Colorful underwater life by Nasty Natski

About the project:

Inspired by the art of diaphonization, hand painted paper and card are carefully sliced and layered to recreate just a few of my favorite aquatic creatures.

You can follow her here on Tumblr.

Selections from The Fish Book by Ernest Goh

Fish Lamps by Frank Gehry

About the project:

The Fish Lamps evolved from a 1983 commission by the Formica Corporation to create objects from the then-new plastic laminate ColorCore. After accidentally shattering a piece of it while working, he was inspired by the shards, which reminded him of fish scales. The first Fish Lamps, which were fabricated between 1984 and 1986, employed wire armatures molded into fish shapes, onto which shards of ColorCore are individually glued, creating clear allusions to the morphic attributes of real fish.

Since the creation of the first lamp in 1984, the fish has become a recurrent motif in Gehry’s work, as much for its “good design” as its iconographical and natural attributes. Its quicksilver appeal informs the undulating, curvilinear forms of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997); the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago (2004); and the Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel in Elciego, Spain (2006) as well as the Fish Sculpture at Vila Olímpica in Barcelona (1989–92) and Standing Glass Fish for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (1986).

Illustrations from the National Geographic archive presently on display at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York through February 16, 2013.

About the exhibition:

Steven Kasher Gallery is proud to present the exhibition National Geographic: The Past and Future Present. It is the gallery’s fifth show of works from the National Geographic archives, but our first that presents vintage illustrations side by side with vintage photographs. The one hundred works presented span the entire 20th century.

Themes explored include Past Civilizations, the Age of the Dinosaur, Space Travel, Native American Cultures, American Industry, the Sea, and Flora and Fauna. National Geographic: The Past and Future Present juxtaposes photographic images taken from life, botanical studies drawn from live specimens, and depictions of the past and the future, imagined but unseen. These juxtapositions will highlight changing visions of natural and human history as they have evolved over the twelve decades of the Society’s image making.

Outstanding underwater photography by Octavio Aburto

Beautiful ocean prints for your home from SevenElevenStudios on Etsy.

Fish photos by Visarute Angkatavanich

Wayne Levin proves that underwater photography doesn’t have to be colorful to be spectacular.

Underwater Landscape Photos from National Geographic’s amazing collection.

Beautiful underwater photography by Pedro GoniO

Images from Ocean Soul, a National Geographic book of photography by Brian Skerry

About the book:

Ocean Soul is a love story. It is a story of discovery. It is a story of hope. The story begins when a boy who loves the sea attends an event with underwater photographers and has an epiphany: “I had always wanted to explore the oceans, but I now understood how I would do this. I would do it with a camera.” With sheer deter­mination, hard work, and a little bit of luck the boy, named Brian Skerry, realized his dream with more than 20 awe-inspiring articles for National Geographic magazine. Now, with Ocean Soul, he showcases his stunning photography and describes his adventurous life in a gripping portrait of the ocean as a place of beauty and mystery, a place in trouble, and ultimately, a place of hope that will rebound with the proper attention and care.

Some of the Masters of Undersea Camouflage Photos put together in a wonderful gallery by National Geographic.

A few of the 25 New Reef Fish Found from the fascinating gallery by National Geographic featuring images from the new three-volume book set, Reef Fishes of the East Indies.

Feathers and fins from the beautiful paper art of Lisa Rodden

Images from In focus: The incredible shoals of sardines, a terrific Wired gallery with high resolution images by Nadya Kulagina that you can zoom in and scroll around in. They capture moments from the “shoal run”, an annual event from May through to July when billions of sardines spawn in the cool waters of southern Africa and move north along the east coast of the Philippines and into the Indian Ocean.