News Photos of 2013

Boston's Big Picture website always boasts stunning photography, and their year end roundup of news photos from around the world is also an impressive collection. (Click to enlarge.)

Above, a shot from massive wildfires in Australia in January of this year. 

Here's an image from August in Egypt ad that nation struggles to reinvent itself.

There are three parts to this year's collection - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Annual Christmas Photo Caption Contest

Yes, it's that time again - craft your best caption for the photo above and you too can be a WINNER!

What will you win? A giant heapin' helpin' of my love and devotion, that's what. Not too shabby. (And of course, you'll receive the satisfaction of a job well done!!)

A caption to get you started --

"Say Mayan Apocalypse one more time, and there will be something way worse than coal in yer stocking."

Best Political Website of the Month

It's really not a website, but a Tumblr account: Floor Charts is an archive photo collection of all the charts brought up to the floor during debates and comments In Congress. They range from awful made-at-the-last-moment monsters to the oddest moments imaginable and of course, lots of colored charts, shapes and lines.

The Oil War in The Gulf of Mexico

"In fact, there are three fronts. We’ve got the emissions at the bottom of the ocean. We have where the oil is coming to the surface and trying to fight it as far offshore as we can -- you’d rather deal with it there before it even gets close to shore -- and then how you deal when it makes contact with shore. And the three kind of distinct operations require different sets of -- types of capability. And we’re fighting a three-front war basically at once."

That's from Admiral Thad Allen, recently retired from the Coast Guard, and the government's point man on the disastrous and non-stop gusher of oil in the deepwaters of the Gulf of Mexico. KnoxViews has more from Adm. Allen's comments yesterday.

Above that quote, one of several jaw-dropping images featured on The Big Picture. The ever-growing pollution and environmental destruction is hitting the smallest and the largest lifeforms across the region. Here are some other pics from the web site. Click on the images to see them in larger formats, or just click on the link above to The Big Picture.

Meet Michael Alvis and Buy His Book

I've been most fortunate living here in East TN to have made so many good friends with folks who are also talented artists. It might seem odd to some, but there has always been this very strong and powerful community of artists in our area and it's my pleasure to introduce another to you today.

Michael Alvis currently teaches photography at Carson-Newman College, my alma mater, and he's also a skilled painter too. We became friend when I was a student in the early 1980s and we soon found a shared passion - watching movies. This was back in the day when VCRs were top-loaders and we shelled out way to much money for movie rentals as we would rent massive stacks of videotapes and go on marathon runs which might last for 24 hours or more likely for 48 or 72 hours at a stretch.

Michael is from Rogersville, but has traveled far and wide - visiting every state in our country as well as living for several years in Japan. He was there again this summer and taking pictures of a place and a people which he truly loves. He has now collected some of his favorites for a book, titled "Japan {Shashin}" which is now on sale and you can preview the book here at this website.

I urge you to spend some time looking at the book, and hey, the holidays are about to begin so why not buy a copy or two or three for friends? And here, take a look at some of the other books Michael has for sale too -- you'll see much to enjoy and much to buy, so buy it!!

Michael creates images which I really enjoy - he has this knack for capturing images of our world which are sometimes on the edges of our daily perspectives, sometimes are right in front of us and he makes those images unique. Here, another book I really like is called "Dog Trade", a collection of photos which are all signs - hand-written signs, abandoned signs, and other signs of human life. A sample is below from his online gallery via the C-N Art Department:


Most every day of my post college life was surely shaped by the many hours and days I spent at the Art building at Carson-Newman. No, I was no Art Major, but the people and the ideas I encountered there have been a constant inspiration. Michael and others who call the Art Department home - Department Chairman David Underwood, Artist-In-Residence William Houston, and David's wife Susan Underwood, who is the Creative Writing professor at C-N - are also my friends and folks who made my life much better.

The image below is a portrait of Michael Alvis, and a cover to one of his books, made from the many images he captured in Japan with his camera. Now go and buy his work.

Giants Mark 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Berlin Wall

The Boston Globe has some amazing pictures of part of the ongoing celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, part of a massive photo essay. The story being enacted is performed by the French street theater company, Royal de Luxe. It tells a story of a young girl and her uncle, a deep sea diver, who helps to destroy the wall which separates him from his niece and is entitled The Berlin Reunion.

Estimates of the crowd say nearly 2 million people watched the unusual giant marionettes enact their story on the streets of Berlin.

Here's a sample of the images taken as the giant diver strolls past the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building and below an image of his giant niece. The full photo essay is here.

Looking at Square America

For the past few weeks I've been returning again and again to a great web site called "Square America" which provides hundreds and hundreds of photos of daily life, some on special occasions, some on the spur of the moment, all from the early use of cameras and the candid moments of American life. As the site's creator Nicholas Osborn says: "Square America is a site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century. Not only do these photographs contain a wealth of primary source information on how life was lived they also constitute a shadow history of photography, one too often ignored by museums and art galleries."

It's almost like time travel. If you've never had the experience of sifting through an old shoebox of family photos, where the pictures wait on little squares of paper, some with those funky scalloped edges, some streaked with nearly illegible writing to identify the time and place and people, then Square America is the next best thing.

Images of lives and events are presented with startling simplicity and yet evoke complexity too. For decades, this kind of photo record was the cutting edge in family history. Some years back I received a few boxes of photos from my own family and have found them to be a source of endless imaginings and a vivid documentation of where I came from.

Many categories are offered - for examples, I picked just a few of the huge amount of images offered. This site is one I'll return to often.

From the section called "The Neighbors":"




From a section called "The Pleasures and Terrors of Youth":