This Well-Known Hair Stylist Spends His Day Off Giving Haircuts to the Homeless

Mark Bustos is a hair stylist based in New York City. Currently, Mark works at the swanky Three Squares Studio, which  has been featured in magazines like GQ, Details and Vanity Fair, among others.

But on his day off, you won’t find Mark shmoozing with his high-end customers. Rather, you’ll find him walking the streets of the city, offering free professional-level haircuts to homeless people.

#BeAwesomeToSomebody#NYC

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 31, 2014 at 7:10am PDT

The idea started back in May of 2012, when Mark took a trip back to his family’s native home in the Philippines.

While there, he rented out a chair in a local barbershop to give haircuts to underprivileged kids.

According to Mark, he meant it as a tribute to his girlfriend’s late father, who had always gotten his haircuts at that shop.

#tbt to that time a few years ago I had the opportunity to work in a 100+ degree barbershop in my hometown province in the Philippines giving free haircuts to less fortunate children. This day started the movement. #BeAwesomeToSomebody

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 24, 2014 at 8:17am PDT

During his time in the Philippines, one boy’s reaction really stuck with Mark:

“My most vivid memory of one particular child’s reaction was a simple smile… He was 12 years old, and so shy, and rarely made eye contact with anybody. He had no shoes on his feet and looked extremely rough and callused.

“During his haircut, he looked upset the entire time and didn’t look up once, until the cut was complete. One man in the shop said, ‘Now you look like you’re from NYC!’ He looked up and cracked the most unforgettable smile.”

This experience stuck with Mark, who decided to continue the tradition when he returned home to NYC.

#BeAwesomeToSomebody

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Aug 6, 2014 at 6:19am PDT

Now, every Sunday, you can find Mark on the streets of New York, looking for somebody who looks like they could use a random act of kindness.

One of Mark’s biggest motivations is giving these people a boost in confidence and the chance to be treated with some dignity:

“I do believe people with a proper, professional haircut receive more respect than those who do not have a proper haircut… Having a proper haircut also gives the recipient much more confidence.”

#BeAwesomeToSomebody

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jun 26, 2014 at 1:14pm PDT

Mark didn’t always take pictures of his free haircuts, but decided to start doing so recently in the hopes that he could, “inspire others to do great things for fellow human beings.”

But when it all comes down to it, Mark is simply motivated by the desire to be a positive force in the world:

“There is so much negativity in this world today, and I just simply wanted to bring some positive energy and hope into this world.”

Jemar Banks. Tompkins Square Park. 💸💸💸

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jun 19, 2014 at 11:09am PDT

street cleaning rules are in FULL effect . #BeAwesomeToSomebody#NYC

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 11, 2014 at 2:00pm PDT

Best Mother's Day gift I ever gave to anyone ! #BeAwesomeToSomebody

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 14, 2014 at 9:00am PDT

#BeAwesomeToSomebody#NYC

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 31, 2014 at 7:10am PDT

"If we all do one random act of kindness daily, we just might set the world in the right direction"

A post shared by Mark Bustos (@markbustos) on Jul 14, 2014 at 7:13pm PDT

“If we all do one random act of kindness daily, we just might set the world in the right direction.”

(h/t TODAY.com)

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How Ultraviolet Light Reveals All the Secrets Buried Just Below Your Skin (Video)

Ultraviolet or UV radiation is the radiation released by the sun. While the sun’s energy is obvious extremely important for our survival, the UV rays it emits can damage our skin over time.

Examining your skin through an ultraviolet lens can reveal things you never knew were there (a lot of people have freckles they can’t see).

It can also reveal changes and/or damage to the skin that is still invisible under normal light. Check it out in this awesome video posted by artist and photographer Thomas Leveritt:

Wikipedia Has Refused to Remove This Monkey Selfie Because ‘The Monkey Owns It’

If a monkey takes your camera from you and snaps a selfie of itself, who owns the picture?

That is the question being argued right now after Wikipedia refused to remove a monkey selfie from its website. Nature photographer David Slater (who’s camera captured the image) requested it be taken down due to copyright infringement.

In 2011, David was in Indonesia trying to capture a perfect shot of the crested black macaque. He set up his camera on a tripod in the hopes that he could get a better shot of the monkeys if he was further away.

David Slater with the crested black macaques which were the focus of his photography excursion to Indonesia (Photo: David Slater)

But then something unexpected happened: one of the more curious macaques went right up to his camera equipment to investigate. Then, it took the camera off the tripod and started snapping pictures. It ended up taking hundreds of selfies.

Though most of the pictures were blurry and out of focus, a few them were seriously incredible, including the now viral image of the smiling macaque below:

The disputed image is on the right. The image on the left is just another fabulous selfie snapped by the inquisitive macaque. Click to enlarge (Photo: David Slater/Wikimedia Commons/The Monkey Itself?? I don’t even know)

The problems began after Wikipedia uploaded the image to its Wikimedia Commons database. Wikimedia Commons is a collection of 23 million royalty-free images and videos that are free for public use online.

Earlier this year, Slater asked Wikipedia to remove the image, saying that he owned the copyright to the monkey selfie and that the image’s availability on Wikipedia was jeopardizing his opportunity to make money off of it.

But Wikipedia denied his request, saying that since the monkey was the one who actually took the picture, Slater can’t own the image. In their denial letter, Wikipedia said,

“To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they’d only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image. This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain.”

Another image of the macaques captured by Slater during his excursion. Click to enlarge (Photo: David Slater)

They also said that “non-human authors” don’t have the right to automatically claim the copyrights to a photo just because it was taken using their equipment.

