Get a Car

Does "transportation" include things like sidewalks and crosswalks, bike lanes, and mass transit?  Or is "real" surface transportation pretty much limited to cars and highways?

That was the question Congress was struggling with as the House and Senate proposed new multi-year transportation bills for the nation.  Only the proposals weren't transportation bills — they were highway bills, with a bit of railroad thrown in.  And they would have marked a departure from previous laws passed under both Democrats and Republicans, laws that included Safe Routes to Schools and funding to make sure pedestrians, cyclists and others can use the country's roads and bridges too.

The gaps in those proposals led to this video, a look at what the new laws would ignore and why alternatives are important.  It initially appeared on two blogs in DC, GreaterGreaterWashington and TBDOnFoot, and was quickly picked up by blogs and websites around the country, both national ones like Streetsblog ("Congress to America: Get a Car") and many local sites, from Marin County to Salt Lake City to New Jersey.

Not that we can claim credit, but by the end of the week the House bill was a shambles which the House leadership was scrambling to replace, while the Senate bill had accepted a bipartisan amendment to restore funding for such projects.  That amendment was thanks in part to Maryland's own Sen. Ben Cardin — whom we happened to be photographing at the end of the week as he spent time "helping out" workers at Prince George's Hospital, below.

Ryan & Esmerelda's Wedding

It was about as low-key as a wedding can be: Just the bride and groom, her sister and mother, and a justice of the peace. Even the photographer - me - showed up as an unexpected surprise for the couple

But Ryan and Esmerelda's wedding, outside the courthouse in Arlington, was as charming and romantic as anyone could ask. Esmerelda looked lovely, Ryan handsome, and the flowers of the little garden blossomed like it was the first spring ever.

Someone asked to see the photos, so I made this small video from my stills.

Ryan & Esmerelda's Wedding from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Snowmageddon

"Howling Blizzard Deepens the Misery" is the understated lead headline in The Washington Post this morning (the online edition; we're certainly not getting home delivery). Not to deny there are many people seriously affected by this storm (we too played overnight host to relatives who'd gone days without heat or plowed streets), but isn't that a bit much?

Yes, the federal government and schools have had to pack it in for the week, but does this record-setting winter of snow really deserve the same treatment you'd give a Haitian earthquake or Indian Ocean tsunami? Perhaps the problem here in the capital of the known universe is that the snow serves as a useful reminder we're not the masters of the cosmos, that nature and other potential "inconveniences" still hold the upper hand, even in the 21st century.

And for those of us lucky enough to have electricity and a working oven to bake cookies while the landscape outside is transformed, this memorable week has had a lot to recommend it. Clients have asked if I'm off shooting monuments in snow. No, I'm sure they're very beautiful - the whole city is beautiful right now. But in a family that loves snow and snow sports, this has been an opportunity to enjoy ourselves right outside our front door.

Snowmageddon II from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Perfect

A long-time and favorite client of mine is Barry Remley, of Salvations Architectural Furnishings. Barry and her painters and blacksmiths design and build beautiful tables and other furniture, sometimes starting with found objects like heating registers salvaged from old homes and buildings.

From the designs to the welding to the last touches of paint, these pieces are just perfect. This month, I realized, marks the 10-year anniversary of when I began photographing them digitally. This meant the dropped backgrounds, perspective correction and other effects that normally wouldn't be affordable for a small business became something I could do for Barry's images. So the images became perfect too (at least more perfect than much of my other work, where dealing with real people and real situations means the images have that real -- and less-than-perfect-- edge to them!).

To celebrate the 10-year mark I used my library of images to create a short film of the Salvations works, and the people who make them. I hope you can take a minute to check it out.

How many photos?

"How many photos do you take?" people ask me when I'm working.

"A lot," I usually say. "It's the secret of professional photography: Take a lot of pictures, and something is bound to turn out."

Well, maybe not. But I do shoot a lot of photos, perhaps a couple hundred at an assignment that only lasts an hour or two. And judging by the sounds of their cameras, some of my colleagues shoot even more.

