• Tagged art, forced perspective, Lego, military, military quotes, military transportation, quotes, tribute, US Military, veteran quotes, Veterans Day, WWII

How do you say thank you to a U.S. veteran? For starters, being thankful for our vets one day a year is not nearly enough. We wanted to honor veterans this Veterans Day with a Lego-like military tribute. It seemed to us that the creators and photographers of these tiny military masterpieces were showing their appreciation of our veterans through art. We mixed in some of the photographers’ description with some quotes to honor veterans, some words of wisdom from Combat for Dummies and some Murphy’s Laws of Combat. So if you are veteran, then kick back, relax and hopefully be entertained by this unique expression of our appreciation. If you know a vet who you’d like to thank, maybe share this with him or her? Happy Veterans Day! [52 Photos]

• Tagged art, artificial reef, artificial reefs, Cancun, diving, environment, Grenada, Jason deCaires Taylor, Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park, MUSA, nature, The Silent Evolution, underwater, underwater photography, underwater sculptures, Vicissitudes

Our coral reefs are dying, but forward-thinking eco-minded artists are helping nature by creating stunning life-sized sculptures . . . and then sinking them. Man has been creating artificial reefs for thousands of years, starting with the Ancient Persians who wanted a military advantage by blocking off an area of the sea. As mankind has evolved, so too have our artificial reefs. The most amazing consist not of our trash or out-dated ships, but of incredibly detailed sculptures created to be placed underwater and slowly but surely undergo a metamorphosis under the sea. While it may look like abandoned statues starting to decay, it is actually art being rebirthed into living, breathing reefs. If you haven’t had a chance to dive or snorkel such locations, then you are missing out. So here is a look at the eerily beautiful process of spectacular art, underwater sculptures, transforming into artificial reefs. [52 Photos]

• Tagged animals, art, Christmas, Christmas dogs, dog reindeer, dogs, holiday, puppy

If you have a dog, then you know he or she is a loyal part of your family. When some folks deck the halls, they also deck their dogs in holiday accessories. Luckily, most of us have dogs that will do about anything for treats and possible Christmas gifts. Unlike the sometimes destructive cats vs. Christmas trees, most dog owners capture shots of their beloved pet being cute and sweet. These photographers share their descriptions and their cute doggies’ photos. [48 Photos]

• Tagged art, Christmas, holiday, Santa Claus, snow globes

As Charles Schulz, the American cartoonist for Peanuts, said, “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.” So here are 40 fantastic Christmas-themed snowy scenes captured for an eternity in globes of water. If you are still wondering about a present for someone, perhaps you will be inspired by Oren Arnold who said, “Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”

• Tagged art, bizarre, geeky, graffiti, holiday, Linus Torvalds, Linux, Linux mascot, Linux penguin mascot, penguin, Tux

What can you get ‘for free’ to virtually wish Linux lovers a happy holiday season? How about a hat tip to Tux, the cute little iconic penguin mascot representing free and open source Linux? This Tux probably is not your grandma’s penguin. Here’s Tux as seen traveling and bashing shells ‘in the wild.’ Cats and dogs love Tux. In fact, there are tributes to the Tux mascot via food, toys, and even from a few future Linux hacker babies. Tux inspires art like digital wallpapers as well as Tux graffiti. We’ll toss in a few interesting Linux facts and hopefully dear Linux lovers, you will at least smile and remember that it’s the thought that counts? Smile and have a great day! [69 Pics]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned amusement park, abandoned asylum, abandoned hospital, abandoned manor house, abandoned prison, abandoned sanitorium, abandoned theme park, adrenaline junkies, adrenaline rush, Andre Govia, art, creepy, creepy dolls, Europe, feature, Halloween, haunted, haunted house, holiday, scary, spooky, urban exploration, urban explorers, urbex, urbexing photography

