I have been spending a lot of time in the past year pondering modern American society's current constructions of masculinity and femininity. The "LEGO for girls" curfuffle kicked it into high gear for me.

JeongMee Yoon's The Pink and Blue Projects "explores the trends in cultural preferences and the differences in the tastes of children (and their parents) from diverse cultures, ethnic groups as well as gender socialization and identity. The work also raises other issues, such as the relationship between gender and consumerism, urbanization, the globalization of consumerism and the new capitalism." Yoon visited with young boys and girls (mostly American and South Korean) in their homes, and photographed them among all of their pink or blue belongings. The resulting photographs were highly saturated fields of pink for the girls and blue for the boys. The effect of everything gathered together in one place was startling, and perhaps a little unnerving.

Interestingly, I came across this project while I was reading Julia Serano's Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. As is usual for me and non-fiction books, it was a slow read, but it was a good read. Serano has very interesting and insightful things to say on femininity, society, and misogyny. It is generally considered acceptable and even cute for girls and women to do, wear, and enjoy "boy" things, but shameful and wrong for boys and men to do, ear, or enjoy "girl" things. No one looks twice at a woman in pants, even a suit, but a male in a dress is comic. This is because our society generally sees masculine things as good and strong, while feminine thing are silly and weak, so it makes sense to want the masculine things, even if you are female. But for a male person to seek out the feminine is to downgrade.

On a personal note, this was something I struggled with a few years ago. I was seeking out a new car seat. I found the brand and style that I wanted, but it was pretty expensive. There was one seat in that model that was significantly less expensive that the rest: it was pink. I was buying the seat to use with a boy child. I knew that the seat would work as well whether it was black or blue or red or pink. I knew that the savings was not insignificant. I knew that pink being for girls only was an artificial construct. Yet I found that I couldn't get past these things and choose the pink carseat. I was annoyed and resentful at this fact, and wanted to force myself past this hang-up. And still, I ended up with the red seat. It was a serious "what the hell?" moment.

How strong do you have to be to get past the "pink for girls"? Why on earth should you have to be strong to get past "pink is for girls"? And, given the strength that it takes to push past this stupid color taboo, why is pink still seen as weak?

The world, it makes very little sense sometimes.

Mighty Girl is one of the blogs I have been reading since shortly after I discovered blogs, over a decade ago. I love the writing, I love the photos, I love the ideas. Today's post really made me think.

Playing the video and thinking about what it says, this has an awful lot of merit. At the same time, I think there is a lot of privilege in the idea of "just do what you love and the money will follow." It may be true that the money will follow, but life doesn't stop costing money just because you are starting to follow your passion. The "DWYLATMWF" premise assumes that you have a support system to keep you going in the meantime: parents, a significant other, savings, a patron, a government grant... Otherwise what do you eat? Where do you live? How do you pay your medical bills? For anyone who isn't starting out from a position of privilege, Do What You Love is going to be a hell of a lot harder. There are a lot of people for which "Do What You Gotta and Maybe You Can Pay the Bills" feels like an aspiration.

What are your thoughts? How do we make DWYLATMWF realistic for more people? I'd certainly love to make it work in my own life. Is passion enough to build the bridge from that point A to point B, or does it also require circumstances that may be beyond your control.

In my own life, in my own family, I look at how to make this work. What does it take to make this work? What does it mean if you can't?

I assure you. Most definitely not a robot. I am a human, who does the human things.

These, on the other hand, are some fairly iconic robot faces from the past century, gathered together and illustrated by Daniel Nyari. I don't recognize all of them, but I know most of them.

It's kind of great to see Rosie, Voltron, WALL-E, and a Cyberman all hanging out, ya know?

(OK, maybe that's terrifying, if you really think about it. But great, too.)

"Everybody" knows that a more symmetrical face is more attractive, right?

