Hole in the Clouds


Tag: (Image credit: Trey Ratcliffe)

Irradiated

Nov 16, 2009

An apartment building in Prypiat, the Ukrainian town built for the families of people who worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Two days after the nuclear accident in 1986, Prypiat was abandoned.

After twenty-three years, radiation levels have dropped significantly here, but no one is yet permitted to live anywhere in the Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl. It is not considered especially dangerous to spend a few hours visiting the area, however, and a local tourism industry has emerged.

This is a High Dynamic Range photo by Trey Ratcliffe. The Hong Kong picture in the November 4 Good Morning was also by Ratcliffe.
 

high dynamic range   Chernobyl   Prypiat   Ukraine   (Image credit: Trey Ratcliffe)  

The little reading room

Feb 4, 2010

William Randolph Heart's San Simeon palace in California included two private libraries for the newspaper tycoon and his guests. Accounts of life at San Simeon suggest that the amount of time set aside for reading was not always substantial. But this is the smaller of the two reading rooms.

The craftsmanship of the room, including the ceiling, is phenomenal; click on the photo to see it in detail.

high dynamic range   William Randolph Hearst   library   (Image credit: Trey Ratcliffe)