The Longest Run

Bayou City Farmers Market, Houston, March 2009 Had a long talk yesterday with a friend who is interested in taking the plunge and buying a digital SLR. I put together some notes for her about links and products I've found useful which I figured I'd share with all of you as well. As I said to her, I love talking and sharing photography, so let me know if you have any questions. Photography blogs: www.kenrockwell.com (I don't love his tone all the time, but he tends to zero in on what's really worth paying for. There's a Nikon link on his home page which will show you all his Nikon stuff. Photoshop Insider www.bythom.com (particularly good for Nikon stuff) http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/ (check out his video work - particularly a short movie called Requiem - as an example of what can be done with a digital slr with video capabilities B & H Photo - my favorite NYC camera store. Very good and very reliable - be sure you look for products with a USA w...

Photography meets surfing: Vincent Laforet's blog . You know from previous posts ( If You Have 10 Minutes..... and Photography.... ) that I am a big fan of Laforet. The blog has recently covered a project to film a surfer - Jamie O'Brien - in Hawaii. The posts are a combination of some great video as well as behind-the-scenes details on Laforet's approach to the project. Links to more links: 10 Hot Photography Tips and Tutorials from 2008 and 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know . From Digital Photography School .

I'm a big fan of the Boston Globe's Big Picture series. Check out these three posts on their best pictures of the year as there are some amazing photos. 2008, the year in photographs (part 1 of 3) 2008, the year in photographs (part 2 of 3) 2008, the year in photographs (part 3 of 3) One of my favorite pictures is this one .

Check out the new feature at washingtonpost.com : Political Browser . Perfect for political junkies, it's a view to the stories around the web considered most noteworthy by the staff of the Post (whether those stories are WP stories or not). I discovered Political Browser via the Publishing 2.0 blog - see washingtonpost.com’s Political Browser Uses the News Judgment of Journalists to Filter the Political Web Related articles by Zemanta Washington Post Launching "Political Browser"

....and you are interested in photography, check out this New York Times slideshow about photographing the recent political conventions. I came across the slideshow on my new favorite photography blog: Vincent Laforet's appropriately titled Vincent Laforet's Blog . And yes, Laforet is the guy with the fantastic Beijing Olympics photos ......

With so much interesting weather these days, I've been looking a lot at weather web sites. A couple of new ones to me (via Lifehacker): Stormpulse and Umbrella Today? . Also, over at The Big Picture , there's a great picture series of hurricanes as seen from space orbit . One of my favorites is this one: Photo via The Big Picture .

Joe McNally is a photographer who is well-known for the magic stuff he does with lighting. I came across a long entry on his blog today that I wanted to share with you. The entry, which is called Welcome Adorama! and concerns his efforts to maintain a group of photos he took for a project called Faces of Ground Zero, is an interesting story and has some great pictures. This post follows one from last week called Rollin' With The Pride of Midtown ; if you are interested in photography you'll enjoy his detailed description of how he captured this fantastic image of a firefighter driving his rig through Times Square. Even if you're not interested in the process you should still check out the photo! McNally published a book earlier this year called The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One Of The World's Top Shooters . I recommend it highly.

Over at Photoshop Insider , today's guest blogger - John Nack, the senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop - has a great post responding to Photoshop Insider's poll asking users what new features they'd like to see in the Photoshop product. The post is a fascinating interesting inside look inside the innovation/product development process and the tradeoff between giving customers what they want as opposed to giving them tools they didn't even know they needed. There are parallels here to book publishing as well, where there's a sense that it's the publisher's role to be a tastemaker for the consumer - to select and publish books in anticipation of interests readers might not be able to identify.

For those of you interested in phototgraphy, last Sunday's New York Times had a great article by Virginia Heffernan on Flickr and the emergence of a 'flickr style'. The article's opening paragraph really grabbed me: Let’s face facts: the Web, after nearly 20 years, has failed to uncover new masters of noble art forms like poetry, sculpture and the airport thriller. But it has engendered — for good or ill — new forms of creative expression. Blogs and viral videos are only the most obvious. Fan fiction, wikis, Flash animation and Second Life avatars are a few more. People don’t upload to the Web words and images they had fashioned apart from the Web; they fashion their stuff specifically for online platforms and audiences. Check the links in the article to see some terrific photos on flickr - very inspirational!

I'm down in Baltimore, MD for work for a couple of days; I'll be in our distribution center, mostly doing a series of Q & A sessions with staff to highlight how things are going in our business and in our area (operations & technology). Taking the train down this morning gave me the chance to catch up on some reading, and I came across some things I wanted to share with you. For fans of American Idol, this New York Times article is full of great trivia. While I've watched the odd episode of the show over the years, I've never watched a full season until this year. I'm really enjoying the show and especially connecting with other people who are fans (you know who you are!). Tonight's show will feature the final six contestants doing the music of my close friend (!) Andrew Lloyd Webber; that should be interesting. I'm mostly in agreement with this reporter's take on the remaining contestants, though I'd move Jason Castro down to the bottom of...