Julian Wolkenstein created a series of carefully neutral portraits, which he then made into two photos each, using the mirror half of each side to complete the face. The results show just how uneven even the most "symmetrical" of face really is, and how odd and off-putting true symmetry can be in a face.

As a continuing project, people are invited to take phone or webcam photos of themselves, mirror them lie Wolkenstein did, and submit the results to echoism. The results are both delightful and bizarre.

I am now kind of in love the with the University of Wisconsin Archives' Flickr photostream. It is a treasure trove of great historical images.

In particular, I am quite taken with the Campus Area and Madison Walks (1900-1970s) set:

After reading Tara Austen Weaver's account, on Tea & Cookies, of her walk through the labyrinth on Lummi Island and the small pile of little things (stones and shells, mostly) that she found there, I started thinking of a similar walk I took a couple of years ago.

In early fall of 2010, my boyfriend and I bicycled out to Governor's Island, on the northern edge of Lake Mendota. We spent a golden afternoon wandering around the edge of the island, and exploring the small trails through the little woods. In one shaded area, I found a small shrine or altar. It was very crude, made of things that one would find on hand there in the woods, but it was still quite recognizable. Sitting on top were a number of small objects, including several dollar coins.

I didn't take any photos, because by that point the late afternoon light was too dim under the cover of the trees, though I wish I could have. I don't know who made the altar, nor for what specific purpose. I certainly didn't touch the objects on the altar, particularly the coins. I figured that, sooner or later, someone would come along, disturb the altar and pocket the coins. But I was not going to be that person.

It isn't uncommon to see roadside shrines: crosses, flowers, maybe balloons or stuffed animals, marking the scene of a fatal accident. It is also pretty common to come across places like the Dickeyville Grotto, which are built with genuine love and respect, but are also pretty public. Something like this, in such a quiet place, stumbled-upon, rather than displayed, seems unique. Yet there are probably just as many quiet, out-of-the-way little altars and shrines as there are in full view. You just have to be there to find them.

This recipe from Forgiving Martha caught my eye on Pinterest about a month ago, and I finally got around to trying it. The verdict is yum.

The pudding is very simple and very rich. Jess' recipe yields two servings, and you will find that a serving is quite filling. This isn't low calorie (my calculations say that it is about 282 per serving) but it is vegan, if you are looking for that.

The next time I make this, I think I will substitute honey for the agave nectar. I like honey much better. It will alter the flavor profile a bit, but it would be interesting to try.

Another thing I will do differently is to blend it in a smaller jar, or use an immersion blender. The small quantity of pudding didn't work very well in my full, large blender. I had to keep stopping the motor and stirring with a spatula to get the mixture back into the blades. In the end, I left some of the avocado unblended, so there were tiny chunks of green floating throughout the creamy brown chocolate. I was ok with this, but I'm sure that other people might find it less than appetizing if I were sharing this.

I really love passenger trains. I love big cross-country trains, commuter rail, and urban trains. I have a particular fondness for traveling via subway, when I'm in a city that has one. So I was grimly fascinated by A Short History of Death on the New York City Subway, which highlights a little over a century of underground tragedies in the MTA.

The loss of life is sad, especially when it could have been prevented. At the same time, it is morbidly interesting. And not all of the stories end in death:

1965 Power Failure

In November 1965, 800,000 people were stranded for six hours in dark subway tunnels. Transit police walked people out along the tracks while warming them with emergency blankets. There are no recorded deaths, but how freaky would that be?

I'm also fond of the little Flash-animated train that makes its way down the page as you scroll.

Members of NAVA (North American Vexillological Association) responded to a survey, in which they ranked the designs of 150 United States city flags. Madison's flag took eleventh place.

But wait, what on Earth is vexillology? Apparently, it is the "scientific study of the history, symbolism[,] and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general." So now you know.

