Makes you hungry, doesn't it? C'mon; you know you want it. (Photo by Lorenia) WARNING: If you find yourself watching the Food Network with the kind of enthusiasm most toddlers save for Barney, think recipes without pictures are stupid, and constantly refresh your browser to see if anything new has been posted on foodgawker, you may be addicted to food porn.* Food porn addiction, also known as Iron Chef Syndrome, is an affliction commonly found among foodies and amateur chefs. It's often expressed through such profound philosophical statements as, "How am I supposed to know what I want to eat if I can't see it?" and "Me wanty."** Alas, in the interest of economics, many cookbooks tend to skimp on the pictures, rendering many recipes useless except to the most adventurous of chefs. However, thanks to the Internet, there are countless websites with full-color photos and step-by-step instructions on how to make your favorite dishes. There's Smitten Kitchen, a website that combines the deadly force of succulently roasted chicken with the cuteness of cinnamon swirl hair. Or TasteSpotting, a visual carousel of temptingly delicious recipes best not looked at before lunchtime. And the irreverent-yet-tasty Cook to Bang, which aims to not only please the palate, but other parts of the anatomy, as well. So, if you find yourself drooling at the computer screen on your coffee break, dreaming of lobster thermidor while asleep in your bed, or wondering helplessly what to do with those cranberries in your refrigerator, you may be in need of an intervention: a tasty one. * Be wary of typing "food porn" into a search engine. ** Quotes not at all taken from this writer's sister. Suggested Sites... Epicurious - recipes, menus, pictures, and ratings of thousands of dishes. foodgawker - a collection of recipes and images from all over the Internet. Foodista - a food encyclopedia users can edit. Serious Eats - a blog all about recipes, dining, and all things food. The Amateur Gourmet - restaurant reviews, recipes, how-tos and more.

Directory categories: Recipes, Food Blogs, Gourmet Food, Cooking, Ingedients

Archived under: Books, Chefs, Cooking, Fanatics, Food and Drink, Photography, Recipes

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"Say 'cheese!'" (Photo by Robert Mann) Summer is nearly here, so it’s time to officially come out of hibernation. For those of you who have an itchy shutter finger, today is an especially good day to venture out and about with your camera. June 15th is Nature Photography Day -- a great excuse to pause and observe the wild world and contemplate its conservation. Fortunately, you don't need to be the next Franz Lanting in order to participate in this event, or even to plan a trip to an exotic location. The North American Nature Photography Association has a very low-pressure approach. They'll be posting members’ photos in their newsletter, but they offer a few rules to follow. The main rule is that your photographs must be taken within walking or biking distance of wherever you are on June 15. This provides you with an opportunity to find the glimpses of nature that you might otherwise miss amid your ordinary day-to-day routines. You might see the sidewalk in a new way, or gain an appreciation for backyard visitors. Maybe you won’t end up with a print you want to frame at the end of the day. That’s fine. Stopping to "snap the roses" is its own reward. On the other hand, maybe you’ll be inspired to develop your skills as a photographer. The next challenge: kids! Suggested Sites... Wildlife Theater - pics taken in one suburban back yard. Wild Light - Rick Lieder's images of the birds and the bees. A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania - corn in morning fog, and other cool things. The photo.net Nature Photography Pages - guides, equipment reviews, field ethics, and much more. Nature Photography Day on Flickr - public Flickr group.

Directory categories: Nature Photography, Personal Nature Photography Exhibits, Resources for Photographers, Photo Contests, Nature Photography For Purchase

Archived under: Animals, Arts, Cameras, Conservation, Environment, Events, Hobbies, Home and Garden, Photography, Wildlife

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Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page in The Notorious Bettie Page (from Yahoo! Movies) Scandalous at the height of her career, and almost innocently retro now, Bettie Page remains an icon of glamour and sexuality -- even today, on what would have been her 86th birthday. Bettie began her pin-up career in 1950, posing for "private camera clubs" that were essentially legal erotica rings in an era when nude photography was heavily restricted. Her friendly smile and uninhibited poses made her a hit with both photographers and the readers of men's magazines. When photographer Bunny Yeager shot Bettie in animal-print lingerie amid a variety of wild animals, she quickly became a softcore supermodel, and the "Jungle Bettie" series became some of her most iconic work, leading to her January 1955 Playboy centerfold. But Playboy was wholesome compared to Bettie's "Dark Angel" work with photographer Irving Klaw. Klaw specialized in fetishistic content for his mail-order erotica business, and Bettie's bondage and sado-masochism photo shoots led to her appearance before a Senate hearing on juvenile delinquency. Bettie retired from modeling in 1957 and fled the public eye. She found religion and worked as a missionary. Later, still in anonymity, Bettie battled mental illness, and struggled through a series of failed marriages. In the 1990s, she was startled to learn -- while watching "Entertainment Tonight" -- that she'd become a pop culture icon once more. Fan clubs had been founded, celebrities mimicked her look, and her likeness could be seen in comics, fashion, and even tattoos. The world had changed, though, and the "dirty pictures" that were once taboo now seemed almost innocent. After 40 years outside the spotlight, Bettie returned -- with just a hint of scandal, once more -- to set the story straight. Suggested Sites... Bettie Page - official site of the late pin-up queen. Playboy: Pin-Ups and Downs - Playboy feature on Bettie Page, including photos and videos, a fan tribute, and a 1998 interview about the troubles she'd experienced since leaving the public eye in 1957. The Notorious Bettie Page - 2006 Page biopic starring Gretchen Mol. The Bettie Page - fan site featuring images, articles, and fan art.

