Photoblogging 1
One year ago, when I discovered Flickr, I wasn't taking a lot of photos. I had a digital camera, for vacations and work, but apart from the occasional burst of pictures on my way to the office, there was no documentation of my day-to-day life. After a while, taking loads of photos and just dumping them into iPhoto for posterity became tedious, like cooking for one.
Flickr was just the first of two significant catalysts that started me off as a photoblogger; it gave me the tools to publish. Three days later, I went to the second NYC Photobloggers event at the Apple Store, which sealed the deal. I've been taking pictures almost every day since then, and working to become a better photographer. Each of the presenters at NYCPB2 was really impressive, but there were three NYC photobloggers speaking that day who I think about a lot when I shoot and edit:
- David Gallagher, of lightningfield.com, whose mailing-list method of photoblogging was so catchy that it almost obscured his work as the best cameraphone photographer in New York.
- Keith Kin Yan, of overshadowed.com, and his infectious love for The Image. His attention to details of composition and color is inspiring.
- Eliot Shepard, of slower.net. I'm a huge Eliot Shepard fan. He takes fantastic, honest photos of people, and he wrote his own epic photoblog system to showcase them. Eliot's work as a photographer and a programmer has been a tremendous influence on my work as a photoblogger.
This Friday is the fifth installment of the NYC Photobloggers series at the Apple Store, and marks what I consider the one-year anniversary of my work as a photoblogger. I will be there (sitting quietly, not speaking) as I was a year ago, with a slightly better camera and nine hundred posted photos to my name.
In the next couple of weeks, I'll post some thoughts on what I've learned from all this, and where I'm going with it.
inspirations-ish , photo-ish , photoblogging-ish by tangentialist at 01:13 PM on 27 Sep 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me My Ass Was This Big?
It's not that I didn't care about users of Internet Explorer before today (I do, though I always urge them to try Firefox instead). I don't own a PC, and Virtual PC is a pain in the ass, so I have been living in denial about the look and feel of tangentialism for my Intel-based colleagues, and I am now deeply contrite. Thanks to BrowserCam, this site is now marginally legible for users of IE 5 and above, I hope. Additional thanks are due to my friend Genevieve, who is clearly the only Explorer user who didn't look at the site and simply go "pfft... loser."
If you're an IE loyalist just arriving here, let this post serve as a reminder of just how much I care about people who aren't like me--a liberal, elitist Mac user with nothing better to do than write paragraphs about ice cream shop trademarks and unemployed television journalists. By the way, you should try Firefox instead.
browsers-ish , css-ish , meta-ish by tangentialist at 03:41 PM on 19 Sep 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
New Orleans
It's too hard to compose in a blog post my thoughts on what is happening to New Orleans. I don't think I ever would have expected the extent of unmitigated human suffering that has unfolded over the last week, even in light of New Orleans' vulnerability. The scale of loss and human trauma--especially on the part of the victims who were and are trapped in the city--is tragic, unnecessary, and infuriating.
My thoughts go out in particular to my colleague Nick, whose family was fortunate enough to be able to escape. They're worried about their home, and what they will return to, and when, and how they will weather their separation from New Orleans and each other until all this has passed. For them, and for every citizen of the city, I hope it passes swiftly, and that it gets better before it gets worse.
Not that you haven't been prodded a thousand times already in the last five days, but Charity Navigator is a good place to start as you decide how to help.
charity-ish , hurricane-ish , new orleans-ish , tragedy-ish by tangentialist at 05:50 PM on 02 Sep 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)