I recently photographed Tom Tancredo in his Jefferson County home for NRC, a dutch publication.  Tancredo is a former congressman from Colorado who made his political bed on issues related to immigration.  He recently took his not-so-infrequent dip into hot water after making a speech at the Tea Party Convention where he suggested a poll test for people wishing to vote in the presidential election.  Tancredo’s political ideas have always been something that I’ve had difficulty swallowing, though the thing that I enjoy most about this job is the ability to meet people on their territory and to see them as separate from their rhetoric.  I took a series of very simple portraits for the magazine in Tancredo’s basement.  The first picture is what ran, the following pictures are outtakes that I liked.

(...)
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Vietnam is thrusting itself into the 21st Century faster than any other country I have been to.  Of course it was pretty much starting from 25 years of post-war restructuring and global sanctions.  So the changes in the past 10 years have seemed fairly drastic.  This is a new era in Vietnam and Saigon has been ground zero for the visual transition.

The East-West Highway is the first highway to run all the way through the city.  It currently goes through 8 districts but stops at the entrance of the Thu Thiem Tunnel which is being dug under the Saigon River.  When completed, the tunnel will be the longest in SE Asia and the highway could serve as a major artery in an already heavily congested traffic system.

As you drive down the road you see the landscape changing leading up to the center of the city, District 1 – the financial district.  It’s quite telling of the make up of each section really.  On the surface everything is interesting because it is different to me.  But it’s the details that bring it all together.  The blankets and cart of a homeless man mimics the textures of  the buildings across the river.  The sound of construction nor the passing traffic phases him.  He sleeps engulfed by his possessions.

In fact the South side of the highway is speckled with this scene.  Recyclers sort through their loot on small portions of unused road.  A married couple stuff their sacks to the size of both of them put together.  Another man crouches down to the rear wheel of his bicycle attempting to make repairs with piece of cardboard.  He wears a black Vietnamese fashion ball cap.  But underneath there is a full head of hair streaks of white highlights that tell his age.  His face is worn with sun spots and wrinkles.  He is beautiful.  I reach over to shake his hand but his politely declines while point to his palms.  They are black with dirt and oil.  Instead he smiles and says goodbye.

The drive is quite odd to me.  Saigon is known for it’s traffic.  Hundreds of thousands of motorbikes crowd the small streets of the city.  People drive in the wrong direction.  They drive on the sidewalks.  Any place where there is an inch of space, a motorbike will squeeze in.  But on the highway, strangely enough, it is quite the opposite.  I’m not sure if local Vietnamese people know what to do with three to four lanes of road going through the city.  Or perhaps it just doesn’t lead to where they need to go.

A patch of bamboo grows on the side of the road near a traffic light.  A man stands in the middle mimicking the vegetation to urinate.  I quickly pull off to the side of the road and fire off three frames.  The first one is overexposed and I like much better.  He turns around to glare at me.  I leave as quickly as I stopped.  Further down the road a bridge crosses over a small river.  A coffee stand sits underneath.  But it’s more than that.  In fact it reminded me of a truck stop some where on Interstate 80 in the Midwest.  The makeshift store sold instant noodles, coffee, flowers, Vietnamese music CD’s, gasoline … you name it they had it scattered around some where.

The overcast skies offer relief to the intense heat of the sun.  The evenly poured asphalt reminds me of home.  The open road gives me an excuse speed.  The wind catches the brim of my $14 helmet and sends it back to my neck.  I know it is reckless but I don’t care.  In fact most of the helmets in Vietnam are only worn to appease a law.  I have dropped a helmet from three feet before and it has broken.  I slow down and stop to readjust my helmet.  To my right there is a small abandoned house foundation.  I stop to photograph but I don’t quite feel any thing.  I notice a man’s head bobs up and down in a nearby pond.