Directory categories: Bettie Page, Vintage Pin-Ups, Fashion, Erotica

Archived under: 1950s, Artists, Arts, Bettie Page, Biographies, Birthdays, Celebrities, Censorship, Models, Photography, Pin-Ups, Recluses, Sex and Sexuality

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Free Napkins It's a bright and lovely Springtime for the Internet. The lines are a-buzzin', the keyboards are a-clickin', and the engineers are a-innovatin'. Here are a few of my favorite websites to recently emerge... FreeNapkins.com is the introductory page for an ad network called NapAds owned by JI Worldwide, Inc. They offer free napkins to their network of bars and nightclubs with their clients' logos and advertisements featured in beautiful, full color, "high-definition" graphics. While advertising on napkins is nothing new, creating an ad network which utilizes napkin-space as real estate to be bid on by a variety of different advertisers takes the former Budweiser-logo-on-bar-napkins model to the next level. So, if you happen to be (or know) a bar owner, get in touch with NapAds for some beautiful, free napkins. I wonder what the next commonplace object to be utilized by advertising networks will be ... Dishware? Cigarettes? Condoms (yikes!)? People? Face.com: Although Face.com is still in alpha testing, I had to give you a little preview of this remarkable new digital image recognition technology. Face.com's Facebook application scans all of the photos in your Facebook account, detects all the faces in them, and then learns to recognize all of the people in those photos so that it can automatically tag those faces with the names of the individuals in the photos. The end result is that you can find your friends in pictures that you didn't know your friends were in. As a Facebook application, it's a fun little novelty, because you don't have to rely on someone hand-tagging a face in a photo in order to know that you or your friend (or even your mother) is in that photo. The image recognition technology used to power this app is pretty astonishing. Imagine what image search engines will be like once the engine is no longer relying on uncertain metadata and can start actually recognizing people, places, and things within the photos. Wow. For more info on this developing technology, check out the Facial Recognition Systems category in the Yahoo! Directory. Continue reading below for more of my favorite new websites... Suggested Sites... ZooBorns - blog showcasing pictures and video clips of the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world. Topics - BBC - a full list of topics, nations, people, and subjects from current events and news from the BBC. Garden - Sunset.com - online version of the "Sunset Western Garden Book." Includes articles about gardening in the western United States, recipes, and a searchable guide to what plants grow best in your area. Watch TED 2009 - watch some really fascinating lectures by some really smart people on all kinds of different fun topics from the 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference. Making Home Affordable - program from the Federal Government to help homeowners obtain loans and refinance their current home loans into more affordable monthly payments.

Directory categories: Advertising and Promotional Items, Facial Recognition Systems, News and Media Web Directories, Lawn and Garden Information, Buying a Home

Archived under: Advertising, Animals, Brands, Business, Creativity, Cyberculture, Design, Education, Gadgets, Gardening, Government, Home and Garden, Housing, In Character, Internet, Invention, Landscaping, Lawn Care, Marketing, Photography, Social Networking, Technology, Yahoo! Directory

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"Boulevard du Temple," taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 Photography was effectively born on January 9, 1839, when the first practical photographs were announced by the French Academy of Sciences. All the buzz was over a collection of metal plates containing black and white photographic images, with detail unlike anything society members had ever seen before. The inventor who had brought the plates to the Academy was not a scientist, but rather a painter and stage designer by the name of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. And his invention, which he not-so-humbly named after himself, was the "daguerreotype." In spite of his breakthrough, Daguerre was unable to figure out a way to cash in on his invention, so when the French government offered to give a generous pension to both him and the estate of his late partner Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce (in exchange for the patent on the daguerreotype process), he -- naturally -- took them up on the offer. The French government immediately released the patented process to the public as a gift. Daguerreotyping instantly became a sensation, with Daguerre's instruction manuals flying off the shelves and sellers having difficulty keeping them in stock. Thus was launched a French photographic revolution, you might say; a revolution that spawned portrait photography, travel photography, and (surprisingly soon after daguerreotyping was released into the public domain -- or perhaps not so surprisingly), erotic photography (Ooh la la!). The popularity of the daguerreotype was short-lived, though. Within a decade, the development of other photographic processes gradually diminished the market share of the daguerreotype. Eventually, the drawbacks of the daguerreotype -- the inability to produce multiple prints and the preference for paper prints over metal plates -- hindered its sustained growth, and cheaper alternatives won out over the clarity of the daguerreotype images. With that, the first practical photographic process retreated into history and into the obscure niche of hobbyists. Suggested Sites... The Daguerreian Society - a society of daguerreotype enthusiasts. Photograph Identification Guide - a guide to identifying daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. Library of Congress Daguerreotype Collection - information on daguerreotypes and the Library of Congress collection. PhotoshopSupport.com - tutorial on creating a daguerreotype effects in Photoshop. Maison Nicephore Niepce - devoted to Daguerre's partner in the invention of photography.

Directory categories: Daguerreotypes, Photography, Photography History, Photographers, Photography Museums and Galleries

Archived under: Anniversaries, Arts, Black and White, Cameras, France, History, Hobbies, Invention, Inventors, Photography, Technology

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