A scene from my recent vacation: Volcán Mombacho, as seen from the belltower at Iglesia La Merced. I did a bunch of journaling and drawing, so more thoughtful Nicaraguan posts are on the way…

The AJC has some really nice photos from the premiere of Gone with the Wind. I never knew there was a motorcade, teeming crowds, etc. Even has a nice playbill.

2009 is going to be awesome, too.

The old man will be home as soon as he can, and we will take a walk. That’s poor folk’s luxury.

That’s a quote from Carleton Watkins, an early American landscape photographer who hauled thousands of pounds of equipment around the American West. His photos of the Yosemite area appeared in The Yosemite Book that helped make it a protected area, and had a big influence in creating national parks. He was great with the lens, but not so good with money. Sad story of failing health, failing eyesight, then insanity. He lost his life’s work when the San Francisco earthquake struck and his studio burned.

In some ways, the pricing of digital fine art prints seems to be a shift-away from paying for an actual print to paying for all the expense that went into creating the work that led to this actual print, because making the actual print is relatively cheap. And there’s something a lot less seductive in that, to me, as someone who might like to buy a print. I want to pay for the worth of the thing itself, not the artist’s overhead.

A small glacial outwash plain near the Entuj??kull glacier.

In the middle of a volcanic wasteland in Iceland.

I’m still sorting through my photos from Iceland, sifting out the worthwhile from the not-so-great. I plan to take my time and upload them over the next week or so. This is from my first morning in Reykjavik. More to come.

I’m still sorting through my photos from Iceland, sifting out the worthwhile from the not-so-great. I plan to take my time and upload them over the next week or so. This is from my first morning in Reykjavik. More to come.

Bucket hat? Check. Knit woolen sweater? Check. Pipe? Check. I love it when stereotypes match with reality.

I couldn’t make it up if I tried. I saw this tonight. Only about 30 feet separates this from the worst parking I’ve ever seen incident earlier this year. There must be some sort of psycho-electro-magnetic field in this parking lot that disrupts human motor functions.

[*this is the preferred technical term]

The Brooklyn Museum has some great photos on Flickr. Currently in the commons are a great set of old lantern slides in Egypt, and a lot of images from the 1900 Paris Exposition.

In the Paris set, it’s cool how the primitive coloring job kind of flattens the images. They look almost like paper cut-outs or watercolor: