I’ve had my photo gallery at SmugMug for a couple of years now. SmugMug is a great site, but a couple of things have made me look for an alternative. First, the price: the pro level is a bit spendy, at $150 a year. For people who make a living at photography, this is a great deal, providing a lot of shopping cart options. For me, though, it’s a bit of overkill. The other issue is that I’ve never really been happy with the search visibility of the site, given its reliance on Flash. Images I put on my blog get indexed by Google Image Search, but images on my SmugMug site have never really been picked up.

Since I already have a website, I figured why not host the photos myself? So that’s exactly what I’ve done. My photos are now here, powered by ZenPhoto. It’s not quite as feature-filled as SmugMug, but it works well enough for what I need. Since I’m hosting it, I can customize everything. It’s also very easy to sync my Lightroom catalog with the albums on the site using the Publishing function of Lightroom 3.

SmugMug is a good site for pros, but I’m hoping that ZenPhoto will work for me for a while.

• Current Mood: Extreme Monday
• Currently Listening To: "Gimme Shelter", The Rolling Stones

I took a few photos on Easter at my brother’s house, they are in my random gallery. Here’s one of his dog Sophia:

• Current Mood: Lazy Sunday
• Currently Listening To: "Alive", Pearl Jam

I’ve uploaded pictures from the DFL SD59 convention last Saturday here. Plenty of samples below the jump…

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• Current Mood: Monday
• Currently Listening To: "The Tourist", Radiohead

I’ve decided to give myself a late present and purchase the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens and a few Kenko extension tubes. Based on everything I’ve read, the 17-55 is probably the best walkaround lens for a crop camera like my 40D, and it will give me a wider angle lens than what I already have.

Which means I’m selling my Tokina 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 on eBay. If you need a cheap, decent wide-angle lens for a Canon EF mount, check out the auction before it ends next Sunday.

• Current Mood: Exercised
• Currently Listening To: "Show Me The Way", Peter Frampton

Julia and I went to Omaha over Christmas to visit her family. While there, I took a few photos of the fun. They are on my website and below the jump…

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• Current Mood: Relaxed
• Currently Listening To: "The Crunge", Led Zeppelin
• Currently Reading: "Stuff", Ivan Amato

Julia and I went to visit my mother in Kansas City over Thanksgiving, and of course I brought along my camera. The full gallery is here, with samples below the jump…

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• Current Mood: Exercised
• Currently Listening To: "Master Song", Leonard Cohen

Here are a couple of random pictures I took on a dreary day today.

Windows 7 thoughts to come tomorrow.

• Current Mood: Tired

We started out in Philadelphia, then spent two days in New York. Our last weekend was upon us, though, and we in DC. We arrived early Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. Julia used to live in Rosslyn during college, and Mo’s girlfriend also lived in the neighborhood, making it a convenient location. We stayed in a Hilton, which was nice enough, but after the hotel in New York, it seemed wastefully gigantic.

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• Current Mood: Hungry
• Currently Listening To: "On The Run", Pink Floyd

Our first couple days in New York behind us, Wednesday Julia wanted to go shopping, so after sleeping in a bit to recover from the previous night’s barhopping, we headed out to shop first at the Century 21 store (where Julia bought a new purse), then to SoHo. Like our previous shopping experiences, we saw a great deal of things we couldn’t afford, but there were some nice, more affordable clothes that Julia picked up at places like Banana Republic and Esprit. After our shopping spree we went to a sushi place in Midtown for some all-you-can-eat sushi, which wasn’t bad. Post-dinner, we went to a couple bars in Midtown, then back to the hotel for the night.

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When we left off, we had just arrived in New York outside of Penn Station on the Bolt Bus. We grabbed a cab, not wanting to haul our suitcases on the subway, and headed down to Chinatown where our hotel was located, the Comfort Inn Manhattan Bridge. It is a fairly new hotel, in a very convenient location, and had a pretty good price for a New York hotel. As you can see in the review, I would recommend it no problem. And it has a pretty nice view:

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• Current Mood: Monday headache
• Currently Listening To: "New York State of Mind", Billy Joel