I Believe Two Things

Fashion Princesses

Disney princesses are depicted almost exclusively in their elegant ball attire, but artist Victoria Ridzel has imagined them as modern-looking teenagers in appropriately casual dress. With twelve princesses in all, only Princess Aurora seems happy to be pictured. Belle is fantastically bookish, Mulan deliciously tomboyish, and Ariel as rebellious as they come.

As with the “realistic princesses” from Jirka Vinse Jonatan Väätäinen, the splash of attitude and deviation from how these characters are normally seen adds some delightful believability to them.

Fashion Princesses

High-resolution copies are available at Ms. viria13′s deviantART page.

Apparently this is already wildly famous, but I’d never seen it. The official title is The Simpsonzu, but it’s been described as “realistic Simpsons” and “anime Simpsons” in posts I’ve seen. Nina Matsumoto, known as spacecoyote on deviantart, created the piece in 2007 and has since won an Eisner award for it.

The Simpsonzu

More than anything I think it’s “The Simpsons with More Than Two Colors Each”.

Medical imaging firm EIZO released a pinup calendar a couple years ago. But they’re a medical imaging firm… so the pinups all look like this:

Miss March

I’m sure most people only read it for the clavicles.

(via Geekosystem)

Finnish designer Jirka Vinse Jonatan Väätäinen (pronounced “Yirka” and “Vah-tay-nen”) has pieced together some “real life” portraits of Disney princesses in Photoshop. Here’s Princess Aurora:

Princess Aurora

The Toronto 1977 – 2007 photo series showed how Toronto changed over three decades. Photographer Irina Wering’s Back to the Future project shows how people have changed in the same period of time.

Mechi in 1990 & 2010

Each pair takes an original image, usually of a child but occasionally with a teenager or younger adult, and recreates the scene with the same person in the present day.

Some of the pictures look like classic school portraits, while others show a variety of everyday activities that one would expect to see photographed — playing at home or at the beach, or posing at a landmark while on vacation.

Werning has taken care to duplicate not just the location but also the clothes and even the posture and facial expression of each original.

Lali in 1978 & 2010

(via bumbumbum)

Astute observers of current events may recall some sort of hullabaloo in Egypt a little while back having something to do with freedom and democracy.

The Cheezburger Network has showcased some of the best protest signs.

Egypt Protest Sign

They’re all quite clever, such as this programming-themed protest:

try {

Free and Fair Elections;

} catch (DemocracyNotFoundException ) {

“Time for Mubarak to leave”; }

Toronto 1977-2007

Photographer Damon Schreiber posted a fascinating series of photographs a few years ago titled Toronto 1977 – 2007. Perhaps the title gives away the premise: after discovering online a set of photographs taken in Toronto in 1977, Schreiber set out to photograph the same locations again in the present day (then 2007).

He took great care to find not just the same location but the same camera angles and even the same subjects. If a bus happened to be pulling away when the shutter clicked 30 years ago, the retake will capture a new bus in the same place. This brings striking clarity to the real changes that three decades have brought to the city.

What I found absolutely fascinating was that the pairs show neither a steady decline throughout the city nor a constant improvement toward sleek modernity. Some locations got better, some got worse. Some sidewalks became crumbled and chipped while others were replaced with beautiful brick and shrubbery. We see buildings erected and torn down. New signs are installed while others have stayed exactly where they were placed half a lifetime ago.

The end result is a wonderfully comforting sense that the dilapidated sections of our cities today will be vibrant and clean in another few decades, even if the new brickwork we see workers laying down today may have degraded.

The Ballerina Project showcases photographs of ballerinas posing in everyday locations throughout New York City and Boston. It’s an enthralling mixture of the surreal beauty of ballet and the very different beauty of a historic city.

Dane Shitagi is the photographer behind the project and describes it this way:

The New York City Ballerina Project grew from the idea of New York City as a magnet for creativity; each photograph is a collaborative work of dance, fashion design and photography played out against the city’s landscape.

One of the most striking features of the photographs is the almost complete lack of other people in the background. The dancers pose in apparent isolation, reminiscent of the magical departure from reality that ballet always seems to bring.

I’ve always understood that big buildings use lightning rods to attract lightning strikes away from smaller buildings nearby, but understanding that in theory isn’t the same as seeing it in action in this photograph that Alain Aguilar contributed to The Big Picture last week (of a storm in May):

Lightning, from The Big Picture

The entire series of storm pictures is fascinating.

Brian Baldeck took this picture during the Boston Marathon.  Instead of just returning the boy’s high five, the soldier tore the United States flag from his uniform and handed it down, and then gave a high five.

High Five