Looking around the house for interesting shapes and colors, I ended up playing with candles.

« Use the best: Linux for servers, Mac for graphics, Windows for Solitaire. »

« At the age of twelve, I began hustling newspapers like many other great Americans had done. The only difference was that they became great. »

I’ve been using the very stable newest beta version of Firefox (1.5 Beta 2) for a few days now and more than ever love my browser. The final release of version 1.5 is expected later this year, but current 1.07 version performs just as well and everyone should check it out. Firefox turns the task of surfing the web into a pleasure. The tabbed browsing is awesome and extremely efficient; you can even reposition your tabs according to your needs. The smart search function highlights your query on the page as you are typing it. Skins allow you to easily change the looks of the program and extensions make it totally customizable.

Gmail notifier sitting on the status bar, scrapbook context menu option that lets me save a snapshot of a page as is, including Postdata, an fantastic bookmarks management window and the option to export them as an html file, an simple function that lets me assign a shortcut to any search field on any site and then do that search from the address bar whenever I want without even being on that site, an integrated Google search toolbar, opening mailto: links into my webmail, all of these are now part of a daily surfing experience and I love it!

Did I mention I like Firefox?

All right; standing on the edge of anarchy after my last post, I felt compelled to rectify my aim and fall back into the well behaved photographer groove. Here is the mediatic face of a very attractive city, blah-blah-blah...

Why always be neat and picky about our photography? Yeah sure, I usually consider the rule of thirds to be my bible and spend an eternity refining my angles and framing and light and exposure and composition and... wait a minute! Spontaneous is good too! Snapshots retain more of a subject’s life, they convey better motion, and less calculation.

Here are two that I’m fond of. The first is a self-portrait during one of those very calculated panoramic photo sessions, where I suddenly had the impulse to hold up the tripod - and camera - at arms length while walking and shoot myself. The second is the proof that when children - here my nephew Yann - hear us ask them to stay still, they probably assume we are speaking Chinese. Which would be appropriate considering the location...

The new blog look is a result of an experiment conducted way too late at night... It isn’t final but reflects the emerging tendency to adopt lighter tones for the site.

[To be continued when I’ve slept a little...]

Every year in fall, the Montreal Botanical Garden hosts « The Magic of Lanterns », a dazzling exposition of lighted hand-made paper sculptures in the finest Chinese tradition. This year’s theme was « In the Kingdom of the Birds ». I’ve posted a few samples in the Traveling Colors gallery, also accessible directly via the thumbnails below.

I’ve also added a panoramic shot of the whole Chinese Garden to the Panoramic Photography Gallery.