Paging through the photographer dude's book while watching this year's Oscars

Needed some sort of distraction during these lame Oscars, while waiting to see if His Dudeness would finally win the Best Actor award. Martin and Baldwin as cohosts -- what happened? The humor was missing in action. And what was with that tribute to horror movies? Classy move, Academy.

In contrast, Jeff Bridges is far more impressive as a photographer than Martin and Baldwin were as hosts. For years he has shot black and white candids on his movie sets and then printed them up as gift books for cast and crew. What makes them interesting is not only his good eye, but the fact that he shoots with the legendary Widelux panoramic 35mm film camera. His book Pictures is available on Amazon and features selections from the photos he shot over the years (shown above, Bridges and his brother Beau on the set of The Fabulous Baker Boys.) Although the book's photos aren't online, you can see some examples of his technique from more recent films on his website. And here's a striking Bridges image that was used as a poster for the 2004 New York Film Festival.

Even the book couldn't distract me completely from a program that just got worse and worse. Those awful, cringe-making introductions of the Best Actor and Actress nominees -- unbelievable! (And for that they took away their clips, the only chance for some in the public to see what they were getting the award for?)

But at least Bridges prevailed in the end. He received his long-overdue Oscar -- as so often happens, for an OK movie, but one that was far from his best. The Dude abides.

Fire and/or ice -- which will it be for print journalism as we know it?

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-- Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice"

I've documented both. Fire is great for venting. I subscribed to the print edition of Madison's Capital Times right up to the end, but when it ceased daily print publication two years ago, I burned the last issue in protest. My Flickr friend Hugh torched his local paper, the LA Times, after its latest outrage -- and he made a video.

But I think Frost is right. The real threat to dead tree papers isn't fiery anger and outrage. It's ice cold indifference. I read the Capital Times almost every day of my adult life (and its competitor, the Wisconsin State Journal, almost as often). Sadly, now that the Cap Times lives mainly on the Web, I rarely go there anymore. In print, it had a great, scrappy history. It had a soul, and a role in my life. On the internet it's a very small fish in a very big sea of data, and as I navigate this ocean of information, the Cap Times rarely shows up on my radar (maybe occasionally on my Twitter feed). It's almost as inaccessible to me as that paper frozen in the ice of Lake Mendota which I photographed a couple years ago. I'm not indifferent, but much of the world is, and has moved on. That's the cold reality.

They're back -- yesterday I saw my first Sandhill Crane of the season in Madison

Spring is on its way -- the cranes are coming back! I was walking on the UW-Madison's path along the Lake Mendota shoreline near Picnic Point when I sensed something large moving slowly in the University Bay marsh. Two somethings, actually. A pair of cranes were picking their way gingerly through the reeds. They were almost invisible against the brush surrounding them. Their bearing was both awkward and regal, and they walked in absolute silence. I wondered if they were my bad weather buddies from Lake Wingra last fall.

I took a few photos, but it was hopeless. Close as I was, their images just blended into the background. Suddenly, with the beating of powerful wings, they took off. I pulled the camera back up to my eye and started shooting. The first few frames were obscured, and their flight path soon disappeared behind some trees. In between, I got one clear shot at the second crane.

A bit closer to life size.

Shorty Award winners illustrate scope and impact of real-time short-form internet content

This tweet and others like it were what most of America relied on last year for first-hand accounts of the crash landing in the Hudson. The mainstream media began by playing catch-up and taking their cues from the tweeters on the scene.

The Shorty Awards, "the Oscars of Twitter," were presented in New York this week and provided a fascinating snapshot of this new medium's impact.

William Shatner congratulated the winners via video and read some of his own favorite tweets from @shitmydadsays, which is being turned into a TV pilot by CBS with Shatner in the lead role. In all, 34 awards were given across 28 categories, including several new ones. Haitian TV presenter Carel Pedre received a special humanitarian Shorty Award for tweets that shed light on the devastating earthquake in his country. Janis Krums received a Real-Time Photo Shorty Award for his camera phone shot of U.S. Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

Best of all, the acceptance speeches were limited to 140 characters. Oscars take note. Scroll down here to check out the list of all 34 award winners in 28 categories. They make fascinating reading. Some are familiar names, and some are not. You may want to start following some of them.

We still have a lot of snow on the ground, but a lot of it will just disappear into thin air

If all the snow on the ground had to melt before it disappeared, we'd have even more runoff and flooding in the spring than we normally do. Instead, some of it just disappears into thin air. It's called sublimation -- in chemistry, "the transition of a substance from the solid phase to the gas phase without undergoing intermediate liquification." And that's why a nice run of sunny days like the ones we've had gets rid of a lot more snow than you'd think just looking at what's running into the storm sewers.

Clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion

From "Shutter Island" review by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker.

In a celebrated riff on “Casablanca,” Umberto Eco wrote, “Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.” “Shutter Island” is that reunion, and that shrine.

So, does he like it? No. But it's a thoughtful piece that pays Scorsese the compliment of taking him seriously and acknowledging his stature as a director, while also holding him responsible for this misbegotten mess. Beautifully written, not a casual dismissal. In no hurry to see the film, but this is the kind of review I'd enjoy reading even if I did like the film. Like some of Pauline's in the old days.

Let there be lights (and kites) again!

The tricks that memory play -- when I came across this old print the other day of fireworks at Kites on Ice back in 2001, I thought I remembered the show coming Sunday night, at the end of a wonderful weekend. But then I found some old notes that that put it in the middle of the weekend, on Saturday night, more of a climax than a finale -- "In the evening went to the kite show for fireworks and the magic of kites flying in the night. Dark little Brueghel figures on the ice." I know I sound like a broken record, but we should have something like this again -- and fireworks certainly do brighten a winter night.

Ours won't be as fierce this time, but March supposedly comes in like one of these

Normally, though, it would have two eyes -- but, hey, you go into March with the lion you've got. In this case, it's the lion I photographed last year in the Conservation Carousel, Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison Wisconsin. Because of the camera angle, the other eye is hiding behind the nose. Sorry about that. In any event, looks as if our March lion in Madison took temperament lessons from the groundhog. It's supposed to be a nice day.

Lions are not the only animal metaphor used in regard to March. There's also the salt marsh harvest mouse.