Arts Design

BEAUTIFUL SKY ILLUSIONS NOW

My Toy Plane Series: High Rises. Photo by Varun Thota.

by Varun Thota. My Toy Plane Series: High Rises.

This week we are celebrating Beautiful Skies. First, we take a look at skies as they intersect buildings and planes. We found some incredible photographers and designers that take to the skies in totally new and beautiful ways.

VARUN THOTA

We’ve been flying a lot lately, so when we think about skies, planes instantly come to mind. Whether we are in them or looking up at them, we’re seeing lots of planes. But Macau-based web designer Varun Thota gives us a cool new perspective with his delightful photo series called #mytoyplane.

Thota, a front end web designer, with maybe a little too much time on his hands, started to play with his little toy plane by holding it up in the sky, against the backdrop of skyscrapers, and photographing it as if it were soaring.

Born in India, raised in Macau, Thota studied at Portland State University, before he began to pursue his passion for design and for “creating beautiful experiences." He now lives in Hong Kong.

Thota has loved flying things ever since he can remember. His dad was a helicopter enthusiast. He played with flight simulators for hours on end as a child. He started carrying a small Kinder egg airplane with him wherever he went, then began to photograph it to create these spectacular images.

Check out his Instagram account.

PETER WENGER

American artist Peter Wegner takes skyline photography and flips it on its head, using gaps in the buildings above him to create what appear to be buildings made of the sky.

In his series, titled “Buildings Made of Sky,” Wegner creates illusions, playing with negative and positive spaces. Sometimes, it looks as though you are seeing a mirrored façade. Sometimes the sky looks like a solid. And upside down gets turned around

Wegner is a Yale University graduate. He has been working on this project since 2009. It was recently featured in the In Focus: Architecture exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

His work also appears in the permanent collections of many museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.

Check out his awesome TED talk about inspiration.

Read more about Beautiful Skies, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Skies in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 09.14.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!