World's Strangest Monuments

Charge your camera batteries before visiting these monuments: You might need photographic evidence to prove that they’re not just a figment of your jet-lagged mind.

Saint Wenceslas Riding a Dead Horse
Prague

What It Commemorates: Saint Wenceslas, Bohemia’s patron saint.

What Makes It Strange: For almost 100 years—even during the dark days of Communist rule—the grand sculpture of Saint Wenceslas in Prague’s Wenceslas Square has been a source of national pride. But today, even the revered saint isn’t spared from the Czechs’ irreverent senses of humor. Sculptor David Cerny’s parody of the St. Wenceslas statue, hanging in the Lucerna Palace mere yards from the original, is of Wenceslas mounted atop the belly of a dead horse that’s been strung upside down.
Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue
Tsonjin Boldog, Mongolia

What It Commemorates: The infamous founder of the Mongolian Empire, known locally as Chinggis Khaan.

What Makes It Strange: The 131-foot-tall, 250-ton stainless steel statue, unveiled in 2008 and located an hour’s drive from Ulaanbaatar, is the world’s largest equestrian statue. Visitors can take an elevator to the viewing deck on the horse’s head and look out on the expansive Mongolian steppe. Until 20 years ago, Mongolia’s Communist government banned any celebration of the military leader, but in a surge of nationalism, Mongols have slapped his image and name on everything from an airport to a university and bottles of vodka. The statue is part of a planned theme park featuring nomadic lodging and restaurants serving horsemeat.

Duke of Wellington Statue Glasgow

What It Commemorates: Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington and commander of the British forces that defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

What Makes It Strange: For the past 20 years, this innocuous statue—erected in 1844 on Glasgow’s Queen Street—has been a magnet for late-night pranksters, who scale the statue and top it with traffic cones. Locals argue that the cones are an integral part of the statue, as well as the city’s identity. The government doesn’t agree. City workers knock off the cones with a high-powered water jet, and police have threatened to prosecute the pranksters. But since the public has ignored these warnings, anyone caught putting cones on the Duke is simply told to move on.

Fengdu Ghost City Fengdu, China

What It Commemorates: This necropolis is modeled after the Chinese version of hell.

What Makes It Strange: During the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), two court officials named Yin and Wang moved to Mount Mingshan to obtain enlightenment. Combined, the surnames of this mystical pair sound like “King of Hell” in Chinese, and ever since, locals deemed this a gathering place for spirits. The Ghost City that developed is a complex of Buddhist and Taoist temples adorned with macabre demon statues dismembering humans as they guard the entrance to the netherworld. Landmarks bear frightening names, such as “Last Glance at Home Tower,” “Nothing-to-Be-Done Bridge,” and “Ghost Torturing Pass.” Ironically, the area is literally a ghost city now because of the massive Three Gorges Dam project, completed in 2009, which flooded the town and forced the region’s residents to relocate. Mount Mingshan is now a peninsula that is visited mostly by tourists on Yangtze River cruises.

Calder Mercury Fountain Barcelona

What It Commemorates: The siege of Almadén, one of the largest mercury mines in the world, by Franco’s troops during the Spanish Civil War.

What Makes It Strange: Keep your hands away from this one. Poisonous liquid mercury pours through a series of iron and aluminum troughs, splashes against a metal piece that sets a mobile in motion, and cascades into a circular pool of deadly metal. American sculptor Alexander Calder designed the fountain as an anti-fascist tribute for the Spanish Republican government for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris (where it was displayed opposite Picasso’s Guernica). Calder eventually donated his fountain to the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, where it is encased behind glass.

Headington Shark
Headington, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

What It Commemorates: The dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

What Makes It Strange: Officially called Untitled 1986, the 25-foot-tall beast known commonly as the Headington Shark appears to have crashed headfirst through the roof of a quaint British home. House owner Bill Heine commissioned the work as a reaction to nuclear power and as an expression of someone “ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation.” Made of metal, polyester resin, and plaster, among other things, the shark was originally viewed as an incongruous eyesore that the city council desperately tried to remove. Today it is accepted as a landmark.

Georgia Guidestones
Elberton, Georgia

What It Commemorates: The monument serves as a set of directions for rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse.

