Art and Photography Blog

Great Photo Blog and More - Louisiana Flava

Here is a blog on one of my favorite topics, Louisiana food and culture. I learned about it from a cooment on this blog. New Orleans is my home town and I frequently return. There are many photos of the city on this blog. Louisiana Flava with the tag line, “At the end of the day in Cajun country still fulfilling a passion,” covers the area south and west of the city. I often went fishing there with my father in the 1950s. Roxie Broussand provides a beautiful blog with great photos.

I loved the post and pictures of figs. We used to have a large fig tree in our backyard. I would pick them and my mother ma fig preserves that I sold at a street stand in front of our house. I sold out in one day. Rexie provides some recipes along with several photos of the figs.

There is also a wonderful post and pictures on oysters and Dupuis Oyster Bar in Abbeville. It also includes photos of shrimp boats. We used to go down to the docks in NOLA and get fresh shrimp form the boats. I assume that you can still do this if the docks in NOLA survived Katrina. I know that much of the west end was blown away.

Photography as Narrative: Ashes and Snow

Here is a beautiful and interesting web site. Ashes and snow is an art project that looks at the relationship of animals and people. It combines photography, art installations, and a novel. Gregory Colbert is the photographer who has worked around the world on this project. It aims to integrate people with the other animals. Highly recommended. They also sell art work on their site. A nomadic museum has been built to house the project as it travels to places such as Venice, New York, and Santa Monica, California. It will be in Tokoyo from March to June 2007.

New Web 2.0 Ways to Share Your Travel Photos

I have a lot of travel photos on this blog. Here are some other ways to use features of the new web to share your photos and learn from others who have already been to where you might want to go. The New York Times recently had an interesting article, Practical Traveler: Sharing Photographs Online, in which you covered some of the ways the new web allows you to share your photos more effectively and use those of others to enhance your travel plans. As they wrote, “photo-sharing sites like Yahoo’s Flickr.com and SmugMug.com have begun to let users add another dimension to their travel photos. Through a technology called geotagging, users can add G.P.S. data to their pictures, which can then be plotted on a digital map. This not only allows users to see exactly where a photo was taken, but, when uploaded to an Internet map, users can also quickly browse a trove of photos that were taken nearby, providing a kind of scattershot collage of a place.”

It is still a bit geeky to use these features but I am sure they will get easier. More your can go to these sites and search for photos of your travel destinations to see what they are really like. It can get very specific, “Plotting photos on maps also allows trip planners to “see” the terrain before booking a trip. On Everytrail.com — which lets users upload geocoded photos from their favorite hiking trails, biking routes and sailing trips — visitors can check out sights along a specific driving route in Namibia, or examine trail conditions on a hilly bike route near Palo Alto, Calif.”

This could easily be another area of accelerated business activity for Web 2.0. As the NYT wrote, “ Last month, Google announced plans to acquire Panoramio.com, a photo-sharing site with more than two million images that allows users to integrate photos into Google Earth. And as photo-sharing continues to evolve, travel Web sites are recognizing how valuable images can be when users essentially act as free contributors and submit their own pictures.”

These features can certainly increase the stickiness for web site. “Zoomandgo.com, a travel review site, recently redesigned its site around photos and videos submitted by travelers. A team of four people spent months “geocoding” thousands of hotels and attractions so that user-photos can be displayed on digital maps. A new social-networking feature also allows users to create their own travel profiles, connect with like-minded travelers, and swap tips through photos. “Facebook meets Frommers” is how Jonathan Haldane, the founder of Zoomandgo.com, described it. Before the social-networking feature went up, he said, users spent about eight minutes on the site, mostly reading or posting hotel reviews. Now, he said, users spend an average of 18 to 19 minutes, sending messages to each other and browsing through photos and videos.”

That is a great concept for any site that wants to keep people there. It is like getting lost in YouTube.

Michael Schmitt Photography Site

My cousin, Michael Schmitt, is a professional photographer living in Portland Oregon. I was impressed with his site, especially the travel photos, and wanted to pass on this link to Michael Schmitt Photography. I enjoyed seeing all the interesting places he has been. I also like his photo style and the simplicity of his site.

Provence Photos - Howard Dinnin

Howard Dinnin writes the blog, Per Diem. He posted some good photos hear his place in Provence, Late Fall in Fox-Amphoux 2006. Take a look

Flickr Photography Methods

Flickr is a great source to share your photos. Look at this nice use of graphics. As the What Can We Do With Flickr? post says, “This cluttered desk represents just a small set of powerful ways you can use Flickr. This image has been annotated with "notes", so as you move a mouse over hotspot areas, pop-up messages will appear, some of them with links that can take you elsewhere.” Here is another excellent post on Top Ten Hacks on Flickr by Thomas Hawks. I also love the graphic here collecting multiple photos. He males an important point, “Flickr is that because of their open API a whole host of developers have built more and more interesting things to do with the site. It's interesting to me today that so many of the ways that I use Flickr are not even through the site as designed by Yahoo, but instead through the work of outside developers who are constantly creating new and interesting ways to experience the site.” This is one of the key success factors for Google, Google Maps, and Amazon. The Flickr people paid attention. Here are some further readings the What Can We Do With Flickr? Post recommended. How to Flickr Intro by Ben Bishop Tips for Flickr Beginners (Lifehacker) Flickr Tutorial Series (Indezine) Flickr Advanced User Guide (Lifehacker

Photos of New Orleans After the Flood

The Met in New York had an interesting photography exhibit last year. It covered post Katrina New Orleans as our modern Pompeii. I have been there and can picture in my mind the photo opps Ploidiri had. As the NY Times said, “Chernobyl to Havana -- in sometimes dangerous, topsy-turvy, out-of-time places -- generally bears witness to profound neglect.” Parts of New Orleans gave him must have served him well. The Times concludes, “(His pictures) simply testify, as Mr. Rosenheim (in the intro) puts it, ‘to a city that care forgot.’ It's good of the Met to remind us.” 'New Orleans After the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori,'' was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. If you hear of it appearing again be sure to go. here is the benefit of the Web. If you go to their New Orleans After the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori site you can still see the pictures.

New Orleans is where I grew up and I wrote about my recent trip in a series of posts on one of my other blogs. Here are the links.

New Orleans Update 2007 Part One: the Paradox of Two Cities Remains

New Orleans 2007 Update Part Two: Restaurants

New Orleans 2007 Update Part Three: Live Music

New Orleans 2007 Update Part Four: Buying Music at the Louisiana Music Factory