How often do you come across a nifty picture on the internet, and you want to know more about it, but can't because it is without any sort of useful caption? I often find this on Pinterest and Facebook: someone will post something cool, but when I follow the link to find more information (where was that photo taken? who built that cool house? what movie is that from?) I find that the link goes to someone's Tumblr page with an "isn't this neat?" caption and nothing more, or an aggregator site with similarly slight info. I find it incredibly frustrating.

"But where did they get the photo?" I wonder to myself. Somewhere along the chain of Tumblr and Pinterest re-posts, someone posted it first, and that person might have the information I need. They might even be the original artist.

Well now I know a way to find this, and because it is so simple, I want to share it with you.

Step 1: Open Google Image Search. Click on the little camera icon in the search bar.

Step 2: Paste the URL of the image itself into the search bar. (You can usually get this URL by right-clicking on the image and choosing "Copy Image Location.") Then hit "search."

Step 3: Look at your search results. It may take a bit of looking, if it is a popular image to post. If you have a lot of hits, try site that don't have tumblr, pinterest, etc in the URL. Places like Flickr or DeviantArt are more likely to be original sources. It may take a bit of sifting and clicking to find the right source. You can also limit your results by image size. It is easier to make a big image smaller than a small image bigger, so there is a good chance that a 200 pixel wide image is a copy of the 500 pixel wide image.

For example, I was very excited today to track down the origin of this lovely photo, that had been making the rounds all over Pinterest and Tumblr:

I could read about the location and see the rest of the photos in Pete Blakemore's lovely set. Thanks, Google Image Search!

Look into that face, those eyes, and tell me that it is "just" and animal. James Mollison has taken portrait photographs of 40 different apes, of a variety of species, from Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. Each one shows a different personality, a different intelligence. Assembled together, the effect is rather striking.

I was of two minds about even linking this, but here are my thoughts:

Yes, this is a collection of ridiculous, dated photos. Glamour Shots and it's ilk had/have some very silly things going on. As a photographer who really strives to capture my subjects in the best possible way, this hurts my aesthetic sensibilities.

And yet, the mockery of the photos was also a mockery of the women in them. I don't know them, maybe some of them are/were genuinely mock-worthy people. But neither do the people doing the mocking. It may be just a random collection of silly pictures to them, but each one is a photo of an individual woman, who may very see this (or someone who knows her might.) What did they do that deserved to be mocked? Try to live up to society's demand for feminine beauty...for glamour...and fail. Shame! Point them out and let them know how stupid they look.

This collection is mean-spirited and cruel. I'll bet many of the women (and girls) in those photos went to have their portraits taken so they could look at the image and feel pretty, something that the world around them went out of its way to deny them on a regular basis. If your beauty doesn't completely conform to the basis of what society is celebrating that minute, someone is always going to tell you how you need to improve. You hair is too flat, too mousy. You need to lose a few pounds. Your boobs should be bigger. Your teeth are crooked. You're too old.

So you go to the place that promises to make you look like a model. They do your hair, they do your makeup, they give you something to wear. They make sure you have fun. Now, the photo stores in the mall probably aren't employing the best hair and make-up people, the top-notch photographers. They are hiring folks for a little bit above minimum wage and then instructing them to sell, sell, and up-sell. They get a small wardrobe to work with, and a set of poses they like (it saves a lot of time). Which means you get some silly end results. But I'll bet that most of the women looked at the photo they got and felt happy, felt pretty, even if just for a little while. Until society started reminding them how much they fail at looking like an ideal. How plain, how fat, how old, how silly.

And then we come along, a decade or so later, to point and laugh at their aspirations to glamour.

Good job, internet. Good job.

The scale of the universe. (2)

Spell with Flickr is a nifty little script by Erik Kastner. Type in a word and it puts it together for you using letters in photographs on Flickr. I've been spelling things all night.

As you may have already heard, Wired.com has done a wonderful thing:

Beginning today, we're releasing all Wired.com staff-produced photos under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) license and making them available in high-res format on a newly launched public Flickr stream.

Wired has some really excellent photography, so this is quite a trove. I wonder if any other companies might follow suit?

