Rent Glass, no not the kind you drink out of but the kind you use to make images: Lenses. Now you can rent a lens you really wanted to buy.

This is where I want to be in October. If you are at all on the brink of advancing your career as a digital photographer, join me. No Kevin did not pay me to plug his workshop, but I heard him speak in Las Vegas and I gotta say, he knows his &^(#. Also check out his Photoshop Actions that transform ordinary looking images into something quite exquisite. His most recent Sloppy Borders CD is my favorite.

“Take your best shot—and send it to us,” asks The National Geographic for Your Shot, a monthly feature that will showcase the first 5000 images submitted by its readers.

Karen Nakamura of Photoethnography.com thinks it is an ongoing scam.

What do you make of it?

Full Circle is currently accepting submissions between 1000-3000 words in length by people of Indian origin who have spent a significant amount of time working on a service project in India. We are looking for well-written, vivid, true, inspirational personal stories and essays. While the stories need not be about service specifically, we are seeking submissions that reflect the experiences had, the friendships formed and the realizations made while engaging in service work in India. Some themes to consider might be identity, people, places, turning points and challenging moments.

Submissions should be e-mailed to Sindya Bhanoo. Please include the following information:

* Full name
* Nationality
* Contact information
* Description and length of the project you worked on in India

Submissions Due By: July 15, 2006.

More about the project: Every year, young people of Indian origin travel to India to pursue social service. They settle in cities and stay in villages, work with children and adults, and learn and teach. They make this trip to India not to visit, but to live in and experience the country for what it really is. While India is not their home, it is their homeland. They are in search of their roots. They want to give back and make a difference. They want to inspire and be inspired. Some stay for a few months, others for years. Some work on education and health initiatives, others work with tribes trying to market traditional art, and still others devote themselves to improving agricultural practices.

Over the years, the pull to return to the homeland has been running stronger and deeper. More and more youth journey to India every year. Long after they complete their work in India, the stories and memories of the people whose lives they touched, and who touched their lives, stay with them. Their stories are filled with appreciation and wonder, laughter and tears, and challenges and aspirations. Above all, their stories resonate with hopes and dreams for India, themselves, and humanity.

Full Circle is a collection of these stories. For more information and a sample submission, visit us at: http://fullcircle.indicorps.org.

The first no rules street photography site on the web

Bending Light Magazine, Issue2: a terrific site that presents photographs beautifully. Last mentioned this site here.

Photojournalism as Activism, a conversation with photojournalist Lynn Johnson. Johnson is also responsible for a new project called Xenophoto, a website “about neutralizing fear based on difference.”

A White House Photo Op in real time [thanks to Melissa Lyttle for the link]

Strobist: Learning to use your small flashes better

Build your own paper pinhole camera

Into The Heart Of Unrest: Photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve reports from Nepal

Ami Vitale on Blueeyes Magazine, Issue 11

Neeraja Viswanathan, soon to be a Siren, is guest blogging at Sepia Mutiny

First I read a story on Photo District News about two guys tooling around an airplane hangar to create one of the largest camera in the world and subsequently the largest photograph ever produced in the world. Then I hear about the CameraTruck Project. Apparently for us photographers, size does matter.

How to cut a mat for your prints

Managing fonts for free

The Big Picture?

Getting Things Done: Mission Possible. Just wish there was a program that morphs the best from Xpad and WebnoteHappy

Those of you who actually visit this site rather than read the contents through a RSS aggregator probably have already seen the change. I decided to jettison the all-black color of the site for a more earthy tone.

I am still figuring out where and how to place all those links on the right and left side. I am curious to know if the drop-down menus I had for a while worked. Do tell me. There is no better way to learning about this than doing and of course receiving positive feedback from people like you.

If there are any designers trolling this site, I would love to hear from you. So, speak up!

Via Photojojo

Kollabor8 “is an open digital image mutation collaboration, displayed like threads in a forum. Each link in the chain should be in some way a derivative of the previous image.”

Go for it!

The image above was originally uploaded by lecercle.

Taking a cold shower is perhaps the only solution to the summer heat Indians experience from March through about the end of September.

You gotta remember that water for some is a luxury. This young boy could either be revelling in water cooling him off, or smiling because of the attention [aka. the photographer's presence] he has suddenly received.

Either way the boy's right hand leads one's eye into the image and to the center of the action. The water splattering all over the kid's face is captured with a fast shutter speed but you get a sense of the rush of water from the plastic cup he holds in his left hand. The punchy image, which is also contrasty in nature, is visually arresting.

I'll often post images here that are interesting, curious and even spectacular. Would you also like to have your images showcased on this blog? If so, join my Flickr community group also called Tiffinbox. Thoughts, suggestions, opinions always welcome, so please leave your comments below.

This blog post is brought to you by Seshu's Pipal Productions.

1.08308605341 isn't the square root of Pi. It's an approximate average number of blog posts here on Tiffinbox in the past three years. One day. Kinda like a vitamin for your soul.

Yep, I quietly swept past the 1000 post mark. No balloons or firecrackers. I did drink a dry, smooth Cabernet Sauvignon, though to mark the occasion.

If you arrive on the Tiffinbox page [those of you who don't use a RSS aggregator] you will notice now a temporary blue dock at the bottom of the page with a little message from indieKarma, a new micropayment service I am using. If you visit this site on a regular basis, it will only cost you pennies to support Tiffinbox. I am passing around the hat.