The Daily Parker

Yesterday Parker turned 11, which means today brings his annual birthday portrait:

I am not sure why he prefers me to photograph his left side, but going back through earlier photos of him, clearly he does. For example, here's the runner-up for this year's portrait:

Not to mention, the 10-years-apart photos I posted May 4th.

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago held its annual benefit on April 7th, with me as benefit chair. We raised more money than at any previous benefit, as far as we know. I've got some photos to post; here's the first, of soprano Meaghan Stainback and alto Molly Mikos:

The last two days, I've been in meetings more than 7 hours each. I'm a little fried. Meanwhile, the following have popped up for me to read over the weekend:

• Making people reveal their real names stops online trolling, right? Um, no.
• A poet discovered that two of her poems were used in Texas' state assessments, but she couldn't answer the test questions about them.
• Hanselman asks, should we teach programming from the machine up or from the glass down?
• Photographer Kaylee Greer has a video about how to photograph dogs in challenging situations.
• Aurora, Ill., is throwing a months-long "Wayne's World" 25th Anniversary party. Excellent!
• Apparently Trump's Defense secretary nominee hates all of his other nominees for Defense positions.

I'm now off to the opera. Thence, perhaps, to sleep.

Here's a fun comparison. This is the building adjacent to the north side of the northbound platform at the Northbrook Metra station. First, October 1985:

Here's the same wall almost exactly 31 years later:

The pharmacy long ago disappeared. The building now contains an Italian restaurant and a hair salon.

Pretty good, from space. Benjamin Grant, who runs the Daily Overview feed, has put together a "greatest hits" collection in book form, which will be available October 25th:

The best images appear inOverview: A New Perspective of Earth. The book reveals the many ways humans shape the world. Groves of bright green olive trees stand ready for harvest. Deep blue and purple caverns cut into the earth at a uranium mine. Iron tailings turn a pond bright pink. Grant uses juxtaposition to underscore the point, placing, say, a deforested rain forest alongside a paper mill. “You’re able to make comparisons within the chapters, in a way that you can’t if it’s one image per day on the Instagram feed,” he says. The last chapter celebrates remote places, like the reptilian ridges of Rub’ al Khali, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert.

Many of the images are aesthetically beautiful in the abstract, but troubling in context: the aligned grids on a rust-red landscape of the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya, or the yellow stripe and black ridges of a coal shipping terminal in Qinhuangdao, China. Grant hopes to show that tension. “You have an overwhelming sense of the time that would be required to create these staggering landscapes—erosion, build up of mountains—compared to what we’ve developed in the past 100 years,” says Grant.

I pre-ordered the book as soon as Grant posted he was publishing it.

This has been my computer's lock screen image for a very long time. It's hard to believe I took this photo that long ago:

Details: Canon EOS 20D, f/6.3 at 1/250, ISO 800, 18mm.

My friend Molly's newborn has become world-famous. Last week, Daniel made the cover of Bored Panda, which got picked up by Huffington Post, and now the Daily Mail has followed.

I've met the kid. He really is this cute.

One of the first photos I took with my poor, now-deceased G5:

I've been meaning to post this photo from July. No story behind it; I just think it's cool.

On my trip home from Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago, I came across this lovely girl at the MSP airport:

Didn't get to say hi, but ain't she sweet?