There’s a great discussion going on at Javajive about how much one should manipulate a photo in Photoshop. Check it out.

Brandon’s observation to a comment I made:

Lao-Ocean - An interesting fact about dSLR photography is that quite often an image taken with a point and shoot will actually come out to be more ‘likable’ to an untrained eye. They often have settings which increase saturation, sharpness, and contrast straight from the camera. Often people will boast that their point and shoot takes better pics than an SLR. In many ways, it’s simply doing some of the photoshop work for them, but I’d much rather have the control of doing it myself, as once the camera works it’s magic, you cannot easily go back to what your eyes may have seen. Since you’ve recently stepped over to the dSLR side, did you notice anything like this? Have you found it easier or more difficult to achieve decent results with the XTi?

It shows how much I know about photography, because I never realized that point and shoot cameras “fix” shots before you see them on the viewfinder. It makes sense now. Haven’t you ever taken a photo (even in daylight) and reviewed your picture, only to find that didn’t look quite how your eyes saw it? Maybe the hue of that flower pedal just doesn’t look “right”. I noticed this many times when using a P&S. With my new camera (Canon Rebel XTi), it’s a lot easier to correct pictures to the way my eyes saw them. If you noticed from my Thanksgiving pictures, most of them are washed with a warm, orange hue. It’s because there was no flash, with the lamps and candles as the light sources. I only had to brighten them up a bit, but there definitely would have been a different feel to the pictures if a point and shoot forced flashes on those pictures.

This is Kim Joo-won, a world renowned ballerina.

These are her feet.  [Links via The Marmot's Hole]

Ever wonder what Lao food looks like?  Or how to make it?  Check out laocuisine.net (picture of green papaya salad is from that site).  Another place is Thai and Lao Food Blog.  Both have lots of pictures and recipes, while the latter also provides videos to help you cook your dish.

If you’re still hungry, check out Vienne’s site:  The Lao Cook.   Vienne is a chef in Andalucia, Spain making mouth watering Lao, Thai, and Japanese dishes.  Now I’m in the mood for sushi balls.

Three friends spend three months on the U.S. Mexico border filming and distributing disposable cameras to two types of groups, migrants trying to cross into the States, and Minutemen volunteers trying to stop them.  [http://www.borderfilmproject.com]

On this site, they say that most migrants had never seen or used disposable cameras before, so there were instructions to help them take pictures.  There’s also a Profile section where you can read stories from some of the migrants.  The similarities through many of the stories, are that they want to earn money and then return home.  The guy from Honduras wants to make enough money so that he can build a house when he returns. The oldest man in the profile has already crossed about 20 times.

This site amazes me.  It appeals to my gossip-monger, and artistic side, all at once.  At PostSecret, people anonymously send in their secrets on a homemade postcard, which are posted on the site.  I don’t know if they’re all true, but I hope they are.  It’s be sad to send in a fake secret, just to get a reaction from somebody.  New secrets replace old ones, so there isn’t an archive.  Of course, it made me think of what MY secret would be.  What about yours?

"It all began with an idea Frank Warren had for a community art project. He began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places — asking people to write down a secret they had never told anyone and mail it to him, anonymously.

The response was overwhelming. The secrets were both provocative and profound, and the cards themselves were works of art — carefully and creatively constructed by hand. Addictively compelling, the cards reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions. Frank calls them "graphic haiku," beautiful, elegant, and small in structure but powerfully emotional." [Barnes & Noble]

These are from today: