Followed Norman Walsh (so.nwalsh.com)

Norman Walsh headshot Structured markup geek. Programmer. Photographer. Author. XML. DocBook. XProc. XSLT. XQuery.
I am currently an employee of MarkLogic Corporation where I’m an engineer. I work out of my home in Austin, TX. Previously, I was employed by Sun Microsystems, Arbortext, and O’Reilly Media (then O’Reilly & Associates).

Read Trifecta at Twilight (science.nasa.gov)
On February 18, as civil twilight began in northern New Mexico skies, the International Space Station, a waning crescent Moon, and planet Mars for a moment shared this well-planned single field of view. From the photographer's location the sky had just begun to grow light, but the space station orbiting 400 kilometers above the Earth was already bathed in the morning sunlight. At 6:25am local time it took less than a second to cross in front of the lunar disk moving right to left in the composited successive frames. At the time, Mars itself had already emerged from behind the Moon following its much anticipated lunar occultation. The yellowish glow of the Red Planet is still in the frame at the upper right, beyond the Moon's dark edge.
Read Announcing Mimi Uploader for Micro.blog hosted blogs by Sam (samgrover.com)
I’m very excited to announce the launch and availability of my new app, Mimi Uploader. Mimi is designed from the ground up to enable super fast uploading of photos from your device to your Micro.blog hosted blogs. Utilize Mimi to upload a set of photos for making your blog post. Maybe a road trip, or a party, or memories of a special day.
Listened to Episode 5: Caring What You're Sharing by Dr Laurie SantosDr Laurie Santos from The Happiness Lab

Sharing a good experience with another human deepens our enjoyment of the moment... but only if we abide by certain rules. Dr Laurie Santos shows us how we often get 'sharing' wrong and explains how we can all derive more happiness from ice cream, sunsets and a night in front of the TV.

Maryellis Bunn’s website

Erica Boothby website

Museum of Ice Cream website

Alix Barash website

There is some interesting discussion about exploring and interacting with the world here both with and without a camera and/or digital phone or other device in one’s hand. 

The research and examples in this episode could be useful  for UX/UI  designers in the social media and IndieWeb spaces. The ideas presented here could help us in designing interactions on the web for people in a much happier and healthier fashion. I particularly likes the concept that a museum specifically redesigned some of it’s exhibits so as to be able to minimize the use of phones and increase the human-to-human interaction.

The questions of whether we’re posting content for ourselves or to share with others is an intriguing one. I tend to post for myself (and my memory via my commonplace book) first in almost all cases. When I’m taking photos or checking in, I almost always do it in a way so as to minimize as much as possible the distraction of doing so to others. It’s exceptionally rare that I spend the time and effort to get the “perfect” photo when I’m with others in public.

The discussion about the museum experience being designed for or against photography and the research relating to memories of the experiences reminds a lot of Matt Maldre’s recent experience with a museum security guard who urged patrons to get their phones out and take close up photos of artworks. [#] She obviously intuitively knew something that the rest of us could have only guessed at. Or perhaps she’s just been reading all the most cutting-edge research and putting it into practice in her own work?

This also reminds me I ought to call Dan Cohen and have a conversation about these sort of design concepts (and particularly those relating to Frances Yates and memory techniques) for his forthcoming library.

Read Blogger Gets Slammed For Committing Ultimate Instagram Sin (comedy.com)
It’s no secret that bloggers, vloggers and pretty much anyone on social media tend to ‘bend the truth’ a little bit. There are countless apps you can download to turn your very average photo into what looks like photographic gold. With a little tweaking and cropping, a few saturation and contrast adjustments, you can fake just about anything. This may have become a trend that caught on a little too well. Johanna Olsson is one of the many bloggers who have photoshopped her images to suit the theme of her page. In an attempt to gain points for her reputation, her photo-shopping mishap caused her more publicity than she could have ever imagined. However, it was not for the reasons she was hoping.

👓 There’s Nothing Wrong With Posing for Photos at Chernobyl | Taylor Lorenz | The Atlantic

Read There’s Nothing Wrong With Posing for Photos at Chernobyl by Taylor Lorenz (The Atlantic)
Influencer-style pictures are simply the way we document our lives now.
Strip away the headline and the social media influencer angle which is a canard.

There’s an interesting societal shift happening here in photography. For counterpoint, compare this with Pictures of Death: Postmortem Photography by Nancy West (The Atlantic).

👓 Open Your Mouth Very Wide | Peter Rukavina

Read Open Your Mouth Very Wide by Peter RukavinaPeter Rukavina (ruk.ca)

I read somewhere—perhaps it was “5 Tips to Instantly Up Your Instagram Game” or some such—that, when taking photos of people, you should ask them to open their mouths as wide as possible.

Interestingly, it works. It seems weird, both to them and to you, but the photos that result often have much more life in them than they would otherwise.

I received similar instructions many years ago from a CBC Radio producer: I was going into the studio to record a commentary, and she advised me to make my points so emphatically as to appear (to myself) to be raving. It was very hard to do this, and it made me very uncomfortable, but I had to agree that the result was better.

An interesting piece of photography advice… I like the caricature advice for audio as well. It was something that obviously worked for people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

🎧 “The Daily”: The Photo of the Yemeni Girl | New York Times

Listened to "The Daily": The Photo of the Yemeni Girl from New York Times

The story behind a portrait that brought a widely overlooked human catastrophe into devastating focus.

👓 Trio | Khürt Williams

Read TRIO by Khürt Williams (islandinthenet.com)

We’ve all heard of the rules of thirds but have you heard of the rule of three?

The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that a trio of events or characters is more humorous, satisfying, or effective than other numbers in [the] execution of the story and engaging the reader. The reader or audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed. This is because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern. It makes the author or speaker appear knowledgeable while being both simple and catchy.WIKIPEDIA

Although a writing principle, one of my photography instructors, Loren Fisher, has suggested using this principle when composing images with more than one object of focus.

I’ve been trying to use this principle in my images.

This image was captured earlier this year near South Street Seaport during my lunch break. I used my Fuji X-T2 + XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR and shot using an ACROS Film Simulation Recipe by Ritchie Roesch.

Some interesting theory about both photography and narrative structure with a great little photo to underline it all.

🔖 Unsplash | Beautiful Free Images & Pictures

Bookmarked Unsplash | Beautiful Free Images & Pictures (unsplash.com)
Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.

👓 Selfies at Funerals | The Atlantic

Read Selfies at Funerals by James Hamblin (The Atlantic)
A new Tumblr compiles self-portraits taken at funerals and shared with the world. Here are a few, interspersed with more traditional efforts at celebrating life and publicly reflecting on mortality.
An interesting and excellent follow-on from the prior story I read. Somehow the older mores of photographing and arranging the dead seem at least connected to those we’ve lost whereas some of these funeral selfies or so-called “caskies” they don’t seem to be mourning much of anything except the minute amounts of fame they may be losing.

👓 Pictures of Death: Postmortem Photography | The Atlantic

Read Pictures of Death: Postmortem Photography by Nancy West (The Atlantic)
When photography was new, it was often used to preserve corpses via their images. An Object Lesson
Fascinating to read about some of the cultural shifts and norms in our society over the past century or so.

👓 Instagram import in Micro.blog | Manton Reece

Read Instagram import in Micro.blog by Manton Reece (manton.org)
Micro.blog for Mac version 1.3 is now available. It features a brand new import feature for uploading an archive of Instagram photos to your blog.
This is an awesome development. I do wish it wasn’t so MacOS-centric, but hopefully its one of many export/import tools that shows up to improve peoples’ ownership and portability of their data.