close your eyes

You can now add The White House to your Flickr contacts, and like any good Flickr contact there’s a nice mix of the eventful and the ordinary. Tip: you can subscribe to the stream as an RSS feed. Via Daring Fireball

I love that DSLRs can now take beautiful short films like this.

On my “bucket list” (oh jesus I can’t believe I just used that term) is seeing the Iditarod — I’m hoping that at least some of my family comes with me. I’m reminded of this by today’s Big Picture, which features photographs of dog sledding competitions from around the world. Mush!

While on a nighttime flight back to San Francisco from Amsterdam, Flickr user Ettubrute was inspired to build an impromptu camera mount using bags, pillows, and blankets and create a time lapse film of flying across the United States. embedded flash movie Via kottke

Stunning set of photos documenting Chinese New Year at The Big Picture.

The Big Picture hosts a jaw-dropping set of photographs from photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Wait until you have a few minutes to look at every one of them. The photographs will be part of an exhibit of 150 4×6 foot prints that will be on display in New York in 2009. I hope they’ll make their [...]

It was built a hundred years ago, originally housing a family of five. Up until a few years ago, it was the home of the Gypsy Arms, a quaint Fremont Bed and Breakfast with a dungeon in the basement (B&BDSM, if you will). Its new owner is Seattle musician Steven Flynn, but today it sits [...]

Another great post from The Big Picture: The 2008 political conventions of the United States For discussion, compare and constrast: The “halo” shots: Obama is the return of Christ. McCain comes of as a little …frightening. The signage: especially the conspicuously handmade signs seen in GOP pics (have we underestimated the “hockey mom” demographic?) The [...]

Speaking of photography from above, I’ve been meaning to post a link to the Visions of China blog, which contains dozens of beautiful photographs taken by Newsweek photographers of the Beijing olympics. One of my favorites was the post the showed world records from above and described the process of taking the photos: Once you [...]