He is washing the plastic bags he had spent all evening gathering.  He is proud and does not want photos taken.  He is ashamed of the work that he does.  A few meters down and the pond is filled with thousands of lotus flowers.  Giant lilly pad-like leaves cover the water as if it never existed at all.  Beautiful pink petals lay cocooned in a rich green covering.  A small man wades through the lotus forest.  His eyes are covered by a brimmed hat.  He is wet and muddy up to his chest.  He carries two dozen harvested lotus flowers on his left shoulder.  He tells me his name is Hai Ngon, which means “two fingers”.  I smile to myself and think of a character out of movies like “Dick Tracy” or “Ocean’s Eleven”.

As Hai Ngon walks down a dirt road returning to his house I turn around and see four cement deer pass by.  I stand confused for a few moments then jump my bike and accelerate to catch up to them.  The throttle is on my right but so is the trigger on my camera.  I speed up past the driver and photograph while coasting as he passes by.  I repeat this maneuver three times.  A look of confusion and an awkward smile shows on the driver’s face.

I notice a family sitting on the side of the road fishing in the river.  A woman holds her child while her husband patiently waits for Catfish to bite.  He caught more than 20 fish the previous day but he said a lot of other people fished today and he wasn’t hopeful.  The fish he catches will be dinner for his family.  I sit watching him for some time.  A tiny worn is speared by a homemade hook.  Catfish pierce the waters surface but they seem uninterested in the bait.

Green construction fences block the road abruptly.  One man stands guarding the entrance.  He looks to be no more than 19 years old.  In the distance two large tunnels can be seen.  The guard says the project should be completed next year and it will connect to District 2, on the other side of the Saigon River.  It’s an impressive undertaking and a major step in securing the proper infrastructure of Vietnam.  Ten more years from now the city, the country will be different.

A group of elders take shade under a crossing overpass.  They sit watching the passing traffic.  An old woman crouches on the edge of couch remembering her past.  She says some Americans offered to take her to the U.S. after the war.  She said they offered her $400 a month and naturalization into the country.  But Vietnam was her home.  And it always will be.

***

Kevin German is a photographer who lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  His column, “The Motorbike Diaries” appears every other Wednesday.  He is a founding member of Luceo.

© kevingerman for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

I woke up this morning behind the steering wheel of the rental car that I’ve been living in since last Saturday. I just wrapped up a really fun gig that kept me in Montana for a week and, somewhere in the early morning hours of driving home along Wyoming’s northern Rockies, I reached a point last night where it made sense to pull off the road and grab some sleep before carrying on. A hotel bed would have been too comfortable to abandon in the morning, so I pulled the car into a park in Buffalo, Wyoming, unstuffed my sleeping bag, and reclined the seat. Four hours later, I woke up to the dawn light, put the key in the ignition and finished the drive back to Denver. The assignment came up at the last minute and kept me in Montana for a few days longer than I originally anticipated, although the drive gave me nice space to think through the content of this post.

Rather than put out a laundry list of ugly contract language, I have decided that it would be most beneficial to take one clause and dissect it in plain English. If this were an anatomy class, this exercise would be similar to looking at one organ rather than an entire system. It is by no means exhaustive and doesn’t account for the entirety of the contract. However, for purposes of sticking to the broad topic of intellectual property and the photographer, it gets pretty close to helping us look for those places where a contract should address those four big things we talked about in the last post. To recap:

1. Licensing is not like selling toothpaste. It is more like renting a car.

2. When you license an image to a client, you should be discussing and defining:

a. The timeframe or the term of the license

b. The geographic scope or territory in which it will be used

c. The specific type of use for which the client will use your image

To help anchor these vague notions to something a little more concrete, I’ve plucked language from a contract that’s received a bit of resistance from other photographers. The publication’s name has been removed and the language has been shortened to help illustrate these points. The relevant licensing clause reads as follows:

