Technology optimism hour

Back in 2022, I wrote Web technology optimism hour, highlighting the things I thought were cool about the state of technology. Time flies. Let's do it again. It's still easy to be pessimistic, but it's nice to mine your feelings for the positive ones. The elephant in the room i…

This Week in the IndieWeb

August 7-14, 2026 Recent EventsFrom events.indieweb.org/archive: Homebrew Website Club - Eastern Wednesday, August 12 at 6:00pm Online! Zoom! Homebrew Website Club Europe/London Wednesday, August 12 at 7:00pm Homebrew Website Club - Nuremberg/Germany Wednesday, August 12 a…

Byeday

Well, almost. Tomorrow I fly back to Indiana, where it has been stormy the whole time I've been gone, seems like. In a couple of months, I'll be scanning all the photos I have in dozens of three-ring albums, but keeping the photos themselves, which I want to organize chronologic…

Film Photographers: You Can’t Beat This Discount

Yes, we've got something special for film photographers! Did you know that the Phoblographer doesn't get funding from the large camera and lens brands? In fact, we're super transparent about where our funding comes from on our disclaimers page. Can you say the same thing about y…

August 2026 solar eclipse from AY1339

I was on a flight from Helsinki to London when the 2026 solar eclipse occurred this week. With uncharacteristic forethought I’d ordered, taken delivery of – and brought with me – eclipse glasses and a little accompanying cardboard filter for my phone camera. I’d also res…

4 Photo Books That Serious Portrait Photographers Keep Going Back To

Portrait photography is one of the intense genres of the medium. It requires an understanding of light, gear, people, and a vision. For most, to capture a person goes beyond capturing their likeness. Sometimes, it is about showcasing a side of them that most can't see. For those…

4 Best Cameras for Portrait Photographers Today

Portrait photography is an important genre of the medium that not only helps one to document their loved one's likeness but also to create photos that are unlike themselves. If you are someone who is looking for a high-end full-frame camera that creates stunning portraits, these…

Light Lens Lab Enters Apochromatic Territory With New M-Mount Lens

Leica is the epitome of luxury and performance. The company has created cameras and lenses that last decades, and the image quality remains unmatched. However, for most, gathering more than one lens can be a task, given the price point. As a result, many Chinese third-party bran…

Unforgetful

I have ADHD. Probably.1 My entire adolescence was defined by forgetting to do my homework, disappointing everyone around me, and being told by every adult that I was lazy, “just” needed to try harder, and wasn’t living up to my potential. I’ll be working on the resulti…

Tressie McMillan Cottom on AOC’s presumed presidential...

Tressie McMillan Cottom on AOC’s presumed presidential run. “But these are different times. Ocasio-Cortez is a different woman, and Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down.”

This Method Helps Street Photographers With Brain Rot

It's easy to sit there and endlessly scroll away on your phone looking at the images of other street photographers. But when it comes to actually making images, you can be tuned in with zone focusing and setting everything to manual mode. Just think on a sunny day: ISO 1600, F8,…

This Test Will Tell You if Your Hands are Shaky as a Photographer

Image stabilization has majorly helped photographers to make images that otherwise were very hard to make. But it shouldn't be a self-inflicted crutch that you use to throw away good form. The problem here though is that many photographers have completely thrown that out the win…

3 Honest Tips From Travel Photographers Who Have Seen It All

Travel photography has helped millions of young people to go out and explore the world. Some have looked at far away lands, while others have turned towards places closer to home. For those who are still struggling, here is a look at some of the best tips we've received over the…

What's the best programming language for coding agents?

This somewhat widely cited post (I keep seeing it cited, anyway) suggests that dynamic languages and/or languages that represent things more concisely are more token efficient. It seems to be cited enough that LLM search results agree. For example, when I searched for "dynamic v…

Open Thread for August 2026

We haven’t done an open thread for awhile, so… What have you been working on? How are you feeling? What’s on your mind these days? What’s the best thing you’ve seen this week? Have you called a plumber to your home lately? Are you new here? Introduce yourself if you…

The 5 Boro Foto Fest Says No to Generative AI

Want to apply to be a vendor? Join the authenticity. This year, we're throwing something special in celebration of photographers: it's called the 5 Boro Foto Fest. We've been working on something very big here at the Phoblographer for a long time now. The state of photography tr…

NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month...

NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month Ever. “It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl…” (This record will be broken several more times in the decades to come.)

The Moral Unseriousness of Centrist & Conservative Pundits

Jamelle Bouie almost never misses. In this video that’s just shy of 10 minutes long, he chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on “wokeness” instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump re…

Burrsday

I subscribed to the Los Angeles Times early last year when I was writing about the challenges for journalism in covering the wildfires there. That was in my News Commons series, which I think has some brilliant and useful stuff. But it didn't go anywhere, for reasons. So I wasn'…

A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain...

A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain from 2005. “We discuss Tony’s preferred sucker-punch etiquette, his loyalty to cigarettes & the Chateau Marmont, ayahuasca in Peru, and the talk show he dreamed up with Christopher Walken in mind.”

Supersonic Trebuchet

Ok so when you woke up this morning, you probably didn’t expect to watch a 20-minute video about a trebuchet — but to be fair, I didn’t either. But Tom Stanton’s build of a fully mechanical trebuchet that propels a tiny plastic pellet faster than the speed of sound (c…

Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs:...

Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs: A Swarm of Blood Robots. “I now have a comprehensive family tree, naming the very boats my Italian and Polish ancestors came over on in the late 1800s, the villages a few came from…”

“Draw any shape and hear it as a drum.”...

“Draw any shape and hear it as a drum.” Eigendrum: a drum simulator where you can change the shape of the drum to see how it affects the sound it makes.

G.P.S. and the Lost Art of Getting Lost . “G.P.S....

G.P.S. and the Lost Art of Getting Lost. “G.P.S. has also led us to outsource existential skills: locating yourself in space, parsing out your surroundings, staying calm when you don’t know where you are. Do we lose something when we no longer get lost?”