For my project, A Lomo A Day, I’ll be taking and uploading a new Lomo shot each day until Feb 20, 2012. The Lomos will be taken using my iPhone and Lomo camera and uploaded at the place of inspiration, where possible, to The Daily Lomo website.

SPONSOR

Springfield Punx is a great blog that features renderings of what your favorite comic book, cartoon, and movie characters (and a few late-night talk-show hosts thrown in for good measure) would look like as characters on the Simpsons.

In the wake of America’s historic presidential election, nearly two years of divisive campaigning, and eight years of a controversial administration, the nation is in desperate need of healing. Beloved Internet personality Ze Frank started From 58 to 42 with Love where contributors use their webcams to post messages reaching out to the side of the country that didn’t vote for their guy. It’s saccharine at times, and there are one or two borderline nasty posts from people that don’t seem completely onboard with the project’s objective. But overall, it’s pretty effective and moving. I’ll admit I needed a couple tissues while reading it.

Going about day-to-day life can be a chore, which is why the guys at Anxiety Culture are delivering highly valid excuses for why people should feel free to do exactly as they please, which, in most cases, is absolutely nothing. This blog might be the most important discovery since penicillin, with such genius observations as “every time a compulsively house-proud person tidies up, he/she becomes more sensitive to the onset of untidiness” and a thorough guide to understanding and conquering guilt. This is Nobel prize-winning material.

Live Smart Daily is an online magazine for ‘people looking for a smart, simple take on daily life’ set up by Lost At E Minor contributor and LintCoat founder, Derrick Stembridge. We asked him where the premise for the magazine emanated from: ‘The idea for Live Smart Daily actually hit me when I quit my full-time job and started my own company, Catch and Release Media. The thought hit me to start a magazine that featured everything with a real purpose in life. The end goal is to feature DIY projects, covering ways to better your life across every demographic’.

SPONSOR

A Chicken Growing Up! is a great blog on which science illustrator Mieke Roth posts one ink drawing a week of a chicken as it matures.

Whether or not the global economy collapses in our lifetime, it still seems somewhat prudent, or at least empowering, to learn how to do as much stuff off the grid as possible. You know, just in case. In the Wake is a great resource that provides instructions on how to do everything from growing and storing food to dealing with waste disposal after the collapse of civilization. The site also features interviews with prominent anarcho-survivalists who share their insight into living independently of any system whatsoever.

Now, this is fun. We have five awesome 3 Skypephones to give away to randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscribers. These stylish mobile phones call, text and take pictures, but also enables you to do Instant Message and make calls through Skype too. For free. The 3G 3 Skypephone has a 2-megapixel camera, mp3 player, mobile TV and internet. The giveaway is open to residents of the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Hong Kong, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Republic of Ireland.

To be in with a chance of winning a 3 Skypephone, be a Lost At E Minor subscriber, and leave a message under this post saying: ‘Ah, yeah. I will take that, thank you very much’. Entries close Monday morning New York time and the winners will be announced shortly thereafter.

Oh, and to celebrate the power of the phone, Aussie girl Rebecca Campbell has been given the best job going. The Skype Nomad challenge has seen Campbell embark on a 33 day round-the-world trip across 15 countries including China, Australia, America, Italy and Estonia to product test and demonstrate how Skype can be used wherever you are.

She is constantly blogging, video blogging, facebooking, podcasting, twittering and using Skype to keep people up to date with her travels live, using a variety of Skype enabled gadgets from 3 Skypephone to the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet to keep in contact.

Yup, it’s a tough life …

Shorpy is a great blog dedicated to digitally restored photos, mostly from the first half of the 20th century, but some from as early as the 1840s. Some images are by renowned photographers such as Ansel Adams, G.G. Bain, and Dorothea Lange, while others are merely snapshots by unknown shutterbugs that time forgot.

SPONSOR

I am immediately drawn to anything that reminds me of my childhood, so I was taken with this photo of Keren, a subject in Dina Kantor’s quirky and playful series, Finnish & Jewish. We caught up with her recently to discuss the photos. What made you embark on this series? ‘I began photographing the Jewish community in Finland a few years ago as a way to explore my heritage, but also to delve into the issues of making a portrait of a group of people. I also wanted to think more critically about how photography helps define our ideas of identity and community. My mother was born in Finland and emigrated to America as a child in 1947. Almost thirty years later, when she married my father, she converted to Judaism. I am not related to anyone in the community who I am photographing, though we share certain cultural characteristics’.

Is there something unexpected that you found all of your subjects have in common? ‘I’’ve photographed about 300 people, so it would be difficult to generalize and say that they had something besides the community walls in common. I guess they have themselves in common. The community is small enough that they all seem to know each other fairly well –even those people who live in other cities and many of them are related. Everyone was amazing –they were all incredibly nice and hospitable, and they seemed to be just as interested in learning about me as I was in learning about them. Many of my photo shoots turned into dinners and drinks and even a weekend away. I am lucky to have spent so much time getting to know such a remarkable group of people’.

Do you read photography blogs? ‘I do read a handful of blogs, but try to keep it to a minimum. If I read them all I’d never get any work done! Amy Stein and Cara Phillips are good friends, so I tend to check their blogs fairly regularly. Right now, I am helping my friend Kate, who started The Girl Project, with her blog. The Girl Project is an organization that gives teenage girls disposable cameras to photograph anything they like. The photographs are then collected and will be turned into an exhibition and a book. The Girl Project Blog is a great resource for teenage girls to get introduced to photography, and it showcases some of their amazing photographs’.

Are you working on a new project that you can talk about? ‘Honestly, I still have about 100 rolls of film from my last trip to Finland that I am working on, so I’’m not quite ready to move onto the next body of work yet. When Finnish & Jewish is published, I’’ll let you know about the next project!’

Square America is a photo blog that’s sort of like Found magazine, but with more rhyme and reason. The eerie, antique photos are organized by theme, subject matter, and even the ways in which time or lens imperfections distort the images.

Man babies! Man babies are so cute, they sure know how to play the flute, they can even wear a suit! MANNNNNNNN! BAAABIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! Ahem. Umm, is the Internet over yet?

I’m enjoying reading the insight and witticisms of the Indie Breakfast Club blog, which casts a wide net over entrepreneurship and what it means to be one and still have a conscience.

SPONSOR

Somehow, meme-based blogs never lose their charm. Maybe because they’re just so stupid. The FAIL blog is simply a catalog of the funniest FAIL images on the web.

Monique Easton runs a blog called Baby Got Framed where she cataloges barely remembered evenings and cute hipster zombies. Of the site she says: ‘I’m probably guilty of romanticizing a generation of wasteoids, but it’s good solid fun’. And so it is.

The Magazineer is ‘a blog about magazine design and print culture, written by people who love, and make, magazines’. It’s an insightful inside look at the world of magazines and contemplates such topics as advertorial and sizing of print runs, while reviewing titles both popular and obscure, including the Vice Second Annual Fiction Issue, Helio and Me Magazine.

The Occasional Diaries Of Werner Herzog is a spoof online diary for German film director, Werner Herzog. Although they’re all fiction, I enjoy reading them as much as if they were genuine. Some of what he says make total sense to me, which bothers me a little if I dwell on it too much! I often wonder whether the whole notion of Werner Herzog is a spoof anyway, perhaps initiated by the KLF’s Bill Drummond. It’s a mental minefield really.

SPONSOR