Bill Waldman of 365 Portraits fame is on a roll. First it was Jhumpa Lahiri in Time and then this excellent advice about buying equipment. Read both posts and book mark this guy's sites. He is awesome!

Happy Cinco de Mayo everybody!

J. Adam Huggins shows us that the manhole covers found in NYC are made in India

You have heard of Craigslist haven't you? Well here comes a website that pulls the RSS feeds off of the original and delivers it in a much more creative/clever/clear way: crgslst

David duChemin asks “What makes a great photograph?“

Dr. Brown's Services – if you are eager to make your life a little bit easier using Photoshop you will download these scripts and use them.

Flaunt your photographs using flauntR, a free and easy online photo editor

21 Ways To Shoot Better Photographs

drop.io – faxing for the free

Learnfest by Lena Hyde, Tamara Lackey, Laura Novak, and Audrey Woulard: some very fine photographers out to teach you the ropes. I wish I could go. The price tag is $2600 for three days/2 nights and includes the teaching, the food and the accommodations. Guess, I shouldn't be complaining. In the long run I do see it is a terrific opportunity.

In the Hindu pantheon, Yama is the god of death. Well check out this camera. Freaky, isn't it?

Lakshmi's Lounge is hosting Sandeep Sood, the man behind Badmash

Simple + Dirty – David Jackson's personal work. Some very fine art indeed. Check out his other work here. His blog is here.

So, you are a professional photographer? Got a business plan? I am working on mine right now using Strategy Avenue‘s Path To A Business Plan. Strategy Avenue also has a blog written by John and Laura.

I am infatuated with Design Aglow.

MacUpdate and MacHeist both have some cool promotions on right now.

The Vagabond II may be back-ordered, but it is the only well-built external battery source I have found for my on-location portrait photography sessions. Now to order one!

The other day for some reason I kept thinking about the movie Amelie. Photo booths are so trippy, aren't they? I may have mentioned the Photobooth Blog before. If you want to set one up yourself and have a PC, try Photo Boof!. For the Mac folks among us, there is The Mugshot Machine. Then there is Rolland Elliot who will ship and rent you a booth for a fee.

Blurb, the self-publishing/designing online tool has a new version of BookSmart out. Download it here.

Vanessa Winship was in India.

Adrees Latif wins the Pulitzer prize for photography. Read all about it here.

Book reviews aren't easy and for a guy who reads at a glacial pace it's doubly hard. Thankfully UNSUNG by Anita Pratap and Mahesh Bhat has some incredibly captivating images that kept me engrossed, flipping page after page taking in each of the richly textured black & white images.

What I found curious was that the images nudged me on to read the accompanying text. Ms. Pratap's easy writing style makes it an enjoyable read as she narrates each of the nine stories about average Indian citizens doing some great things for society with very little resources. This book is simply inspirational and a must-read for all.

Whoever designed this book must also be applauded. The pacing of the images, the right pull-quotes in the right places and the easy-to-read font make this book something extra-ordinary.

Please support independent photography and writing projects such as this one by buying this book here.