This weekend we have a couple of fun things going on. First up is a show at Smith College with Bob McGrath and one of my favorite kids in the whole world - Maddy.  Despite the fact that her mother is pumped about the idea of her daughter getting to perform in a show with Bob from Sesame Street, Maddy was not quite so psyched as of a couple of weeks ago. Her mom thinks it’s because she has to dress up in a not-so-flattering duck suit (if I am remembering this correctly). And Maddy confided in me that she hopes none of her schoolmates will be in the audience. I’m sure the opportunity to be on such a big stage in front of a big audience will turn her around. She’s quite the showperson.

Sunday is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Holyoke - arguably the city’s biggest day of the year. The weather is supposed to be real nice and it’ll be a great photo subject. Plus, we’ll have Pat’s dog with us. How nice to be a dog owner for a day!

Matt, Amy and I checked out the New York International Auto Show over the weekend. It was a lot of fun and I suspect that Matt will have more to say about it in his blog soon. For now, check out my photo gallery.

My favorite car was the Jaguar XK (not pictured in this entry, but it is here in the gallery). At 75,000, it’s a real bargain! I also enjoyed the Smart Car and the Mini, but the Jaguar stole my heart. The photo in this entry is of the Maybach, which is apparently the car that rappers drive, or something.

This is one of my very favorite photos that I’ve ever taken. I am attracted to color when I shoot so this was a great subject for me. This is Matt’s grandma’s pantry. I shot this photo last summer.

This weekend Matt and I head to the auto show in New York. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in cars, but Matt is a bonafide fanatic. It’ll be fun to see him in such an environment. And with Amy and me there, you know there will be lots of photos.

I’m excited to see what the 2009 Honda Fit looks like. Just this week I had a dream that I was in a Prius. It was really nice in my dream, but didn’t have a lot of leg room. I can’t wait to sit in a new one and stretch out my legs.

Here is a list of blogs/videos/audio that I need to get to this week.

How not to brand/market your site/newspaper (via Jeff)

Speed Up Windows XP (can’t remember but prolly via Jeff)

Adding blogs and multimedia to your newsroom (via here)

When I have more I’ll add them here

I like the song on the Volvo commercial with the ethereal-looking woman wearing a white dress. It’s by this Swedish guy named Melpo Mene. 

In celebration of Brittnie’s birthday, Pat and I took her out to dinner at Green Street Cafe in Northampton. I have never had a bad meal there and last Saturday was no exception. This was the first time I had been there in years and so it was my first time seeing the Jeff Mack mural depicting the Smith Expansion plan.

I had been looking at the mural all night. It was obvious right away that it is a play on The Last Supper, but it didn’t sink in until close to the end of our evening that it was a representation of the future of that block of town, which is complete annihilation. Note blueprint on the table and the wrecking balls off in the distance. We asked the owner about the mural and he explained its history as well as what he sees for the future of Green Street Cafe. The restaurant will be open for the next five years, but beyond that is anyone’s guess, even his.

Check out Jeff Mack’s site for more information about the mural.

Uploaded using facebook photos plugin. Check out my facebook photo galleries here (imported using the fotobook plugin). I am into the facebook plugins, because I already use facebook to upload my photos and I like the idea of having an integrated social network where I can share photos, but also communicate with my friends in other ways. I think this is why I’ve resisted flickr and other photo sharing sites.

And to think we all used to use a phone to organize our social lives.

Matt is right now trying to fix our vacuum cleaner–the one we were so excited about late last year. It’s stopped sucking right, which sucks. The claw attachment also stopped working properly about a month ago. I just wrote a lengthy email to Hoover about how annoyed I am.

In other consumer-related news, I got our cable company to knock $30 off our bill for the next three months. I had been calling to downgrade our package/see what other packages were out there, so I guess it was worth their while to save us $90 this spring so they could keep us at our same level of service.

I’ll take it.

A number of people have asked me what Nikon School is so I thought I’d take a minute to explain. Nikon School is not really a school; it’s two seminars (one is an intro and the other is advanced) that take place a few times a year across the country. I had considered doing it in Boston, but Amy suggested that we do it in New York, since we both have the same camera and it’d be fun to do it together.

School was actually a large ballroom on the 18th floor of Hotel Pennsylvania and we were two of about 400 other students. There was a pretty big range of ages represented - from high school kids to grandparent types, and then we 30-somethings in between.

Amy and I weren’t sure what to expect. Would there be a lot of those annoying students who know everything, or the ones who try to stump the instructor? Or would we end up beside chatterers? First thing was first. We made a pact that we wouldn’t make friends with anyone. We didn’t need any zealous camera freaks monopolizing our quality time.

The first instructor came to the front of the room and introduced himself as Bill Durrence. Bill Durrence has been doing this kind of thing for 15 years. Bill Durrence is from Savannah, Georgia, and has a white beard, pleasant drawl and an aversion to yankees. I immediately adored him. Bill explained the basics of digital photography, including exposure, shutter speed, aperture, and basically all the buttons all over our camera. Our second instructor was Reed Hoffman, who seemed the complete opposite of Bill, but also very likeable in a Midwestern kind of way. Reed went through the history of digital photography, file formats and the science of organizing photos. After our lunch, Bill came back and talked about the craft of photography - how can you play around with settings to make photography your own art. After that, Reed came back and went through digital editing programs and printing tips.

I came out of the whole thing loving my camera all the more, feeling a little overwhelmed, but since then things I’ve been reading for months are starting to sink in. Things are starting to click.

Nikon person or not (and really, there are a lot of good camera makers out there) I think anyone would get a lot out of a seminar like this.

Amy and I only did day one of the seminar. Day two is more of the editing techniques. Maybe next year!