Usually all the unused images languish in my archive, with me occasionally finding the need to go back and pull one. But, with the magic of laptop movie-making, they can also now be made into a movie. And it can be a darn good movie -- at least when the subject is our highly expressive Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner (see "Yes, he can"), appearing before the House Financial Services Committee.

Geithner, the Movie from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Bike v. Car

Let me say, first of all, that statistically it's possibly safer to commute by bicycle than by car, if you compare the statistical danger of an hour spent cycling versus an hour of driving. If, like me, you're running around a traffic-clogged downtown, you cover more ground in an hour of biking than an hour of driving as well!

That said, when a car and a bike connect, no matter whose fault it is, the cyclist is almost certainly on the losing end. I can attest to that from an experience a few years ago.

And so, when I came on the scene of one such accident yesterday while returning from an assignment at the Justice Department, I really felt for the cyclist. Talking to a worried coworker of his I learned he was someone who'd just left work on his bike from a restaurant only about a block away. No telling who was in the wrong, but I used my camera and sound to make a brief documentation of the scene. It's a reminder that the more that can be done to make cities and 'burbs safe for all forms of transport -- and we had a jogger killed by a bus not far from this intersection just a week or two ago -- the better for everyone.

Bike v Car from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Multimedia

A photographer who's also an audiophile told me the other day that the teeny little built-in microphone on his camera body delivered decent sound. Well, maybe I should try the teeny little mike on the back of my camera. It's meant for annotating photographs -- recording the name of a person in a photo, for instance.

Turns out, though, it can be used for much more than that (though only in 60-second snips). And when you have a camera that can record sound, you have a machine for making multimedia, like this video, from a health care rally I was assigned to shoot yesterday.

Highway to Health Care from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Cell phone multimedia

I really like cell phone cameras. If you always have your cell with you, you always have a camera. And the quality is amazingly good, way better than you can see on the little cell phone screens. (I do always have my cell with me, even when I'm rock climbing in an area with no coverage. That's why my current phone, like one of its predecessors, has a crack in its cover, from my swinging into rock.)

A couple weeks ago a photographer pointed out to me that you can send images directly from your cellphone to a blog -- no laptop or computer intervening. I quickly set that up, on Jay Tumblz, and have been having daily fun with it.

But your cellphone is actually even better than this -- with sound, audio, and video, it's a full multimedia machine. So yesterday, passing through Rock Creek on foot and in my car, I stopped to create a mini "multimedia" piece on the rain-swollen stream, with nothing more than my ever-handy cell. It's called "Rock Creek Rain."

Rock Creek rain from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Walk Your Bike

Here in DC we're fortunate to have several excellent blogs devoted to bicycling as transportation. This might sound like a pretty geeky subject, but the ultimate goal is far-reaching: to make the nation's urban and suburban areas more people-friendly by designing for "active transportation" -- a category that ranges from kids (or adults) on skateboards to cyclists to pedestrians of every type. If you've stepped outside of a car lately you may have noticed: A lot of places are only friendly to autos. It's no wonder Americans drive everywhere.

Thanks to a confluence of factors -- gas prices, environmental awareness, enlightened urban planning, even stimulus money -- a lot of people feel we've reached a critical mass on this subject. Blogs like The WashCycle and the DC Bicycle Transportation Examiner do a great job tracking developments. And they're fun reading besides, particularly for someone who often gets around by bicycle.

The first blog, sponsored by the Washington Area Bicyclists Association, provides detailed coverage of transportation and bike planning in the region. The second, by Adam Voiland, is a bit more personal, and wide-ranging. A former reporter for U.S. News and World Report, Adam (whom I've never met) will summarize complex health studies on air pollution and biking, then go on to feature pieces of local bike culture. His "Politicycle" analyses of politicians' records on cycling are a lot of fun. Who would've guessed that New York Sen. Charles Schumer, riding a $75 department store bike, would outscore DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, a triathlete with a $4,000 rig? (On second thought, maybe that's not so surprising.)

Yesterday Adam noted the increasing number of "Walk Your Bike" and similar signs around the DC area. I'd taken photos of a bunch of these signs on a long ride back from a photo assignment a few weeks ago, and turned the still images into a YouTube movie. Adam used it on his blog. You can read the blog, and see the movie (all of 30 seconds), by clicking on the image below.