« September 2008 | Main | November 2008 »
Helen Bradley publishes a blog that features useful Photoshop tricks. We shared one of her ideas to spruce up the presentation of your photos in a previous post. This is the result of her simple tutorial.
Looks like she's currently on a holiday to Italy. And she's taking pictures like mad. Take a look. I think the photos she took of detail in sculptures are an effective way to pull something unique out of otherwise heavily photographed subject matter.
Photo from the Iraqi Kurdistan Tourism Ministry.
We noted here some time back that airlines are slowly resuming service to Iraq. Now the New York Times talks up Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, as a travel destinaltion - not as a news story, but in their regular Travel section. Austrian Airlines flies there from Vienna.
There's even a Ministry of Tourism and an official web site, KurdistanTourism.com.
It apears those are rocks in the foreground, and not pretty little wildflowers. But hey....
During the run-up to the Olympics, we spent a lot of time obsessing about how the games would play out. Now that they're over and gone and the clean air wizards have left, here's the view from James Fallows' window in Beijing.
Photo from James Fallows.
Photo from Mike Fox.
If you've ever gotten out of bed before dawn to hire a driver to get yourself to some special place for sunrise, or traveled thousands of miles to take pictures of a festival, or in any other way done a lot of advance planning to get that certain shot, you'll see yourself in this article from the web site Mike Fox - Photojournalist, about how he came to get this photo of a KKK cross burning in Arkansas.
With this Firefox add-on, experience web browsing as it's done in China. Everything works fine in Hong Kong, but as we reported about our last trip to China and as Tim Johnson affirms in China Rises, just the briefest trip to the mainland outside Hong Kong can cause your web browser to blink uncomprehendingly when you ask for, say, the BBC. Now you can try it for yourself from home. Get the China Channel Firefox Add-on.
Photo from EarthPhotos.com
In the current Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about his adventures thwarting the Transportation Safety Administration. He uses fake boarding passes, carries banned items aboard aircraft and such, and for the most part depicts a hapless, inept TSA.
This is not news to anyone who has flown domestically since 2001. Part of the (relative) pleasure of flying point to point outside the United States is that you're largely treated as a grown up. But if an inept TSA is a problem, and Mr. Goldberg tells us it is, it seems to me the irreverent, wisecracking tone of the article diminishes that point.
Have to agree with Mr. Goldberg (here, on his Atlantic blog) though, that TSA Administrator Kip Hawley responded tepidly on the portentiously named TSA blog, Evolution of Security.
The photo above, by the way is from the long, urbane pedestrian plaza called “Traders Street” in Baku, Azerbaijan. We bought an Osama matryoshka doll, with the Biggest Terrorists Of All Time inside, and carried it home with us just like Jeffrey Goldberg did with Hezbollah flags, knives and books about jihad.
See more photos from Azerbaijan at EarthPhotos.com.
We heard from our friend Laurence Mitchell, author of the Bradt Guide to Kyrgyzstan today. He sent a short note from Armenia. Next he's bound for Iran, and he promises a guest post on Common Sense and Whiskey. Look for it here, perhaps next week.
Photo from Universe Today.
Under the influence of Andrew Bacevich's new book The Limits of Power, I've been brooding about the United States, pinned down by two wars, with military bases all over the planet, straining to maintain its imperium. If somehow you had no nationality, you'd likely cheer for human progress wherever it came from, rather than spending mightily to constrain your opponents.
Which is why this post on Universe Today struck a happy chord. Have a good weekend from EarthPhotos.com.
We've written frequently in the past about challenging travel destinations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). Here, though you wouldn't know it from the photo, is one of the more dangerous, or at least formerly fear-inducing, of them all.
Photo from the New York Times.
At first glance, where do you think this might be, maybe a planned community somewhere in the midwest? Could have been, except that mosque in the distance rules that out. Okay then, modern Muslim country... how about a planned community on the edge of the desert outside of Amman, Jordan? Maybe a development somewhere around the new airport for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?
Take a guess, and then after the jump see a "before" picture of the same place.
There are certain things a guidebook ought to level with you about right up front, before all the gushing about the exotic culture, pristine sandy beaches and friendly people. Number one, page one, straight flat out:
YOU ARE GOING TO A COUNTRY THAT CAN’T KEEP THE ROAD TO ITS ONE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT PAVED, AND LINES THE ROAD IN AND OUT WITH BOYS WITH NO FACIAL HAIR HOLDING MACHINE GUNS.
Lurching into and out of potholes on the road to the beach, dim yellow headlights illuminated scrawny street dogs, sneering from the road, teeth in road kill. We took the diplomatic approach and decided, let’s see what it looks like in the morning.
*****
In the pre-dawn gray the fishing fleet already trolled off the Negombo shore. The last tardy catamaran, sail full-billowed, flew out to join the rest.
Sheldon had already been out and back. A slight fellow, just chest high, with a broad smile under his tight-clipped mustache, Sheldon showed me his catch, in a crate, a few gross of five or six inch mackerels.
He took me to meet all the other guys and see their catches, too, stepping over nets they were busy untangling and setting right for the afternoon. He led me to his house, just alongside and between a couple of beach hotels, shoreside from the road. It was a sprawl of a dozen thatch huts.
He’d built it himself.
from Brett Snyder via Flickr.
When you fly on a new Airbus A-380, you might not want to sit next to the wing.
The Cranky Flier reviews an Emirates A-380 flight (1, 2).
from EarthPhotos.com
In volatile times such as these, as you move around the planet this is good to know.
from EarthPhotos.com
The Scandinavian countries are all delightful places to visit in summer. But in The Road Less Traveled - Going North in Sweden, Anna Etmanska probes the limits of the Swedish transportation network.
See photos from Norway, Sweden and Finland on EarthPhotos.com.
If you've got the time and inclination to download nearly 300 megs, which will expand to a little over half a gig, The Forbidden City, Beyond Space and Time is, well, imposing. A collaboration between the Beijing Palace Museum and IBM, Beyond Space and Time is a 3-D replica of the square-kilometer palace grounds that they call "The Virtual Forbidden City." I've just gotten it installed and at first glance, it looks like it might be fun. I'll come back with more after I've taken a spin around, talked with the tour guides and so forth.
from The New Yorker.
For the record, the photos Colin Powell referred to during his endorsement of Barack Obama.
The Serena Hotel, Kabul.
The InterContinental Hotel, Kabul.
Both look plausible, don't they? Okay, then step outside your door and join Nir Rosen for a little sightseeing, in Rolling Stone. See his buds after the jump.
Common Sense and Whiskey is the companion to EarthPhotos.com, where you can see and buy professional photo prints from 105 countries and territories around the world, and the blog for Common Sense and Whiskey - the book. It's Intelligent discussion about the world out there.
The Photos:
