Mike Johnston’s wonderful post at T.O.P. about the perils of blogging:

Inexplicably, a lull–and the blogger is aware that the already huge crowd has suddenly achieved a whole new dimension; it has magnified exponentially. Behind him, an enormous mass of people have materialized. They are armed with cudgels, verbs, spikes, bricks, epithets, all sorts of things. And they are looking menacing. A wave of fear travels up his spine.

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Karl Zipser at Art & Perception:

Staying artistically fit in 2007

Thanks to my New Years resolutions, I took my camera on my walk this morning. Making photos every day — what’s the big deal? Photography is just a matter of pressing a button, right?

I did the same walk around the harbor that I do every day when I am in Wilhelmshaven. But today I felt exhausted afterwards, and it wasn’t from the physical weight of the camera. I felt tired because I used my “photographic vision,” a special way of looking at the world. It took about half an hour of walking and shooting to get into “photographic vision,” and it now persists for some time after I put down the camera. “Photographic vision” lets me take photographs without using a camera, in a sense. I assume all the photographers have this; probably the professionals live with it all the time. For an amateur like me, it yields a sort of “mental muscle ache” something like what you feel when you first start exercising muscles that you didn’t realize you had. All the more reason for the daily workout!

– Karl Zipser [Art & Perception]

Yes, Karl, yes. :-)

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