All kinds of things  running through my mind as I watch this.  Musings on how much of photography is being in the right place and the right time.  Recollections of kayaking out and snorkeling with the seals and sea lions and otters in Monterey Bay. Amazement at the shots Paul Nicklen got on this adventure.  And a bit of reconsideration about what was going on in Pongo’s mind when he’d bring me live geckos when we still lived in Togo.  Did he really think I was “useless” when I didn’t know what to do with his gift?

[via Towleroad]

While pulling up a link to our wedding reception photos for a friend, I stopped in to look at Bryson Kim’s recent work.  Now I’m just trembling in awe (again) at the man’s skills.  Check out his collection from last weekend’s Fireknife finals.  Incredible renditions of what I generally call polynesian or island torch dancing, captured in beautiful stills.  The image borrowed here is just one, don’t miss the other 258 from that day, or the 317 from Saturday.

Spinner treated me to dinner at the San Diego County Fair last night.  The artery clogging menu included courses deep-fried zucchini spears, Australian-style batter fried potatoes, and a foot-long hot dog on a stick.  We saw no deep-fried twinkies, last year’s delicacy of choice, and a quest for chocolate covered bacon (recommended by the Sparklett’s man) was unsuccessful.  If someone has managed to merge the two flavors-above-all, we couldn’t find him.

My camera died early for want of charged batteries, hence the lack of pixels in this post, but I couldn’t have done the sunset justice anyways.  We were a hundred or so feet above the ground on top of the ferris wheel, watching the sun set over the dog beach in Del Mar as all the lights of the fair started to pop on.  If my camera had been charged I would’ve offered the operator a fortune to stay up there for half an hour or so, but had to settle for a few short minutes and commit it all to memory.  Wonderful.

We also did the roller coaster and the sky way over the fair, and took in a lot of the exhibitions and vendors.  Too much shopping and too much walking, but certainly a great night.

I’d seen a few of these photos around, but too many of the kids blogging (and Facebooking and Tweeting, etc), never learned how to do anything but steal an image and repost it.  Credit an artist?  No.  Cite the site where the work was found?  OMG NO!  Just put a photo in context with an accurate caption?  Huh?

Enough with the rant.  Maybe it’s yet another sign that I’m doing too much family law, but Fallen Princesses rocks.  Thanks to Soliloqueer for blogging it old school.

Still not ready to write the words, but our photographer came through in amazing time. So happy with what he was able to do for us and so jealous at how good a photographer he is, all at the same time. Find yourself or enjoy the event vicariously as appropriate.

Stressing a bit about the upcoming reception. Nothing seriously wrong, just enough going on that’s out of my control that I get stressed. But I stumbled on this a few minutes ago at our photographer’s website:

Pretty pictures take my mind off everything else that I should be working on.

The photographer who will be working at our reception, Bryson Kim, has an gallery of his work at the 5th Annual Fire Knife Competition at his site, Island Pix. I always love watching these guys in action, and Bryson did such an amazing job capturing the motion in still images that I had to give a shout from here.

Wow!  Amazing perspective from the 10m diving platform.  Found myself getting a little anxious even though there’s no way of falling off from here.  [via]

The official t-shirts of the 2008 Slackathalon came in today. This ended up being a fine Slackathalon season, possibly the best yet.

Obviously, the wedding almost resulted in disqualifications of all participants, but the sheer lack of planning involved in the event resulted in a waiver by the Slackathlon’s presiding official, Party D.  The fact that the finish line photos were taken while your blogger was flat on his back watching Voyager reruns on a weekday afternoon showed a dedication to slacking that far supersedes any momentary rush of emotion, adrenaline and hormones.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this season such a blast and provided the distractions that kept so much meaningful work from getting done.  You’re enablers, each and every one of you, and we’re proud to have you in our lives.  I’m sure Spinner will have some thoughts of his own posted eventually.

Diego and I are on our own for a few days while Randy and my camera cavort around Miami.  Snacks wherever we want and lots of scratching ourselves in inappropriate places until Tuesday night.  We bond well.

I started off the time alone by attempting to make some long overdue upgrades to the photo gallery look and feel.  The gallery’s been powered by Coppermine since it started in 2005, and while the template’s never been exactly what I wanted, it worked and I was never able to figure out their coding.  Now, after a couple of days of dedicated tweaking, I’m thinking that I never will.  Gawd what a mess, and I’m now pretty sure that the reason it wouldn’t bend to my will isn’t a lack of skill but a lack of flexibility in the core of that program.

Been experimenting with Gallery 2 as an alternative, and so far I’m favorable impressed.  I remember comparing them back in oh-five, and deciding that Coppermine was the better option then, but Gallery seems to have more than made up the difference in the last three years.  Expect some changes on that side of the site in the near future. 

Be happy to hear any comments about other experiences with the packages, or other self-hosted photo galleries, but as was pointed out to me (again) this last week, I”m too much of a control freak to ever turn over a portion of the site to Flickr or some other third party again.

It’s been kind of a mind-numbing blur of a week.  Ignoring the phone and letting iTunes’ Party Shuffle drag me around my collection by my ears this morning.  It seems to be working.  Lots of blues.  A bit of jazz.  Classics.  One more hour in the office than off for some photography – time to make Spinner’s kids look like they’re having fun for an Open House multimedia presentation.  Any input on the best photoshop filter for removing Tazer marks?