after the thanksgiving holiday is over. after the leftovers are all gone. after the throngs of people and all the shopping. what do you do? take pictures. playing with the macro on my camera, I capture these fun, colorful creatures.

last saturday evening, I attended a really terrific performance at works gallery. It was a performance piece by Sara Kraft and Ed Purver - Woods for Trees. They had recently performed this piece at the SF Fringe festival and had been voted best of the festival. The piece is loosely based on Hansel and Gretel but weaves in pointed thoughts about media and story telling. The piece is story, song, video, media. It is haunting, funny, disturbing and beautiful all at the same time. I have attached some shots - they don't begin to capture the piece, but here they are anyway.

For those in the bay area, they will be performing the piece again in January at Venue 9.

Quiet this week - DSL out since for about 5 days and the Dreamhost server with this site was down for 2. Have many images to post. I'll catch up over the weekend.

Sometimes photography is about the little things. Somtimes it is about the big things that make you feel small and insignificant.
Photodude sums it up here:

“But there's a handful of times in my life where I felt the way I did around these Live Oaks; at Monument Valley, Yosemite, Antelope Canyon, the Atlanta Olympics. Places or times of unmatched visual grandeur.

Times that are almost paralyzing, because you find yourself at a place where you can take no bad pictures, and have little hope of capturing all the good ones. Being immersed in a place where you are surrounded by wonderous scenes is both pleasurable and intermittently painful. There's the joy of capturing scenes you love, and the agony of what you know you're missing (there's no way to get them all) or not doing justice to in your compositions, plus the knowledge you may never get back there again. But I dealt with it somehow.”

I can say I had the same feelings about Mono Lake and Alaska and Haleakala and other places I have been and photographed.

wishing I was in New York. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

I am having my furnace replaced this week and when they pulled the old - 50 year old - furnace out, it had this cool control panel on it. Notice the sans-serif type and the funky 1950's colors. Simple, subtle yet elegant and industrious.

Announcing the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture! If you are a reader of design::writings and were wondering why the postings on there were so sporadic over the last several months this is why.

Our official launch is today.

The Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture. We're working on creating resources for information architects, information about promoting IA and the benefits of IA, and we're creating a framework that can support research and advancement of the discipline.

One of the initiatives I am personally working on is the creation of tools for in-house IAs. Having dealt with these issues myself, I know how frustrating it can be to "sell" your work to your own people. Tools, process maps, ROI studies, research on effectiveness, case studies, elevator pitches and other things that you can use, will make your life and mine easier. When we can spend our time "doing" our work instead of "justifying" it we will all be better off.

very funny image

another mirror project submission - from my trip to virginia. kooky.

A few weird post-halloween fun cat sites to explore.
scary kitty
mean kitty
samurai kitty
angry, rock and roll kittens
beastly cat

The last of the pencam shots from my trip to Virginia. Shot from my hotel room. The day is wet and soggy, but the trees that I see from my room are intense and brilliant. During the week I was there, this red tree was like fire and then began to burn out as the rain pushed the leaves off and they collected beneath. I love fall and it is one of the things I miss most living in California.