I have long had a deep love of abandoned and crumbling places. I know I'm not alone in this. Ruins are fascinating, a little sad, a little creepy. Of course, the beauty in ruins is made more complicated when the beautiful, crumbling structures are in the midst of modern American cities. It is easy to equate urban decay with beauty when you aren't trying to live in the middle of it...when it isn't your city that is falling apart.

The photos of 100 Abandoned Houses were shot in Detroit, which certainly has more than its fair share of urban decay. When we look at these, are we rubbernecking? Are we vultures? Do we pause and think, there but for the grace of god and the vagaries of economics goes my city? My home?

Whatever the case may be, they are beautiful, though hard to look at. They make me want to say a prayer and buy American.

Rion Sabean put together this excellent series of men doing some of the typical "pin-up girl" cheesecake poses. The guy with the shovel is probably my favorite.

The Art of Clean Up: Sorting and Stacking Everyday Objects

(My favorite it the alphabet soup.)

Creepy woman candle is creepy.

And the close-up photography quizzes on the back page. If you loved those, you will probably also dig Caren Alpert's magnified photography. The surfaces of ordinary objects look like alien worlds.

I remember it well, that feeling of light-headed "Oh my, I may have to keel over and die now." post-run euphoria/exhaustion. And no, it isn't pretty.

But these photos are marvelous.

Dear Photograph is a charming photoblog that puts a cool spin on the "rephotographing" trend. Rather than just recreating an old photograph, "Dear Photograph" inserts the old photograph into the scene as it is today, lining up the shot as closely as possible, along with a bit of commentary (in the form of an apostrophe to the photo itself). So far, I am finding it utterly charming.

In The New Yorker,Nick Paumgarten describes the fascinating process by which the names were arranged for the The National September 11 Memorial in New York:

Arad arranged the requests using index cards. Each pairing set off a chain reaction, the strings of connection growing ever more tangled and frayed. There were two thousand nine hundred and eighty-two names. The deeper he and his staff got into this puzzle, the more complex it became, especially in light of the aesthetic requirements: for example, he didn't want names lining up evenly atop each other, lest there be gutters between them. He had to factor in the number of letters in each name. He had to consider the leading.

Even if you are not a typography nerd, it is a pretty good read.

You do not want to miss this amazing panoramic, high-resolution photographic image of the library at Strahov Monastery in Prague, taken by Jeffrey Martin. It took him five days to shoot. The image is 40 gigapixels, and is composed of 2,947 separate photos, which have been joined together into one incredible, enormous 360-degree panorama.

If you have Javascript active for the site, you can pan around the room, including up and down. You can also zoom in onto small details with startling clarity. The tremendous size means that you can spend quite a while examining things and still not see it all.

8 bits to be precise.

Enjoy!

...is what you will often find wafting through Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg's "cinemagraphs.

As they explain to John Pavlus at Fast Company's Co.Design:

"We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn't want the high maintenance aspect of a video."

You really want to take a look at these. Aside from being great photos, they are also quite clever and elegant.

Ryan Novelline has constructed a exquisite, couture ballgown out of Golden Books. The link not only has some great photos of the dress, but excellent documentation of the process. Showing your work: not just for math class. I love it!

If the Miwa Yanagi fairy tale photos are too much for your brain, here is a palate cleanser for you: 14 Rare Color Photos From the FSA-OWI

These excellent photos were shot between 1939 and 1945 by photographers for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. They are striking photos regardless, but the color adds an extra element of beauty, since this is an era that we rarely imagine in color.

Even Disney can't make fairy tales entirely sweetness and light. No matter how they scrub, some darkness remains.

Now, the farther back you go for your fairy tales, the less scrubbing they have had and the darker they remain. They are full of death and sex and violence and complete weirdness.

Miwa Yanagi captures that darkness and deepens the shadows in her collection, Fairy Tale. These will haunt your dreams.

