people stop and really think about. They ask themselves, “Is it really worth it; will I need this many memory cards after the vacation?”

If the answer is no, cancel your hotel reservation, save the airfare and go out to dinner somewhere nice locally, because if you don’t want to buy more memory to preserve your vacation moments, then it’s not worth going on.

The cheapest thing you are going to be using on the trip is the film/digital film and it should be bought to the point of overkill.

There are a few reasons for this. One, you need the files as big as possible so you can enlarge your images to put on the wall without interpolation (enlarging the image until it becomes pixilated).

The second reason is that stuff happens — your card breaks, you accidently erase all the images, or you lose your card. One simple movement of the fingers and your images can be gone.

I got an e-mail from a friend in Algiers last year and he said he accidently erased all the images on his card and asked if there was anything he could do to save them. I advised him to take the card out of the camera and lock it away so that there was not a chance to use it again.

When he got back to North America he simply downloaded a recovery program from the Internet and was able to retrieve all but a few images.

This wouldn’t be possible without more cards. The prices have dropped over the last few years and you can buy huge memory cards, capable of holding hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of pictures.

Buy them and shoot your heart out.

Capturing a vacation should start at the airport when you are about to leave. You are telling a story and any good story has a beginning, middle and end. Take shots on the tarmac, of taking off, neat planes at the airport, pictures of those fabulous airline meals — it’s all fodder for images.

If it makes you laugh, take a picture. Digital cameras and their cards have no problems going through airport X-ray machines, but film is a different story. In most airports in Canada and the U.S., you can keep your film in a separate container and ask for a hand check. In some of the southern countries you don’t stand a chance of getting film checked by hand. At one airport in Mexico, I asked and was told “No, it’s OK” as they threw the bag into the scanner.

With the increased security, film in your checked luggage will be ruined by the strong scanners, so always carry your film in your hand luggage.

When you get to your destination, try shooting a few scene setters to give people an idea of where you went.

If you want to take iconic pictures of your destination, search out a few souvenir shops and look at the postcards. This will give you an idea of angles and locations to shoot from. Go to those locations and make them your own.

If you want to put your travelling companions in the photos, then make sure they don’t get too far away so they become spots in the picture. A rule of thumb is to try to get your subject on one or the other side of the frame and leave the other two-thirds for the location. This layers the photo and gives it depth.

Bring your camera everywhere with you. Pack some zip-lock bags and take them to the beach — sand is a killer — or wherever you travel on the water. I also throw my extra batteries and memory cards in them. Sand can blow through cloth bags and make its way into your slots in the memory card, so bring extra plastic. Check before you go and see what type of electrical outlet your country has. You can buy converter kits that will ensure you can recharge your batteries.

Most of all, experiment with your modes, take night pictures, inside images, beach, sand, action, close up images. A small tripod that fits in a coat pocket can be bought for under $20 and will help in low-light situations, and using the self timer will get you in a few shots.

You know, the ones you are going to put on the dust cover of the book that you are going to make when you arrive home, tired, dirty, and excited to sit at your computer for hours and bring back all the memories!

( lwagg@herald.ca)

 

Bio Len Wagg has been photographing people and events for 20 years in, above, and around Nova Scotia. Through his work at The Herald, his pictures have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world. His photographs have also graced several books. As a photographer, he became involved in the Canadian Center for Wolf Research and spent hundreds of  hours in the woods, watching and photographing, and building a relationship with the animals as the pack grew up. He has donated thousands of dollars in prints to the Center as well as to schools around the province. In 1999, he combined his passions for flying and photography and started photographing the communities we live in. Part of his collection  may also be found in Frame Plus Art Stores. He grew up in the Annapolis Valley but now makes his home in Wellington.

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About the author

LEN WAGG is Photo Editor at the Halifax Chronicle Herald. He grew up in Nova Scotia and trained in photography at the Halifax Vocational School. …
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Jan 2)Wild Nova Scotia by Len Wagg 8. (new to list)Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Recipes for Two by Beth Hensperger 9. (9. Jan 2)The Shock Doctrine: the …
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10 marketing resolutions for 2008

Church of the Customer Blog

« 10 marketing resolutions for 2008 | Main | The invisible business »

December 28, 2007

 

What might marketers and entrepreneurs tackle in 2008? Here’s one list, in no particular order.

1. Vow to do more attracting than selling.
To use a high school analogy: Be the charismatic kid with a winning smile, a charming personality and a good dose of humility. Don’t be the tard who farts and throws firecrackers at cats in that desperate vein of “Look at me! Look at me!”

2. Adopt the 5th P.
If your company relies on the classic marketing model of the four P’s, add a fifth one: Participation. Build a model of how customers, partners and employees can meet, share and participate with the company or with one another. 

