photography

I submitted some of my Cuba photos to JPG Magazine. It is a neat print publication publishes photos based on online voting of user-submitted photos. Here's one I submitted to the "street" issue:

Actually, I've just noticed that you cannot just vote on any picture you want for some reason. It randomly selects certain photos you can vote on. I guess this is to prevent friends from voting for their friends' photos and in turn having their friends vote for theirs.

I just noticed one further gotcha. It looks like one can only submit one photo to each theme. These guys at JPG are really trying hard to prevent people from gaming the system and I admire that.

I mentioned before that some photos I had posted to my Flickr account had been short-listed for inclusion in a Schmap travel guide. As I said before, "I did not enter a contest or anything. I just took the pictures and posted them to Flickr and I guess they found them and I liked them." Well it turns out all six photos that were short-listed got officially accepted into the guide. Unfortunately I cannot see the guide because Schmap requires users to download a client to view the travel guides and that client only runs on Windows. If anyone wants to try it out, go to the Maui and Molokai travel guide and let me know what the guide is like and if it is any good.

While on vacation in Cuba in June and July 2006, we rented a moped for the day and went for a drive from Cienfuegos to Rancho Luna, crossed on the ferry to Castillo de Jagua, and then took the long road back to Cienfugoes. Along the way we spotted something very interesting in the middle of nowhere, located near the coast somewhere not too far west of Castillo de Jagua near Cienfuegos.

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We snapped this photo as we were going by on a little scooter/moped. Actually I think we stopped to take this picture because it looked so interesting. There was literally nothing for miles in either direction of this thing. I had assumed it was a nuclear power plant, but the idea seemed far-fetched to me and I then assumed it was some of chemical plant or perhaps a water desalination plant or something. There are some chemical factories in Cienfuegos so that seemed most plausible.

I finally did a little research and managed to find some information about it here:

The construction of an atomic power plant, started with Soviet aid in 1982, has been abandoned for ecological reasons, amongst others. The project - 75% of the construction and 20% of the equipment being finished - can be seen across the bay in the southwest.

(Once again nuclear gets a bad rap for being un-"ecological" even though it is one of the cleanest sources of power around.)

This could very well be the structure they are talking about as it is located south-west of the city, although I doubt that it is visible across the bay, but I could be wrong. I found further evidence here that actually has some pictures and what I photographed is definitely the same thing as what is shown there. Another link here is heavy on US propaganda. It's too bad if it wasn't for Chernobyl (and the United States' meddling), the Cubans might actually have a nuclear power plant.

I just found out today that six photos I took in Maui last October have been selected for inclusion in a Maui/Molokai travel guide make by Schmap. It's got to be a "Web 2.0" company with a name like "shmap". I did not enter a contest or anything. I just took the pictures and posted them to Flickr and I guess they found them and I liked them. Pretty cool eh? Here are the ones that have been selected. I hope some of them make it into the travel guide!
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