“Dubai is sometimes called the “City of Gold” because of its stunning growth from a sleepy Gulf port to a world-famous business crossroads in the space of a single generation. Its nickname has a literal meaning for traders in the precious metal. The city is building itself up as a center for the gold trade, between sources in Africa and consumers in the rising economies of China and India”. – Kamran Jebreili via Associated Press

Photo: A gold press operator collects 10 gram gold blanks to press them with the logo of the Emirates Gold company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Gold prices remained relatively steady in 2012, close to $1,700 an ounce. (Photo by Kamran Jebreili/AP Photo)

These are the amazing panoramic photographs that look like little planets. They were taken by photographer Dan Arkle, 34, from Sheffield, UK. He said: “On a sharp summit, you feel literally on top of the world, with dramatic views in all directions, including straight down. I tried using conventional photography to capture this feeling, but even with a wide angle lens I couldnt get all the view in the image”. Here: “Taken at the tiny summit of Cima Piccola in the the Tre Cima group in the Dolomites, Italy. The large peak is Cima Grande Some remote peaks have a summit register, and my climbing partner Steve can be seen signing this in the bottom of the picture”. (“Little Planets” Project. Photo and comment by Dan Arkle)

“By 1969, the fashion choices of tens of millions of young American men and women were as variegated and ever-evolving as the world around them. Cultural transformation was an irresistible force during the Sixties, and across America and around the globe civil rights, women’s and gay liberation, the sexual revolution and, of course, the explosive soundtrack of R&B, soul and rock and roll informed everything from politics to fashion”. – LIFE. Photo: Corona del Mar High School students Kim Robertson, Pat Auvenshine and Pam Pepin wear “hippie” fashions, 1969. (Photo by Arthur Schatz/Time & Life Pictures)

Inga Paltser is a young painter from Severodvinsk known for her watercolor illustrations and paintings of owls. Inga prefers working with paper, but sometimes also creates on textile, wood, and canvas. She started painting in her childhood at the local school of arts. However, after high school Inga decided to become a biologist and now she works as a researcher. Even though art hasn’t become her profession, Inga finds time to create wonderful paintings presented on this website. Her first owls were painted spontaneously – Inga decided to utilize small pieces of watercolor and pastel paper and created two cute owls called “Friends”. Inga’s owls instantly received recognition across the web and social networks and now are greatly loved by thousands of people around the world.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

James Kerr started his project “Scorpion Dagger” without any real direction, except for the intention to make one GIF everyday(ish) for one year. He had been making collages for some time and “Scorpion Dagger” started out to be a test of discipline and a way for him to learn how to animate. Making GIFs was a logical evolution to him. The project represents many different things to him, the works from which he draws upon are so powerful and inspirational to him, that he is now nearly obsessed with repurposing them to share his vision of the world, and perhaps inspire people to look at art differently. The project is tremendously personal to him, it’s a lot more than the humor that’s at its surface and he is still trying to work out what “Scorpion Dagger” really is.

In this photo made late Saturday, August 9, 2014, in Keelung, Taiwan, a traditional Chinese dance troupe performs during a parade marking the beginning of the Chinese folklore's mid-summer's Ghost Month Festival. Fourteen days into the seventh month of the lunar calendar, August 9, in 2014, marks the traditional Chinese Ghost Month where the gates of the underworld are opened and spirits of the deceased are set free to roam the world of the living. The month long festivities are aimed to please the roaming spirits. (Photo by Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

The brutalist war memorials found throughout the former Yugoslavia were weird enough when they were built in the 1960s and 70s. Today, separated by the end of an architectural movement and the disintegration of the country, they seem almost alien. Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers treats them purely as artistic objects in his book, “Spomenik”, named for the Serb-Croat word for monument. Known for photographing geographical oddities, Kempenaers was captivated by the spomenik after seeing them in an art encyclopedia. After hearing that many had been destroyed or abandoned, he set out to record what was left. (Photo by Jan Kempenaers)