A Snapshot of America, originally uploaded by nate_marsh.

I really like all the things that are happening at once in this photo – pleasure craft scooting into the harbor, containership unloading iPhones, humble fisherman waiting for the big bitem young woman chatting on the phone and a big plane full of business folks ready to touch down in Boston – lots of stuff!!!

Hello Kitty: Meets the Tiger

First in what will hopefully become an ongoing series – originally concept by E.Roosey.

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I am not one to repeat myself, man, this is a cute little guy… Looky at his little cast, his little nose, etc. Too much…

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Someone asked me to take some photos at this event last night. I had a couple weeks lead time and perhaps my greatest shame on my camera is the flash. Sure, it works fine in most occasions, but when I try to take photos when it is a tad darker than usual – it unleashes a BLINDING FLASH to try and autofocus, multiple times in a row. If it actually gets a fix, people are already completely disoriented and angry so the photos no look so good.

Enter my new baby!

The FL-36 – the embodiment of God’s great promise and deliverer of many great flashes – yay!

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I went to the zoo last week. Actually, I was just strolling around the town with the missus and lo & behold – the Franklin Park Zoo. The zoo itself gets a lot of crap for being small and not particularly wealthy – it has a quaintness that I rather enjoy.

Anyways, after paying the regular admission, the nice lady hands us a map that has all the areas crossed off where animals are wintering elsewhere. This was a good 50% of the creatures! But, on the bright side, this meant that I did not need to fight through hordes of smelly little children to get the wholesome zoo experience that I crave.

I think the camels might be my favorite of the hardy outdoor animals. This handsome fellow here seemed to be gnawing on a giant log, really going to town on it. Not quite sure what he was getting out of it, but he seemed to be okay with his job – that’s the kind of feel good scene I expect from a zoo. Anyways, FPZ is definitely worth your $11 !!!

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I saw this at a Whole Foods Market in California – not sure if someone is trying to be a smartass but this is a pretty silly sign!

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I had a great little trip to California over the holidays. On the plane ride over there, the kind folks from JetBlue gave me 3 free mini-scotches on account of it being Christmas Eve. I almost passed out – shock & scotch! Actually that is not a bad drink idea…

Anyways, I did many crazy things over there, including looking at photos on other people’s cell phones, as the above indicates. But all and all, I think the area is pretty similar to dear New England.

The only thing that continues to blow me away is the citrus. Every time I walk past a lemon/lime/orange/tangerine tree I stop and gawk. Like “WTF is that doing there?!?” Maybe it’s because of my sheltered childhood in the mountains of PA and have rarely traveled far from there but I am astonished to see a real tree with real oranges on it outside, it’s like my mind is going to asplode. The icing on the cake was a friend of mine gave me a tangerine that was from a TREE IN HER DAD’S BACKYARD!

I know this is whole “citrus tree” thing is unsurprising to most people, but for me that is seriously a major reason to move to California. I can see myself now on the roof of my apartment building, tending to a vast citrus grove, creating delicious fresh drinks each morning and then skipping over to my job at the Free Love Sustainable Squirrel Monkey Training Center!

HOme for the Holidays, by nate_marsh.

Recently I was propositioned at a party to help produce a special holiday card for a few of my friends. These talented fellows had wisely procured a collection of matching holiday garb and needed someone with the photo chops and the ability to not feel extremely uncomfortable with them prancing around, tempting everything in sight. I was perfect for the job.

The result is something that still brings a small tear to my eye, view the complete set for more treats!

Credits: Original concept by Asher/Tracy/Ahmed. Photography by N.Marsh and graphic design by E.Roosey

SeasonsGreeting2007, by nate_marsh.

Not much to write here except that Santa’s sleigh is going to pulling a bit to the right this year, based on my calculations and the chart below pulled from Wikipedia (boys on the left, girls on the right):

Kinda sad – how is Vixen going to take care of the babies by herself? Not my problem!

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Gordion Panorama, by nate_marsh.

I have recently been interested in different ways of viewing panoramas on the web. Flickr doesn’t do so well as you can see with the image above, it is hard to get a sense of the whole scene without having to flip between multiple views.

I’ve tried using some Quicktime stuff and other 3d viewers but I very rarely take 360 panos and normal ones look kinda dumpy.

So, I was pretty interested to use this tool – a little plugin called Zoomify that comes with Photoshop CS3. Here’s an example of the above photo in this browser.

It does all the image slicing & HTML work for you which makes it rather speedy and flexible. This particular one is optimized for a large screen and still does not let you zoom all the way out but I think it is a pretty good compromise!