“Photographer will own the copyright to the Photographs and hereby irrevocably grants to [Publication] a perpetual, worldwide , fully-sublicensable and royalty-free license to use and exploit all Photographs…. …in any and all media and in connection with any and all products, services and/or other purposes, so long as such use and usage is tied to a [Publication] magazine. Such license will be non-exclusive… …For the avoidance of doubt, [Publication’s] rights will include and are not limited to: (a) unlimited use of any and all Photographs… …accompanied by articles and/or other [Publication] magazine editorial content of all kinds, (b) unlimited use of any and all Photographs… …in connection with commercial products branded or co-branded with a [Publication] magazine title…”

If you’re still awake at this point, you’ve vaulted the first hurdle. The Devil is always in the details and it’s pretty rare to find a client who will highlight the ugly or contentious language for you; it’s just a chore we all have to suffer through. This particular clause has a few doozies hiding out and it’s probably best if we take this one piece at a time.

Don’t Let the First Words Fool You Into Not Reading the Others

“Photographer will own the copyright to the Photographs and hereby irrevocably grants to [Publication] a perpetual, worldwide , fully-sublicensable and royalty-free license to use and exploit all Photographs…. …in any and all media and in connection with any and all products, services and/or other purposes, so long as such use and usage is tied to a [Publication] magazine.”

It’s never a bad move to start out a contentious discussion on common grounds. In this case, the publication reminds the photographer that they retain their copyright before going on to murder most of the value the photographer could hope to extract from their images. Specifically, it grants the publication the ability to take photographs that were licensed for a day rate and use them without any further compensation in “any and all media and in connection with any and all products, services, and/or other purposes.”

The only thing that limits the future use of the images is a very vague piece of language that requires the use of the images to be “tied” to the publication. This could be particularly catastrophic in instances where the editorial publication is an arm of a larger company or where the publication has made partnership arrangements with other entities (think record labels, insurance companies with an editorial branch, lobby organizations, corporate partnerships, etc.)

When you tally up this language through the lens of the specific terms of a licensing agreement, the score doesn’t look so hot:

Specific Timeframe: “PERPETUAL” (doesn’t sound very specific, does it?)

Geographic Scope: “WORLDWIDE” (um, er, also not very specific)

Specific Use: ANY AND ALL MEDIA TIED TO A PUBLICATION MAGAZINE (again, it’s vague enough to leave the potential for future, uncompensated uses to the imagination)

Editorial Day Rate, Editorial Use

And the next sentence:

“…For the avoidance of doubt, [Publication’s] rights will include and are not limited to: (a) unlimited use of any and all Photographs… …accompanied by articles and/or other [Publication] magazine editorial content of all kinds”

This part seems reasonable. The contract starts to lay out several possible uses for your photographs. Again, it’s always a good strategy to start on the issues where there’s little debate. In this case, the publication is reminding you that their editorial day rate is purchasing a license for the use of photographs in their editorial publication. Seems fair enough…

But Wait!

The language that follows co-opts images licensed under an editorial day rate for commercial use. It’s not uncommon for magazine contracts to allow the publication to use your photographs to promote the magazine itself, but this language goes several steps further:

“(b) unlimited use of any and all Photographs… …in connection with commercialproducts branded or co-branded with a [Publication] magazine title”

Uh oh. This could create some ugliness. For example, if the publication is owned by Acme Records Inc. and Acme Records Magazine also puts out a CD, don’t be surprised if your images turn up on the jacket. Uncompensated.

Where’s the Problem?

The cornerstone of our businesses turns on pricing related to specific use, specific timeframe , and specific geographic areas of distribution. When the licensing language of a contract attempts to grab commercial use for an editorial rate, it undermines the value of our photographs and debases the pricing structure that is integral to keeping photographers behind the camera for the long-haul. Negotiating for terms that respect limited use, limited geographic scope, and limited timeframes for a reasonable price is not only a matter of self-respect, it’s also a matter of respecting the value of our profession.

