Is it strange to party in a cemetery, do you think? Thousands, many elaborately dressed and made up, thronged the Hollywood Forever cemetery on October 30th to celebrate the Day of the Dead with music, dancing, food and artistic renditions of family altars, all among the graves of Rudolph Valentino, Marion Davies, Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks and Johnny Ramone.

City stairways grey, cold concrete which is often dirty. These Street Artists around the world decided to do something about it. What they have done is nothing short of phenomenal. You won’t believe it. You’ve have to see these incredible transformations that took these stairs from dull to beautiful!

“Hiding In The Shadows”. This Baby Sandhill taking refuge under Moms wings while sitting on her second egg. I witnessed this baby being born earlier that day,and the next morning saw the other one hatch,what a sight to see. Photo location: Deland, Florida. (Photo and caption by Scott Helfrich/National Geographic Photo Contest)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

If we were to burn NH4Cr2O7 with HgSCN in the Dark Ages in Europe and show it to anyone, it is us who would be burning next on a fiery cross of Inquisition. And it’s no wonder, since this experiment produces a truly marvelous result. At first, as you ignite the mixture of NH4Cr2O7 and HgSCN, all you can see is that it is slowly burning with a reddish flame. After a while, however, a crater is formed in the middle of the burning pile, and then, suddenly, tentacle-like appendages start sprouting from the burning mixture. And you can almost hear the scream of the mad occultist – “Come forth, Kraken! Come forth!” But of course, this is simply a chemical reaction that is called the "Pharoah's Serpent". It was also often sold in firework stores until people realized that it was toxic.

In Dougie Wallace’s photos of Mumbai taxis, the chatter, yelling, and constant horns of the city are almost audible. A selection of his images is on show at Gayfield Creative Spaces, Edinburgh, as part of the Retina photography festival until 30 July. For four years, the Glasgow-born Wallace focused his photos on one kind of taxi in particular: the Premier Padmini, a 1960s workhorse painted in black and yellow. Locally known as “Kaali-Peeli”, there were once more than 60,000 of them in the Indian city. But thanks to laws restricting pollution, the cars now are fast disappearing from Mumbai’s streets. (Photo by Dougie Wallace/The Guardian)