Photo of the Day (7.5.09)

Today’s photo comes to us from Flickr user andreakw, who captured these brightly colored beach shacks during her visit to Melbourne, Australia. The bold paint schemes and quirky color choices immediately caught my eye. You can almost picture yourself sitting there, staring at these shacks, rows of beachgoers thronging about and laughing in the rolling surf behind you.

Have any photos from your travels you’d like to share? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of your shots as our next Photo of the Day.

Life imitates art at Mardi Gras

We’ve been taking a look recently at some of the fun that went down this past week in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and many of our fellow travel bloggers have been doing the same. National Geographic’s Janelle Nanos found herself in New Orleans for the festivities, and in the midst of all the good times stumbled upon some partiers who just might be her magazine’s biggest fans.

As Janelle tells it on her personal blog, she was enjoying the parade when she came upon Danielle King, a fellow reveler who had chosen to dress up as an “Irrational Geographic” photographer in honor of Mardi Gras. How does one accomplish such a costume? Danielle and friend had dressed themselves up in full expedition gear, complete with pith helmets, exploration vests and SLR cameras and were making their way through the crowd, snapping pictures of the local “menagerie” using National Geographic’s iconic yellow framed border as a photo prop.

Not only is Danielle’s idea quite clever, she also took some amazing portraits. They are at once warm and friendly, filled with the vibrant colors and fun energy you would expect from a Mardi Gras celebration. I think this guy is perhaps my favorite. Make sure to click on the gallery above to play the full slideshow of all the local “party animals” as framed by the famous National Geographic cover. And head over to Janelle’s blog and Intelligent Travel for the full story.