***

Matt Slaby is a Colorado-based attorney (and photographer). Matt attended the University of Denver College of Law on a full public interest scholarship. His experiences in law school include a PILG clerkship for ongoing civil work with El Centro Humanitario’s legal clinic as well as handling wage claims and contract issues for DU’s Civil Litigation Clinic. He is a founding member of Luceo and, in addition to his photography, brings his legal background to the organization. Questions, comments, and ideas for future posts are welcome. Please add them to the comments section or reach me here: mattslaby@luceoimages.com

**DISCLAIMER: Luceo Images LLC and Matt Slaby assume no liability for the information provided above. This information may not be correct when applied to your specific situation. Moreover, the information provided is not intended to create an attorney/client relationship and shall not be construed as legal advice.

© mattslaby for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

This week’s theme was chosen by LUCEO’s own Tim Lytvinenko! Check out the photos and get to guessing!

Congrats to david anderson for being the first to guess this week’s theme: Strong.  Please send an email to tim[at]luceoimages.com or kendrickbrinson[at]luceoimages.com to claim your prize.  Thanks for guessing, and see you next week.

THURSDAY CLUES:

photo by David Water Banks

photo by TIm

WEDNESDAY CLUES:

photo by Tim

photo by David Walter Banks

TUESDAY CLUES:

photo by David Walter Banks

photo by Tim

MONDAY CLUES:

photo by Tim

photo by Kendrick

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us

A whooping yell comes from the trees, “Hey, Mardi Gras!” a masked man perched on a low branch screams. “Never fear, the Crawfish Bandit is here!” After a final drag on his cigarette he jumps down from the tree and starts to run, diving headfirst into the nearest mud hole. His attempts to uncover crawfish throughout the day were continuously unsuccessful. This year Fat Tuesday  fell on February 16. I was excited to return to the small rural town of Mamou to further explore their traditional Cajun Mardi Gras ritual. The town’s celebrations are self-segregated and while people don’t talk about it much, there is a palpable tension whenever the issue of race arises. The black side of town parades with men, women and children whereas the white side only allows men, 16 or older to ride along. They don traditional Cajun costumes, masks and hats – their outfits resembling colorful klansmen. Starting at sunrise, they begin drinking and the stream of Bud Light never runs dry. I follow nearly 150 men on horseback along with a caravan of tractor-drawn trailers as they roll through the countryside. Every now and then we stop at a farm and the men dance for the residents, who then release a bewildered chicken for the men to chase. Whoever catches the bird carries it like a trophy for the rest of the day before it is put into a pot of gumbo.

My buddy Denny Culbert covered Mamou this year for his newspaper, The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, so he left in the early afternoon to file. I decided to wait around for the light to get nice and to explore some street scenes as the day winds down. By the time I get back to my Jeep I realize that somehow during the day’s craziness I bent my car key in half. I only wish there was someone there to make a picture of me as I tried to hammer my key straight with an empty 40 of Miller Lite I found in the ditch. This, of course, was to no avail. I was hard-pressed to find a locksmith in rural Louisiana on Mardi Gras so Denny had to return to drag me out of the bar where I holed up with a whiskey and take me back to Lafayette for the night. This was only the beginning of my Jeep-related logistical hurdles that I encountered during this road trip.  Despite this, the day was a blast and I hope to attend again next year. The entire event was a visual playground,  though in the grand scheme of things I’m not sure where these pictures belong, but I trust that in time they will find a home. Until then, here is a handful of images from Mamou, Louisiana.

Coming up next, a continuation of Trouble the Water, a project on the alligator people of South Louisiana.

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I was recently sent up north to the city of Da Nang to photograph a clean water program for the NGO East Meets West Foundation.

