The folks over at The Walrus are having a contest who can write the best love letter, and there are prizes!

The instructions can be found here, but I’ve pasted a quick summary for you:

1. Write a love letter.
2. Your love letter must be devastatingly sincere, true to your heart, and LESS THAN 500 WORDS.
3. Once you have finished pouring your heart’s deepest and most secret desires onto a Microsoft Word document (and then painstakingly editing your heart’s desires over and over again), you should harness the necessary courage and send your love letter to loveletters@walrusmagazine.com.
4. Translating those pent up feelings onto the page or screen takes time. Do not fret. You have a few months to work it out. Kindly deliver your letter to us before the CONTEST CLOSES ON VALENTINE’S DAY, 2009.

WINNERS AND PRIZES

The winning love letter will be announced on March 1, 2009. The letter that wins the judges’ hearts will earn a $1,000 GRAND PRIZE, as well as another $1,000 in prizes from Deutsche Grammaphon. The letter will also be published on the Walrus website.

Runners-up prizes include:

• A ROMANTIC GETAWAY weekend for two
• A LOVE LETTER FROM BIGFOOT, written by Graham Roumieu
• Your love letter PUBLISHED for all to read on the Walrus website
• Signed copies of Four Letter Word
• Prize packages from DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

Hmmm. That’s $1,000 Canadian dollars, so I certainly hope the exchange rate improves by then if I want to spend that money out of the country!

I have “All Rights Reserved” on all my online photos, which I’m sure gets ignored and abused without my knowledge (it’s the internet, after all). The last time I reminded someone to provide attribution for my photos that he used without asking, he deleted the entire post in a huff. A completely unwarranted huff, since he didn’t even link back to my sites — he’d just downloaded my photos and posted them!

Depending on what people use it for, I usually say yes if it’s for charity/asked nicely/assured proper attribution (name/link back) because I am generally a sharing type of person. I’ve considered a Creative Commons license in the past for my point-and-shoot photos, but surprisingly I’ve sold p&s photos and I don’t want to take the extra time to use different categories — it’s easier just to use one!

Here are a couple of positive examples, where I was happy to share and reciprocate in giving credit:

(I was planning to post this at Halloween, but I completely forgot…)

Burningbliss asked to remix my photo of Alberto.

Fotofyoog: Gail at Large’s "Bravo Alberto!" by burningbliss

His description:

Part of my collaborative “Fotofyoog” Project (see set). The original photo came from Gail at Large - her photo titled “BRAVO ALBERTO!” Thanks “Gail” for such a wonderful photo to play with! =) And yes…the split, creepy monster, outer-image was also manipulated from Gail’s original pixels (if you look at the details you will see that both the “good” and the “evil” images were created from the exact same original photo).

Here’s the link to the comparison photo.

In other news, one of my 2006 film photos of a likeness of Stanley Segalla, the Flying Farmer, accompanied an article written about the man. It’s funny because I have photos of Segalla in the flesh, but the cut-out made the grade…

Two and a half years ago Stanley Segalla, then 81, flew from his home in Connecticut to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York on very short notice to help me scatter David’s ashes on his birthday when we couldn’t get the biplane that day. I’ve written more about Stanley Segalla here.

The author of the article, John Cilio, sent me the PDF last month, which you can open up and read here. (PDF posted with permission.) I just found the online version here — it was published in the November issue of the Atlantic Flyer.

It’s the end of an era for Segalla — he flew his last Flying Farmer routine at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the closing weekend last month. He’s following the sun and moving full-time to Florida for his other business, where he teaches aerobatic flying in the winters. Even at 83, the man’s still working but at least he won’t be commuting back and forth from Connecticut!

Via a link from The Window Seat, a comprehensive USA Today article that would be interesting for any other travelmongers out there who are concerned with the future of travel and how the two U.S. presidential candidates differ on the issues:

USA TODAY online, October 28, 2008: Evaluating McCain and Obama on travel issues

The intro:

The pollsters say there are still quite a few undecided voters out there, so if two wars and an economic crisis aren’t enough to sway your opinion, maybe it’s time to evaluate both candidates’ views on travel and aviation.

It’s easy to argue that how a president addresses the nation’s economic woes directly affects the travel industry. As do a host of other campaign topics—national security, energy, global warming, employment, taxation and dozens more. But what follows is a rundown of specific travel and aviation issues, with the stated positions and track records of both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.

Being a bit of a rail fan, it’s interesting to note that VP candidate Joe Biden (who was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania) is an outspoken supporter of Amtrak. I’d love to see train travel become a more viable transportation option in all of North America, the way it is in Europe. Canada doesn’t have the population density across the country to compete with air travel for the same routes, but the U.S. does.

