For a hobbyist, photographer Tzvika Stein captures some remarkable images around the world. It's hard to top his cool drone photos of the Dead Sea, which look like another planet.
Behind the beauty are some troubling trends. He writes:
The Dead Sea is going through rough times to put it mildly. Due to the factories in the area that keep extracting minerals from the salty sea, the sea level keeps receding. One side effect of that are sinkholes that are a direct result of the descent of the water level which causes cavities where the land collapses into itself. The sinkholes make it dangerous for people to walk around in the area since the ground might collapse beneath them. Many have died in the past from exactly that.
Being a landscape photographer I made countless trips to the beautiful Dead Sea to photograph it. At the beginning I only shot with my DSLR but lately I started using my DJI Mavic Pro drone to photograph the sinkholes in places I was afraid to walk in or couldn't even reach.
Looking from above I was fascinated to see the amazing colors that I never even knew were there. But even more amazing was to see shapes that reminded me very much of the human body. I saw sinkholes shaped like crying eyes; one shaped like a heart; a stream of water that looked like a bleeding artery with a blood clot due to the color of the soil; two adjacent streams in blue and red colors reminded me of the aorta; sinkholes in green and yellow colors that reminded me of the digestive system.
I think that though it's very beautiful from above it's a high price to pay for beauty.
Check out more of his work on Instagram:
• ttzvika (via Flickr / Tzvika Stein)
