Archive for » 2009 «

Faces and Places of the World Photo Contest

I’ve never actually entered a photo contest before, which is sort of ironic because I do consider myself an amateur photographer.  One certainly cannot pass up the opportunity to enter a photo contest when all the fees are waived.  Thus is the case with the Faces and Places of the World contest, being put on by The Examiner and Now Public and since I am a writer for the Examiner, my fees have been waived so I figured why not?

This is where you come in.  I need votes for the People’s Choice award!!  So… if you have a moment to check out the six photos I’ve submitted, please choose your favorite and vote!!  I would really appreciate it.  I hope you enjoy them. *Click on the thumbnail image to go to the voting page, and on the voting page you can scroll your mouse over the image for a larger version.

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A Creative Voyage Photo Journey: Mobile Phone Edition

Here is where I take my appreciation of technology and my love of photography and mix them together for a whimsical voyage of visual fun. I recently upgraded my phone from the LG Voyager to the LG EnV Touch. The EnV Touch is modeled after the Voyager with many wonderfully delicious features, including it’s ever-fantastic digital camera feature. The phone has a 3.2 megapixel lense with automatic focus and… (drum roll please) … a flash! It’s a bright flash too, sufficient for 10-15 foot object distances with little to no effort.

You can take pictures in six different resolutions (2,048×1,536, 1,600×1,200, 1,280×960, 640×480, and 320×240 pixels), five white balance presets, and five color effects. It also has three focusing modes: autofocus, macro mode, or manual mode, the last of which lets you pick one of seven points on the screen to focus in on. You can toggle the flash on or off, adjust a self timer if you want, or select one of three shutter sounds (there’s also a silent option).

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Outfest 2009 Feature Film: Make the Yuletide Gay

Original article cross-posted from Examiner.com.

OutFest 2009 the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is the oldest continuous film festival in Los Angeles, featuring 182 films and videos from 25 countries in 7 different venues over 11 days starting July 9th and ending July 19th. Outfest will dazzle Los Angeles with 87 separate public programs – 6 galas, 68 features, 10 short film programs and 13 panels and special events.

On Thursday, July 9, Outfest will launch with the presentation of the 13th Annual Outfest Achievement Award preceding the Opening Night Gala film LA MISSION starring Benjamin Bratt.

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End US Hunger NOW: The Campaign and My Personal Video

On Friday, May 29th 2009, Ashton Kutcher sent out a tweet to his list of Twitter followers (just shy of 2 million) asking everyone to create a video that will become part of a viral video campaign for US Hunger.  Ashton announced that a large US corporation would be willing to donate 10 million US dollars worth of products in US food aid but without the help of able and willing Americans everywhere, the donation may not happen.

The action alert was simply this (from HungerLimit.com):

1. Record a video of you or your friends saying “Are you hungry?”, “Hungry?”, “You look hungry”, etc… then looking at the camera and saying “Eat!” or “Go Eat!” also saying “Some people Can’t!” and finally a video of you or your friends eating something.

2.  Upload your videos to YouTube and tag them with “endhungernow” or send them over to endushunger [at] gmail.com until Tuesday, June 2nd 2009.. All videos will be cut into a single viral video clip and posted online.

3.  Follow @aplusk, @mrskutcher and @FeedingAmerica on Twitter to get the latest updates about the campaign.

4.  Tweet about #HungerLimit, #Hunger and #USHunger to raise hunger awareness of your friends, colleagues and family members.

5.  Visit FeedingAmerica.org online and contribute with a donation or become an advocate for the cause.

I decided to take action for once, hopped on my webcam and made my own little action alert.  Here it is, I hope you like it.

An Idiot’s Guide to Twitter Plus The Twitter Song

If you know me, than you know I’m a huge fan of Twitter. Twitter, although hard to explain to your average web 2.0-illiterate person, is really quite simple. I thought, ok, if I had to explain Twitter to my Mom and she could understand it, than anyone could. I have yet to successfully explain gmail to my Mom so you can see what I’m working with here.

To define Twitter in the most simplistic way is easy: twitter is 140-characters-or-less-microblogging.  For each “blog” posted, you have 140 characters (not words) to get your message across.  Across to who?  Well, whoever thinks your interesting enough to follow.  Twitter is also social messaging.  Twitter is also news reporting.  It is anything you want it to be, without having to type a lot and these days, who has time to do that?

So who follows you and who do you follow?  That is a good question and one that I will answer shortly. First, I ask you to stop reading and go join Twitter.  Once you’ve joined, come back here and read this super awesome tutorial that explains everything you may (or may not) have wanted to know about Twitter. But first, follow me. There’s my shameless self-indulgent plug.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, you may read on.
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