3. Build a niche.
The future is micro-specific. It starts with people who share highly specific characteristics that defy traditional demographics. Define an ideal customer to the n’th degree, like unemployed college professors who wear corduroy sport coats (with elbow patches) and drive old Volvos.

4. Conduct a word of mouth audit.
Put every customer-facing experience up for review, from reception to the floor person, to accounts payable. Does the customer experience generate good word of mouth, or bad word of mouth? Adjust then measure again.

5. Create a social network.
Do it on Facebook, or Ning or the good ol’ analog way: a customer advisory board. Any form of social network among customers, partners or employees (current or former) is a tangible asset. Treat it as you would your grandparents (respectfully), not as you would your younger brother whom you randomly punch in the head.

6. Vow to eliminate a stupid rule.
You know what it is. Customers (or bloggers) have already told you. So eliminate it already. For extra points, give it a funeral.

7. Create a social media training program.
In 2008, expect word of mouth and customer evangelism to be accelerated by social media considerably more than it was in 2007. What people say online will reach deeper into the B2B world, too, like long-term services contracts and enterprise-wide computer systems. Understanding the basics of social media, how it works and the effects it can have on reputation and sales should be part of annual training programs.

8. Ban use of the word “consumer.”
Nothing says “I’m like Borat” more than using “consumers” to describe your customers, or end-customers. If you call the sales channel your customers, then their customers are your end-customers. To call them consumers is so Borat-like.

9. Raise the ethics bar.
Be a hero to people who still believe in ethics. Make 2008 the year you set higher standards for ethical behavior. Make the standards clear to employees, partners and vendors. Enforce them. Gaming the system is for congressmen and crooked military contractors.

10. Do what you love.
It may be trite but if you don’t love what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to?

Posted by Ben McConnell on December 28, 2007

 

Technorati Tags: Ben McConnell,Church of the Customer Blog,10 Marketing Resolutions for 2008

 

The Perfect Sales Process?

 

By Geoffrey James

January 8th, 2008 @ 5:24 am

Technorati Tags: Customer,Sales Process,Sales Strategy,Sales Force Management,Sales,Geoffrey James

Your sales process is probably broken. Here’s how to fix it.

Any sales process creates a structure that helps track the progress of the sale. However, most sales processes also encourage dysfunctional sales behavior. I’ve recently stumbled across a sales process model that pretty much fixes that problem, but before going into details, let’s look at what’s wrong with your typical sales processes.

As I explained in my post way back in March, “Is Your Sales Process Obsolete,” the typical sales process looks something like this:

• Step #1. Engage customer.
• Step #2. Investigate needs.
• Step #3. Present a product.
• Step #4. Demonstrate the product.
• Step #5. Propose a purchase.
• Step #6. Negotiate terms.
• Step #7. Answer objections.
• Step #8. Close the deal.

The main problem that traditional process model is that it defines a set of actions that the sales rep is supposed to take. It assumes that the customer will meet with you, will share information with you, will watch a presentation or a demonstration, and that all those activities will convince the customer to buy. But customers don’t think that way and may have a very different process by which they decide to buy something.

Ideally, you want your sales process to match the customer’s buying process. The problem is that every customer is different when it comes to stakeholders,politics, etc. If you took the “match the customer buying process” concept to its logical extreme, you’d end up rewriting your sales process for every customer. That’s why it’s easier to stick with the traditional “vendor-focused” process — even though it’s not really helping.

I recently had a conversation Duane Sparks and Tim Murray, the two leaders of the sales training firm The Sales Board. They may have come up with the skeleton of a sales process model that matches — in a generic sense — the way that every customer makes buying decisions, regardless of the specific details. They’ve observed that customer buying decisions always take place in five predictable stages:

1. Do I want to do business with this particular sales professional?
2. Do I want to do business with the firm this sales professional represents?
3. Do I want and need the products and services this sales professional is offering?
4. Does the price and value of those products and services meet my expectations?
5. Is this the right time to make a decision to buy those products and service?

Note that each stage represents a customer decision that leads eventually towards the decision to buy. Furthermore, each step builds on the previous step. If that generic customer buying model is accurate (and I think it is), then the ideal sales process should be structured into those five stages.

What’s going to be different (meaning unique to your firm and to individual customers) are the specific activities that your sales reps must do to guide each customer to make the five “sub-decisions” that will result in the big decision of actually buying… from you.

Figuring out that part of your “perfect” sales process is going to take observation and research into what’s really working out in the field. But if all those activities are structured around those five decisions — in that order — you’re more likely to close business than with a sales process based upon wishful thinking about how customers ought to buy.