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There is something I absolutely love about sketchy motel rooms.  I know that’s not a normal way to begin a paragraph, but it’s true, I love them.  I can’t exactly explain why but there’s a certain mystique that comes along with them to me.  I’m not even talking about the two-star Ramada Inn that made you mad because they didn’t bring fresh towels every day.  I’m talking the ‘Joe’s Motel & Bar’ type establishment with truck parking around back and a room full of mismatched items ranging from the past 40 years.  I’ve always enjoyed staying in hotels and making them my little home away from home, but in recent years with ample travel I’ve fully embraced my motel passion.  This may be another reason I feel such a strong connection with the transient lifestyle.  However, there’s always something waiting for me at the end of the line – home.  Knowing that there is a home is a large part of why the motel stops are so enjoyable to me.  They are these unique little single-serving homes that I get to open, use, and disregard as I leave to venture back to my real home.  I often wonder though if the appeal would be quickly lost if there was no end of the line, and no place to return to.

© davidbanks for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Here are a few frames with the Xpan from Mardi Gras in Mamou. I’m just starting to get into the rhythm of this camera and am slowly falling in love with the way it breaks me out of my formula and challenges forces me to see differently. I’ve still got a long way to go with it.

Coming up next: Trouble the Water, two days spent at Daneco Alligator Farm in Houma, Louisiana for a long-term project on the alligator people of South Louisiana.

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You can always find our bigger lists and running commentary on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s our list of favorites for the week of 3-5:

@lpvgallery @Yagamisan @dcuthbert for giving us some Follow Friday Love.  (don’t know what follow friday is go here: http://mashable.com/2009/03/06/twitter-followfriday/)

Jeffrey Schear for making the most humorous Facebook comment of the week.

Dvafoto and Allen Sullivan for helping spread the word with the new Luceo Student Award.

Big thanks to everyone who commented about Eich making PDN’ 30 on Facebook.

Matt McLoone for making the most You Guess It guesses in one comment with five (one per comment please!).
And Ian Bates for keeping the You Guess It guesses interesting.

Ken Ross and Noah Darnell for some good thoughts on the World Press disqualification.

If you’d like to be featured here next week, or called out, join in our conversation.  We always appreciate hearing from you all.

-Luceo

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Part of my purpose for this recent road trip to Louisiana was to continue laying the groundwork for a new book project I plan to work on for the next four years. While I am still in the beginning stages of this process I want to begin sharing some work through this outlet so I can chart it’s progress over time. Unfortunately at this size it is almost impossible to explore these frames but hopefully they will give a sense of some of the experimentation I have been enjoying of late.

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(...)
Read the rest of From the Archive (155 words)

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Lately I have become concerned that I am projecting my own idyllic perception of the James on the scenes I have encountered thus far in this body of work. All I see when looking at the images is what isn’t there. What they don’t say. They’re so quiet. Too quiet. They aren’t risky enough, they aren’t intimate enough. The other day I was talking with friend and confidant, Rich-Joseph Facun, about these struggles. He has always found a way to be incredibly supportive of my work without cutting me any slack. He wrote this in a recent email.

“I was thinking about the James River Blues project. If it is the “Blues” then shoot it this way. Blues songs reflect the good times but then interject what trials and tribulations are happening now or that have happened recently. Like BB King when he sings something along the lines of this: “I gave you five children and now you want to give ‘em all back…I bought you a five course dinner and you said thanks for the snack…” He gives the past pleasantry but then brings you the present drama. He makes you laugh when you should be crying. This is what the James River Blues should do. You are dreaming of the past but now you want to show the present. Yesterdays dreams interwoven with todays reality. Maybe that is what you’re concerned with and why you feel the need to show both.”

Each project I embark on is it’s own journey with a unique set of problems and answers. These dialogues with other photographers, editors and artists are crucial not only for my growth as an individual, but also for the development of these long-term bodies of work.

________________________________________________

Matt Eich is a photographer who is based in Norfolk, Virginia.  His column, “In My Back Yard” appears every other Wednesday.  He is a Founding Member of LUCEO Images.

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to the edge of the world.

