Can you tell we had Chinese take-out tonight for dinner?

The New Year begins. Happy New Year to you all! Wishing you and your family all prosperity in 2007.

Starting today, as I promised way back when, I will be posting one image a day. This will be a daily exercise to flex my visual muscles. This daily meditation isn't for awards or contests or even for deep navel gazing. I hope that it will guide me to express what I see in the world in new and interesting ways.

The pictures will simply follow these rules: 1) the images will be well exposed, 2) they will be well composed and 3) they can be of anything I fancy. The post will be less of which lens or camera or ISO I have used [though, I'll be a geek and mention it if you wish]. Those things matter, but not as much as the act of making images for oneself.

Your comments are always welcome. Feel free to critique the image(s) as well. In fact, among the most helpful critiques I receive through the year, I will choose a group of new friends [and that's what I really hope you will all become] to receive a TIFFINBOX t-shirt [among a sundry of gifts].

This year-long series will be called ‘Vision Quest'. If you are checking this site through an aggregator, set it to receive the image through the RSS feed. If you find it worthy, feel free to tag the post to your del.icio.us or digg account.

I'll post my first image in the evening.

SimplePhotoTV

A new trend in family photography [also known as lifestyle photography] is having a photographer come home repeatedly over the course of a year

PhotographyBlog has a terrific interview of National Geographic's Gerd Ludwig

24 Ways to impress your friends. The one on photographic palettes is my favorite

Video Volunteers “is working to create a global network of 100s of rural or peri-urban Video Producers who produce and share media across the barriers of illiteracy, poverty and media neglect.”

Try explaining this to the security guard as you check in for your next flight

Top 10 Blogs for writers

I think Andy Warhol is rolling in his grave. Check how Barney's is selling his designs on Campbell's soup cans for a whopping $48 [sure you get four of 'em, but for salty soup?] Via Kottke

Dosa Man [via Pardon My Hindi‘s Whatsthesamachar]

Heidi Good – interesting photography, clean design aethetic. Check out her website!

Getty Images Year In Focus is a retrospective of the best images from the year. Expect more of these “best of …” galleries soon. I'll post them as soon as I hear about them. If you get to them sooner than I do, please do email and let me know.

If you are Macintosh-lover like me, you are probably on the look out for some pretty slick software to go with your machine(s). MacHeist has for the last week or so been selling a bundle of software for $49. The actual value of the package, of 10 separate award-winning applications, if bought separately would be about $360! What a deal, then to get it just for $49, eh? Well, in line with my previous post about giving and receiving at the same time, about 25% of what you pay for the bundle goes to one of the charities listed on their page. You get to select which one or split the 25% across all eight charities. Very cool. You have got only about 31 hours to go before the vault is sealed and the sale ends. So get to it!

T'is the season of receiving gifts, but it can also be about a season of giving gifts. But how about this novel idea – could you receive gifts and at the same time give gifts? Now, won't that be just cool?

Well, two brothers a brother and sister – Ken and JJ Ramberg – have done just that through Goodsearch. We all use Google, Yahoo! or some other search engine to look for information on the Internet. Why not put some of those advertisement dollars to work for a charity that is close to our heart? Here is how it works.

“What we don't all have is the time or money to support these efforts as much as we'd like. So, what if we could raise money for our favorite charities and schools by doing something that we do every day — search the Internet?”

I'll let you know which charity I have chosen and why in a couple of days. I hope you will join me in supporting it by simply using the Goodsearch page for searching for your favority topics. You won't have to lift your wallet, I promise.

“In a single snapshot, during 40 seconds of silence, you could absorb the emotional arc of Bob Gainey's life because you knew ever detail, every epiphany and pain, behind that photo of a father and a daughter.”

That was written by Selena Roberts for The New York Times, describing the scene at Bell Center in Montreal, before the Canadiens played the Boston Bruins.

It is a terrific testament to what a photograph can evoke in all of us and a reminder to keep making images of our loved ones. This reminds me of a cheesy tag line that one of the Indian film companies (that existed back in the 70s, I believe) used: Memories Fade. Photographs Do Not.

Dan Heller's Photography Business Blog

John Nack lists a slew of photo guides that you must download

Interested in shooting and processing RAW images? How about sharpening those images that appear dull and boring right out of the camera? Well, Bruce Fraser's books and acumen on these subjects and other Photoshop-centric issues are legendary and have helped thousands of photographers across the globe. Unfortunately Bruce has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Bruce Fraser is a true Photoshop guru. Pay your respects. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals has announced that it will honor Fraser with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Is the photojournalist an endangered species? Sigh!

Photojournalist Ed Kashi‘s work on Mediastorm uses an interesting device to display his most recent project: Iraqi Kurdistan.

Photographer and friend Neil van Niekerk explains how he uses his camera's histogram to avoid blow-outs. Check out also his in-depth look at how to use your dedicated flash unit.

This should be on every photog's reference desk: John Harrington's Best Business Practices For Photographers

Conde Nast launches VOGUE in India

Pixelicious is a free resource for professional and aspiring photographers

The National Associations of Photoshop Professionals is hosting the Photoshop User Awards

One Light Workshop – Zach Arias' intense workshop that I hope to attend [if he heads into Boston]

Youki – A Flash-based tool to design your website. There are only two variations, but they look wicked cool. Con: At nearly $50/month, it's way too expensive. To see what one can do with it though, check out the developer's site.

Got a Mac? Good move. Well, since you broke your piggy bank once to buy my favorite computer, here is a link to ThriftMac, a site chock-full of of free software for the best OS around.