Commissioned by the Shanghai government, this 24.9-billion-pixel panoramic photograph captures an incredible amount of detail, and it’s easy to lose hours zooming in on every individual scene. Taken from the top of a skyscraper, the photo aims to “show China’s economic take off to the world,” both in terms of what can be spotted in the image and the technical prowess required to produce it.

You can peer in windows, enter private courtyards, examine the contents of ships or the garments hanging to dry on balconies and glimpse furniture in penthouse apartments. Zoom in far enough and you can actually discern individual items sold by street vendors, license plate numbers and the logo on a woman’s handbag.

https://twitter.com/ciannotseean/status/1075833946418630657

Naturally, everyone’s looking for people engaged in some kind of illicit or embarrassing activity with surprisingly limited success – just a finger up a nose here and there, as well as some glitches.

https://twitter.com/_DD1888/status/1075884427807477761

This guy has had better days… pic.twitter.com/CtHuXgieRp

— LFC devotee (@modaith) December 20, 2018

“At the initial stage of creation, the Big Pixel Team decided to accept new challenges of taking photos with hundreds of billions of pixels by breaking the past limit of tens of billions of pixels. However, it’s extremely difficult. The previous splicing technology was no longer applicable. More images, bigger data treatment and network deployment and loading were new challenges.”

“Regardless of such challenges, we were still full of fighting spirit and successfully overcame such difficulties one by one. After taking photos in the Oriental Pearl Tower which is 230 m high and after data treatment for two months, we successfully created this picture, the world’s third largest picture and Asia’s first largest picture, marking that our team became a top creative image production team of the world.”

Check it out for yourself at Big Pixel.

For all the effort we humans put into light art, birds have us beat – we just don’t realize it most of the time, because their work is invisible to us. Spanish photographer Xavi Bou reveals the hidden works of art produced as birds fly through the sky using a multi-shot technique that captures both the trails they create and the movement of their wings. The results look sort of like fluttery eels, or black ribbons strewn around by the wind.

Bou’s ‘Ornitographies’ series arises from his interest in “questioning the limits of human perception,” combining simple observation of bird behavior from the ground with photography to see what our eyes can’t show us. He takes inspiration from chronophotography, a Victorian technique capturing movement in a series of frames for the purpose of scientific study. Bou’s focus on the birds is less about science and more about the grace of their movements and their unintentional creativity.

“The approach used by Xavi Sou to portray the scene is not invasive; moreover, it rejects the distant study, resulting in organic form images that stimulate the imagination,” reads his description of the project. “Technology, science and creativity combine to create evocative images which show the sensuality and beauty of the birds’ movements and which re, at the same time, clues for those wishing to identify or recognize them.”

The photographer takes thousands of shots and layers them together to produce the final effect. Depending on the species, the exposure and the contrast, you might be able to make out distinct wing feathers in the patterns. A recent trip to Iceland produced some particularly stunning results, and it’s fascinating to imagine which birds produce the more orderly lines versus the chaotic ones.

Symmetrical photographs reveal the elegant geometries present in the architecture of some of the world’s most beautiful libraries, captured by Thibaud Poirier. The Paris-based photographer has traveled throughout Europe, visiting places like the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, the modern white Stadtbibliothek in Stuttgart, Dublin’s Trinity College Library and the church-like Biblioteca Angelica in Rome to highlight their classical beauty and make us all wish we were roaming around gazing at those rows of books right now.

“Like fingerprints, each architect crafted his vision for a new space for this sacred self-exploration,” says Poirier. “These seemingly minute details are everywhere, from the balance of natural and artificial light to optimize reading yet preserve ancient texts to the selective use of studying tables to either foster community or encourage lonely reflection. The selection of these libraries that span space, time, style and cultures were carefully selected for each one’s unique ambiance and architectural contribution.”

The photographer calls this library series ‘Palaces of Self-Discovery,’ noting that they provide the same kind of worship space and community interaction as a church, even while the act of reading is typically a solitary one. Within each of these buildings is countless opportunities to lose oneself in another place or time, take on another person’s identity and temporarily forget about all of our cares and worries.

