Last month I spent a terrific weekend attending the West Coast Moto Jam at Sears Point raceway. (Slideshow | Gallery)

Last year, after a couple of years using Phanfare to host my family photos, I closed my account and moved it all to Smugmug. I actually opened two accounts at Smugmug, one for my family media and one for this, my personal hobby site.

From the beginning, Phanfare was a great photo hosting site. Although there were some limitations, they absolutely nailed family photo hosting. Gorgeous web galleries, uncluttered by corporate branding. Comprehensive slideshow features. Clean, implicit timeline-based organization. And a cross-platform desktop client, making managing the site painless and streamlined. This is an all-important feature, because if it’s not easy, I simply don’t have time to do it.

So why the switch?

I've always loved single-take shots. There's a strange excitement when I realize I'm seeing one, and I can't look away.

So here's a neat video that caught my eye. One take, including audio!

In trying to regain some sense of order in my home video recordings, I've been going through and systematically capturing and archiving some older DV tapes. Unfortunately, some of these tapes weren't even labeled. Moreover, a tape may last a month or two in the camera, and obviously contains a number of events.

I enjoyed this set of photos very much.

Ara, aka BeemerChef, and his dog Spirit, have a wonderful site called "The Oasis of my Soul", a motorcycle travel journal with heavy doses of photography and food thrown in. I've been enjoying it for some time now, so I'm adding his feed to the new site here.

I've recently been given some slides to scan, pictures from when Dana was a kid. After trying out the transparency adapter on my trusty Epson Perfection 1650, I realized that for these particular images I wanted more quality than the Epson could provide. It's an excellent scanner, but the slide/film part is a weakness.