I think this was David’s kindergarten or Grade 1 photo, taken sometime in the early ’70s.

Apart from the obvious reasons, I really really wish David were alive to see today. He was a patriotic American who was frustrated with the policies of the Bush Administration. I accompanied David during the last federal election when he went to the polls on November 2, 2004. Of course, I couldn’t legally vote, but I was interested in seeing how it’s done in the States.

David was deeply disappointed with the outcome of the 2004 election, and wanted to move with me to Vancouver when Bush was elected for a second term. But David’s mother refused to leave Pennsylvania, so we decided we would live in PA as long as his mother was alive and move to Vancouver later. That later never happened.

David’s maternal grandmother, who died of cancer when he was 16*, was a political campaigner for the Democratic Party and was a major influence on David when he was growing up. (It’s his grandmother’s diamonds in our wedding rings.) He often told me stories about how his Orthodox Jewish grandmother bucked tradition by sitting with the men in temple to talk politics instead of sitting with the women, and how they couldn’t walk 20 paces in town because Rachel Schneider knew everyone and would stop and greet one and all. It was because of her that David was a proud Democrat.

In late 2005, David was impressed by Senator Obama from Illinois, and was of the opinion that Obama had the intellect and ability to lead the Democratic Party.

David, how I wish you were alive today to see how much American life has already changed in the nearly three years since you left us and how far Obama has come…

* I couldn’t help but feel sadness when I heard that Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him, died of cancer over the weekend — only a few days before this historic occasion. (His mother, Ann Dunham, also died of cancer, in 1995.) Madelyn Dunham voted early, and it was made official in the state of Hawaii that her vote for her grandson counted.

Via Claude of Blogging in Paris (a self-confessed ‘elderblogger’, but she is the most computer-savvy ‘elder’ I know!), via a whole bunch of other people. See her post here.

Scramble from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.

A time-lapse video by Sam Javanrouh (Top Left Pixel) of the launch day of Toronto’s first scramble intersection at Yonge and Dundas. Or check out the HD version on Vimeo.

NEWS FLASH: Air Canada Removes Second-Checked Bag Fee
By: Genevieve Brown of Travelocity’s travel blog, The Window Seat
September 18, 2008

Oh Canada! Yay for your national airline! Air Canada announced today they would remove the second-checked bag fee of $25.

Read the whole article here.

Air Canada has also removed the fuel surcharge by factoring all fuel into the listed fare price, and I just got a broadcast email from WestJet saying they’ve done the same. However, Air Canada also announced last month that they are reducing fall and winter capacities and routes, so depending on where you live or where you plan to fly, the reduction in available air travel options may affect you more than these current announcements.

I wasn’t on the water, but I was happily shooting along the shore on Saturday after my amazing flight (which I haven’t posted yet!). At least these jetskiers were sticking to the waters along Hamilton and not frolicking over by the border waters of Niagara, unlike these unfortunate people on Saturday who got caught in rapids, nearly drowned, and ended up on the American side… only to face charges of illegal entry after being treated in hospital.

Watch that U.S. border, people, it’s very protected and I doubt the guards believe in accidents of any kind.

Back to frolicking, this little dog was getting so carried away the owner didn’t even make it into the picture!

… especially if you try and film it from a balcony with a metal railing.

This Flickr user in Washington State was zapped by lightning while filming with her digital camera last month!

Because you insisted, here’s the unedited screaming version. I also added video from a minute before the lightning struck so you can get an idea of how hard it was raining. From what i understand, it went through my left hand holding the camera, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand holding onto the metal railing. No entry or exit wounds, as i was not directly struck, i got just a really good zap from one of the “finger arcs” that happen when lightning hits.

The whole story is here, from Wired.com.

I’ve been talking a lot about f-stops lately, it seems, to people who own point-and-shoot digicams and wonder what all the numbers on my DSLR and lenses mean. Since my own photography knowledge isn’t derived from a classroom but a mental mashup of books, conversations with photographers, the internet, and a variety of other sources, I really don’t know if I’m synthesizing my learning into a coherent explanation of what that f/x really means.

Today, like an answer dropped right out of the sky, my RSS Reader served up a comprehensive post by Vancouver’s Derek K. Miller (Penmachine) which does the job quite nicely:

August 7, 2008: Camera Works: what are f-stops and why do they matter to the pictures you take?

If you’re allergic to math, don’t worry — the words will do the trick.

Thanks, Derek, I can stop stammering now.