Contrasting today's modernist aesthetic with its more uplifiting predecessors:

The International Space Station (ISS) shown above in these impressive five images, is a collaborative effort between the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. The space station is divided into two main segments, namely the Russian Orbital Segment, and the US Orbital Segment. The ISS has eight docking and berthing ports for visiting spacecraft, and circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, thereby completing 15.5 orbits per day. Long-term occupancy of the space station began on 2 November 2000, and continues uninterrupted to this day. The station is expected to remain operational until the end of 2030, after which it will be de-orbited using the US Deorbit Vehicle.

Reflections in the beautiful, blue, still waters of Horseshoe Lake, at Denali National Park in Alaska.

Porto Flavia in Sardinia is a port dug into cliffs at 50 metres above sea level. Consisting of two 600 metre tunnels, and an ingenious mechanical arm, Porto Flavia was used to load zinc, lead, and other mined ore, directly from the mining operations within the cliffs, onto cargo ships waiting in the waters below.





When Porto Flavia became operative in 1924, it slashed ore production costs by up to 70% , allowing its owners to gain a strong market share within a short time. The construction of Porto Flavia paid for itself in under two years, and was considered a technical marvel of early-20th-century engineering.

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European accounts in 1722 (Dutch) and 1770 (Spanish) reported seeing only standing statues, or moais, which were still venerated, in Easter Island, but by James Cook's visit in 1774, many were reported toppled. This statue-toppling continued into the 1830s. By 1860s, no moais were left standing. In about 60 years, the islanders had damaged this part of their ancestors' heritage; theories range from intertribal warfare to loss of faith in their ancestors' ability to protect them. In modern times, moais have been restored at Anakena, Ahu Tongariki, Ahu Akivi and Hanga Roa.





Pictured here are the fifteen standing moai at Ahu Tongariki, the largest stone platform on Easter Island (or Rapa Nui, as it was called by its original inhabitants). These moais had been toppled as mentioned above, and furthermore, in the 20th century the stone platform was also swept inland by a tsunami. Nonetheless, Ahu Tongariki was substantially restored in the 1990s through the efforts of a multidisciplinary team headed by archaeologists Claudio Cristino and Patricia Vargas Casanova. All the moai here face sunset during the winter solstice.

Hohenzollern Castle perched atop the Swabian Alps, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, seen here during the different seasons. With over 350,000 visitors per year, Hohenzollern castle is one of the most visited castles in Germany. This castle is the ancestral seat of the historically significant, imperial German House of Hohenzollern, who own the castle to this day, though they do not actually reside there. The castle that we see today was built between 1846 and 1867 as a family memorial by the Hohenzollern scion King Frederick William IV of Prussia.

Antelope Canyon is a sandstone slot canyon approximately 30 miles long and about 120 feet (37 m) deep, formed across the ages through water erosion from flash floods, especially during the monsoon season. All of Antelope Canyon is within the Navajo Reservation, in Arizona. Different Navajo families own different sections of the natural slot canyon, and some offer tours that are booked for specific dates and times. Visitors are not permitted to explore the canyon on their own; instead, they must purchase an admission ticket, or a day tour that includes an admission ticket.

In ancient times monks had converted a part of Linsong Mountain (located in Gansu Province, in China) into a Tibetan Buddhist temple complex by digging grottoes, and connecting them by means of an intricate network of tunnels. The temple complex is called Mati Si (which translates to Horse’s Hoof Temple). Thousands of grottoes are grouped together in seven clusters, and each group of grottoes is no more than a mile or so from another.





The image shown here is arguably the most impressive part of Mati Si. This part of the mountainside has been carved out into a huge pagoda-like hall. Nearly 200 feet (about 60 meters) in height, it’s divided into seven floors, and houses seven grottoes connected by tunnels, containing 200 Buddha statues.





Gansu Provicne lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia's Govi-Altai Province, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south and Shaanxi to the east. The Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Part of Gansu's territory is located in the Gobi Desert. It is home to a number of other similar Buddhist grottoes carved into mountainsides and hillsides.

Tonight, August 16th, the annual Gozan no Okuribi (roughly "The Five Mountainous Send-Off Fires") festival was celebrated in Kyoto, Japan. Five giant bonfires were lit on five mountainsides surrounding the city, signifying the moment when the spirits of deceased family members, who are said to visit this world around this time, are believed to be return back to the spirit world — thus the name Okuribi (送り火, roughly "send-off fire").



Every year on each of the five mountainsides, stone hearths are purposefully built for the festival's bonfires. Three of the hearths are shaped in the form of giant Japanese text characters that signify greatness, and the Buddhist dharma, whilst another two are built in the shape of a boat, and a shrine gate. Additionally, lit lanterns are floated into a pond in Arashiyama, just before the ritual mountainside fires are lit.



Specific families have the hereditary duty of organizing all the logistics of the bonfires, and they spend many hours annually providing volunteer labour to maintain this tradition.

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It's really amazing how much the angle of depression (a technical term meaning the angle formed between a horizontal line and the line of sight when an observer looks downward at an object) effects our perception of depth. Here are two images of Miramar Palace (the orange building), built in 1893 at San Sebastián in Basque country, on the orders of Queen María Cristina of Austria, who used to spend her summers there. The white building behind it (with the black, conical roofed towers) is the diocesan seminary of San Sebastián (Elizbarrutiko Seminarioa), reconstructed in 1939. (Click on an image to view full size.)



In the first image, which is taken up close, the angle of depression is sharper, and the result is that the seminary appears to be almost directly behind Miramar Palace. In reality however, there is a distance of about a kilometre between the two landmarks, and there are plenty of buildings in between them. The second image approaches Miramar Palace from the same bearing (or azimuth), but from further away, and thereby the angle of depression is much gentler. This not only bestows a panoramic view, but allows us to judge the distance between the two architectural landmarks much better.