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Since the Athens games in 2004, news sites have come around to having more (and better) photo galleries that aren't strictly tied to articles. The summer games in Beijing seem like the best covered Olympic games in recent memory. Or at the very least, the games with the widest selection of photos available to the public.

The games are finished, now, but there are just tons and tons of photos to be had and here are some of my favourites:

• Olympic Pictures of the Day from the New York Times
• Photo Galleries: Beijing Olympics 2008, LA Times 
• Newsweek's Visions of China. Vincent Laforet's entry about shooting events with multiple cameras is excellent. Access and timing are everything. 
• Women's Fencing at Boston.com's The Big Picture.
  

I love the trees planted around my office complex. They're all some 20' tall, with lovely broad leaves that catch the sunshine beautifully, providing buckets of shade along the way.



Normally: I'm the sort to see such a group of trees, wonder what they are specifically, and go find out. But you know how it is with the everyday: you forget because you see it every day. And so I did. Until today. Finally curious enough to do something about it, I engaged my Google-fu.

Unfortunately: the tree encyclopedia that I found wasn't much of a help in this search. Then it occurred to me that I remember lounging beneath similar trees between classes @ UCLA on the north campus. So I search "UCLA north campus trees" not expecting to find anything, because really: how likely is it that a university would detail their landscaping choices... oh, oh UCLA does. Well, of course we do. (:

As it happens, the trees from my college years and the trees in my everyday life that I enjoy so much are the same: the South African Coral tree. I'd forgotten that the trees at work bloom  every now and again with those bright red flowers. Still: I recognized them at once.

Mystery solved!

Post tree-hunt, I came across 2 other items I want to share with you:

• Not everyone's a fan of Ken Rockwell, but I like him well enough. He's always been straight with me and I appreciate that he uses the gear he talks about. In a recent update, he resurfaced his thoughts on how to use ultra-wide lenses and I think it's a pretty good Getting Started Guide if you're trying out the crazy wide end of the spectrum.
  
  In short? Get close!
• Tycho (aka Scott Hansen) has long been a favourite. Dub, atmospheric (not always the same thing), but never ever boring, I can let a Tycho record or EP play for hours on end. "Sun-drenched" is one of the best descriptions I've seen of his work. His latest EP features the single "The Daydream" (iTunes) and a short film called "Meridian" was just released featuring the track.
  
  Not everyone gets down with the time-lapse photography set to electronic music, but this is pretty good. It's a nice selection of good photos with good transitions and some ridiculous particle effects.
  
  Yum.

Split Second
Another excellent photography exhibit from The Morning News. Barbara Probst sets up her cameras (sometimes 2, sometimes many more) to fire at the same moment, capturing a scene from different angles.

Photography is like language: It provides us with an interpretation depending on the intentions and abilities of the person that told the story or made the photograph. - Barbara Probst

The mechanics of taking (or making, if you prefer) a photograph fascinate me. From the location, time of day, equipment, people/things being photographed, and the people doing the photographing: it's all part of whatever image you finally see.

Generally, I'm not bothered or disappointed in finding out how much (or how little) work went into a photograph. Lots of prep time and lights and make-up don't necessarily make a photo
any less inspired, so why bother turning your nose up at it? Everything can't always be shot from the hip, so what's the point pretending it should be?

London is Swimming
Photos of abandoned pools in and around London. I like it when such places that are forgotten and untended manage when photographed to say something about their former lives. In Gigi Cifali's collection of pools, I think it's low angles and bright & muted colours that sucked me in. (The photos are also in Polar Inertia's latest issue.)

Incidentally, BLDGBLOG is one of my all-time favourites; if you have any interest in architecture, urban landscapes/planning, then BLDGBLOG might be something want to add to your bookmarks/feed reader. It's not the sort of thing you can just skim -- well, okay, usually there are photos, so you can but why you would is beyond me, the entries are thoughtful and worth your attention.


Snow in July? A mixed blessing in the Rockies
The NYT runs some pretty excellent photos and I'm noticing lately that they're often going with a pretty large photo on the article page for the day's featured articles. Unfortunately, they pull the photos from the stories once they're a few days old, so here's the shot from the story:



Photo credit: Michael Jamison/The Missoulian, via Associated Press

About a month ago, Boston.com fired up a new photo blog, The Big Picture.

With regular news stories, you rarely get very large photos. Very wide columns of text are difficult to read, so if photos are embedded in an article, they're typically medium-ish (say, 500 pixels or so). If there's a separate photo player, the photos still aren't "oh my goodness"-big.

Well, The Big Picture is all about "oh my goodness"-big. Each entry features an enormous collection of photos from a given topic, e.g. the latest space shuttle launch. We're all so used to seeing those medium-ish photos that these huge photos is a reminder of how powerful photos can really be.