| By :
Mark Etinger
I love photography, and taking photographs, though I don't have professional photography equipment, and in fact, even my little point-and-shoot was stolen in Buenos Aires last month. One minute I'm capturing forever a scene involving a picturesque balcony and a parked scooter, and the next I'm empty-handed, staring at this cute little kid, who's like, "Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer," and I'm all, "Because you stole my damn camera, kid." All of this happened in Argentine Spanish, remember, which is really hard to understand. Okay, it wasn't quite like that. There was a cute kid, and we exchanged a few words. Probably he just said hello and I said hello. But the other part's true, about the balcony. And the camera, she was gone. On the bright side, sometimes it's nice to be forced to dream it all up again. While I dream of replacing my camera with a better one (or, hmm, maybe renting professional photography equipment until I can afford it...), I've been gaining inspiration from some amazing photographers and artists on the web. Here are the top 5 most inspiring sites I've been hanging around on lately. 1. Flickr - www.flickr.com This is sort of cheating, because there are so many photographers on it, but on the other hand, how is that cheating again? Flickr is awesome. Hit Explore and...explore. 2. Gray Signal - www.graysignal.com Nancy Froehlich, visual and conceptual artist, photographer, print-maker, ceramicist, also the Director of Photography for the book D.I.Y. Design It Yourself. Her work is gorgeously executed, stylish, and sometimes so tender I have to look away before I look back again. 3. Found Photos - www.foundphotos.net No professional photography equipment employed here. This page is just hundreds and hundreds of found images. It's totally fascinating. I love seeing what people see and think to capture. 4. Smoke Bath - www.smokebath.com A seemingly (if not really) endless collection of rad photographs and art work loosely based on the theme of camping/ nature/ exploring. If you fall in love hard, you can buy the book, and all proceeds go to The Fresh Air Fund, an independent, not-for-profit agency that provides free summer vacations to New York City children from low-income communities. 5. Catch Light - www.coffeehousepress.org This one isn't a photography website, but it's a website where you can buy Catch Light, a book of insanely beautiful poems all about photography by poet/photographer Sarah O'Brien. If a picture's worth a thousand words, maybe the converse is true, too. I forgive Buenos Aires, by the way. It's a magical city. I'm even kind of thrilled to have brushed against its thieves. Remember a few years ago, the Bush girls visited Argentina and one of them had her purse stolen? There were, like, twelve Secret Service agents protecting her. I didn't have any bodyguards, and all they got was my camera. I might have been madder if it were superfine professional photography equipment I was using, but as it happened, I just sighed (well, with a lot of expletives) and let the little camera go. Everywhere I went for the rest of the trip, I looked around as hard as I could, then imprinted what I saw the really old-fashioned way, on my memory, in my mind's eye. But just wait till I go back, prepared.
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