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

There are some excellent photos in the archives of the New South Wales, Australia police department. Of particular interest are the mugshots, which are so different in so many ways from the mugshots of today. And yet... so very similar. (I could very much see the young woman in this photo in combat boots, a band t-shirt, and ripped jeans.)

A tip of the hat to Very Short List for bringing this to my attention.

Go take a look!

Try to watch all the possibilities.

Of Another Fashion is a fashion blog that describes itself thusly: "An alternative archive of the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color."

Using wonderful historical photos, often out of personal photo albums, along with any relevant information or stories, the site is building a record of fashion and style that has been neglected by the mainstream and made invisible: minority women in the United States.

It's a great read and could be a great resource for costumers, as well.

Go take a look!

Greenwich Locksmiths in New York City looks like my kind of place.

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

I did not even know that such a book existed. Now, thanks to Maggie Mason, I do. And I am delighted by it.

December and January have been busy for me. Fun, exciting, and hectic. Also, as tends to happen in winter: cold, dark, and snowy.

Between traveling, getting a couple of colds, starting projects, and occasionally curling up in my cave to hibernate, I haven't posted much. I'd like to start making up for lost time.

Over Christmas, I took a trip out to the east coast, and got there just in time for the big December blizzard.

Also out in the blizzard was Jamie Stuart, "Idiot with a Tripod," who shot this excellent short video using a Canon 7D. It's a really nice piece of work. Even Roger Ebert loved it. Check it out yourself!

Idiot with a Tripod from The Mutiny Company on Vimeo.

Dave Mead, of Austin, Texas, has collected some of the most fantastic beards in his "Magnificent Specimens." Magnificent they are indeed. Tremendous, in fact.

If you are in Portland, OR, you have just about a month to see the show in person. The rest of out can check it out via the portfolio on his website.

Go take a look!

Well actually, someone did once.

Top 48 Ads that Would Never be Allowed Today

They are crazy and hilarious.

When I watched this amazing video, all I could really think about was the precision required to not smash into each other in the water at some point.

Some faster than others. Daniel Del Nero makes houses of out cardboard, covers them with flour and mold spores, and the photographs the decay. It is creepy and gorgeous and wonderful.
It's like something from a strange and haunting dream.

You really must check it out.

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

I have always had a major sweet tooth. I have been cutting way back in the past couple of years, but candy is still a huge temptation for me.

So it is with both pleasure and pain that I have been reading Candy Blog, a website with lovingly photographed candy and gorgeously descriptive reviews. Even the silliest, technicolored chunks of HFCS get fair and wonderfully worded write-ups:

Blue Raspberry (blue) is very woodsy and strangely chemical at the same time. There's a floral raspberry flavor but also something kind of like artificial watermelon in there.

(I was clued to the website by Gail Ambrosius Chocolates, which I expect will be getting a glowing review soon.)

It is a wonderful read, both for the mouthwatering pictures and the delightful text. I don't know whether, overall, this will help me with taming my sweet tooth, but for now it is a vicarious pleasure.

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

Have some wonderful oddness. I can't stop re-watching this video:

Philip Scott Johnson has creatued a video that morphs Vicent Van Gogh's self-portraits from one to the next. The effect is really something. The angles and colors change, but what keeps it really consistent as being the same person is the eyes.

One thing this really shows is how good our brains are at recognizing "this thing is also that thing".

Van Gogh from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

I swear, I will find the time to get the Gallery Night photos up. In the meantime, I have a wonderful thing for you.

In almost every picture #7, collected and edited by Erik Kessels and Joep Eljkens has an amazing series of photos taken from the perspective of a shooting gallery. From age 16 in 1936 to the present day, Ria van Dijk has been going yearly to the shooting gallery at the fair, where he picture is automatically taken when she hits the target. (There is a gap in the photos during the war years.)

The series is remarkable as we watch her get older, fashions change, and the photography go from sepia to polaroid. All the while, her arms are up, her left eye is closed, and she bears a look of steady concentration and pride. It really is a wonderful thing, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Go take a look!