Urbex guru Andre Govia has an uncanny ability to take the most amazingly beautiful photos of creepy abandoned places. If you like abandoned, creepy, spooky, scary or haunted, then you could disappear for hours into Andre’s photostream. He’s a master of capturing hauntingly beautiful shots of abandoned mansions, hospitals, asylums, industrial complexes, hotels and about anything else you can imagine that might be abandoned across Europe. Andre Govia is on an urbex European madness tour; the fear factor is off the charts and some of the photos could scare the snot out of you. He’s been urbexing all over the globe and in 22 different countries. He and his adrenaline junkie buddies have Fright Night down to a fine art, exploring places caught in a time-warp, locations where history is frozen in time, and capturing ghosts of the past. Interesting at any time, it’s downright spooky to view his artistic photos around Halloween. Be ready to take a trip through some of the creepy, haunted locations. Andre granted Love These Pics an interview and offers tips for urban explorers and secrets to get the killer shots. His photos offer something for everyone, from elegant and hauntingly beautiful, to a scare factor that is the stuff of nightmares. Meet Andre Govia. We love these pics! [47 Photos, 1 Video]

• Tagged art, bizarre, Brothers Grimm, creepy, enchanted, environment, forest, forests, Halloween, haunted, haunted house, holiday, nature, nature horror settings, scary woods, spooky, woods

Ah, the approach of Halloween seems to call upon a special spooky theme, but we’ve covered tombs for Tales from the Crypts, fields of Halloween horror via the corn maze craze, even a Lego Monster Mash before. So then we considered man-made haunted trails that people purposefully visit to be spooked for Halloween . . . but there are other times when a person is totally alone in some eerie forest that seems a bit enchanted. When the woods seem scary, it could be because you let your imagination run wild. It might be local folklore about a foggy forest, or a moody mist attached to legends and claims that the woods are haunted. How we interpret a setting may be our state of mind at the time, but artists of all kinds have taken to the forest for inspiration. J.R.R. Tolkien used Puzzlewood as his mystical, magical muse that inspired him to create the fabled forests of Middle-earth within The Lord of the Rings. In our Fall Fantasy post, we quoted Vincent Van Gogh as saying, ‘Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.’ Perhaps to truly enjoy these pictures, you may need to think of it like an art game….for each picture, imagine if you were all alone in these woods. We were curious what made the streak of fear strike the hearts of photographers who are out alone in the forest. All of these photos were tagged with words like spooky, dark, scary, foggy, or haunted; on any other day, and different state of mind, these might be interpreted as sweet alone time in nature. But tap into your inner artist and let your imagination run wild to “see” what the photographers saw when these “enchanted” woods seemed “haunted” or “spooky” or just flat-out Brothers Grimm scary. [66 ‘Scary’ Pics] {At least it’s not 666?}

• Tagged architecture, art, beaches, bizarre, culture, nature, sand, sand art, sand castle, sand sculpting, sand sculpture, sand sculpture competition, sand sculpture festival, sandcastles, travel

When a person builds a castle, it’s a strong fortress meant to last hundreds of years. Yet some people build temporary, fragile castles of sand. In fact, most sandcastles are not castles at all but, amazing works of sand sculpture art. This is a mixture of nature, of art, of science. Physicists theorize that even more massive sand castles could be built underwater. While that would be cool, it would be much harder for the masses to enjoy the sandy works of art by masters of sand sculpting. We really liked these and imagined what it might be like to walk along the beach, enjoying nature, but taking in giant cultural pieces of sand art at the same time. While it’s still summer hot in the USA and some “kids” will soon start school, let’s globe hop and enjoy a summer day on the beach and these sensational sand sculptures. [47 Photos]

• Tagged abandoned, adrenaline rush, architecture, art, bizarre, film location, ghost hunts, haunted, paranormal, paranormal phenomena, people, phenomenon, senior citizens, urban exploration, urbex

