China has drones with flamethrowers:

I’ve been remiss in both processing and shooting this year. Here’s all that was in the pipeline:

• JoCoCruise 7, back in February;

• Houston’s ASS, easily the finest all-accordian pop-music combo working in Houston today, playing at the Lienhard’s home; and

• Our trip to New York in July wherein we visited Kirsts and saw some play.

Even if you don’t really know what a Hassleblad is, you should go read this story.

Just what it says on the tin.

Well, I’d start with this set of photos in the Atlantic…

Last week, Mrs Heathen and I took a little cruise with 1,100 of our closest, nerdiest pals.

When using your fisheye, be careful about the placement of your hand on the camera body. Just because your hand is behind the lens doesn’t mean it’s not in the shot.

Rand has picked up a drone, and in so doing experienced a few “Holy Shit!” moments. Click through, read, and watch. They’re still spendy — the one he grabbed is $700 — but the video footage is just amazing, and it’s a cinch such tech will be half that price in a year or two.

Several new sets!

• In which Nicole has an unspecified birthday!
• In which we visit Florida!
• In which Erin does not hurt herself or anyone else with a giant fucking knife!

Note: the elephant wasn’t actually at Public Services. Justin is really strict about that.

We ate some a couple weeks ago. It was fun.

Here you go, cruise-friend Heathen!.

Ingredients:

• Talented photographer
• Modern cameras damn near capable of shooting in the dark
• Iconic metropolitan area
• Helicopter.

Seriously, don’t miss this. Via Kottke.

Photog’s site.

A weekend away, and I’m digging through the photo backlog:

• Easter afternoon with the Kirstlings

• The May debut of Fiddlewitch at Rudyard’s

• Back in January, Marcela had a birthday. Presumably, this happens every year.

• The annual visit with the Ceasers back in July.

More to come. Just maybe not today.

Let’s say you wanted to take pictures of a spider’s fangs. How would you do that?

Well, here’s a cool guide. Bonus: their subject is, amazingly, A. robustus, which is one of the deadliest spiders in the world.

Here are the cruise pics from February.

I am very good at procrastination.

Heh.

Via Kadrey: “Alice in Waterland” by Elena Kalis.

I have a time machine, apparently, because I got all these Christmas pictures!

God, I’m lazy.

Two short pix sets from before the holiday:

• In which my mother-in-law runs the Marine Corps Marathon AGAIN; and

• In which we are Thankful in Mississippi.

More to come.

This extraordinary blog post from photographer Jeremy Cowart is all over the net, but I saw it at MetaFilter.

Go click. It’s worth your time.

This short GoPro film documents Kevin Richardson’s relationship with, among other things, wild lions in South Africa. They’re very happy to see him, on the order of the old Christian the Lion videos; they run up to him and want to snuggle. I’m sure his science is dodgy, but the video is still fantastic.

We here at Heathen care, which is why we’re pointing out this picture of Idris Elba and Janelle Monae, which contains a powerful distillation of pure awesome.

Know who Eero Saarinen is? Maybe not. But you know his designs.

(Mrs Heathen: don’t miss this.)

Not sure how this happened. Just last year, she was five.

Anyway: here.

Robert Ellis at Discovery Green.

“A Documentation of the Annual Spectacle of Exuberance Commemorating the Anniversary of the Birth of His Holiness Carl Ludwig IV.”

I may have amused myself with the captions.

• Bats y Kirsts y Bridges
• Ellybelly!
• Nitetime with JZ

Enjoy!

Long exposures taken from space are even cooler.

This year’s trip had two phases:

• NIECESES; and
• SEA MONKEYS

Enjoy.

Here’s a pic I took at a minor league baseball game in Louisville.

Olympus OMD E-M5 w/ Lumix 14mm. 1/80 sec @ f/4, ISO 500.

We fell behind. Sue us.

• A few fun bits from the Steampunk Ball portion of Comicpalooza, with Abney Park. The lights were my nemesis!

• Free Press Summerfest, which is mostly Ume.

• In accordance with regulations, we now provide photos of NEW KITTENS.

Q. E. D.

Of general interest, perhaps, are pictures of The Joy Formidable playing at Fitzgerald’s earlier this month.

Of more narrow interest are deeply joyful pictures of Frank and Hadleigh’s wedding weekend in Jackson, which was SO SOUTHERN.

(Heathen Nation: “How Southern was it?”)

Well, I’ll tell you: It was so southern that the officiant was a blood relative of Flannery O’Connor.

Finally, because if I don’t include this, someone will complain: one more pic of Joy.

This set of color shots from 1939-43 is completely stellar.

Thanks, Rick!

Fortunately, someone else DID say that. And they took pictures.

h/t: Triple-F

This Tumblr is full of images found in the National Geographic archives. Enjoy.

Jonathan Coulton is using a picture I took on his home page today, in his post about the cruise:

Go me!

That tiny frog hates you.

Mefi.

It’s rather a bigger set than I usually post, but we were gone for a whole week: Pictures from JoCoCruiseCrazy 3.

Via MeFi, we find this promo of a somewhat intense encounter with a polar bear. His real-time narration is a bit breathless, but then again he IS being investigated by a giant bear who would like to eat him.

That said, White House photographer Pete Souza’s best of 2012 is a great set of photos. Enjoy.

SI’s 100 best ever sports photos rundown is pretty great.

Because I am me, my top ten photos from 2012 actually includes thirteen shots. Deal with it.

Look, pix from Mississippi!

Alessandro Della Bella put together some pretty amazing time lapse shots from atop a couple of mountains in eastern Switzerland. Go. Watch.

These dental mannequins ask WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

Canon: State the nature of the problem?

Photographer: Well, I was in Africa, and a lion borrowed by 5D.

Go here, to the Atlantic’s first installment of 2012 in photos, and scroll down, immediately, to photo number 19:

Julian, a two-month old pet monkey, bites the ear of Kan, a transvestite performer, backstage at the Tiffany’s Show in Pattaya, 150 km east of Bangkok.

NatGeo’s contest is in again; the second batch of their winners is particularly fine. The bat shot (#22) and the one of the owl (#50) are really, really great.