I hope you enjoy this one again!

Leon Baas

Leon is an enthusiastic macro photographer and has developed his own special style. He has been featured on many photography websites and in the Dutch magazine Focus. He has also showed off his work in the Canon Headquarters in the Netherlands.

Igor Siwanowicz

Igor Siwanowicz is a very talented macro photographer. He is often able to pose his subjects in a very pleasing way. His use of colours and posure give us a fabulous view of the small aliens right in our neighbourhood.

Pawel Bieniewski

Another selection; this time from the great macro portfolio of Pawel Bieniewski from Poland. He manages to capture his little critters in stunning poses and frames them perfectly.

Robert Seber

Apart form being an amazing macro photographer Robert Seber tries to take photos of lots of different subject and experiments with many different styles. He aims to be creativity through understanding technical photography.

Jack Houston

Jack Houston, based in the United Kingdom uses a Conon EOS 40D to capture these stunning macro images. Be sure to check out more of his work on his public profile page.

Cyrus Khamak

Cyrus is a very divers photographer, not only specialised in macro photography. He runs a website with many great tips and tutorials and a forum on MegaShot.net.

Martin Amm

Martin Amm shows off some of his very impressive macro photography on his personal profile page at Deviantart. Check it out!

Chan Chen

Only in spring of 2007 did Chan pick up digital photography. It’s amazing how quick he became good at it and has, since then, produced some fabulous macro photography.

Saleem Khawar

Mr. Khawar has had over 18 years of experience in photography. He has won many awards and his work has been used in many publications. The following butterflies are from his awesome collection.

Brian Valentine

dr. Valentine is a retired PhD Microbiologist and has taken on macro photography in Decemebr 2004. Most of his shots are taken in his garden, illustrating how stunning close-ups can can be made anywhere (well.. he has never used insectacide!!).

Other Great Artists:

Lets begin!

eboy.com

The fabulous tallent and eye-for-detail of the ‘eboy-team’, Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr, have probably made them the webs leading pixel artists. They’ve done video’s, posters, books and even painted a bus. Be sure to check out their site as this is only a very, very small selection of their work.

RodHunt.com

Rod Hunt is another very established illustrator and pixel artist. He too has made some very awesome pixel cities. Check out his site for more great illustrations!

Bugpixel.com

Jalonso was the creator of the following stunning images, which are part of a bigger pixel city project at PixelDam.net. There’s loads to see and you can keep discovering new things. More at Bugpixel.com & Jalonso.Ensellitis.com.

More beautifull buildings from PixelDam.net, this one by Zoanoid.

Speaking of pixel-cities, CityPixel.com might be one of the largest and nicest places out there. You can scroll around and get your own appartment.

Another place where you can login and stroll around in a pixel city is Habbo Hotel.

Another, (with cool driving cars) is this site, featuring several mayor websites as links from buildings.

This is a very large and cool (some places are a little bulky) pixel city covering multiple screens.

Also, a very cool pixel city with loads of different buildings and UFO’s driving by.

Places to build your own Cities:

City Creator is a very cool application and currently allows you to build your own cities in 3 different settings.

City Maker is a rather strange application and seems buggy in times. The results are pretty cool though.

Other Pixel Artists:

Please visit mr Wongs website and admire this mile-high pixel building. Every story is linked to the website of the artists who desinged the floor.

This is actually a tile, that can be repeated ove rand over to create a cool background.

Scene was modeled in 3D studio MAX 08. Also MudBox was used to create a map for Hamilton’s race suit. The entire scene was rendered in VRay and finally, Photoshop was used for texturing and some touch ups.

A stunning render of a Ford Mustang. Awesome detail!

This Land Rover Defender was made for a client. Originally it was a lowPoly 3D model. Gradually, the rough parts were replaced and more and more details were added to make this final render.

This shark was modelled with ´Edit Poly´ in 3ds Max. It started of as a simple box and was sculpt and shaped using book illustrations as aguide.

The bumblebee character was designed in Zbrush and a first composition  was rendered in 3D Studio Max. Fur was rendered seperately and the entire image was retouched in photoshop.

Ocular Production is a 3D visualisation firm specialised in creating photorealistic 3D renders of architectural marvels.

