National Geographic has the Best News Photos from 2013 World Photo Press Contest and has an amazing collection of images.

Amazing costumes in Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann.

via The Guardian

I worked on a project near Lincoln Center a while back and during the times around Fashion Week, I would see the crowds of people posing and taking pictures outside at the fountain. Now I know what they’re up to and who their haters are. People on both sides of the lens seem to enjoy it. And these people who said they were there first and don’t like being crowded out, who cares?

I was at the Post Office the other day and saw these beautiful Earthscapes stamps in the glass case. I was buying a large amount of stamps for one of Anna’s mailings. Unfortunately they did not have 50 sheets of them, so I ended up with the plain old flag stamps.

Looking more like a scene from a sci-fi movie than something right under your feet in midtown, these photos from the MTA’s East Side Access project shows that the MTA really does make progress in some pretty serious construction projects. Now if only the 2nd Ave subway could be finished soon…

Assimilation series by photographer Dillon Marsh.

In the vast barren landscapes of the southern Kalahari, Sociable Weaver Birds assume ownership of the telephone poles that cut across their habitat.Their burgeoning nests are at once inertly statuesque and teeming with life. The twigs and grass collected to build these nests combine to give strangely recognisable personalities to the otherwise inanimate poles.

Michael Duva’s animal photography is like the flip side of Sharon Montrose’s animal portraits. Michael’s images are dark and brooding, capturing the silhouettes of animals and their wild spirits.

While Duva’s work reveals at once his love and fascination for animals, these are not cute photographs of kittens. His haunting animal portraits compel the viewer with an unflinching clarity, to view animals as equals.

I am just learning about Michael Wesley and his long – I mean super long – I’m talking 2-3 years long – exposure photographs.

A combination of a filter and an extremely low aperture is set on a large format camera to make this happen – capturing moments of change, ghostly and magical, in urban environments.

Read a little more about Michael Wesley and the details of some of his works here and here.

Stils from the ISS assembled into a time lapse of star trails by Christoph Malin.

via Notcot

Of course the Google Data Centers are intensely organized. What else would you expect?