I used to draw, but I kind of drifted away from it in favor of other things...like photography. And, like any skill left unpracticed, I've gotten rusty as hell.

However, Pose Maniacs makes me want to get back into practice. I particularly like the gesture drawing feature, since that was my favorite part of life drawing class.

...will be coming soon, I promise. I just need to get the photos edited. In the meantime, how about a webcomic? (I started reading this recently, and have been enjoying it.)

This grand old post office building is going to be transformed into Moynihan Station, an expansion of Penn Station. In the meantime, a lot of it is currently vacant.

Open House New York allowed Scout, the blogger of Scouting New York to tour and photograph the facilities. The result is a really interesting photo series.

I'd love a chance to look around there myself, but alas....too far away. However, I really love looking at these photos.

LIFE.com has some previously unreleased photos of the Hell's Angels from 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray. These are great aesthetically, historically, and as a sociological piece. Too bad the story was killed in 65, but I'm glad they've put the photos online.

Go take a look!

Denverpost.com has some fabulous arial shots of Manhattan in their photoblog. The perspective is breathtaking.

Go take a look!

NPR is featuring some neat "ground as backdrop" photos at the moment.

I'd already seen Oren Lavie's "Her Morning Elegance"

as well as "Sorry I'm Late"

But Strawberry Swing was new to me.

And now, into Friday we gooooooooooooooooo!

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

Miniature Art on the Tip of Pencil by Dalton Ghetti (via Odd Stuff Magazine) showcases the amazing and beautiful sculptures that Ghetti carves into the graphite tips of ordinary pencils.

He has a level of patience and devotion to his work that I have not achieved. The fact that he gives his work away, rather than sell it, adds a layer of wonderful to the whole thing.

I've done many of these things. Doing things alone can be wonderful. It isn't necessarily better or worse than doing things with a companion or two, but it is definitely different.

Go take a look!

Dark Roasted Blend explores some really interesting book plates. Looking at some of the designs, I find myself wanting to make my own set of book plates. Time to start planning!

See the sky while stuck at your computer with Neave Planetarium, a fun Flash-based planetarium site. I'm enjoying it.

Livestrong.com has a neat program from tracking diet and exercise. The diet tracking part is pretty standard, but what I like about it is that you can map and track particular exercise routes, and save them for later.

I no longer have to guess how far I walked when I take a midnight stroll around my neighborhood, or how far my bike ride was. The fact that it includes the elevation changes is particularly nice. Not entirely without bugs, but very handy.

It also comes as a mobile version for iPhone and iTouch.

My "Red Gym" photo has a nice inclusion on the Photogrunt blog. There are some other very nice pictures included. Why not take a look?

Clients from Hell

The Seventeen Magazine Project

Both are worth a look.

As blogged by T.

I was obviously not the only photographer at the Floating Market. Here are some that were actually shot during the market. (And with better lighting, since she was working with more than just the pop-up flash.) It's a very nice set.

Also, here is another excellent write-up of the event, featuring some of those photos.

IO9 put together a gallery called What to Wear to the End of the World. There are some excellent examples given, but I know what is still my favorite.

I'm quoted in Etsy's Storque blog.

Also, more Film Fest write-ups coming soon, but in the meantime, I'm off to Chicago for Lifeline Theater's Floating Market benefit.

Cicada this time. Nice way to end the work week.

The Floating market garners a nice mention in this article on the Etsy Recyclers Guild Team (see page 4 for a photo and page 5 for the mention)

What a nice way to start the week!

I've watched this one a couple of times, and enjoy it more each time.

ETA: In case you don't know all of the paintings.

ETA II: And yes, the blackface in the rendition of "Olympia" is rather troubling. I didn't notice it the first couple of times I watched the video, sad to say.

A pair of cufflinks from The Floating Market has received a favorable mention on Small talk about big things. Check it out!