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I spent last Friday fighting my way through the evil tangled invasive-mess we call privet along the steep bank of a creek between two industrial factory complexes.  My guide, Nelson Brooke of the Black Warrior Riverkeepers, was kind enough to lead me to the discharge pipes along Avondale Creek where McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company is dumping pollutants.  The creek feeds into Village Creek, which is a tributary of Black Warrior River’s Locust Fork.  By finding a loophole in the Clean Water Act, McWane managed to set the EPA back by years, and legally destroy the environment while they’re at it.  Read more about the issue in the New York Times article here, or on the Black Warrior Riverkeepers site here.(...)
Read the rest of Toxic Waters for The New York Times (0 words)

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Shooting: Snapture – This app adds a whole slew of options to the dismal default camera app. First off you can press anywhere on the screen to take a photo. You can also press and hold the screen then trigger the camera when you release your finger. Pretty handy if you need to take a photo when not looking at the screen. One of its better features is its almost motor drive. Theres a 3 photo burst mode but the app will let you save a whole set of photos at once, instead of shooting a photo then waiting for it to save while missing the photo you want. For $0.99 its a great replacement to the default camera app.

Pano – Exactly what it sounds like, this app lets you stitch together an entire scene of photos into one huge panorama.

Editing:

Camerabag – The Helga filter makes your iPhone photos look like holga photos. Its quick and easy photo editing. Theres also a good polaroid filter.

Best Camera – This runs more like photoshop for me on the iPhone. Im able to add contrast, lighten, darken, cool filter, warm filter and a bunch of filter sets that I’m not too much of a fan of. Most photos I’ve tried this with don’t hold up well.

before:

after:

Now if only I could find something to get the noise out of the photos. Or figure out how to get one of Canon’s image chips in the dang phone.

Music: Melodica – This is a no brainer for making some soft background music for a quick multimedia piece or slideshow. Its also really fun to just play on it. To record from this app you will need a male to male headphone adapter.

Jailbreak Apps: Or hacking. Or what I like to call it: making your iPhone awesome. Don’t be fooled either, jailbreaking isn’t for everyone but jailbreaking is easy enough that anyone can do it. Theres a new desktop app called blackra1n, should be easy enough to find it via google, that will jailbreak and install Cydia or Rock (my new favorite installer) with 2 clicks. Its really that easy.

The benefits include: Cycorder – Video on iPhone 3G. I’ve used this and Cycorder works great. Obviously not as good as the video on the 3GS (or the 7D) but its good enough and best of all free. The audio recording works surprisingly well and the video does up to 15fps depending on the light. Its great for shooting some of those photos that need to breath for a couple seconds or normal videoing.

PdaNet/MyWi – These apps tether your computer to the iPhone’s data connection. Someday AT&T will let us tether our iPhone to our computer. Until then these two apps are tops.

Putting this all together: Now that you have photos, panoramics, video and music all in a little device that you can have with you all the time I want to see your projects.

© timlyt for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

On Saturday and Sunday we attended vastly different Mardi Gras celebrations in two different cities. The first, in Baton Rouge, was the Spanish Town Mardi Gras. It was early morning and the streets brimmed with people grilling out and drinking beer. It was more of a street party than anything else but was incredibly warm and colorful. The next day we got up and went to New Orleans where we haunted Bourbon Street for a while and saw the Bacchus Parade later in the evening. Still fresh from the Superbowl, the whole city seemed jubilant. While the appeal of being crammed between hundreds of intoxicated people grabbing for beads is lost on me the visual opportunities from those situations isn’t. We made it through the night and thankfully had the next day off from drinking and partying before we headed to Mamou for Fat Tuesday.

Coming up next is a different perspective from these two days that is part of a new long-term project I am embarking on.