 

The Essential Sales Proposal Checklist

By Geoffrey James

February 4th, 2008 @ 4:22 am

Categories: General, Sales Tips, Sales Process

Technorati Tags: Proposal,Sales Strategy,Sales Force Management,Marketing Research,Sales,Marketing,Geoffrey James

 

Working on a sales proposal? Here’s a quick way to assess whether you’ve got a chance of actually winning the business, based upon a conversation I had a couple of years ago with sales proposal guru Tom Sant.

Examine the current draft of your sales proposal carefully.  Then answer the following questions as honestly as you can:

• Does the customer know who we are?
• Is the customer expecting us to bid on this?
• Does the executive summary address customer needs?
• Is the executive summary one page or less?
• Have we replaced all the jargon that’s meaningful only to us?
• Are we sure that another vendor doesn’t have the inside track?
• Does the proposal follow the customer’s specified format and outline?
• Have we removed all the meaningless marketing fluff (e.g. “state-of-the-art”)?
• Has someone edited out other customer names from boilerplate material?
• Is the writing clear and forceful rather than flat and technical?
• Has the proposal been edited so that it contains no glaring grammatical errors?
• Can the proposal convince the customer that we can actually deliver?
• Does the proposal define how we’ll measure customer satisfaction?
• Is the proposal being submitted on time and to the right people?

If the answer to ANY of these question is “NO” then you’ll lose the sale. It’s as simple as that.

Have I missed anything?

 

Noca Targets Transaction Fees….

Technorati Tags: Noca,Transaction Fees,New Online Payment System,Hendrickson

January 22 2008

Noca Targets Transaction Fees with New Online Payment System

Mark Hendrickson

62 comments »

If you sell anything online, whether physical goods or services, you’re probably keenly aware of the 2-3% (plus $0.30) lost through transactional fees every time someone makes a purchase with their credit card. This fee rears its ugly head whether you use PayPal, Google Checkout, or Amazon Flexible Payment Service since those companies are largely just passing on the fees imposed on them by credit card companies.

Noca, a startup founded by ex-Visa employees, is attempting to virtually eliminate transaction fees by bypassing the credit card companies altogether with its own online payment service. Since $5 billion goes towards online transaction fees every year in the United States alone, and since online vendors have particularly slim profit margins, the company thinks that the near elimination of transaction fees would be a huge boon for online vendors. Concurrently, Noca seeks to provide consumers with a more rewarding and more secure purchasing experience, thereby making its service appealing to both actors involved in a transaction.

While Noca aims to eventually facilitate online payments for purchases of all sizes, it begins with a focus on micro-payments, and on micro-payments made through Facebook in particular. It has launched two Facebook applications to test its payments system out: OneClick Pay and HelpYourWorld.

The former provides a simple way to send money to friends. As you can see in the screenshot to the left, the idea is to send someone a digital check; you actually enter your routing and account numbers into the application instead of using a credit card. This poses a significant obstacle to adoption (who remembers these numbers or carries around a check in their pocket?). But the company insists that using checking information rather than credit card information increases security and reduces the chances of identity theft. Plus, Noca is working to provide functionality that would allow you to enter your online banking credentials in lieu of your checking information.

The latter Facebook application, HelpYourWorld, provides a good use case for Noca’s micro-payment system. Since the application solicits $1-at-a-time donations for a series of causes, it benefits greatly from Noca’s lack of transaction fees (especially the standard fixed one of $0.30). Noca hopes that many other Facebook applications with similar micro-payment needs will use its APIs to implement its payment service.

As for the benefits to the consumer, Noca promises to provide strong and flexible incentives through cash back schemes, frequent flier miles, and the ability to designate a part of your payment to a charity of choice. The company also insists that its service will be substantially easier to use than others like PayPal, and that consumers will gain access to a much more comprehensive transaction history than they would get elsewhere.

In the longer term, Noca will become much more like a credit card company itself, providing credit to users through direct partnerships with banks. In doing so, it will be able to provide users with the same benefits of buying things on credit without charging vendors standard transaction fees, which it considers mostly oligopolistic fat. To make money, Noca will also attempt to leverage its user data to target them with tailored advertising and product deals.

 

More Money,More Business & More Time Off!Got your attention?

Rich Schefren @strategicprofits.com posted the first winner of their Free Business Acceleration Program Contest on his blog. In the US, small businesses make up 50% of the overall economy. Strategic Profits is here to improve the lives of the 85% of people that are either employed by or dependent on a small business’ success.Read More……

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5 of the Best Magazines For Your Photos

You search for magazines that might publish your photos? This article gives you some good hints which mag might be the best for you..

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16 ways to spice up your portraits, and 16 awesome photos as examples.

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