What Makes It Strange: Designed and commissioned by an anonymous group, the Georgia Guidestones consist of five 16-foot-tall granite slabs, arranged in a star-shaped pattern, that function as a compass, calendar, and clock (drawing comparisons to England’s Stonehenge). Some local Christians deem the creations the “Ten Commandments of the Antichrist” for their unsettling nature. (One guide reads, “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”) The stones have their fans though, including covens of witches and Yoko Ono.

Memento Park
Budapest

What It Commemorates: Hungary’s Communist past.

What Makes It Strange: Most Eastern European countries ceremoniously destroyed Soviet-era relics once they gave occupying forces the boot. However, rather than demolish all vestiges of a painful past, the city of Budapest removed 42 statues from prominent locations and placed them in a suburban park. Statues of Lenin, Marx, and Engels are all displayed, along with the Boots, a 1-to-1 replica of the remainder of a 27-foot-tall Stalin statue that an angry crowd tore down in 1956.

Underwater Gallery
Grenada


What It Commemorates: Reef ecosystems.

What Makes It Strange: This series of sculptures in the clear, shallow waters off the coast of Grenada has one highly unusual characteristic: it is accessible only to divers (though it can also be viewed through glass-bottomed boats). Sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor created the works, a series of human figures in various groupings and settings, as the world’s first underwater sculpture park, which also serves as an artificial reef to promote conservation awareness.

By Lyndsey Matthews
Source: Yahoo Travel

Photographs of Carcar



I went on a photowalk with Zenia and Laurie to the south of Cebu last Sunday. This was the first time I had the chance to use the new things I bought on Ebay. I was so excited that I forgot to adjust my camera settings.



I set the camera with the wrong shutter speed. This mistake ended up blurring most of my shots. I was had to use manual focus in this photowalk since I was using a legacy lens in my camera. I will have to charge those blurred photos to experience. Here are some of the photos I took. 


Exploring Black & White Photography


It's been a long time since I posted anything to this blog. A lot of things have happened in the last few months that I haven't had time to post anything on my blog. I 'm back now, and I've been busy with my hobby.

I attended a photo tour of the province last week. I've had the opportunity to practice street photography. When I was shooting the images, I had a lot of good ideas, but I wasn't able to catch anything on my camera. I'm just going to have to charge that to experience.

Interior CCBA09 - Penthouse Interior Project


A few months ago, we were hired to design the interior of a penthouse. The first problem we had was that the penthouse was initially started by a different contractor. Even though it was minimal, we were constrained by the initial layout of the interior.
 
Our first approach to the design solution was to find a way to tailor our design to the existing layout. We also wanted to achieve a design that would stand out from the rest of the building. The penthouse was to be used for private or special activities.

Reviving My Love for Photography

Lately, I have been trying to revive my interest in photography. I used to love photography back in high school, my dad taught me how to use his old film SLR cam back then. I used to take a lot of pictures of different subjects. When my dad bought his first digital camera, I also stopped my hobby of taking pictures with the SLR camera.

My fascination with photography stopped since film photography was expensive back then. It was the SLR camera that made me love photography back then. There's just a lot of difference between the point and the shoot and the SLR. Apart from the difference in the results, there is a different feeling in the handling of an SLR camera

When Zenia bought her Holga camera she asked me to go with her on a photo excursion with our office mate. While we toured around the rural areas I watched my office mates taking shots with their DSLRs. They took photos of different subjects and scenery with their DSLR. I, on the other hand, took some pictures with my cellphone camera. After our photo excursions, I noticed my shots were not as sharp as the ones my friends took with their DSLR.

 I was frustrated with the results since I might not be going back to that place for a very long time. I then recalled that my dad still had his old SLR cameras. I borrowed it from him and tested it out and found out it was still working perfectly. Although these were old film SLR camera the quality of the shots were good. Even though I had to spend on film and developing it, this would still be much cheaper than buying a DSLR camera.

Eventually, I will buy myself a DSLR camera this December. As for now I will exploit my dad's SLR cameras and learn the ropes before investing in a DSLR. I still have to convince myself that this is not just a phase, that I would find time for this hobby and continue with this it for a long time.

Here are a couple of the shots I took with my film SLR.