Seflie-stick photographers can make themselves targets in theft-prone tourist areas, so in case of mugging, one Moscow martial arts center is teaching travelers who to wield said sticks as weapons. Of course, retraining to use these tools as weapons is not as simple as point and shoot.

Still, the telescoping mobile phone-holders are in many regards already quite like certain extendable police batons, and it makes a strange kind of sense to turn them on attackers (indeed, they have already been banned from places like Disneyworld for fear of their use as weapons).

Daria Lapshina of the M-Profi martial arts centre in the Russian capital told the M24 website that tourists have been the target for attacks in many countries “and the only means of defence that all travellers have is the selfie stick.”

The aim is to train people to defend against all kinds of attacks, including from those with experience boxing, wrestling or practicing mixed martial arts or other fighting styles. At the very least, unsuspecting muggers may find themselves with an unwanted fight on their hands, and may choose flight over combat.

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Seeing photos of your friends’ travels is great – but when your Instagram and Facebook feeds are all full of the same landmarks over and over it can get old rather quickly. Designer Philipp Schmitt came up with a way to combat this burnout: he invented a disobedient camera that won’t take pictures in places where too many have been taken before. Want to take a photo from the top of the Empire State Building or in front of the Eiffel Tower? Tough luck, because about ten billion other people have beat you to it.

Camera Restricta uses GPS tracking to determine where it is. It constantly scans the internet to find photos geotagged with nearby locations. Looking at the screen, you can see how many pictures have been taken in your current spot and whether any more pictures are allowed to be taken there. Schmitt doesn’t divulge how many pictures of a given spot constitute “too many,” but we’re assuming it’s relative based on the accessibility and popularity of any given place.

If the camera decides that the place you’re in has become too cliched a snapshot site, it will refuse to work. A large red X will appear when you look through the viewfinder, and if you try to push the shutter button anyway, the shutter will retract and you’ll be shut down. This can add a kind of sense of adventure to your photos, as you never know when you’ll be the very first or the very last person to be allowed to take a photo of that scene.

This concept is a weird form of futuristic censorship in which the recording of our own memories takes a backseat to “originality.” The inventor also notes that the idea could be used by businesses or government entities that want to restrict photography in certain places. It’s unlikely that this type of technology will make its way into consumer cameras anytime soon, but this 3D printed prototype might be a glimpse into our future as tourists.

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Photography is part skill, part timing, and a great deal of luck, as the photographer of this incredible scene from nature knows first hand, having captured an stunning series of images showing a crow riding an eagle.

Poo Chan has a great deal of wildlife photography experience, but he would never have guessed that these two birds – both with strong personalities and not known for normal interactions – might align in flight for such a strange moment. And if you like this photo, be sure to check the link above – he is amazing at capturing animals in motion, even aside from this once-in-a-lifetime set of shots.

From the photographer: “Crows are known for aggressively harassing other raptors that are much bigger in size when spotted in their territories and usually these ‘intruders’ simply retreat without much fuss. However, in this frame the crow did not seem to harass the bald eagle at such close proximity and neither did the bald eagle seem to mind the crow’s presence invading its personal space. What made it even more bizarre was that the crow even made a brief stop on the back of the eagle as if it was taking a free scenic ride and the eagle simply obliged.”

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Shot by astronaut Alexander Gerst and published by the European Space Agency, this remarkable series of shots (captured during a sleep cycle) makes the International Space Station look dark and deserted.

Various static night lights cast the scenes in haunting blues and greens, making the entire place feel as much like a low-illuminated movie set or post-collision space ship filled with faux clutter as an actual living quarters for half a dozen space-faring humans.

One could imagine that in the cramped quarters of this station, skulking about at night might provide some much-needed privacy for residents – aside, that is, from the creepy empty suits tethered to the walls float like eerie alien corpses.

Astronauts aboard the ISS follow GMT, syncing their sleeping patterns to a single time zone. Geoff Manaugh paints the scene with words: “The dimly lit corridors of this house of sleeping astronauts take on the atmosphere of film noir, as if this is secretly a crime scene, still flickering with the last lights of its drained batteries, and these are the first photos to be taken upon arrival.”

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Using sections of the International Space Station as stationary points, this incredible photo shoot turns both outer space and our own planet into a series of surreal and otherworldly landscapes.

Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit relayed some information about photographic techniques used to achieve the images: “My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”

The results are nothing short of stunning – the Earth’s surface becomes streaked with color and light, punctuated by what appear to be blotches of lightning or blurred cityscapes, but overall looking more linear like (Jupiter or) some other celestial body.

Naturally, only pieces of the ISS itself look static in each shot, creating a stark contrast between a fixed foreground and spiraling set of backgrounds (though, in reality, the station itself is also rotating – it is all relative). Armatures of the station end up open to interpretation, in some cases looking like the needle on a record player hovering above a spinning disk.

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