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‘

On February 11 I left Virginia on my way to Louisiana via Atlanta. Over the next ten days I pushed my aging Jeep Cherokee to 250,000 miles, saw some dear friends, met some fascinating people and made a lot of pictures. The night of the 11th I crashed in Atlanta, at David and Kendrick’s pad before heading down to Baton Rouge where I met up with Kevin Martin and Denny Culbert on the 12th. On Saturday we went to Baton Rouge’s Spanish Town Mardi Gras celebration on Saturday and the New Orleans Bacchus Parade on Sunday. Monday was a much needed recovery day before Denny and I went to Mamou for Fat Tuesday. From there I headed down to gator country (Houma in particular) for a couple days before making the return trip home. Over the coming week I will be blogging new work from my time in the Deep South but for now here are some orphan frames, made for no other purpose than to remember what it felt like to be there.

© matteich for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

You can check out TIME’s story here.  You can also find out more about the fight for legalized medical marijuana from Sensible Colorado, the outstanding organization that my friend Brian Vicente founded in Denver.

© davidbanks for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

because sometimes, when you let yourself just go with the ebb and flow, the mistakes are more beautiful than the things you put your all into.

and that can be so much more enchanting than the on purpose.

(I’ll be packing and moving, and then traveling –to Las Vegas and then back to my beloved Sun City–the next two weeks, so forgive my absence.)

© kendrickbrinson for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

This week’s theme was chosen by LUCEO’s own David Walter Banks who is also filling in for Kendrick Brinson to provide clues this week. Check out his photos and get your guessing on!

Congrats to Breana T for being the first to guess this week’s theme – Waiting.  Please send an email to tim[at]luceoimages.com or kendrickbrinson[at]luceoimages.com to claim your prize.  Thanks for guessing, and see you next week.

David Walter Banks Photo

Matt Eich Photo

THURSDAY CLUE:

David Walter Banks Photo

Matt Eich Photo

Tim Lytvinenko Photo

WEDNESDAY CLUE:

Tim Lytvinenko Photo

Matt Eich Photo

David Walter Banks Photo

TUESDAY CLUE:

Tim Lytvinenko Photo

Matt Eich Photo

David Walter Banks Photo

MONDAY CLUE:

David Walter Banks Photo

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2010. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us

(...)
Read the rest of My Backyard: The Salton Sea (601 words)

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In that order.  I’m heading out tomorrow morning for Portland.  An assignment in Montana will take me and whatever rental car I have waiting at the airport through Idaho and into one of my favorite states.  Planning on returning to Colorado before the week is out.  Cell phone will be the easiest way to reach me, though I expect to check email twice daily and would love to have an excuse to stay out longer.

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Newsweek’s overseas edition picked up an old photograph of mine form Mexico.  The final layout ended up using it as a cropped graphic element to divide up the page, but that’s life.  The initial appeal for making the photograph was to remember the quote behind the statue.  It’s one of my favorites, something that I come back to periodically.  The caption follows along with the layout.

A pigeon covered statue of Benito Juarez –Mexico’s first, and only, full-blooded indigenous president –sits just off Tapachula’s main plaza. Inscribed behind the statue is Juarez’s most famous quote which reads: “Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.

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You can always find our bigger lists and running commentary on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s our list of favorites for the week of 2-26:

WillMedia and jessicalowry for giving us some Follow Friday Love.  (don’t know what follow friday is go here: http://mashable.com/2009/03/06/twitter-followfriday/)

David Root for making the most unsuccessful attempts at this week’s You guess It post with 5 comment guesses. You were oh so close with soaking which I also think was your downfall. Wet came only 3 hours later, finishing out ’soaking wet’. Thanks for playing and better luck next week.

Ian Bates also guessed five times but you put four of them in the same comment so you don’t get the crown of most guesses.

Matt Roth, Matt Craig, and Tom Leininger for bringing their usual level of sophistication and thought to their comments.

William Widmer for a nice question and some nice work on his website. Particularly the shanty still lifes like this one.

Thanks again to everyone joining in our conversation.  We always appreciate hearing from you all.

-Luceo

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