A pretty good collection from Anne McKinnell. I’d only add one: Photofocus which is hosted by pro photographer Scott Bourne; it is short and simple — he and a guest host answer a handful of questions each episode.

This new service seems fun. The design is nice, and the UI is very easy to use. Basically it is like a digital scrapbook. As you may expect, that means the majority of users are women. Well over 60% from what I read.

Women… And photographers!

I was almost content to ignore this as just the next fad, but several of my photos started showing up on it, and the entire photographer community seems to be moving towards it.

I’m still learning the ropes, but I’d welcome your follow if you want to keep up with me on there.

Setsubun is this coming Friday. This is a fun holiday, especially for kids. I was going to write a little about it, but then I remembered this old post. It still holds up, so go have a read if you are curious.

Setsubun is a Japanese holiday that takes place on Feb 3^rd, the day before the start of Spring on the old Japanese calendar. It’s not a national holiday, but almost everyone celebrates it. It has some fun traditions that go along with it, particularly one called mamemaki.

Perhaps it would be a bit more relevant to this site if it were Japan and not America; despite that, these are some amazing photos!

And don’t miss part 2.

Mike Johnson posts about the latest photo of the Earth from NASA. It’s beautiful.

My buddy Dave Powell takes us on a tour of his favorite places to shoot in Tokyo.

Here is my Tokyo…as I live it and shoot it.

Thomas Hawk:

For many photographers though I think Flickr Pro is looking like a worse and worse deal. Google+ will host an unlimited number of photos for you for free now. Flickr’s free account only will let you access your 200 most recent photos and even worse if you don’t reup for a Pro account they hold the rest of your photos hostage on their site until you do renew.

I use Flickr to host all my full-resolution photos — including everything I post here — so this alone makes the 25 bucks a good deal; add in the Getty group and I make money on the deal.

But for casual users? Flickr is sinking, and why would they pay for a dying service? Despite the negative things Thomas mentioned above, Flickr still has a lot going for it. But it is quickly being passed by other services like Google+. They need to do something to remain competitive and justify the price for casual users. I don’t know the solution, but I imagine it starts with Flickr actually adding some new stuff to their service.

As to price: Boost the pro price, but add another cheaper option above free, and then give away a bit more on the free accounts.

As I find myself preparing to take the JLPT 2 this coming December, I came across this from my pal Gakuranman.

While studying Japanese and working as a translator I’ve found a lot of great tools. So here’s Gakuranman’s top 5 picks for the best online dictionaries for Japanese-English translation!

Pretty useful resource for any of you Japanese learners.

My friend Baye McNeil wrote a book.

[C]an a book be judged by its cover? I’m gonna go with an emphatic YES! This cover lives up to the book and the book lives up to the cover, and then some!

And what a cover it is. Head to his page to check it out. Baye is a really great writer and does a good job showing the parts of Japan that the guidebooks skip. His site is always a great read, and looks like the book will be too.