Slater disagrees with Wikipedia’s take on copyrights, but he also appealed to them as a photographer, pointing out that his work is extremely expensive and only produces an iconic shot (one which he can actually make money off of) every once in a while:

“That trip cost me about £2,000 [~$3,355] for that monkey shot. Not to mention the £5,000 [~$8,387] of equipment I carried, the insurance, the computer stuff I used to process the images. Photography is an expensive profession that’s being encroached upon. They’re taking our livelihoods away…

For every 10,000 images I take, one makes money that keeps me going. And that was one of those images. It was like a year of work, really.”

Wikimedia’s editors are still divided on the issue. It’s most likely that the copyright debate will be solved in court.

Read the original story from The Telegraph here.

Capturing the Hidden Alien Worlds Inside of Gemstones (Photo Gallery)

Danny J. Sanchez is obsessed with gemstones. He says this fascination with minerals has been with him since he was a kid.

In 2004, Danny enrolled in the “Graduate Gemologist” program at the Gemological Institute of America.

It was during this program that Danny first saw pictures of the interior structures of gemstones through powerful microscopes. Specifically, Danny was fascinated with gemstone inclusions.

Danny J. Sanchez poses with one of his recently published photos  (From his Instagram @mineralalien)

A gemstone inclusion is when a characteristic (either a different type of mineral/compound or a distinct crystal pattern) gets caught within the formation of a larger gem. Danny describes inclusions as “gems within gems”.

“I’m not sure, exactly, what the first photo of gemstone inclusions that I saw was but I know that once I saw it, I was hooked. Soon after that, in 2006, I bought my first microscope and started this hobby in earnest,”

he said in an interview with Sploid’s Jesus Diaz.

You can check out some of his photos below:

Clinochlore in Quartz

Quartz with black inclusions within negative crystals

Rutile on Hematite in Quartz

Dolomite in Quartz

Negative crystals in Amethyst

Flourite in Quartz

Muscovite in Quartz

Negative crystal in Spinel

Petroleum in Quartz 1

Petroleum in Quartz 2

Pyrite in Quartz

Rutile in Sapphire

This hobby isn’t something that Danny just picked up overnight. It has taken a lot of time and money for him to put together the rig that he uses for his photography.

He told Sploid,

“I’m definitely a gadget-head. I even belong to a Facebook group dedicated to “gadgetry”. It’s in my blood to tinker and build, dissect and re-arrange. Putting together the rig that I use to photograph has been tedious and not inexpensive.”

But with the help of, “private vendors, online friends around the world, Craigslist and a lot of Ebay,” Danny was able to learn about the photography process while simultaneously assembling the necessary gadgetry.

When he first started off, he was focused on capturing specific gemstone inclusions, but as time passed his perspective began to change:

“…as I worked more and more, trying to photograph these gems within gems, I realized that the real joy and real challenge was trying to capture the sense of space that these inclusions inhabit.

Through the scope, it’s truly an other worldly scene where scale is thrown out (of) the window and if I can capture that in a way that leaves people wondering if what they’re looking at is real or not, or big or small, that image is a success.”

Check out the original story from Sploid here.

For more of his work, check out Danny’s website here.

If These Photos of Dogs Underwater Don’t Make You Smile, Nothing Will (Photo Gallery)

Seth Casteel is a photographer based out of Chicago and Los Angeles who specializes in taking pictures of animals.

Though he photographs all types of animals, dogs are one of his favorite subjects. A few years back, he shot a series of photos of dogs playing underwater. Check out the pictures below (click an image to enlarge):

The success of the photos landed him a book deal, and the photo-book “Underwater Dogs” was released in October of 2012.

Casteel’s photography company, Little Friend’s Photography, specializes in lifestyle pet photography. Casteel describes this art form as,

“embracing the at-ease mentality of pets on location in the natural surroundings.”

You can check out more of Casteel’s work on Little Friend’s Photography’s website here.

(h/t CBS News)

Why It Took 32 Days and 126 Separate Photos to Capture This 3,200 Year Old Sequoia In One Image

“The President” is one of the world’s largest, oldest and most famous trees.

This giant sequoia is located in the only place giant sequoias are found: on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.

The President is surrounded by smaller trees, which are referred to as the “House” and “Senate” to stick with the political theme. It is approximately 3,200 years old and measures 247 feet high, 27 feet in diameter, and 45,000 cubic meters in volume.

The base of The President’s trunk dwarfs nearby trees and makes the man standing next to it look like an action figure. Click to enlarge

Because of its massive size, the tree had never been captured in a single image. That is, until a group of National Geographic scientists and photographers got together to study and photograph the iconic tree back in 2012.

The team battled cold temperatures while putting together intricate pulley and lever systems to scale the tree. It took a total of 32 days and 126 individual frames to stitch together a full, single image of the tree. It is the first full image of The President ever:

The first single image of The President. Click to enlarge

The video below includes footage from those 32 days and shows how the image above came together:

Check out some more images of The President below:

(h/t Distractify)

Why Were These Cars Abandoned In the Forests of Belgium for 70 Years? (Photo Gallery)

In the forests near Chatillon, a small village in southern Belgium, lie between 100-150 dilapidated and decaying cars.

During World War II, a number of American troops were stationed in Chatillon. Urban legends claim that when the war ended, the troops being sent home didn’t have the money to ship their vehicles back with them, so they hid them in the Belgian forest.

This story is likely just a myth, though. Locals claim that the car graveyard was simply an old car dump from after the war. Whatever the real story is, the vehicles have been slowly reclaimed by nature over the past 70 years. Check out some images of the car cemetery below:

There were once four car graveyards in the Chatillon area, with as many as 500 vehicles. Unfortunately, many of the vehicles were stolen or stripped by locals, and environmental issues eventually led to the closing of the other three car cemeteries in 2010.

(h/t Amusing Planet and Bored Panda)