New Orleans: Photo Post

The view of New Orleans from the sky.

The city is rich in history be it French, Spanish, Creole, American.

New Orleans is probably one of the more photogenic towns I've seen.

The culture and vivid colors came as advertised.

A city where tragedy is ingrained in its DNA.

They know and celebrate life and even death. This is truly a unique place!

Thank You, @genecoxnbc12

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a tiny bit choked up watching this evening's local news. Anchor Gene Cox had his last broadcast tonight before heading to retirement. Of course reporters got to leave short messages for him and poke some fun at him one more time before going off the air.

Thinking back and growing up in Warsaw, I remember watching Gene do the evening and I think at one point the morning broadcasts. I used to have a tiny portable TV that I kept by my bed growing up and it would work as my alarm in the morning. I can remember the TV would come on every morning with this God awful Tuffy (repair shop) commercial. On the commercial a mechanic turned into the devil and laugh maniacally at overcharging some poor woman to fix her car. It used to scare me every morning. But despite the terrible local commercials, I spent the first part of every weekday keeping up with local and world events thanks to Gene's professionalism and tact.

I think in this new digital age, we don't look to newscasts the way we did, but there will always be those special memories. Thank you, Gene. May you get the most out of your new life ventures. With all this new media, I'm sure we'll keep hearing from him.

Summer = Mobile Photography

Many of us have stopped carrying cameras with us anymore. With pretty decent cameras on our smart phones, the need just isn't there anymore, not for basic point and shoot photography. While I am no major enthusiast, I do suggest that everyone have a basic photo app with filters and a decent photo editor. Blackberry has Photo Editor and others, Windows Phone 7 has Thumba and others, and of course iPhone has Instagram which has achieved unimaginable hype. There are many good apps out there for every platform.

I did a post before actually that highlights some great apps here. Being an avid Android user, here's what I use: Picplz and Posterous for social networks, PicSay Pro for photo editing and Retro Camera + for on the spot filtered photography.  What does that mean you ask? Here are a few shots I took in the back yard using different camera types with the Retro Camera app. You can see the differences in colors, borders, etc. This comes in handy on the go when it's not convenient to try to figure out how to shoot things that we see.

It's easy to see the drastic changes with each type of filter. That is how the cool kids take their pictures these days. So get out there and take pictures, the world is getting smaller, but don't think for a second people of the world wouldn't be interested in different perspectives. Especially with this now booming social web.