I rarely do this, but tonight feels like a good time for a pictures-only post.  Quite a few things have sparked my interest lately -- here are four that stick in my mind.

Jen Davis' self-portraits.  I'm pretty enamored with them, conceptually and aesthetically.  You should look at them, too.

The plot thickens over JPG Magazine's supposed departure. As I continue to read the news coming out from JPG and elsewhere, I find it difficult not to get cynical. After all, in the original goodbye letter, didn't editor in chief Laura Brunow Miner say “we sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success?”

Either JPG did a pretty incomplete job looking for buyers – especially considering all the rumors that Flickr will be the buyer – or this was all part of the plan to cut staff in half and start a cash-only bidding war.

What's your take? Does something about this smell fishy?

In other news, I stumbled upon some humorous (that is, humorous because there were no injuries) “glad that's not me” photos of a skier who ended up suspended upside down sans pants on a lift in Vail, Colorado. Unfortunately, the photos – taken by a resort photographer off-duty and with his own camera – have cost the photographer his job with Sharpshooter Images.

I feel like this week has driven me crazy.  I can hardly believe it's Thursday.

• 1000 Words Photography, an online contemporary photo magazine, came out with a new "issue" this week and it's got some interesting work.
• I've been saying I'm going to get out more, and I think I'll really have to visit the Contemporary Museum to check out Dawoud Bey's portraits of teenagers.  The portraits are big (30 x 40 inch) and accompanied by autobiographical writing by the subjects.  How can I pass that up?
• The National Portrait Gallery has an online exhibition up.  The current showing didn't strike me immediately, but it's well-presented and seems to be welcoming me back for a second and third look to digest the work.   
• When I first arrived in Baltimore, a coworker told me I'd probably enjoy the quirky art and culture scene in our little city.  In the Station North Arts District, the Charles Theatre is apparently dedicating a big wall to a regular display of employees' art work, which I think is pretty cool.
  

Happy Thanksgiving!  An abundance of food and wine delayed the Thursday night links, but here they are!

• I've heard rumors that the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II will start to filter into stores soon.  I'm really excited to see the creative things artists will do with the awesome HD video this camera can capture.
  

• AP photographer Jerome Delay took this heart-wrenching photo of two children looking for relatives in Kiwanja, Congo. He was inspired to try to reunite the family after receiving a flood of emails from strangers asking how they could help.
• While on an adventure trip in Pakistan last year, my father-in-law sent us a postcard featuring what he called "jingle trucks."  They really are a sight to behold, and I recently found an article about them on Web Urbanist.
• Wow, crazy!  I just learned I can do even more with my Flickr account.  After losing some valued pictures due to hard drive failures and the like, I have been much more religious about uploading full-quality photos to Flickr.  Positive side effects: I got some very pretty business cards from Moo, we'll be ordering our Christmas cards using Flickr, and while I'll always be partial to handmade artist books I may take Blurb for a spin.
  

This Thursday's links include...

• Did you know the National Museum of Women in the Arts is free every first Sunday of the month?  That means I could even splurge on a $14 Amtrak ticket rather than driving.  There really is no excuse not to go.
• Speaking of DC, it's too bad we can't combine Free Community Day at the NMOWA with American University's Mid-Atlantic MFA Invitational.  Oh well.
• I recently stumbled upon photographer Elinor Carucci and her "Crisis" series.  These domestic images are very intimate, almost to the point of making me feel slightly uncomfortable and voyeuristic.  It's interesting to see images so different from my own, yet still unfolding domestic life in pictures.
• The Magenta Foundation has posted a call for entries in search of emerging photographers age 34 and under.  I'm a little iffy about the $50 application fee, but then again, maybe that narrows the pool of competition.  Who knows? 
  

As seen this week:

• Does a new hybrid camcorder/DSLR signal a shift in the digital media world?
• An engineering professor at Penn State University has used lots of photo trickery to capture usually-invisible air currents.  The practical application?  Studying air movement in human coughs to understand more fully how diseases spread.
  
• More abandoned stuff caught my eye this week.  This time it's amusement parks.
• The Internet's role in this presidential election was unprecedented, and the more I read about it, the more it astounds me.  Did you know a search for "Obama victory" now yields over 12,000 results on Flickr?
  

