9 haunting photos of nature reclaiming forgotten structures.
Photographer Rebecca Skinner has made a career by going places most people have forgotten.
She says she grew up on a farm and was always fascinated with inspecting the old cars her dad left sitting out in the yard or creeping around the old falling down barn.
As she got older, she ventured farther and farther into the unknown. She learned to work a camera, and she'd take it with her as she explored old factories, burned buildings, shut-down schools. Pretty much anywhere she knew she'd be alone.
"It's quiet. There's no people around," she says. "It's totally a different world, really, when you go into some of these places."
Some of Skinner's favorite moments are when she finds little bits of nature slowly overcoming these forgotten man-made structures.
A flower pushing through a crack in some stone. A tree in the middle of a closed-up factory.
"It's kind of sad," she says. "Some of these places are so beautiful and to see them getting taken over and falling apart is sad."
But maybe it's a sort of new life for many of these places, destined to be demolished or slowly decay. Instead, they find a new purpose and become beautiful again, though in a different way.
Here are some of Skinner's all-time favorite shots.
1. Small trees reach for sunlight inside an old school.
All photos by Rebecca Skinner, used with permission.
2. Water pools and overcomes the inside of this factory.
3. This truck loses what looks to have been a very long battle with some thick brush.
4. An overturned vehicle shelters a small tree.
5. Plant life bursts from the seams of an old carseat back.
6. Small ferns push through a pile of broken china.
7. Moss creeps its way slowly across this abandoned room.
8. Vines sprout through a broken factory window.
9. A chair sits, soon to be swallowed up by new life.
Skinner says the first time she ever photographed an abandoned house, a man with a shotgun showed up out of nowhere, asking what she was doing there.
(He was nice once she explained why she was there.)
Another time, while exploring an old river mill, she nearly stepped through a hole in the floor that would have dunked her into the river below.
Needless to say, it's dangerous work. But Skinner thinks it's important to photograph these places, these moments, before they're gone for good.
"These places are going so quickly," she says. "Every time I see some place I want to photograph, it might be gone the next time."
If her photos prove anything, it's that the world will always keep spinning and that the resiliency of Mother Nature is absolutely beautiful to behold.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.