“May God grant to the living, grace
to the departed, rest
to the church & the world, peace and concord
and to us sinners, eternal life”

I’m not sure exactly where this is…a scan of a 35mm negative, taken in the summer of 1999 in London.

Story here.

This morning I had an assignment at the first Farmer’s Market of the season in downtown Abilene. Good times.

I had scheduled a senior pic shoot with a friend’s son yesterday evening, and I arrived a little early to the location, and snagged this shot of the “oldest angel” on Jacob’s ladder. The sculpture is pretty amazing in person, and if you are ever at ACU, be sure to stop by and check it out.

I had missed a few updates of the SlideShowPro for Lightroom plugin I am using to power the site, but the biggest problem was of my own doing.

A few weeks ago, my webhost (Bluehost, which has been excellent, by the way…) introduced a new feature called “Hotlink Prevention.” Hotlinking is basically when someone posts an image or a video stored on *your* site on *their* site. So, they are, in essence, using your storage space and bandwidth for their own nefarious, or non-nefarious deeds.

Thinking this is a good thing, I just went ahead and activated the service.

And everything seemed fine.

I didn’t put two and two together, though, until last week, when someone on a troubleshooting forum indicated this might be a problem. Apparently, I was preventing MYSELF from hotlinking images stored on my own server. Stupid, I know.

Anyway, the Portfolio site is back up and running, and everything seems to be performing smoothly. If you’re using a very small monitor, or very low resolution (anything below 1024×768), you may not be seeing things properly. But, you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time.

Stop by and check it out, let me know how it works for you and so on.

Peace, and Happy Thursday!

Yes, I have taken pictures of non-flower items lately.

No, I am not posting them.

Besides, after removing the colorful banner that my wife loved, I should make peace with her by posting photos of her roses.

Here’s a shot from back in 2005. Sara and I went to Boston for a few days to see what we could see, and we were very graciously hosted by a friend of a friend in an amazing apartment pretty much in the heart of the city.

I was still very much in the “learning the ropes” phase of my photography, and I was way into (too into?) shapes and lines and textures and contrast. I think it was a necessary phase, at least for me. I needed to focus on the smaller pieces of an image, to understand the elements, before I could begin putting them together.

So, every once in a while I like to go back and look at some of the stuff I did when I was just starting out. I have always been my own worst, harshest critic, and seeing some sort of improvement over the years reminds me that photography, like life, is a journey.

Links:

• David DuChemin, who seems to be in favor of blogging (for the right reasons, and in the right ways) has some good tips on blogging for photogs, and an exciting announcement about a new sponsor. Go David!
• Newly discovered/released images from Hiroshima. Warning: Not puppies and kittens!

So, I read the papers and the stories about this Zimbabwe election mess always stick out to me. And in a week where the news stories are dominated by images of the Myanmar cyclone disaster (rightly so), I am struck by the relative *lack* of images coming out of Zimbabwe.

I think this is because Robert Mugabe rightly fears the press, and while the written word may carry less weight than photos and videos these days, the power of the newspaper and magazine writers and photographers to sway local, regional and global opinion one way or the other is immense.

There is also news that Andrew Mwenda, the TED Award winning journalist from Uganda, has been arrested recently in Kampala for publishing his independent newspaper which included unflattering remarks about President Museveni. I have heard, too, that President Kagame of Rwanda has limited the freedoms of the press in his country, opting for more social control than freedom (which may be necessary in the short term).

All of that to say, I am reminded, once again, of the power of images. When photographs come out that show what is really happening in places like Zimbabwe and Myanmar and Kenya, things are more likely to change. While others may feel differently about this, I believe the freedom of the press is one of the greatest things about this country.

And we should use our global influence (whatever is left) to encourage other nations to develop this belief in their own governments. It cannot be exported at the tip of a bayonet or cruise missile, but the U.S. and other countries could lead my example.

My apologies for the disjointed thoughts…just ranting and reflecting out loud here….

Links:

• Committee to Protect Journalists’ “Impunity Index”
• Reporters Without Borders
• RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index Rankings

Just playing around with the point-and-shoot…

Apparently it caused some to wish to gouge out their eyes with dining implements, and that’s not the sort of vibe we’re going for around here.

I happened to have this photo of me hiding behind my 40D and 24-70mm lens with its mammoth lens hood, so I worked it up into a header image. I’m not 100% pleased with it, but it will do for now.

RIP, header of brightness and joy. It was a good one week and one day run. Say hello to all the other headers up in Header Heaven for me.