As seen this week:

• Found a new addition to my RSS reader this week: Web Urbanist.  It may end up being too trendy and hip for me, but for now I'm thoroughly enjoying both the subject matter and the writing style.
• Incidentally, Web Urbanist recently put up some classic, texture rich color photos of abandoned hotels, churches, and hospitals.  Who isn't a sucker for photographs like these?  They reminded me of a photo book I absolutely fell in love with sometime in spring 2007: Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom.  I just wish I had the extra cash to buy this book instead of just looking at the whole thing over the course of an hour in the Barnes & Noble.
• 1000 Words Photography just featured some interesting work by Pawel Jaszczuk.  I thought it was some sort of commentary on the the quasi-homeless drunks that inhabit our subways.  Then I thought to myself, "that guy is wearing a pretty nice suit," and read the description.  Salaryman is actually about white-collar Japanese workers, among whom heavy drinking is "naturally accepted" as a "compulsory catharsis" to escape from their high-stress jobs.  Apparently these scenes are more the rule than the exception.
• Maxim photo editor Kelly Stuart was riding the NYC subway at around 12:30 a.m. on election night when a group of people unfurled a giant American flag in the subway car and everyone started singing the national anthem.  How often do you see that kind of patriotism while using public transportation?  I don't care who you voted for, that's really nice.
  

Busy week, but not without some good link finds.

• I've thoroughly enjoyed reading seminar notes from the PDN Photo Plus Expo on the PDNPulse Blog.  Of special interest to me were Website Dos and Don'ts and Boosting Your Site's Search Engine Rankings.  Definitely some good technical stuff in there for me to try out this weekend.
• I'm sick and tired of talking, hearing, and seeing electoral politics.  November 4th, you can't come too soon!  However, I was really impressed by photojournalist Callie Shell's images of Barack Obama on the campaign trail -- then and now.
• My husband -- a software engineer by trade -- has been looking at many, many strange visualizations online this week.  Tonight he sent me Shape of Song, visualizations of popular songs by computer scientist and new media artist Martin Wattenberg.  Here is Mozart's Jupiter Symphony:

Lots of links this week.  Here's what I've been seeing:

• A coworker recently signed up for Google Reader and what came with the default "photography" folder but A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania.  I wondered why the next township over from where I grew up in Bucks County warranted such attention, but I learned as soon as I visited the site.  These are stereotypically beautiful images capturing the quintessential vision of America.  Right now the current picture is Silver Maple Leaves Falling into the Delaware River at Dawn, and it makes me a bit homesick.
• A friend of mine works as a runner for the Dr. Phil spinoff The Doctors, which makes for an interesting iPhone-powered Posterous photoblog.  When he posted "Me and a pile of lard" it gave me pause, but imagine my surprise when I see the next post is "I am driving human fat around Beverly Hills."  Now I'm wondering, what kinds of weird jobs do people get themselves into when they move to LA?
• A blip on the PDN Pulse blog (brought to you by the editors of Photo District News) that I'll be sure to mark with a star and save for later: making a good impression when you're marketing your work to gallery owners, photo editors, etc.  The article really stresses being able to speak articulately about your work: know what it is you are doing and have good words to express that to the folks you want to impress.  Duly noted.  I'm glad I carry around a notebook so I can jot down any thoughts I have about my work during the day.  There are some good "business of art" pearls of wisdom in there.
• Ordered my Moo MiniCards this week (see previous entry) and had a lot of fun cropping my images into tiny rectangles.  Hopefully they turn out as unique and beautiful as the free samples I got in the mail on Monday.
  

I'm going to test out a new idea here: another weekly post with some finds I've made throughout the week.

• Influential photojournalist James Nachtwey is using the $100,000 TED Prize to spread awareness about extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).  The pictures are an intense in terms of the abject human suffering displayed, but with that word of warning are worth a serious look: http://xdrtb.org/photographs.php
  
• The Artists Review Artists Project connects artists via the internet for peer reviews.  Participating artists exchange one JPG image of their work and write a 100-500 word review.  Upon receiving your review, you have the option of responding with no more than 100 words and providing an additional image.  To participate, check it out here.
• Some of my nighttime photos are on the JPG Magazine website for consideration for future issues.  They take the form of a little photo essay.  Check it out and cast your vote!
  

Every once in a while, I <3 Photograph shows me something that piques my interest.  The other day it brought to my attention the work of Erik Boker—specifically his "Product Dissections" series.  I found it interesting to compare his study of toothpastes to my own household photography.  While Boker has a lot to say about how we relate to the natural/unnatural as Consumer, I'm concerned in this case with his analysis of the "seemingly insignificant" objects we interact with on a daily basis. 

There aren't a whole lot of parallels between the work, but I find these toothpastes a little grotesque (perhaps a statement on our idea of "hygiene?") and wholly fascinating to look at. I think it was beneficial to my own process to look at his disconcerting critique of our everyday vs. my drive to capture and record household details as almost sacred.

