Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas or, if your traditions differ, a wonderful, safe, healthy and happy New Year! Here’s an amusing little video I found that should help brighten your winter day.

Wow – has it really been 3 weeks since I last posted something? Sorry about that – vacation and a busy summer have left this blog further down the priority list than I would like. Hopefully, a burst of posts this weekend will make up for the recent silence!

I love Ira Glass’s radio work. If you’ve not listened to “This American Life” you are missing one of the best radio documentary series around. It’s weird, quirky, different and beautifully crafted. Check it out. Given this, I was interested to take a look at a Vimeo clip that someone posted on Facebook today. This is Ira talking about the process of being creative. His context is audio storytelling but it applies perfectly to photography too.

My writer wife stumbled upon (and immediately blogged) a hilarious video called “I’m Reading A Book” by Julian Smith this morning so I had a look through his other offerings and came across this equally funny piece which struck me as pretty appropriate for this blog. Enjoy!

Here’s something fun and different. During my visit to Chicago recently for the FIRST Robotics Competition Midwest Regional, I took along the Canon Powershot G9 and my shiny new Gorillapod Focus. The G9 can shoot timelapse video so I would attach it to various railings in the stadium and shoot the competition or crowd or pits or whatever. I’ve cut together some of this video now and you can see the result below.

I first tried this a couple of years ago at the San Diego Regional and you can find that video here. That one is encoded as an interlaced MPEG-1 file, though, so it doesn’t look as good as the new video which is 480p instead.

With all the recent travel and other excitement, I just realised that I completely forgot to mention the fact that I was a guest on Scott Wyden’s new “Talk Imagery” podcast recently. This is a new video podcast using a discussion format. Scott invites half a dozen or so of his photo buddies from across the continent to get together and discuss various photographic topics.

In episode 2, we talked about branding and the importance (or lack of importance) of various online photography sharing services. Others joining the conversation were Pat O’Brien, Rob Hanson, Brian Matiash, John Milleker, Heath O’Fee, Phil Cohen, Joe Hoetzl, Jesse Pafundi and Mike Olbinksi.

Episode 56 of PhotoNetCast has just been published and you can find it on the site or over on iTunes. The uncut video of the original recording is also available to give you a better appreciation of what a good job Antonio does in editing the audio version

If you’re wondering what it’s like to live in the US while having a distinctly different accent, you may like this little video.

Both my kids are great fans of KISS-FM so we spend a fair bit of time in the car listening to current pop. For the first time in about 20 years, I’m actually in a position to know what’s in the charts! Cameron is also a lover of parodies (Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” has become the anthem for the men in our house) so when he showed me this one, I just had to share it. I suspect this will have to be shown to the Cub Scouts next time we have a meeting.

I love snappy audio-visuals. Why would anyone linger for 10 seconds on a given picture when you can easily show 5 in the same period? A new web-based service takes this to the extreme, however. Pummelvision will generate a slideshow of your entire Flickr stream at somewhere around 7 frames per second. You have absolutely no way of taking in any individual picture but as a way to get a quick idea of how someone’s photography has evolved during their time on the site, it’s a lot of fun.

Here’s my entire Flickr photostream since 2006, all 977 images, presented in a mind-pummeling 2 minutes and 22 seconds.

A group of HDR photographers I am involved with on Facebook is trying to pull together a charity project and we’re looking for a skilled videographer who would be interested in helping us out. The plan is to produce a DVD containing examples of our work along with hints and tips on improving your HDR work and we need someone who can cut the whole thing together nicely and add a soundtrack. If you are experienced at that kind of work and interested in helping out, please leave a comment or drop me a line via the contact form.

People involved so far include (in no particular order) Scott Wyden Kivowitz, Oliver Fluck, Scott Frederick, Trey Ratcliff, Jacob Lucas, Pat O’Brien, Mike Olbinski, Phil Cohen, James Howe, Brian Matiash, Bob Lussier, David Nightingale, Jeff Revell, CJ Kern and Jacques Gudé.

We’ve not finalised on a charity that will benefit from any proceeds yet but the current front runner deals with providing clean water supplies to third-world villages. I’ll post more news as the project progresses.