A wet leaf becomes a field of bubbles under the gaze of Sophie’s camera lens. Part of Wired’s list of macro photography; porn for the reversing ring set.

Top 10 Wired Reader Macro Photos [Wired] : Dark Roasted Blend

Lifting the mask was about the worst thing we could have done, under the circumstances.

He shone. I mean, he was somehow confected…caramelian…slick, sticky, and powdery, with golden sugar dusting his lashes that shook loose into motes as he fluttered awake, fluttered and fixed us with a liquid look.

And we looked back, which was perhaps our second mistake. That shell-chocolate masklet, perched on heated brow, began to wilt, and so, for a moment, did our determination. But we remembered our hunger, and drew strength from it as we chose our knives, and the boy began to struggle.

Johan 2 [Minnaloushe on Flickr]

My dears, my sweet darlings, my everythings, my sins and souls, my readers. I feel as if sticky veils of honey-snot are being dragged off my starved gills. Like a stone toad, I am reborn from muck. And how I long to shake and shiver and splatter it all over your eager cheeks.

Well. Seeing as our posting schedule is more relaxed than it once was (no longer is Ectomo in the first wild urgencies of youth), I have turned our Twitter feed back on. Meaning: Twitter user Ectomo will now report when a new post is posted, as it will with this very post. POST.

I am pleased to announce that in addition to my slow recovery from the worst case of burnout in recorded human (or wookiee) history, I am also in the thrall of preparation panic for the sake of two overlapping art shows, in Seattle, in September. One a group show, with a cadre of my prestigious peers, the other a lonely solo redux of my bizarrely successful Lighthouse Roasters show. More on that when I have flyers at hand, I suppose.

Until next time, droogs.

milkman [Flickr]

I knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time before they started reproducing; before they started to expand their territory beyond the realm of carnal delights and into procreation. As their rubbery, soulless offspring wriggle painfully from chapped and cracking wombs to march across our blissfully organic world, it is then you will know I was right all along.

Daniel Mahmood [Artist’s Site]

the torture of brenda [Flickr]

Any claims I might make to possessing a natural predisposition to surfing are belied by my pale complexion and, at times, questionable equilibrium. This is probably for the best, as I have celebrated Shark Week long enough to know that those sea-bound carnivores despise the hobby; the wave enthusiasts perturbing them to the point that they oftentimes resort to physical intervention.

There are no sharks in the oceans of photographers Steve Gorrow and Dustin Humphrey. No, in their series for Dopamine — an art installation sponsored by Intrepid51 — the world beneath a surfer’s board is occupied by nude women astride motorcycles, submerged shanty-towns, and strange, Dr. Seuss inspired automobiles; and in contrast to our own, it appears to be a world blissfully unaware of the wave riders skimming the surface above their heads.

Be careful where you click if exposed, female breasts are frowned upon in your workplace.

Dopamine [Insight] : Shoot The Blog : FFFFOUND

going to work [Flickr]

Mass Hysteria [Dark Roasted Blend]

After months of blissful 65 degree days with skies gray as wet stone (that led me to dream of a summer in which I wouldn’t have to pack my scarf away) Seattle seems to have suddenly realized it is in fact summer now and has been doing its damnedest to catch up. Today, the wretched twin bitches of Seattle in the summertime, cloudless heat and obnoxious humidity, ran rampant.

But my fair city has had enough, lashing out from the clouds we know and passive-aggressively love so well to break the wretched heat and provide we nocturnal, coffee-swilling albinos with a much needed respite, a beautiful display, and a lovely crashing accompaniment.

Lightning! [Seattle]

Fiend on the beach. [Flickr]

A few months ago Vanity Fair recreated some of Hitchcock’s most famous scenes for its Hollywood Portfolio issue; pulling imagery not just from the more popular of his films, but also those frequently relegated to the realm of Hitchcockian fanatics.

The results are brilliant, and remain true to Hitchcock’s horror-noir sensibilities rather than galumphing off into a demesne of half-cocked ideas conjured by those with no love for for the molasses paced fright-fests for which Hitchcock is famous. It’s highly recommended you click through to If It’s Hip It’s Here’s juxtaposition of Vanity Fair’s images against the original scenes from which they drew inspiration.

Vanity Fair’s Hitchock Shots Compared [If It’s Hip It’s Here]

I want to live in a world saturated by the vibrant colors of HDR photography in Japan.

Yong Fook [Flickr : Grinding.be]

Some cells have mattresses, others blankets, still others bare floors. None that we had seen (and we found these cells in each institution visited) had either a bed, a washstand, or a toilet. What we did find in one cell was a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, nude, in a corner of a starkly bare room, lying on his own urine and feces. The boy had been in solitary confinement for several days for committing a minor institutional infraction.

In December, 1965 Dr. Burton Blatt and his friend Fred Kaplan, a photographer, visited “five state institutions for the mentally retarded”. Kaplan was armed with a small camera attached to his belt, which he used to surreptitiously take photographs during their tours. The finished photo essay, which they titled “Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation”, is a harrowing catalog of loneliness and despair; the reader being saved from its crushing weight only by its last collection of photos from The Seaside, an institution in Connecticut, whose program is cited here as an example of proper, institutional care. The entire book can be viewed at the link below, as well as hundreds of others chronicling the history of mental and physical disabilities.

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Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most profound. Photographer Sam Taylor-Wood’s project “Crying Men” consists of images of celebrities, all men, simply sobbing. In one way or another the subject of each photo is a masculine figure, making the heartbreak etched in the faces of those who were able to summon a memory painful enough to elicit a convincing reaction all the more poignant.

I am not particularly interested in what essentially amounts to the hero-worship of American Royalty. I do not care about these men. But their sadness, achingly conveyed in the shattering of their celebrity facade, makes me feel some strange connection with them. As if in despair we’ve found our common ground.

Crying Men [Arab Aquarius : NotCot]

When my good friend Angel and her husband Rob decided to dress as Ritchie and Margot Tenenbaum for Halloween, it was necessary for Rob to grow a luxurious beard to truly fit the part. After the spooky celebrations had ended it was time to shave the beard. Naturally, Rob experimented with moustaches. Hit the jump to see his transformation from doleful, bearded Tenenbaum to mustachio’d man of many faces.

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