Tyler Hicks is amazing. I liked his Iraq pictures too. I'm glad they keep him moving from war zone to war zone.

My Oxford/London pictures are now online!

I travelled light, with just the Leica and the Widelux. Although it lacks the versatility of my Nikon SLR, I think this combination of cameras suits me well. The Leica is unstoppable for low-light black-and-white portraits, which was a lot of fun in the pub. And Jeff and I successfully sought the answer to our question: what do vertical Widelux shots look like?

As with my pictures from the Maine cycle tour in June, I have added a bunch of commentary which I hope brings context to the pictures. Let me know if you think it's a waste of time or space.

Oxford/London pictures are 100% scanned. Now editing...

Oxford/London pictures are 30% scanned. I think I'm finally learning how to do color slides, too. Not that I enjoy it.

Pictures from Jenn's wedding, online within two weeks. Oxford and London pictures are due first.

Good: Yesterday I got back from a great wedding. It was fun to see old friends. And it was nice to have an excuse to ride the train again.

Bad: This morning I showed up at the neighborhood photo lab (Colortek on Beacon Street) to drop off my C-41 film. But the door was locked and someone inside was packing up the inventory. Cripes! I knocked until she reluctantly came to the door, and she confirmed that yes, they too are going out of business.

In case this story sounds familiar, note that this is the third time in a year that I've come to a photo lab bearing film only to find that they were closing down operations. (Maybe I'm bad luck?) If you can't sustain a photo lab that is next door to the New England School of Photography and a ten minute walk from two other art schools, business must be pretty grim.

Indifferent: While I tried to walk off my headache in Washington's Union Station yesterday, a modern-day jive dude advised me of an error in my plan: "Hey, man, what you doin' wearin' them sunglasses inside like that? You look like a movie star! People gonna ask for your awww-tow-graph!"

Jenn's wedding is this weekend. I'm pretty excited about that. It's the second of four weddings on my schedule this year. I wonder if there will be even more in 2007 -- I already know of one! I'm going to be a professional wedding guest before this is all over.

In keeping with the romantic spirit of the occasion, I will be taking the train. (What do you call the room below the first floor? Acela.)

Someone asked if I brought the Widelux to London. Why yes I did!

I found a new color lab with 3-hour E-6 dip-and-dunk service at reasonable prices. I had them do the color rolls this morning. They came out perfectly. Color slide film looks so radiant on the light table. Skies and windows and lamps are simply luminous. I wish other people could see it that way. Scans are never quite as impressive.

On that front, I spent another couple of hours in front of the scanner. One thing is for certain: it's going to be at least a week until I put these pictures up.

Oxford and London were a fantastic time, and for that I owe a great deal to Jeff and a handful of new Oxford friends.

I should be tired right now (1 AM EDT) but strangely I am not. I must have unlocked the secret of beating jet lag. Jeff challenged me to develop my film as soon as I got back, so I did. I processed five rolls of black and white tonight and there are three rolls of color going to the lab tomorrow. My fingers smell like photo fixer.

Holding each film up to the light for the first time is still as magical as it was when I learned to use the darkroom. I have been rewarded with some great shots. Scanning, editing, and writing always take a while, however, and may be delayed until I return from Washington.

Back from London!

The fire that destroyed a United Parcel Service DC-8 aircraft in Philadelphia in February 2006 is now thought to have been caused by Lithium-Ion batteries for laptop computers.

In August 2004, Apple recalled 28,000 Powerbook computers after discovering a design flaw in their Korean-made battery packs that caused two of them to catch fire. But that's just one example: there is quite a history of product recalls due to self-immolating battery-powered devices. And the cargo carriers have already seen several large ramp fires caused by shipments of batteries.

This announcement only strengthens my belief that every laptop computer and cellophone on an airplane is a highly potent incendiary device. Evidently the Transportation Security Administration is okay with that.

Having correctly guessed that failed epoxy anchors were the culprit behind Monday night's Big Dig tunnel ceiling collapse, allow me to offer some new speculation. If I were a betting man, I would bet that investigators will learn that the contractors installed the ceiling anchors over the winter. Epoxy won't cure to full strength when its components are much below room temperature. Even if they were pre-heated, the concrete lining of the tunnel would act as a massive heat sink and reduce the strength of the epoxy-to-concrete bond.

Having correctly guessed that failed epoxy anchors were the culprit behind Monday night's tunnel ceiling collapse, allow me to offer some new speculation. If I were a betting man, I would bet that investigators will learn that the contractors installed the ceiling anchors over the winter. Epoxy won't cure to full strength when its components are much below room temperature. Even if they were pre-heated, the concrete lining of the tunnel would act as a massive heat sink and reduce the strength of the epoxy-to-concrete bond.

Of course I've always been a little skeptical of epoxy concrete anchoring. I use mechanical expansion anchors exclusively.

July 14-18: Oxford and London
July 21-23: Washington, DC

I returned to the one-hour photo lab a little early, just as my first Widelux roll was emerging from the C-41 processor.

"Wow, awesome camera!" the girl operating the machine remarked as she examined the negative's double-wide frames. As a photography student, she said, she appreciates these things. She showed the other employee.

If the test roll is any indication, everything is working fine. Exciting news! Now I have to figure out how to get interesting pictures out of it.

Why, hello again! I nearly forgot this thing exists. You're probably all wondering how the carboat project went. Well, it was a MASSIVE SUCCESS. I was exuberant for as much of July 5 as I was awake. (Three consecutive nights of less than 4 hours of sleep just don't work for me anymore.)

But what did work was our floatation. And our propulsion. And our steering. It was amazing. But so tiring that it pains me to describe it all in great detail just yet.