Renewable Energy Doesn't Mean Clean Energy

SELBY, U.K. – The heavy power lines and narrow roads between the steam-billowing towers of three of England’s biggest power plants traverse an energy industry in upheaval. Shuttered coal mines are flanked by emerald pastures. Towering wind turbines and solar arrays have taken root in windblown cereal fields. In the middle of the transition is the Drax Power Station — Western......read more

Geometric Wooden Planter

John Sardari is a Portland designer who shapes these geometric wood planters out of local woods. Each planter is unique in that the wood grain and layers of wood are distinctly different. We fell in love with these as soon as we first discovered them. Contemporary lines with the warmth of a true craftsman's hands.  Each planter is approximately 15" X 15" and 5" tall Please note: planters......read more

Circle Squared

Here's an old but great holiday-themed animation by HunterGatherer (aka Brooklyn-based artist/designer Todd St. John). "Circle Squared," originally released in 2007, was commissioned by T Magazine for the Christmas season. The story is told through stop-motion animation, using toy-like hand-made wooden forms, which interact similarly to the way Russian dolls nest. These cube-animal shapes......read more

Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain

Photographer Eirik Johnson spent three years traveling around Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, focusing on the region’s tenuous relationship between natural resource industries--particularly logging and fishing--and the communities that rely upon them. The resulting images are gathered in Sawdust Mountain, a photographic exploration of a Pacific Northwest that reveals a......read more

Washington State Fire Lookout Project

Sixty years ago, there were 600 wildfire lookout posts in Washington state. Employed by the US Forest Service, Lookout Rangers worked summer jobs manning the posts and acting as lifelines for the forest. Among them was Jack Kerouac. Today, the number of lookout posts in the state has dwindled to 92. On a commission from Filson, 29-year-old photographer Kyle Johnson traveled around the state to......read more

Time-Bending Photos by Jay Mark Johnson

Our mate Jay Mark Johnson, whose work hung on the walls of the first SHFT pop-up shop, uses an $85,000 slit camera to create these abstracted images that emphasize time over space. It's a complicated process, as Slate's Judith Herman explains:  This unique look is possible because the fixed-position slit camera registers only a vertical sliver of a scene. Whatever passes that slit by......read more

Amazing Photos of Otherworldly Caves in Thailand

There are a few places on Earth that feel decidedly unearthly, and caves happen to be one of them. Australian-born photographer John Spies, who has been living in northern Thailand for thirty years, spends plenty of time underground exploring caves in his adopted homeland. As a cave explorer, photographer and guide, Spies has visited 85 caves, discovered incredible formations, documented......read more

Greenaid Fosters 21st Century Johnny Appleseeds

If you live or work in a city, odds are, you passed a vacant lot or an ugly, barren strip of soil at some point today. Now imagine if that eyesore were transformed into a wild garden. But how? Greenaid, a project by two recent grads of Otis College of Art and Design in L.A., Kim Karlsrud and Daniel Phillips, and local urban planner David Fletcher, is a plan to distribute candy machines loaded......read more