Never been much of a dog person but...

...just look at the cute little buggers. The light-colored one is Hiro, and the darker one is Mohinder. (Sound familiar? Hee!)

Faux Lomo-ed

Lomography was originally an Austrian commercial trademark for photography-related products and services. Nowadays, the term stands for an approach, philosophy or attitude. The emphasis is on casual, snapshot photography, as in shooting from the hip. Lomo images are colorful and quirky. Lomo enthusiasts aspire for happy accidents such as over-saturation, light leaks, vignetting, over- and underexposure, multiple exposures and so on. Lomo cameras are crappy cameras, but the results are cool.

Some months ago I actually thought about buying a lomo camera. My endearingly snooty French art connoisseur friend (love `ya, dearie) huffed and puffed at the thought, indignant that I would consider getting one instead of a slick Canon SLR. (There are cheap lomos out there, see. You can get one from Amazon for as little as $18.) I suppose it's a matter of taste. To cut the story short, I didn't get a lomo. (Which was just as well, since I found myself already overwhelmed with 3 cameras - an SLR, a compact, and a phone camera - during my recent trip.) Happily, I found some how-to tips on creating faux lomo images at Flicker. This is my first try (top image = original image, bottom one = faux lomo-ed):

Eh. I had thought the original image was colorful enough. But now it looks washed-out in comparison to the lomofied version. Here is another one I did. Pretty cool, I think. But that's me. Feel free to be horrified.

Shades of Enlightenment

Embraced by a Bodhi Tree

If you believe you are enlightened, you are actually a little bit crazy.
-- Taisen Deshimaru

Buddha in a Bodhi Tree # 1
Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya 2/10/07

One of the most photographed images in all of Ayutthaya, Thailand's old capital, is this Buddha head that seems to have grown among the roots of a bodhi tree within the compound of Wat Mahathat built in 1374.

While many Buddha heads were forcibly taken when the Burmese ransacked the city in 1767, this particular head must have remained hidden under brush and leaves for many years, until the Bodhi tree sprang to life and embraced it. The Bodhi is especially significant because it is the tree under which the Gautama Buddha gained enlightenment.