1591454848_1366x768.jpg (1366×768)

The Top 50 'Pictures of the Day' for 2011 Every day at 5pm the Sifter posts the Picture of the Day. Below you will find a collection of the Sifter’s Top 50 from 2011. It’s hard to imagine the year is almost over, time seems to fly faster each successive year so it’s fun to take a moment and look back at the year that was. Click any of the pictures below to be taken to the individual post to learn more about the photographer and picture taken. Captured: The Ruins of Detroit Posted Feb 07, 2011 Share This Gallery inShare850 Up and down Detroit’s streets, buildings stand abandoned and in ruin. 15 Mind-Blowing Featured Images by NASA The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the United States’ largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe. They are also home to some of the most amazing images, visualizations and videos NASA has to offer! Please do yourself a favour and check out their incredible Flickr page which has thousands of images with wonderfully detailed descriptions.

National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic - StumbleUpon National Geographic is currently holding its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30. For the past nine weeks, the society has been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to vote for them as well. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose among its entries from 2011 for display here on In Focus. Gathered below are 45 images from the three categories of People, Places, and Nature, with captions written by the individual photographers. [45 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose:

Amazing Places To Experience Around the Globe (Part 3) Devetashkata Cave - Bulgaria Ben Bulben at County Sligo, Ireland Shark Island - Sydney Baatara Gorge Waterfall, Tannourine - Lebanon The Top 25 Photo Galleries of 2011 Dec 29, 2011 Below you will find a collection of the Sifter’s top 25 galleries posted in 2011. Often the most popular posts on the site, the galleries not only take our readers around the world, but back in time as well. Some galleries even show us the farthest reaching points of the Cosmos and the thriving microscopic world invisible to the human eye. Click any image or title to be taken to the original post, enjoy!

22 Incredible Photos of Faraway Places Thailand Chances are you already know Steve McCurry as the man who took one of the most iconic photos of our time. It was of a 12-year-old Afghan refugee girl who's piercing green eyes told us her harrowing story. The image itself was named "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the National Geographic magazine and her face became famous as the cover photograph on their June 1985 issue. Beyond just that one photo, McCurry has shot over a million images spanning 35 years. We Make It Good » Shintaro Ohata. Posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 by shilo Tags: 2D, 3D, Art, Japan, Painting, Sculpture, Shintaro Ohata Portraits of Dogs as They Shake Off Water - StumbleUpon For her series “Shake“, pet photographer Carli Davidson photographed curious portraits of dogs shaking off water. Use a fast shutter speed and you can capture all kinds of strange expressions on your dog’s face. You can find the rest of the photographs in the series here. Shake (via Photojojo) Image credits: Photographs by Carli Davidson and used with permission

A World Without People - In Focus For a number of reasons, natural and human, people have recently evacuated or otherwise abandoned a number of places around the world -- large and small, old and new. Gathering images of deserted areas into a single photo essay, one can get a sense of what the world might look like if humans were to vanish from the planet altogether. Collected here are recent scenes from nuclear-exclusion zones, blighted urban neighborhoods, towns where residents left to escape violence, unsold developments built during the real estate boom, ghost towns, and more. [41 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: