Maybe it’s just the jolt from that first sip of coffee this morning, but two things stuck in my brain from last night’s spectacular light show by Ma Nature:
1. It was a collective, shared experience that echoed the unity in the early days of the pandemic lockdowns.
2. Apple could not have scripted a better global ad for the iPhone’s camera capabilities.
The cosmos and technology never cease to amaze and inspire me.
“When you’re present and you’re always looking, that’s when you discover things,”
Nat Geo Photographer Offers Three Tips to Improve Your Images | PetaPixel
Marshall McLuhan would have loved this thread I saw on Reddit this morning.
Throughout my career, I’ve told stories using words, weaving sentences with nouns, verbs, and the occasional sprinkle of adjectives and adverbs to infuse them with a little creative flourish. When I’m not storytelling for the ear — which is how I like to write — I get behind the lens of my camera to tell stories for the eye. The two crafts share common ground. Each is an art form whose ultimate goal lies in making another human feel something.
As the curtain falls on 2023, I find myself in the familiar territory of retrospection, sifting through images that have defined my year as a photographer. Narrowing them down to a traditional Top 10 was a struggle. A struggle in which I failed miserably.
This year marked a significant shift in my photographic tools. While my trusty Canon often took a backseat, the iPhone 15 Pro Max emerged as a surprising daily go-to camera. Its 120mm zoom was a revelation and the one thing that held back previous versions from taking a stronger hold in my quiver. It really changed how I shoot and what I see. Is it perfect yet? No, but the iPhone is a game changer.
My portfolio this year reflects a diverse collection of moments and experiences. In the studio, the precise control of off-camera flash melded with the subtleties of natural light to create a number of portraits that rise to the top of my portfolio. The streets, always a canvas for unscripted stories, came alive under my lens, each scene a raw and unfiltered slice of life. Exploring low light and abstract subjects pushed my creative boundaries, while the majestic scenes provided by Mother Nature were a reminder of the ever-present beauty in our world and in my own backyard. The Bucks County Classic, true to tradition, added more favorites to my collection.
A highlight of the year was seeing my photographs play a role in a hard-fought school board campaign that drew national attention. This experience was more than just an ego boost; it was a powerful reminder of the influence and inspirational capacity of photography.
I’m excited for what 2024 holds. I’m ready for new creative challenges and fresh perspectives. Here’s to capturing more compelling stories in the year ahead.
Eleven players on the pitch. One — the inimitable Lionel Messi — plays on a higher plane than everyone else. Maybe two planes. Three even.
Yet, even with his astro level skills, he still needs his ten teammates to win. He needs his team to set him up for goals or put the ball in the back of the net when he gives them the ball.
It is like that in business, too. Teams need their Messi: a leader who generously shares their skill and experience to make the whole team better, whose level of play challenges and drives individual players to elevate their own game, who passes the ball as much as they take the shot themselves, and whose presence and enthusiasm excites and inspires those around them to push harder and think bigger.
Who is your team’s Number 10?
There’s an ongoing debate in photography about whether a photographer takes or makes a photograph. I’d argue celebrity photographer Greg Williams puts it to rest with this quote:
“Sometimes you take a picture, sometimes you create a picture and other times you really make a picture with the subject.”
The stories behind 5 intimate celebrity photos
By Oscar Holland, CNN
There is beauty in bike racing. Two-time U.S. champion John Eustice captures it in his daily recaps of the Tour de France.
The team took full control with 2.5-km to go when Ramon Sinkeldam strung out the field into a single line, snaking through sweeping turns of the approach to the finish. Once spent, Jonas Rinckaert took over, there was a bit of a lull that allowed the other teams to come up before he re-accelerated to 1-km to go opening up the Mathieu van der Poel show. VdP started sprinting, completely asphyxiating his rival lead-out men, dropping Philipsen off on the left side at 300-meters to the line. Mark Cavendish, the last winner in Bordeaux in 2010, exploded down the right side of the road at 70-kph, the fastest recorded speed of the day. Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay, in the chance of his career, was on Cav’s wheel. Philipsen dove right, aiming for the Manx Missile’s slipstream. Girmay, and here’s the rub, was letting a gap open between himself and Cav, he was being dropped in full sprint – which was all Philipsen needed. He forced himself into the gap, Girmay was a bit off balance and bounced a bit on the side boards, but it was already over for him, the Eritrean had lost his moment. Philipsen and his team had ridden the sprint from the front. The Belgian won because he has the best team and he is the fastest sprinter. There was no fault committed: this was professional road sprinting at its best.
Two’s a coincidence, three’s a trend as the old saying goes.
I’ve had more than a few conversations lately with folks around the technology industry that have had a common theme running through them — not just topically thematic, but in tone, too.
And that theme and tone have me thinking we’re starting a brand new cycle of tech that feels (and looks) a lot like the start of the Internet more than the start of the Web.
A cycle where engineers move to the forefront tackling new infrastructure, architecture, and networking challenges that future waves of developers will build on.
A cycle that makes the acceleration we witnessed over the last decade feel like a blip on the timeline of innovation.
Whether in reaction to economic conditions, or taking advantage of the leveling off of the core services that used to differentiate cloud providers, companies are beginning to take a closer look at their cloud sprawl and spend. Some are resetting strategies by taking things back in house; some are going in the opposite direction and spreading workloads across multiple providers to find the best fit for their business; and some are using this inflection point to reconsider whether they want to continue building on a legacy centralized architecture or prepare for a more decentralized and distributed future.
So while things like egress costs and price performance appear to be about saving money, what they’re really about — to me — is something more profound: the beginning of a new phase for cloud computing that shifts control back to the customer.
“Linode has phenomenally-generous bandwidth that, all told, has shown us savings of around 60% over AWS even without considering the savings on hardware,” said Jonathan. “It’s easy to get new servers whenever we want, the Linode API is extremely reliable, and pricing is never a surprise. We also use Linode Managed Databases, and we’ve found that Linode’s CPU performance per dollar blows everyone else out of the water.”
Jonathan Oliver, CEO, Smarty
Write what you know, so the old adage goes. Which is exactly what two-time U.S. champion John Eustice does.
The junction between the groups was made at the base of the famed Koppenberg climb, with 45-k to go, where Pogačar accelerated – of course, what else would one do? – and the big three, van der Poel, Van Aert and Pogačar were gone. The trio sliced through the fading riders of the early break, picking up and discarding them in turn.
Pogačar the Conquerer — John Eustice
Mike Maney 