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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Herkimer House to Stay Open!

Yessss!! This is great news for New Yorkers and history lovers.

WKTV in Utica, NY, is reporting that the Nicolas Herkimer Home in Little Falls, once slated for closure due to budget cuts, will remain open.



The state originally said they needed $326,000 to keep the site up and running, but now the park will be doing more with less.... a lot less. Senator James Seward and Assemblyman Marc Butler say they've got an agreement with the Parks and Recreation Department to keep the grounds maintained. The Friends of the Herkimer Home are also pitching in with their support. The site previously employed three or four people, but right now future staffing is up in the air. The good news, $100,000 has been secured in the state budget for the site, but officials plan to stretch it for more lean staffing costs over the next three years.


The Herkimer House was what got me interested in history and travel, way back when I was a girl. I was only 13 years old when I got the history bug. My school class visited the Herkimer Home on a field trip, when I was in 7th grade. At that age, most of my other peers were more concerned with cleansonix reviews, but I was smitten with the colonial era and how people lived back then. I still remember my experiences at the Herkimer Home-- the travel guides were dressed as colonials, and the made old-style Johnny cakes and popcorn for us.

So anyway, I am thrilled to see that the Herkimer Home will not be closed down. The kids and I visited the place so long ago-- and that was before my blog. So we'll have to visit it this year, take lots of pictures and savor the experience. Expect to hear more about it this year. :)

Koalapalooza - San Diego Zoo video



SDZoo | February 18, 2011 | See how today's koala joey naming event went and check out what's in store for the rest of Koalapalooza.


Spring Travel & Blueberry Tips for ABC



I talked five ways to relax this spring for
ABC News Now. Yes, that's the Kentucky Derby rounding out the list.

John Moore: Libya, Egypt & Bahrain





The current upheavals in the Near and Middle East are providing substantial opportunities for photojournalists and conflict photographers to report on the latest battles, revolts and revolutions.

Here's a 6 minutes video interview of photographer John Moore who has just returned from Egypt and Libya as well as Bahrain, where he witnessed the uprisings first hand. This is a must-see for all emerging photojournalists and conflict photographers.

From the PBS NewHour blog: Photographer John Moore is no stranger to combat. As a member of an Associated Press team in 2005, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for coverage of the war in Iraq and he's done extended stints in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, South Africa, Mexico and Nicaragua and elsewhere in the last 20 years.

Yet despite his relative comfort with being on the frontlines, Moore told the NewsHour from his hotel room in Cairo that his latest assignment -a six-week trip that took him to the uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya - might have been his most dangerous. Moore recorded the interview for us after sneaking out of Benghazi, Libya en route back to his home in Denver.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Travel Etiquette on WPIX

Yesterday morning, I got up at 4:30am to get to New York's WPIX to talk travel etiquette, including a few places to go to pick your nose on vacation or why we should be made at pedestrian crosswalks here in the US.

Hippie me

The Colorful cloth bracelet is a gift from my friend, Melissa! I adore it.
Believe it or not, I love to cruise around the Free People website or turn pages of their catalog to see photos of young ladies in hippie casual folksy clothing with beads, hair braided, and headbands...Yes, they look like very free spirits. Here I am; Free People inspiration! I looked kinda hippie in this Free People black dress which I purchased it so long ago, but with a fancy pair of Christian Louboutin - Lady Daf platform mary jane pumps; a twist of fancy. I also gave the look a touch of edginess with an Ivan Grundahl belt. As you know, I like playing with my pieces and making an adventure of fashion.
Thank you everyone for visiting and comment! Have a lovely day ahead!xoxo...Hanh:)

POV: Size & Watermarks

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Yesterday's post with a couple of large photographs of Holi from The Atlantic's In Focus blog prompts this short POV.  I wrote that In Focus' photographs are super compelling because they are viewable either in 1280 or 1024 pixels, depending on viewers' choice.

If the 1280 option is chosen, and  the images fill virtually all of one's monitor...and give the viewers an incredible sensation of proximity to the scene...and no watermark to deface them either! It's the same feeling I get when I open up a double-truck image in a glossy large format print magazine, if not more.

I'm all in favor of large images on the web...whether it's on magazines' websites or personal websites. Another recent example is my post featuring Cristina Mittermeier's work;
River People of the Amazon. Cristina's personal website has a handful of full screen photographs of these Amazonian people that are just breathtaking.

I don't think many photographers disagree with the notion that larger is better.  I've blogged about that a couple of times, and there's no question in my mind that large sized photographs are better received by photo editors who no longer have the patience to view small-sized portfolios.

The other issue is that of watermarking. I don't watermark, and instead embed my information in the photographs' metadata.  Some photographers insist in watermarking to protect their images from being pilfered on the web, and that's their prerogative. I just think it detracts from their work being considered by legitimate buyers...and it's aesthetically unpleasant. Just look at the above photographs!