Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

These have already been flying around Facebook, but for those of you out of that particular loop, here’s photos from last weekend’s “Every Day is Halloween” costume night at Vogue Night…

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

President Barack Obama, right, is congratulated by daughter Sasha, lower left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on after taking the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. AP Photo/Susan Walsh (January 20, 2009)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

My (still in progress) set of photos from this winter’s bizarre weather can be found right here. I’ve got another day’s worth of shots to put in when I get a chance, but that may not happen for another few days or so.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’m all for giving attribution for the goodies people find on the ‘net, letting readers know where the information comes from, acknowledging that links to cool stuff don’t just spontaneously appear, but are usually passed on from person to person and website to website.

Unfortunately, sometimes the process of tracing those breadcrumbs back when you actually want to get a little more information is an exercise in frustration.

For instance:

1. Boing Boing posts about a silly little photography gadget that they saw over at…

2. LikeCool, who have a tiny little “via” link (that I almost missed as it was buried under a stack of Google ads) that links to…

3. Gizmodo, who finally link back to…

4. Photojojo, who actually sell the silly thing, and have things like tech specs, adapter info, and so on.

In LikeCool’s defense, they did link directly to Photojojo’s page in the text of their post, but I missed that link on my first readthrough (the forest green link text wasn’t enough of a contrast difference to the black body text to catch my eye on the first skim).

Would it be too much trouble to say “I read about this here, and you can buy it or get more info here,” instead of forcing your readers to jump through multiple hoops? By the time I found my way to the source page, I’d pretty much lost interest in it. Besides, it looks more creepy than amusing or useful.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

It took a while, but I finally got my photos from the Puyallup Fair processed and uploaded. Prairie and I went on a whim late in the summer, and had a really good day wandering around the fairgrounds. We didn’t go on any rides, but did play some of the carny games, got some cotton candy, looked at exhibits, and had a blast watching the Mutton Bustin’!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Human Cannonball, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Another multi-image collage to tide things over while I try to get caught up with photos. I’ve never seen a human cannonball before, and actually didn’t even know this was still done. Pretty cool to see! It’s hard to see at this size, but on the top right image, you can actually see smoke and flame coming out of the barrel of the cannon as he exits.

View Larger On Black

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Six Seconds of Cute, originally uploaded by djwudi.

This was one of the best things we saw at the Puyallup fair. Put a kid no older than six (the youngest we saw was three) and no heavier than sixty pounds on a sheep and let them try to hang on for six seconds. Really cute, and really funny!

I took a ton of pictures of this, and now I’m having a terrible time trying to cull them down to just a few that are post-worthy. They’re just all so cute…and kind of hilariously disturbing, since it’s essentially a series of young children falling on their heads. The kind of thing you know you really shouldn’t laugh at, but….

Anyway, I put together this collage as a sample of what each round looked like.

Best Viewed Larger and On Black

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A few weekends ago, Prairie and I went down to visit family south of us: her mom and sister in Vancouver, WA; my brother and his family in Corvallis, OR; then Prairie’s dad and grandpa in Woodland, WA on our way back up to Seattle.

I’ve finally finished putting all the photos from the weekend up in a photoset. Here’s my nephews Paul and Noah to kick things off!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

In happier news: first photos of the new apartment!

Here’s what you see when you walk in the front door. Bookshelves along the rear wall, the deck (which has become our favorite spot for breakfast and dinner, thanks to the patio furniture that Prairie’s dad gifted us with), our new couch and chair (brand-new furniture, right from a furniture store — we’re really turning into adults, aren’t we?), the fireplace, entertainment center, and dining room.

Another view of the living room, this time from the door to the deck. The three bookshelves on the right will gain a fourth as soon as we can add one, every shelf on those is double-stacked with books.

My office. In the last apartment, my office doubled as the guest room, but now it’s primarily just my office, only acting as a secondary guest room when we have enough guests to need it.

That’s because with a three-bedroom apartment, Prairie now gets an office of her own, instead of having to camp out in a corner of the living room, and her office is now the main guest room. It’s also very girly and pink, which is just the way she wanted it!

There’s also two bathrooms — but those are bathrooms, and not terribly exciting to take pictures of — and our bedroom, which we don’t feel needs to be broadcast to the world. That’s our room, after all.

We’re really enjoying this apartment. Lots of space, not nearly as cramped, and as we specified wanting a corner or end unit, we’ve got enough windows to get a good breeze keeping the place cool at all times. Since we’re on the third floor, the trees outside keep things nice and private, so we don’t have to worry about people peeking in the windows at us (a pretty common occurrence at our last complex). The deck looks over a small playground, so there’s almost always kids playing out back.

