We have been having some pretty crazy storms around here lately. The tornado sirens have went off at least 3 times in the last week and I lost power for 8 hours on Friday (of course right as my family who was staying the weekend walked in the door).

Last night was one of the most intense storms I have seen in awhile. Truly what you would call rolling thunder. It was almost one constant rumbling sound. While that happened lightning streaked across every direction of the sky, constantly, for about an hour. I wish I could have photographed it but my balcony is in a very bad spot for that.

I did enjoy watching it. It was slightly cloudy so sometimes it would just be the entire sky turning white as the clouds diffused the energy, then a streak would come down and touch the ground as another snaked through the sky.

Why does all this matter? One, because lightning is pretty cool and that's not my photograph above, but it is pretty great. Second, because I went to post last night and the storm knocked my internet and cable out, better then the power I guess.

I wanted to throw in a non-photograph lighting piece of art too. As always I am a sucker for letterpress, and the above card from Etsy is pretty great too (check out the rest of their stuff, great patterns, love it!).

[photo from Flickr and card from Etsy ]

Things don't always have to make sense, ands that is why the world is awesome.

Lunasaurus by Aesthetic Apparatus. $20 

Above are some of the amazing photographs by Branislav Kropilak  (at the time of writing this, his site seems to be down). I have photography on the brain tonight, and I knew exactly what I wanted to post. His photo are been around on the popular design blogs here and there, but it's my turn.

Kropilak is a photographer originally from Batislava Slovakia and they just aren't your ordinary landscape shots. Instead he takes photos of most things people would pass by. Billboards for instance, photographed from directly under them. So they loose the feeling that they are billboards and instead look like pieces of intergalactic equipment. He also takes photos of the insides of parking garages with some interesting outcomes. Last, he takes photographs near airports with long exposures and records flight paths with lights.

All of this is simply amazing. Shot well, lit well, everything.

So photography is on my mind. However most of these would have been shot with natural lighting with nice long exposures and the kind of photography on my mind is off camera strobe lighting. Anyone want to teach me how to get setup for this? I have checked out a few lighting blogs and I am beyond lost. Makes me wish I took a bit more photography in school, or if I ever do go back to school to go for photography (with the 2 choices being more design and photography).

Some of the WMU alumni might recognize these posters. Richard Neissen is a dutch designer who was a visiting artist at WMU a few years ago. Each of the posters were created to showcase a different typeface and were at the annual Chaumont poster show.

A few of the posters were used in raffles at our AIGA fundraiser so a few of my friend have these their homes and I have the Constellation Poster (how ironic is that, I didn't even pick it out, fate picked it out!) in my living room. One of my prized possessions and it is huge, somewhere around 33"x47".  I love the colors, patterning, texture, and pretty much everything about them. Wish I could obtain the entire set but I would probably go poor framing them all.

I am going to kickoff Poster Week with this great triptych called Starry Nights by Sean Tubridy.

Unfortunately, it looks like he is sold out of them and therefore I can't find some of the better photos he used to have on his site of it.

I own this set and it is one of my favorite pieces I have up (which is makes it a favorite if it actually makes it on to the wall, so many still in storage). The color on these is fantastic in person and they look great in a natural colored wood frame (they fit ikea frames).  They remind me of a warm summers night, both because of the color and the imagery. I don't think they will be coming off of my office wall anytime soon.

The Illustrated Guide to the Amazing Feats of the Night Sky is a pocket guide by the great illustrator Jez Burrows. It opens matchbook style and on the inside is a guide to the great celestial events that occurred or will occur in 2009. I know the year is a bit over half done, but that doesn't mean you can't see what is coming up for the fall and winter (fall is one of the best times to lay out and watch the stars).

The last two images are of the Gocco print he created to go along with the guide and sadly those are all sold out. A fantastic print that I'll have to keep my eye out to obtain by other means. The guide itself can be purchased from the Tiny Showcase for $5

Jez has a huge amount of other great work as well so I can't say this is the last time his art is going to show up here.

Now, I will try and keeping my stars/space/sky/etc posts to a minimum because even though this blog is named after a constellation, I don't want it to become too themed. However, when print looks that good, it is going to show up for sure.