Amazing photo sites...

Here I sit doing my usual Friday night websurfing into the wee hours of the morning.....can we say addicted??? There is just a never ending supply of things to look at and become lost in on the internet and this evenings obsession seems to be photo blogs. Some that I spent a great deal of time on include this one.........it's called Photo Muse. It's a site of mostly engagement and wedding shots....very beautiful and the fellow taking the shots, Randy Kepple, really seems to get to know the couples and tells small stories about each of them......very engaging and the photography is awesome!!

Talk about extremes.....from weddings and happy things to.......

Another site was rather different to say the least.....it's called Opacity and is an absolutely mesmerizing site....go check it out. I had spent time surfing about trying to get a feel for the place and the photo's are really incredible....I had to find out more....some searching revealed that the photographer himself is just 25 years old...but what an amazing talent!! And I say "just 25 years old" because the photo's show such a great deal of depth and intensity.

He has a passion for photographing and thus chronicling and preserving some of the history of some very interesting places....I still have not surfed the entire site. But what I have seen is his theme, or subtitle is "Exploration and Urban Decay" and he has taken some incredible photo's of various institutions -- state hospitals, jails,psychiatric hospitals, homes for the disabled, asylums and state training schools -- that have long been abandoned but not yet demolished. He wanders around and explores these decaying, dilapidated places, taking pictures along the way. Some of these places look like people just got up and walked away from whatever they were doing at the time which, I suppose in some cases, is exactly what happened.

One of the series of photo's shows things like huge daily log books, with the date from the early 1900's, dusty and mouldy sitting piled on some, no doubt long deceased doctor's desk; a doll's head sitting on a table; long, desolate hallways with the paint peeling off the walls and ceilings; creepy looking, ancient medical equipment left standing where it was last used; wheelchairs and gurneys abandoned in the middle of rooms and hallways; creepy looking basement and attic rooms; creepy looking tiny isolation rooms. Some of the pictures are haunting, even scarey......but OMG just so, so mesmerizing....they draw you in and won't let go!!

He has dozens of different galleries....each with dozens of photo's and people have left comments on each individual photo in some cases. This is really cool to read too as sometimes there are discussions of quite a personal nature that go on in these comment sections....like someone's family member might have lived at one of these places as a child and are trying to recreate some of that person's history, or some of the comments were placed by people that worked in some of these places....truely fascinating stuff!!

I feel like my description is not doing it justice so if I have piqued your interest in any way....cruise on over there and see for yourself!!

And now I must to bed....it's almost 2am and my goal this weekend is to finish the spring cleaning that I didn't get started till mid-summer and then stopped 1/2 way through with piles of stuff, waiting to be dealt with, cluttering up my dining and living rooms.