How do you tell grandma or grandpa that you love them? Certainly not by putting them in a formerly abandoned and haunted hospital! Facepalm, you’ve got to be kidding me? That is just so wrong in so many different ways! The six-story Linda Vista Community Hospital, which has been abandoned since 1991, is an infamous Hollywood favorite for filming super scary movies. It also has a notorious reputation for all kinds of paranormal phenomena. After some serious renovations, the supposedly haunted hospital will be revamped into about 100 single-bedroom ‘affordable housing’ apartments — Linda Vista Senior Apartments. Do you still dispute it’s haunted after viewing the 70 photos and 5 paranormal investigation videos as ‘proof’? Even skeptics, would you want your grandma to live anywhere within the top 5 floors of these future senior living apartments? About 42% of the U.S. population admits to believing in ghosts and the decaying and creepy hospital is a hotspot for urban explorers, paranormal investigators and the curious in Los Angeles. And then there’s all those animal sacrifices and allegedly satanic rituals which leave some people asking does the devil live inside Linda Vista Hospital?

While HDR sparked epic complaints on the illegal Six Flags tour, it is an art that we especially appreciate when it comes to enhancing extremely eerie, abandoned places . . . especially ‘haunted hospitals.’ If you’d rather see an abandoned place without HDR, here is Nara Dreamland, a derelict knock-off Disneyland in Japan. Otherwise, photographers, paranormal investigators and urban explorers take us on an urbex tour of this creepy ‘haunted’ hospital. Welcome to Linda Vista, future housing for grandpa and grandma. [70 photos and 5 paranormal investigation videos]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned amusement park, abandoned theme park, adrenaline rush, architecture, art, defunct amusement park, haikyo, Japan, Nara Dreamland, ruins, transportation, urban exploration, urban explorers, urbex

In Japan, an amusement park ripping off Disneyland and Coney Island opened in 1961. By 2006, the theme park closed, it was all but a ghost town. The fun part exists due to Nara Dreamland being left abandoned but not demolished. Enter urban explorers armed with cameras and exploring the Japanese ruins, or haikyo. They took all the danger and adrenaline rush to bring us on an illegal tour via their awesome captures. Yes there is security. Yes it is illegal. Yes it is an abandoned amusement park. We love these pics! [65 Photos]

• Tagged animals, arctic wolf, art, big bad wolf, bizarre, black wolf, Canis lupus, Eurasian wolf, folklore, gray wolf, howl, lycan, nature, red wolf, werewolf, wolf, wolf pup, wolves, Yellowstone National Park

Fear of the wolf –the predator–is woven into folklore, fairy tales, mythology, music, and art to depict wolves as villains. From the Brothers Grimm to present-day sci fi, wolves are infamous for gobbling up people, for huffing and puffing and blowing down houses, and for one of the most famous storybook scenes when the big bad wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood, “Ah the better to see you with, my dear. The better to hear you with, my dear. The better to eat you with, my dear.” But the big bad wolf reputation is totally undeserved as wolves rarely attack humans. Yet untold scores of wolves have been ruthlessly hunted, shot, poisoned or trapped because of how much humans fear these fascinating and beautiful animals. At one point, wolves had been hunted to near extinction. Now their numbers have rebounded due to conservation. Did you know that wolves don’t truly bark or howl at the moon, or that you have a better chance of being struck by lightning that being attacked by a wolf? [56 Photos]

• Tagged art, castle, Château de Villandry, decorative garden, environment, Fickle Love Garden, France, French gardens, garden, gardens built for love, holiday, Loire Valley, love, nature, Passionate Love Garden, places, Tender Love Garden, The Love Garden, Tragic Love Garden, travel, tribute, UNESCO World Heritage Site

While researching castles built for love, we stumbled upon another castle located in Villandry, France. But it was the magnificent gardens that were built for love — and even the French name jardin de l’amour sounds divinely romantic. While these gardens have serene elements like Chinese gardens, the Château de Villandry gardens have been called the most romantic and beautiful gardens in France. There is a love story behind Love Garden and the entire estate was designed with romantic symbolism from the Renaissance era. The Villandry has three garden styles, a formal water garden, a 2-part ornamental garden with topiary hedges ripe with symbolism for love including for the “Garden of Love” and the “Garden of Music,” and a huge decorative kitchen garden (potager). The gardens of Château de Villandry are an UNESCO World Heritage Site. We’d never seen anything like it. Welcome to the most romantic gardens in Loire Valley, France! [40 Photos]