Photo of the day – street art in Taiwan

by Meg Nesterov on


There’s a lot happening in this photo: some street art, an intriguing flavor of popsicle, cool sneakers, flammable substances near a lit cigarette, the Asian art of effortless squatting. Overall it’s a very interesting street scene, captured by Flickr user marisoleta in Taipei, Taiwan. Looking at more of her photos, it seems like a fun destination, full of temples, tall buildings, and weird foods we all love to photograph on our travels. It’s always great when a travel photo makes us want to learn more about a place.

Have you taken any good street scenes to get us curious about a destination? Upload ’em to the Gadling Flickr pool and we may use it for a future photo of the day.

Italian art in London

by Sean McLachlan on


One of the best collections of Italian art in the world can be found in an unlikely place: a quiet street in the London borough of Islington.

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is housed in an elegant Georgian mansion and boasts a comprehensive collection of Italian Futurist paintings. Futurism was a style born out of the havoc of industrialization and the carnage of World War One. It emphasized the speed and technological advance of modern society.

Typical of this style is Umberto Boccio’s The City Rises, shown here courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This totally blew me away when I saw it at a special Futurist exhibition at the Estorick a few years ago. The people and buildings seem to be swept along by a windstorm of colored motion. It’s currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other paintings show Futurism’s trading ideas with Cubism, like Gino Severini’s Portrait of Eric Estorick, the museum’s founder. It’s more a study of angles and shading than an actual image of a man.

It’s not all Futurism here and the current exhibition, United Artists of Italy, is a collection of photographs of leading Italian artists. You can also get a taste of Italy at the cafe, where they serve up excellent cappuccinos (hard to find in London) and snacks.

Creepy and beautiful cemeteries around the world

by Sean McLachlan on


Cemeteries aren’t the first places most people go to while on vacation, but they can tell a lot about a culture and its history. We all have to die sometime and the way we deal with the dead says a lot about ourselves.

Some cemeteries are overgrown and covered in moss. Others are orderly and well-kept. Some are beautiful, and can inspire wonderful photographs like the one taken here by user Perrimoon over at Flickr. Sometimes graveyards can be downright dangerous, like the cemetery in Haworth, England, famous as the hometown of the Brontë sisters. The dead were literally stacked ten deep in this graveyard and the stream that provided the town’s water flowed right through them!

Some of the best free sights in Paris are cemeteries. The same goes for New York. My pick for the best place to see cemeteries is Rome, the city of the dead, which has splendid Renaissance tombs, ancient Roman gravestones, and mummified monks.

Do you have some good cemetery shots? Join us over at Gadling’s flickr pool and show us your art. You might just get picked for Photo of the Day!

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Photo of the day – Cocktail hour

by Meg Nesterov on


It’s always cocktail hour somewhere in the world, they say, though if you’re 8 months pregnant like me, it’s not for another 5 weeks or so. Even as a non-whiskey drinker, I looked at this and wanted a nice warming glass of scotch and perhaps a fire to drink it by. Flickr user JRodmanJr snapped this drink (and presumably drank it) in Basel, Switzerland; it’s a 14-year-old single malt from the Scottish distillery Oban. A beverage like this one can inspire a trip to taste the drink at its source, or just provide a mini-vacation in a glass.

Photograph any refreshing beverages on your travels? Upload your pix to the Gadling Flickr page and we may use it for a future Photo of the Day.

Edinburgh through the wide angle lens

by Grant Martin on

Spring is ebbing in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, the best time of the year in northern Great Britain. This historical city blossoms with opportunity as the season changes; green spaces tumble through the city like unrolling bolts of cloth, the castle and the Holyrood Palace glisten with visitors and sleepy residents begin to emerge from the shadows of winter to bustle about the public squares and cafés. Around the this time of the year, Princes Street hums with activity, visitors darting in and out of the TopShop and Jenners while the restaurants on Rose open their front facades to let smells of haggis and fried cod drift out into the street.

Edinburgh is city for walkers and photographers. Two to three steps in any direction and there’s another great view of the castle with a cherry tree or a statue to fold into the shot. Switch to the prime lens and there’s depth in the architectural features of an ancient building or in the lines of a passing tourist. There are generations of history in every fissure of each building, with ancient, stone walls reaching out to you in every direction while nature lovers can drink in the amazing views around Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park.

The photo opportunities alone are reason enough to visit Scotland, without a meal consumed, friendship made, or hotel bed rustled. Luckily, there’s plenty of that to experience in this country as well.

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