A 3D render of how Vadim Valiullin sees the future of painting. Note the screen in the top right.

 
A unique piece made by Peter Hofman in Cinema 4D.

One of the beautiful still life renders of Herner Quintero.

A very realistic render of an old Jeep Wrangler model. This image was modelled in 3DS Max and rendered using Mental Ray.

A terribly realistic render done by the talented Benjamin Brosdau. He used  3dS max 7 and the alpha version of next limit`s maxwell render. Render times were about 3 to 4 hours to get the special flash light-photography style. Noise reduction was done with Neat image software.

And another by Benjamin Brosdau.

A stunning render of a bathroom done by Francesco Legrenzi in 3DS Max, Vray and retouched in Photoshop.

A camera design for competition. This awesome image was rendered using 3ds Max 2009 and finalized with Photoshop CS.

Texturing this image was the hardest part. It was modelled in 3DS Max and rendered in Vray.

Modeling of this fantatic looking parot was done in Maya, while rendering was done in MentalRay. A HDRI Probe and two lights were used for the lighting.

The following three images are by the extremely talented Axel Ritter from Germany. He uses mainly Cinema 4D and these images just keep amazing me.

Eventhough this image, by Bulgarov, isn’t textured yet it already looks amazing. This is a ZBrush shot.

Neil MacCormack works mainly in Lightroom LightWave and has rendered the next two futuristic images. Enjoy!

It’s so difficult to get humans right, but Stephen Molyneaux sure managed to make Bernadette here as realistic as imaginable. This isn’t a photograph, but a render in 3DS Max and Zbrush.

There are more angles of this crash on Den Fox’s site.

Higher detail:

Hitta.se, the main Swedish search engine has it’s own map, satelite and direction tool. The big difference is that they offer much more detail, because airplane are used instead of satellites. Yes, every square inch of Sweden has been overflown, photographed and neatly merged together. This gives the Swedish map tool incredible detail.

Compare the following two images: The left is from Hitta.se and clearly shows the soccer players on the filed, whereas the right, from Google Earth doesn’t even show the white lines correctly.

Increadible 3D capacity:

But the thing that really sets Hitta.se apart is it’s state of the art 3D technology. No longer does a large team of people need to pre program all the buildings on earth, like in Google Earth; a sofisticated aerial photography technique coupled to military software gives the Swedes the most impressive 3D map ever seen.

Compare the next two images: Left is Stockholm, showing  3D buildings, trees and even cars. To the right is what Google Earth provides us. Impressive, but detail on the buildings is less, some grey buildings remain (yet to be textured) and trees are as flat as can be.

The difference lies in the Sweeds capturing technology. Their 3D map is rendered by 3DMaps EX software powering it is by Agency9, but the 3D data and imagery is captered by using  military technology provided by the Scandinavian  firm: C3 Technologies. They use highly sofisticated aerial cameras that record the exact position for each photo. This data is then used to calculate the position of each pixel exactly and once they then have enough pictures of an area (all from different angles), stereovision technology can translate it all into 3d.

Their technique is so fast that they claim to have created a realistic, yet zoomable and turnable, 3D model of the Stockholm city in just 3 days, back in Oktober 2007. Furthermore, they have a Streetview feature here .

Google Earth’s 3D city models are built on flat images and therefore misses out on much detail, as it has to be done by hand. Hitta.se’s technology is completely automated and any object larger than a VW bus is included in 3D in the final image, as they state in their FAQ. The fact that it is all automated does have some pitfalls. Transparent buildings or cranes cause problems, because the software can’t handle this. Observe the following image of a crane in Stockholm harbour:

The street is pulled up to the highest point of the crane. the Hitta.se 3D just can’t handle overhanging structures and transparent buildings.

All in all the technique is very promissing and especialy in more rural and suburban areas, with many organic features (trees, hills, hedges etc..), the results are astonishing. In some urban areas the Google Earth buildings are a little more accurate in terms of straight lines.

