Remnants of Life Around Chernobyl

A young lady on a motorcycle drove through Chernobyl taking pictures and recording her thoughts and feelings. Some of the pages don’t link correctly so I offer all 26 chapters linked here for you.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26.

Photo Sightings

• Synster has a couple photos of a very cute kid listening to to some tune.
• Joe Cunningham’s midwestern milkweed photo reminds me of home spent in and around farmland.
• Chromogenic has a couple of good photos, the first of someones feet brings spring to mind, and the happy antenna ball punctuates the carefree feeling of spring.
• Meccapixel has london underground photos with that cyan saturated lomolog color that identifyies the urban culture so well.
• Infrangible has some of the best people pictures, and he captures them so consistently. I’d like to know his post production process and how he captures many of his low lighting compositions with such clarity and sharpness.
• Sara over at Jocund has been putting up some fantastic studio poses of late.
• Food4Eyes is perhaps the most consistenly pleasing photoblogger I know. His latest is a studio shot of a daisy. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for flower shots. They are absurdly easy to capture, and in the spring everyone is overflowing with them, but I don’t ever get tired of it.
• Deceptive media has been putting up some wonderfully ethereal prints. This one of a stair case and this one of Brookwood Cemetary inspire me. Also, this train station capture is nicely appealing.
• Chromasia’s effusion of red is soothing to me. I don’t know what it is, but I love the effect red has on a photo.

An Open Request to Photobloggers

I love you guys. But I’d like to see some consistency in the permalink implimentations. I sometimes spend way to much time looking for a way to find the archived link so I can put you in my list each day. The most frustrating one is when I have to hit the previous link then the next link to get to the right photo. And when you link the photo to the previous photo, that is also confusing.

Just to review here are the various implementations I’ve found while perusing.

• Linking the photo date. I like this implementation because it is has a long history and follows the convention used predominantly on normal blogs.
• A permalink text near the photo. This one is also very good, as it’ hard to miss and also often used on normal blogs.
• Linking the actual photo to its archive. This ones is trickier. I know the photoblogger is probably trying to limit the amount of text cluttering up the screen, but its not always intuitive where the link is and I went months before I noticed its use on many blogs.
• Linking the actual photo to the previous entry. This isn’t technically a permalink practice, but I put it in here because there is no way to distinguish between this one and the practice above. This method is particularly confusing. If you use it, you should make it plain what the functionality is. I know it make for easy perusing of the archive, but I would bet most of your users would prefer an obvious permalink.
• Using a set of the last five photos on the page as the archive links for the current photo. This one works but requires I spend a bit of time searching. The practice isn’t common, although its gaining some popularity. I’d still prefer an obvious permalink text.
• Not having a permalink on the page at all, but including a previous link. I have to go to the previous then the next to get the right url. I’ll many times go the extra mile to get a permalink, but sometimes I’ll simply skip it because its too much work. Web users are a lazy lot, don’t make it hard on us.
• No permalink, no nothing. 9 times out of 10 will cause me to simply not link your photo. I’ll see comments but no permalink. Irritating.

Just in closing, I want every one to know I love your photos. I get precious little time to spend on my own photography and I know how much effort goes into maintaining a photoblog. You guys are an inspiration. Keep it up.