This is a 17-week-old sheba enu puppy that I encountered while walking my dog just now. It was mildly curious about the Sidekick camera, but mostly just enjoying the Sun.

- mike lee - baltimore

I'm here at The Sound Garden, Baltimore's CD joint at Fell's Point. Since I've effectively been out of town for over half a year, I'm just seeing that they've doubled the size of their front lobby by acquiring the poster shop next door. It's nice to fall into my shelf-scanning trance again as I pass through their massive stock of CDs and DVDs. Normally I'd exit with at least one DVD, but we've been using NetFlix much more lately.

- mike lee - baltimore

Here are some shots of my laptop screen of photos from last week's portrait session with friend Jenny. Though I had the option to use multiple electronic flashes or hot lights, I just used available light and a silver reflector. Shooting with less gear helps the photo session move quickly and the subject doesn't get bored as quickly. Better quality images from this series will be on my main blog in a few days.

- mike lee - baltimore

The swiveling Color Sidekick camera lets me work out a more interesting angle on my dessert. While this camera works much better in low light than the original, the lack of color saturation makes my tasty kiwi sorbet look like mashed potatos.


- mike lee - baltimore

Lordie, I am SO glad I'm not in New York City right now. This is aerial video of New York Waterway's 38th Street ferry pier, which is now clogged with people overflowing out to the west side highway. I've walked the gangplank of this pier countless times and can't imagine it wall-to-wall with overheated, cellphoneless, stressed people trying to escape from the island on the boats.

- mike lee - chillin' in baltimore

Her belly goes away when the baby arrives. Mine, um, probably not.

- mike lee - baltimore

Hey kids, I'll be wandering Chicago September 3 - 8 while my wife works as staff at the AARP member's annual event. Drop me an e-mail if you're local and want to meet up.

I'm particularly looking forward to Don Norman's talk at the event as he's got a new book coming in January 2004: Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things.

And of course, I can go see Dr. Phil, who's one of the star attractions.

- mike lee - baltimore

This is "Yago" the parrot. He hangs out on the top of a house painter's truck while his owner is working nearby. Yago says a few words like HELLO and GOODBYE, and can play dead. When I held the Sidekick camera up close for a portrait, he yelled ACK! His owner warned me that Yago likes women better and will sometimes snap at men. How convenient for Mr. House Painter!

- mike lee - baltimore

Here are some illustrated tips (click on the photo to see it full size) on how I made the mobile mosaics seen and mentioned previously.

In the diagram, the white box represents any wide scene you want to shoot as a mosaic. Each numbered square represents a Sidekick camera frame. I try to scan down a scene using the live viewfinder across the locations of frames 10, 6 and 2 to get an idea of where each of the three rows of the mosaic will fall (horizontal red dotted lines).

As I scan down, I try to remember two reference points in the center of the scene (shown as yellow stars). These points can be window corners, or some architectural or landscape detail.

Now the big SECRET: Starting below the bottom reference point, pan the camera to position #1 and shoot RIGHT to LEFT from #1 to #4. Repeat for #5 through #8 and #9 through #12.

Why scan and count backwards? Well, when you go back to the camera gallery page, you can check off the images starting with the last one from position #12 in the perfect sequence needed to e-mail to Hiptop Nation! Once the 12 are checked (you could have stopped at 4 or 8 for shorter mosaics), hit the MENU button to set up your e-mail in the usual way.

Obviously, these mosaics take up a lot of bandwidth and are somewhat of a pain to shoot. The images don't have to match up perfectly. You can wing it in the way David Hockney did his Polaroid SX-70 mosaics in the early 70s. When you're being artsy, anything goes!

Enjoy...

- mike lee - baltimore

You might think doggie is interested in my copy of the latest Wired magazine, but she really wants the wheat thin that's just off camera right.

- mike lee - baltimore