Photo of the day (9.30.10)

by Meg Nesterov on


It’s 5 o’clock, a near-universally accepted time for happy hour. Flickr user t3mujin snapped this beer ad-worthy pic in Madeira, off the coast of Portugal and notes that the snacks in the background are tremoços or Lupin beans.The legumes are typically pickled, eaten with or without the skin, and served with beers in a pub. Here in Istanbul, drink snacks may include a bowl of nuts, cherries or other bite-sized fruits, or sliced cucumbers and carrots in a salty solution. Around many outdoor bars, vendors sell small plates of almonds or walnuts on ice, with the ice helping to peel the skins off and removing the bitterness of the nut. All of them pair well with a cold beer in summer.

Eat any good drink snacks on your travels? Send your shots to Gadling’s Flickr group and we might use one for a future Photo of the Day.

Win $10,000 in the 2010 National Geographic Photo Contest

by Kraig Becker on

National Geographic has launched their 2010 Photography Contest, giving one lucky shutterbug the chance to take home a prize that includes $10,000 in cash and a trip to Washington DC to attend the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January, 2011. But that’s not all, as the winning photograph will also be published in an upcoming issue of National Geographic magazine, which is a dream come true for many amateur and professional photographers.

Entries are being accepted in the categories of People, Places, and Nature, and all submissions must be in a digital format and uploaded from the contest’s homepage. You can enter as many photos as you would like, but there is an entry fee of $15 per image. The contest ends on November 30, 2010, so get to work on sorting through those photos.

In a few weeks time, the best submissions to date will begin to appear in web galleries online, and we’ll all be allowed to browse them and vote for our favorites. Some of the best entries will also be made into wallpapers that can be used as desktop backgrounds and some will be converted into online jigsaw puzzles as well.

For an idea of what you’re up against in this contest, check out a gallery of the best entries from last year by clicking here and then see who the overall winners were by clicking here. After perusing those galleries, I can see I have my work cut out for me.

Photo of the day (9.23.10)

by Meg Nesterov on


Some photos beg more questions than they answer. Flickr user Marisoleta snapped this statue in Nagasaki, Japan, and the caption notes that the figure is Kannon atop a turtle-shaped temple, surrounded by little children. Kannon is the Japanese Buddhist goddess of compassion, which may account for the children, but what about the turtle? She is also known as a protector of seamen, which could also extend to sea turtles. Fun fact: camera company Canon is named for the goddess as well. The temple also includes a Foucault’s pendulum, one of the largest in the world, to demonstate the rotation of the earth and a bell that chimes daily to commemorate the atomic bomb explosion.

Capture an interesting shrine on your travels, or any giant turtles? Submit to the Gadling Flickr Pool and it could be our next Photo of the Day.

Photo of the day (9.9.10)

by Meg Nesterov on



Few things are more pleasant than tooling around in a slow boat and taking in a landscape via water. This photo by Flickr user Giovanni Fusco (whose photostream captures more than a few “wow” moments) taken in Dordogne, France shows a beautiful balance of the tranquility of the river with the rocky cliffs above. Just looking at it makes you feel peaceful and tempted to hop off for a farmhouse picnic, visit to a winery, or just stay aboard and enjoy the scenery.

Add your beautiful views to Gadling’s Flickr pool and it could be tomorrow’s Photo of the Day.

How green is Greenland?

by Andrew Evans on

Is Greenland Green? The question and oft-given answer are cliché–even you’ve heard it before: that Iceland is really green whereas Greenland is covered with ice and snow.

Well, I’m about to set the record straight, right here, right now, because after spending more than a week in Greenland, I can tell you that Greenland is in fact, very, very GREEN.

Yes, it’s true that a Europe-sized piece of mile-thick ice covers a good 85% of the country. However, the peripheral parts of Greenland are quite open and even lush, especially in the long sun of late summer. Imposing mountains and immense sloping valleys bleed with bright green, a stunning color that is made even brighter by the dry air and utter lack of pollution.

Viking explorer and cunning marketer Eric the Red named Grønland (“green land”) in 982 AD because it was in fact green but also because he was trying to lull colonists from the warmer shores of Iceland. It worked back then, and a thousand years later, the colorful name of earth’s least-known country still provokes a strange wonderment.

The following photo essay shows the true green of Greenland, unedited and unplugged. Whether or not it’s intentional, the country shows a constant theme of the color for which it is named.%Gallery-101755%