I've long loved Google Maps, and especially with my travels and photo geoencoding, I often use it to further explore a place I've already visited in person.

For years, though, I wondered why a distance-measurement feature was not included, since that would seem one of the first enhancements that would come to mind. I eventually created a simple distance-measurement tool myself, adding it to my online exif tool, so that when you use it to view the data for a geoencoded image, you can measure distances from the photo spot (here's an example). Still, my solution was less than ideal [...]

Some things just leave me totally dumbfounded....

Carolyn Wright has an interesting article on her Photo Attorney blog: Update on the Lawsuit against Benjamin Ham for Photographing Private Property. It's about the legal wranglings surrounding a photographer who took a pretty photo of some trees while trespassing on private property. The owners of the property sued him to stop selling copies of that pretty photo, and much legal paperwork ensued.

There was, apparently, no dispute over whether the photographer, Benjamin Ham, trespassed on private property ("passing through locked gates and ignoring 'no trespassing' signs") in order to make his photograph, [...]
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I took the photo above this afternoon. What is it?

Anthony has taken to playing with my camera (the huge combo of Nikon D700, usually with an MB-D10 vertical grip and a Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 attached), which is fine with me so long as he doesn't drop it.

I found the picture above on the memory card. He took it the other day when I wasn't around, of random stuff on the dining table, including a half-built paper Wall-E and a lacquered spoon.

Here's a shot he took the previous evening while we were working on the paper Wall-E...

Later that day, he wanted to take my picture while [...]

Today was the annual Kyoto City Fire Department New-Year Parade, held out in the street near my place. According to the press release, it involved about 3,000 people, 56 fire trucks/vehicles, and two fire-department helicopters. The same event three years ago, which was my first outing with a dSLR, was overcast and gloomy, but today it was bright and sunny.

Unfortunately, I missed it.

I'd forgotten about it, and was reminded only by the thunderous rumble of the helicopters flying very low, immediately overhead, taking part in the finale. (The press release said that only two would take part, but [...]