The photos also offer something we couldn’t get from these libraries in real life: the chance to see them empty of people. Poirier seems to have gained permission to enter each library before or after opening hours to get his shots, further emphasizing the sense of solitary exploration. See the whole series at Thibaud Poirier’s website.

Perhaps nowhere on Earth is there a more beautiful place to take in crystal-clear views of the starlit sky than the pristine Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia, which boasts a mirror-like reflective surface in some spots. The largest salt flat in the world provides an incredible setting for photographer Daniel Kordan, who traveled there in search of the darkest possible sky. Avoiding light pollution can be tough even in rural areas, but not only is this mineral-coated landscape sufficiently far from urban areas, it’s also sort of alien-like in its own right.

In an interview with My Modern Met, Kordan says the salt flats were so dark, he couldn’t see anything at all until his eyes adjusted. Then, suddenly, the stars were underneath him as well as above. “It seemed that we floated in open space. Our spaceship is parked in a distance, and stars are blinking with blue, red and yellow colors.”

A graduate of the Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, Kordan travels the world in search of the most photogenic landscapes, and judging by his portfolio as well as his increasingly popular Instagram, he’s had no trouble finding and capturing them. In addition the salt flats, the photographer has taken gorgeous photos of natural settings i Greece, New Zealand, Greenland, Tuscany, Scotland, Patagonia and many other locales. Check out his personal favorite collection of images he’s taken, replete with glaciers, ice caves, dramatic sand dunes and the aurora borealis.

“I have been fascinated by the possibilities of photography since my early childhood,” says Kordon on his website. “I grew up at beautiful lake region under Moscow exploring wild nature, spending most of my free time in nature. I graduated the art painting school when I was a kid. Mix art, nature, constant activities and you’ll receive a summary – art of Landscape photography. Life started swirling me, pushing me into the rush. University, hard work on my quantum physics thesis, family and friends… but there is alway sa pleasure in the pathless woods: places I always returned and always admired. Nature is my inspiration, with all the beauty and variety of colors and compositions.”

Few of us would ever get a glimpse of the tiniest rope-like iridescent quills on a peacock’s feather, the scales on a moth’s wing, dew droplets on a spider’s eyes or the planetary patterns on a bubble of soap if not for the macro photographers who carefully document details too small for the naked eye to see. It’s almost as if we’ve shrunk small enough to stare an arachnid in the face, or put ourselves in danger of being trapped by a carnivorous plant.

Spiders by Jimmy Kong

Six to eight spider eyes stare back at you, reflecting the image of a camera lens, the human holding it, and sometimes a light. Photographer Jimmy Kong captures images of all sorts of creatures, but his spiders seem to have so much personality, watching curiously as he gets close enough to spot the tiny hairs on their legs.

Butterfly and Moth Wings by Linden Gledhill

Tiny overlapping scales reminiscent of flower petals reveal the smallest details of their shapes and vivid colors in a series of macro butterfly and moth wings by Linden Gledhill, a biochemist by training.

Coral & Other Sea Life by Daniel Stoupin

150,000 shots went into this video documenting the secret lives of ‘slow’ marine animals like coral and sponges, their movements being too small to be seen without a time lapse. Says Bioquest Studios, “Why so many? Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, we used focus tacking and deconvolution algorithms. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots. just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage.”

Peacock Feathers by Waldo Nell

Go closer and closer and closer to a peacock feather, and the level of detail and color variation only gets more intense, with the smallest parts revealing themselves to be tiny ropes. Photographer Waldo Nell used an Olympus BX 53 microscope to take hundreds of individual shots, combining them to get the images seen here to get the depth of field that is typically lost in this kind of photography.

Carnivorous Plants by Joni Niemelä

The sticky insect-baiting appendages of carnivorous plants get a good inspection in all their alien beauty in this series by Joni Niemelä. Each photo offers a different view of the Drosera plant, commonly known as the ‘sundew.’

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A New View 65 Illuminating Larger Than Life Macro Images