Joke all you want about living in Kent — and I’ve already heard more than a few cracks from Seattleites who don’t get why we’d want to be in the suburbs — but so far, we’re liking it a lot.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Encroachment, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Taken near the Old Fishing Hole in Kent, WA. It was a gorgeous day, and the construction equipment looked really out of place against the blue sky and greenery. I think they were actually just working on some of the golf course that’s just over the rise, but there was something slightly ominous about them from this angle (in a bright yellow sort of way), like it wouldn’t be long before the view was of naught but concrete and steel.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Seattle Pride 2008: Pride Parade: Spectators 37, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Buried in the midst of my Pride photos: my 12,000th photo uploaded to Flickr. Yeesh!

Another 8,000-some shots and I’ll have as many pictures on Flickr as I have tracks in iTunes.

Photowhore and musicwhore, that’s me!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.

Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?

Because it’s a movie-plot threat.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

…is perfectly legal. Not that this should be a big surprise, but after the City of Seattle settled a lawsuit with a photographer last year to the tune of $8,000, the Seattle Police Department is clarifying its policies.

The Seattle Police Department this week plans to issue a new policy clarifying when bystanders are within their rights to observe and document officer conduct and when they’re interfering with officers’ law enforcement duties, a department official told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee during a briefing Tuesday.

The new policy clearly reminds officers that bystanders have a right to watch or film officers making an arrest, as long as they don’t interfere or threaten their safety….

It also emphasizes that police can’t simply seize someone’s camera for video evidence without cause or court order and suggests alternative means of negotiating with the witness.

(via Seattlest)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’m experimenting with the Aperture free trial right now for photoshoots with my D70s, but I still wanted to use iPhoto for my Casio point and shoot. Apple allows you to set either iPhoto or Aperture to automatically launch when the Finder mounts a memory card, but by choosing either one, I’d have to quit and manually launch the other application depending on which camera I was importing shots from.

However, Aperture also gives you the ability to set any application to launch when a memory card is inserted. I set up this simple little Applescript (saved as a launchable app) to be the app launched on memory card insertion:

tell application "Finder"
    if exists disk "CASIO-DSC" then
        launch application "iPhoto"
    else if exists disk "NIKON D70S" then
        launch application "Aperture"
    end if
end tell

Now, whenever a memory card is inserted, the Applescript launches, checks the volume name of the memory card (which is set by the camera when you format the card), launches the appropriate photo application, and then quits.

Pretty simple for a lot of experienced Applescripters, I’m sure, but I’m pretty happy that I got it figured out.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Those who follow me on Flickr will have noticed this already, but I’ve been spending some time digging through my old archive CDs and uploading a bunch of old photos from years (and digital cameras) past. At this point, I’ve made it through all my digital photos up to the last few days before I bailed out of Anchorage and migrated south to Seattle. As such, the two sets that have received the most attention are those for Gig’s Music Theater and Old Stuff: Life Before Seattle. Those who’ve met me (physically or virtually) more recently will find these of limited interest, but for those few of you who’ve known me for a while, you might get a kick out of some of these…and you might even find yourself in there a time or two!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I was beginning to doubt that I’d ever find the time to finish this project, but I’m finally done with the pictures from our trip to Hawaii last summer!

Four-month turnaround really isn’t my preferred methodology, but at least I have good excuses for the delay (sudden unplanned moves, a busy school quarter and so on). If I can get the Thanksgiving photos taken care of in the next week and a half, that’ll bring me down to about one-month turnaround…

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Sunbathing Sea Turtle, Punalu’u Black Sand Beach Park, originally uploaded by djwudi.

One of my favorite shots from this summer.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo, originally uploaded by djwudi.

I actually had a day off today. No school, no work, nothing. So, I spent the day working on getting caught up on some of my photographic backlog. I started by processing a set of shots of Club V that I’d been asked to take, then dove back into the vacation photos from this summer. Lots of photos of the Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo just outside of Hilo (one of which ended up being my 11,000th photo uploaded to Flickr!), plus some more snorkeling.

I’m still not quite done with the vacation photos, but the end is in sight. Yay!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I think a short passage in this Reuters Photographers blog may have nailed one of the reasons why my interest in sports is limited to football (real football, that is — most of you know this as ‘soccer’):

…there appear to be few sporting images more emotional or exuberant than those “jubo” moments of soccer players celebrating after scoring a goal. The expressions of American football and icehockey players are all too frequently obscured by facemasks. Basketball players seem to err on the side of mean and moody and baseball players appear to be almost permanently underwhelmed. It might be a cultural thing or perhaps just a result of the way those sports are broadcast or sponsored. There certainly isn’t a lack of passion because tempers do fray and fights and arguments are frequent, but there doesn’t seem to be any of the theatricality we see from soccer players, at least not during the game.