You should, however, have a look for yourself to appreciate it’s stunning features:
Hitts.se 3D
 

Related:

• http://www.gearthblog.com/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlEK46Enptw&feature=related
• http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-maps-friday-fun.html

Of course photo-reference material has been used, but all lines have been drawn by hand and colored by hand. The advantage of vectors above photographs is that these images could be blown up to monster scales, whilst the lines still stay sharp. The creation of these photorealistic vector drawing is a true art and many many hours of tedious work has been put in every single image here. Because many of you will not believe this is all vector art, I’ve blended in the vector lines in all images as to convince you otherwise. Please visit the artisits website, by clicking on the image, for more stunning work.

Enjoy!

1:  Maelifellssandur, Iceland

2:  Golden Gate Bridge, USA

3:  Moscow Winter Life, Russia

4:  Sealions on Ice, Argentina

5:  London from Above, United Kingdom

6:  Chapel in Field, Germany

7:  Mine Tailings Pond, USA

8: Rollercoaster at Fair, Germany

9: Waterskiier and Boat, location unknown

10: Donauworth, Germany

Enjoy, and please feel free to leave me link to other images I should include!

1: Fakahatchee  Bay, Florida, USA

Although this looks like polution this is actually an image of the tributaries of the rivers running through the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Par, a part of the Florida Everglades. The park is home to several endangered species: the Florida Panther, Wood Stork, Black Bear, Fox Squirrel and the Everglades Mink.

2: Richat Structure, Mauritania

The Richat Structure, a 50 km wide circular feuature in the Sahara desert, was first discovered when satelites started imaging the earth. Originaly it was thought to be an meteorite impact crater, but is actually an eroded anticline or dome, off wich the different lithologies create the circular structures.

3: Kolguyev Island, Russia

This stunning boggy river system is located on the Kolguyev Island in the Barents Sea. It’s the results of tundra vegetation and moraines left by the ice ages. Bugringo is the only settlement on this 80 km wide island and it’s inhabitant live from fishing and reindeer farming.

4: Sossusvlei, Namibia

Amidst the Namib desert lies this Salt Pan, the Sossusvlei. The whole valley is about 40 km long and occasionally flash floods flood it from the East. Water quickle evaporates or soaks into the underlying soils and salt deposits remain. Dunes in this area are about 2 km apart.

5: Lake Chad, Africa

The Northern Shores of Lake Chad show the battle between the lake and the Sahara desert sands, slowly encroching on the lake. Lake Chad is the primary water source for Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

6: St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, USA

The small comunity of St. Bernard Parish, located here on one of the delta lobes of the Mississippi river, has been hit hard by the Huricane Katrina in 2006. Now only less than half of the original population remains.

7: Erongo Region, Namibia

The Erongo Region lies just north of the Sceleton coast, one of the driest region son earth. Here a range of geologic anticlinal structures forms a impressive landscape.

8: Uniab River, Namibia

Uniab River in northwest Damaraland cuts through som dramatic plataues and forms an impressive lanscpae, bu it is the nature and chemical composition of the soil here that gives the brown sand this green coloration on the satelite photograph.

9: Amazon Delta, Brazil

The delta mouth of the mighty Amazon river is built up of millions of years of sediment being deposited there where the river enters the ocean. The Amazon accounts for approximately one fifth of the world’s total river flow and has built up an estuary or delta mouth of about 300 km wide.

10: Florida Keys, USA

This is one of only several high resolution images shot over an area mainly covered by water. Offcourse, this is due to the relatively high population density for this area. Almost 6,000 people live on this 30 km long stretch.

1: Blue Moon Wallpaper (1920×1200)

A beautiful surrealistic image of the world, in the future. Has loads of detail and one keeps descovering new details.

2: Sunset Church Wallpaper (1920×1202)

A stunning digital painting of a church basking in the evening sun. Beutifully painted and a lot of detail added.

3:  Edgewood Farm (1920×1200)

An amazing photograph, digitally remastered, showing Edgewood Farm amongst beautifull flowery fields. The overcast sky truly finishes this wallpaper.

4:  Treehugger Wallpaper (1920×1200)

5:  Drug Free Zone Wallpaper (1680×1110)

6:  Conquer the World Wallpaper (1920×1200)

7:  Vicitim of Gravity Wallpaper (1920×1200)

8:  Lady Bugg Wallpaper (1920×1200)

9:  Crazy Sun Wallpaper (1920×1200)

10:  Woodland Wallpaper (1920×1200)