All photos © Bernard Edmaier. Mount Merapi at dusk, Central Java, Indonesia.

“Every time a volcano erupts, we are violently reminded that we live on a fireball,” geologist Angelika Jung-Hüttl writes in the introduction to Bernard Edmaier’s new book, Earth on Fire: How Volcanoes Shape Our Planet, recently published by Phaidon. Texts by Jung-Hüttl that discuss how volcanic activity has altered the natural landscape in beautiful and fearsome ways accompany beautiful aerial photographs Edmaier took throughout the world. Photographers will appreciate Edmaier’s large-format images of volcanic eruptions, lava floes and other fiery activity in places like Mount Etna, Sicily, and his more abstract, artistic compositions depicting land formations and other geological phenomena, like the Painted Hills in Oregon’s John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, which were formed as layer upon layer of volcanic ash settled in the area millions of years ago. (more…)

© George Steinmetz.

Aerial view of chains of star dunes near Omani border with three cars. “Vein” dunes are formed by strong winds, primarily from the ESE, which blow orange-colored sand into long ridges across the salt flats or sabkha. Here the Uruq dunes take the form of a chain of individual star dunes, a rare and poorly understood phenomenon. To find more information on Empty Quarter published by Abrams click here.

© Byron Hetzler

The International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis create streaks of light in the sky as they pass over Byers Canyon west of Hot Sulphur Springs, Colo., on Wednesday evening, Nov. 25, while traveling at more than 17,000-miles per hour and more than 200 miles above the Earth in this 30-second exposure.  The shuttle had undocked from the space station earlier in the day, but remained in the same orbit as the space station, which created the two separate streaks. To see more of Byron’s work click here.

Winter Stories #6, 2007 © Paolo Ventura/Courtesy of Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, NYC

Paolo Ventura’s Winter Stories are narratives set in a small fictional Tuscan village in the early 1950’s; an imagined place full of dream-like memories. A reception for the artist will be on Wednesday, December 9th, 6–8pm. Winter Stories will be on view December 10, 2009–January 23, 2010, at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, 537 West 24th Street, New York City. The exhibit is in conjunction with the release of a new monograph Winter Stories, published by Aperture.