The freshly repaved main route north of downtown Grand Rapids still awaits its painted centerline and bike lane markings. The pedestrian crossing is newly painted and a traffic island added now to the crossing has its eye-catching yellow warning paint to attract drivers’ attention. …

Each year since 2008 a photo contest is held for the thousands of members in the American Anthropological Association. People submit a few pictures during the submission period and then voting is opened up to let members select ten pictures they most like or rate as superior relative to the…

So many photos to take, but then what? Visiting new places or returning to old favorites has involved picture taking since the advent of affordable, easy to use cameras and services to process and print the film. …

Sometimes the message is implicit. Other times it is printed in all capital letters, as in this photo at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan: “Please stay on path and platform.” Put another way, do not stray into the garden, climb on the rocks, or doodle on the lines of…

Tickets to see the well-designed and well-installed cloth figures all around the zoo in Grand Rapids were timed slots, so great was the demand and so worrying were the lingering Covid-19 variants. In fact, less than 5% of those filling the circular route that evening wore face masks. Some sections…

In 2023 cameras seem to be everywhere in the surrounding social landscape and nearly everyone seems to have a way to record still photos and often short videos, too. The devices are found in dashcams, drones, security poles, doorbells, cellphones, not to forget the camera-camera (stand-alone, purpose-built devices to capture…

Here and there in the world’s first known written novel, The Tale of Genji [Genji Monogatari], there are moments of pause and reflection to breathe in the “thisness” of the moment, its “mononoaware” (literally, how it is with the things around us). Other times the sentiment is not stated in…

Apart from a few hours in the early afternoon, the big pool of hot and mineral-rich water (good for 8 sorts of complaints the placard on the far side says) is open to guests. …

After months of admiring the fresh standpoint of professional and amateur drone photographers, I read reviews and product details to choose a modest starter UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System, a.k.a. unmanned aerial vehicle) with a camera that has usable image quality for less than $200. Other considerations were GPS “automatic return…