62 year old emergency physician John Hall and his wife Jane took off on a
Bike Ride Around America to promote cancer awareness. They started on
April Fool's Day, and completed their 12,000 mile journey around the perimeter of the country just
today. Along the way they encountered hundreds of towns and thousands of
friendly people, and a few
not so nice. All in all, a pretty amazing accomplishment in my book.
posted by netbros
on Jul 31, 2008 -
21 comments
Eyes on the Nations is a web site by a young man from North Carolina named Jordan Hill. He's working in various corners of the world to help with community development as a part of a soft christian missionary approach for the
University of the Nations and
Youth With a Mission. He's also a talented and curious photographer with an eye for
people,
places and
critters. (Warnings: NSFW if you haven't ever seen old issues of the National Geographic. Worse, some of this is Xanga)
posted by mmahaffie
on Mar 20, 2007 -
5 comments
Arounder has an ongoing collection of high-quality full screen Quicktime VR panoramas of European cities, focusing on famous artistic and cultural landmarks (in
Rome,
Florence,
Köln,
Barcelona,
Cyprus), with interactive maps and travel information. A collaboration with national tourist offices by Swiss company
Vrway Communication, which also publishes
Vrmag, a bi-monthly review of panorama photography, and the
FullscreenQTVR directory in collaboration with the well-known
panoramas.dk (previously mentioned on metafilter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
posted by funambulist
on Mar 6, 2006 -
5 comments
China Pictures is a free picture site featuring [thousands of ] pictures throughout China, including pictures of China's major cities and tourist attractions as well as pictures of Chinese people and their daily life. You will find not only pictures of the famous Great Wall of China, the forbidden City and the Terracotta Warriors, but also pictures from the unbeaten path as far as Guizhou, Xinjiang, Tibet and other places.
posted by Postroad
on Feb 25, 2006 -
7 comments
Woophy stands for WOrld Of PHotographY, a website founded by a Dutch collective of photo aficionados and internet designers who believe navigation on internet can be more visual, logical and associative. The goal of Woophy's founders is to create an accessible, visual, current, democratic and collective work of art comprised of a database picturing our remarkable world.
posted by crunchland
on Dec 10, 2005 -
8 comments
What Was True. From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s,
William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the
United States, in
India, and in
Europe, and filling
notebook after notebook with his observations. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment to the
daily chores of unemployed
coal miners, from the lifestyle of hippies in
Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney
was able to record the lives of others with clarity and poignancy.
Gedney's America is a nation of averted eyes, and broken automobiles, and restlessness, a place Edward Hopper would recognize, but so, also, Walt Whitman.
posted by matteo
on Apr 27, 2005 -
11 comments
A Tale of Two Chinas, by photographer
James Whitlow Delano.
Whole
swaths of cities have vanished, to be transformed with developments that have quickly made them look more like Houston, Qatar, or Singapore than
the ancient China of our mind's eye. The old hutong, or alleyways, of Beijing that once formed a mosaic of passageways and the siheyuan, or walled courtyard houses,
have been largely razed. The old brick rowhouses of Shanghai, are now being leveled and replaced by modern high-rises.
Traditional marketplaces, residential neighborhoods, streets where medicine shops or bookstores bunched together,
are now either gone or have been rouged up as tourist destinations, part of a new synthetic, virtual version of China's incredible past.
The energy fueling this transformation bespeaks a powerful but often
blind, unquestioning faith in an inchoate idea of progress that
takes one's breath away, often literally. (Unrestrained growth has left China with the dubious honor of having 9 of the 10 most polluted cities in the world).
Delano's new book
is "
Empire: Impressions from China". More inside.
posted by matteo
on Feb 17, 2005 -
23 comments
Sacred Sites. Martin Gray is an anthropologist and photographer specializing in the study of sacred sites and pilgrimage traditions around the world. Traveling as a pilgrim, Martin spent twenty years, visiting and photographing over 1000 sacred sites in eighty countries. 1000s of photos, Atlas of Sacred Sites, travel journal, etc..
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 30, 2004 -
19 comments
Virtual Reality Panoramas of Slovenia. This virtual guide is an attempt to present world landmarks with the point to - Slovenia. The goal of this project is to display the cultural and natural heritage of our planet with interactive Virtual RealityPanoramas. The project started in 1996 and is updated almost every week, so welcome to check it On-line!
This presentation is a part of work in progress. Today it consists of 3610 Virtual Reality Panoramas, 1283 high resolution full screen QTVR-s and more than 16.000 photos (also wallpapers in three standard resolutions), which is about 80 % (hm..?) of the project (Slovenia Landmarks only) .
By Slovenian artist
Bostjan Burger.
posted by jokeefe
on Nov 25, 2004 -
9 comments
Photos by Martin - a gem of a site for vicarious travelers, it features
wonderful,
charming photos and fascinating
stories from a guy who quit his job three years ago to travel the world. He credits global photojournalist
Steve McCurry as an influence. I am such a fan of these photo travel narratives, professional and amateur alike - has anyone else discivered some special favorites?
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 8, 2003 -
22 comments
Impressive monuments, lousy souvenir stands, and lots and lots of vigilant soldiers. An American living in South Korea takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip to North Korea. 11 pages full of photos including a hundred thousand colored pieces of cardboard, and a sampling of the five billion pictures of Kim Il-sung.
posted by CrunchyFrog
on May 7, 2003 -
14 comments
Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the midst. - Gertrude Bell writing of the Euphrates near Baghdad. Gertrude Bell -
daughter of the desert,
Uncrowned Queen of Iraq, Advisor to kings and Ally of Lawrence of Arabia.
Gertrude Bell was a
traveller and mountaineer, recruited by British Intelligence to work in the Middle East during the First World War and, who later worked for the British Government in Baghdad.
Bell's influence on Middle Eastern politics made her the
most powerful woman in the British Empire in the years after World War I. She was a archeologist, writer, translated the poetry of
Hafiz and a
photographer as well. 1909: Letters from Gertrude Bell, dated
May 14 and
May 20. She died early in the morning of July 12th, 1926, 58 years old, from an overdose of sleeping pills--whether accidental or not is not known. She is buried in Baghdad, where her grave is still visited and her memory revered.
Cherchez La Femme
posted by y2karl
on Mar 23, 2003 -
12 comments
The Quiet American provides glimpses of other cultures via phonographs: snapshots of sound. (The
field recordings in Vietnam are beautiful and evocative.)
Vagabonding also conveys the wonders of travel. What other sites allow non-travelers to experience other parts of the world?
posted by jdroth
on Mar 5, 2003 -
5 comments
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