Boker's stark, utilitarian images got me thinking about something else, too: can my images stand on their own?  How important is it that each and every photo be an excellent image when taken out of context? From the beginning, I have struggled with the fact that these images lack some of the boldness of my previous work. My nighttime photos, for example, caused me a lot of discomfort in their making. I was breathless with fear, trespassing alone at night and standing still for 30-second exposures. In every case I was experiencing fright or awe at crumbing shipyards, brightly lit industrial landscapes, skeletal fuel pumps from another decade.

My current work reminds me of the later images in my Reclamation series. At some point the photos calmed down and began quietly documenting the specifics of decay and abandonment: a weathered string of party lights, a faded plastic beach basket full of pine cones and dirt and old jump ropes. That careful documentation, the act of preserving and honoring a particular moment in time, is what I want to go for in this next body of images.

This time, though, I'm examining activity and life, light and color, a home inhabited. It still troubles me that there is no personal risk inherent in these photographs, but I think there is real opportunity there to create something very thoughtful that reads like a book: an exploration of the intersection between career, art work, household. Woman, wife, artist.

In the same breath this is home, simple and overlooked, as seen through the eye of a photographer and writer. We string together words and images constantly, even at home when it looks like we are simply collapsed on the couch after a long day. There is always something to say about the way the screen door frames the sycamore tree out front, the quality of light across the floorboards, the particular arrangement of a stack of library books on the table.

The promised (and delayed) weekly post from last week still sits in a file on my computer.  Unfortunately, I am dealing with some technical problems with my web hosting company and cannot seem to add images to entries anymore.  While that gets sorted out, I am going to share some of my regular online reading.  I own a couple good photo books, but the internet is by far my biggest source of mental nutrition.  Here are some things hanging out in my Google Reader right now:

• Women in Photography is half-blog, half-gallery.  A new "solo exhibition" showcasing a female photographer opens each month.  Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis and the site is curated by Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips.  There are a lot of women doing thought-provoking photographic work, and these two have chosen some great images in the past few months the site has been in existence.
• I find that I Heart Photograph is a little hit or miss: sometimes I find a real gem, sometimes I fail to be inspired by this site that posts copious amounts of photographic finds.  However, I keep the RSS feed on my radar just for those gems it unearths from time to time, such as
• Crashed Cars of Kuwait.  This documentation of car wrecks in Kuwait is eerie, unsettling, and wholly engaging.  I think all our eyes experience a magnetic tug toward mangled vehicles like this because it's so easy to imagine ourselves in the drivers' place, and that is the spirit in which this photographer documents the wrecks.  He acknowledges there is a certain morbid insanity to it but treats the subject with enough reverence to make this a stunning body of work.  In later images he ventures into night scenes, a realm near and dear to my heart.
• Friends' blogs are always in my feed, and I'm always up for a few tales from the entertainment world via Hungry Filmmaker, which has a little bit of everything: job stories, a touching video marriage proposal, tips on working with limited resources, film theory, and some interesting thoughts on copyright/intellectual property in the digital age.  Oh, I admit it, I also read this because secretly I want to work with film but haven't been able to come up with a good enough idea quite yet.  I live (and struggle) vicariously.
  
• Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with Strobist at all because I haven't been doing much off-camera lighting.  BUT.  I feel I need to bring this blog to light because it a.) is written by a Baltimore Sun photojournalist, b.) has an excellent community of active readers and c.) does a great job of teaching professional lighting on a budget.  There is a huge wealth of tips for making highly effective lighting gear on the cheap, with a focus of lighting off-camera using groups of remotely triggered Speedlights.  If I were a photo professor, I would list this site as a required text.

What is on your reading list?  Feel free to send me your favorite online food for thought in the comments.

Crafts were the first art form I experienced growing up: my mom is a flea market and craft fair addict and I more often than not tagged along with her, then and now.  Mom also makes jewelry (beautiful earrings, mostly) and gave me a knack for piecing together little projects at the dining room table after work.  My craftiness has migrated to a job at my uncle's cabinetry shop in middle school, zines in high school, home-built stretchers and frames for my paintings in college, and a love for wintertime knitting and crochet passed down from my grandmother and great-grandmother.

Baltimore has a fun, active, and diverse indie craft scene.  One of my coworkers, Christy Zuccarini, recently landed a gig with the Baltimore Sun writing the Baltimore By Hand blog.  So far it has been extremely aesthetically pleasing in addition to being a great read.  Plus, knowing another Baltimorean who blogs about art makes me feel part of a scene -- you should check out Christy's blog at http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/crafts/.