Citizen Brand

Bunny Ears

Check out this cool site from Kodak and get the answer to the age old question of where the practice of "bunny ears" in photographs comes from.

Thanks to Steve for the pointer.

Cats update

The first precincts are reporting and my cats and I are in the top five vote getters in the Fuzzyfotokc photo contest raising money for two great causes - the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and No More Homeless Pets.

Tell your friends and your family and total strangers to go to Fuzzyfotokc.com and cast your vote for me and my cats!

I promise I will write about other things or I could do like some public radio stations and offer to quit writing if you vote enough to put me in first place.

Okay, I will rest for now.

Vote for my Cats

Here is a great opportunity for all of you to get personally involved in a cause effort for a measly five bucks.

Go to Fuzzyfotoskc.com and click on the vote now icon and look for the picture of my two cats and me and vote for it.  Vote for it early and often.  There are other photos there, but we don't like them.  Only my two cats, Maddie and Cassie deserve your vote.

This is a great cause effort that supports two great organizations, the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and No More Homeless Pets.  A bunch of us Kansas Citians who love these two organizations and love our pets have teamed up for a little electoral competition.  We really don't care who wins.....well maybe we do.  But what we all definitely care about is raising money to help people who need medical attention and can't afford it and for animals who need a good home.

So vote for Mike, Maddie and Cassie at Fuzzyfotoskc.com now!

Easy Riding Artist

Fellow Kansan Dennis Hopper can do it all.  It's appropriate that he was born in Dodge City, because there has always been a little wild west in him.  From the time he burst on the movie scene in Easy Rider right up until today, he has always pushed the envelope in life, the silver screen and as a photographer and artist.

Hopper has a new exhibition showing off his prowess with the camera underway in Los Angeles.  He has always taken photographs, including some depicting a more private side of some of the famous folks he knew in his early days in Hollywood. 

"He's been a bit of secret," says Douglas Chrismas, director of the Ace Gallery, a private museum and exhibit space on Wilshire Boulevard, which hosted the show -- Hopper's first big retrospective in his adopted home town. "People of course know him as an actor and director, but you ask him, he would say he thinks of himself as an artist first."

"As Hopper, 69, takes his guests on a tour of the exhibit, he seems in fact more artist than actor. He quotes Leonardo da Vinci (on the difficulty of representing the creamy patina of a wet stain on a Tuscan wall). He paraphrases Marcel Duchamp, with whom he agrees when he explains, "An artist is a person who points his finger and says, 'That is art.' " And he speaks in great detail about the difference between digital and film photography, how with the former, "you're spraying with light, and not like a [film] photograph, where it rises up from the chemicals."

I like it when you can find people like Dennis Hopper who are much more than they appear to be on the surface.  It reminds us that you have take time to dig deep to figure out what people are really like and what makes them tick.

It did happen

Thanks to McLir for making sure we saw this story.

History and photography are two of my favorite topics.  This historic treasure trove of photos is a good reminder that we have traveled a long way along the road of civil and human rights.  It should also serve as a reminder that any progress we have made can easily be eroded.  Being a citizen is hard work.