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Bring Out the Nikons: It's spring.

Most photographers in northern climates spend part of their winters in darkrooms (or light rooms if they are working with digital photography) working on prints, books and exhibitions. But we look forward to moving outside as soon as the temperature rises and the snowbanks disappear.
We still have snow in fields, in our yards and on the edge of some roads – but it's melting and the sound of water running down the street was all that I needed to justify exposing a few frames of black and white film this afternoon.
My friends in other parts of the country are enjoying spring flowers, but spring on the prairies is very special. We've missed the warm sun for so long that we feel we deserve the heat and the light. Later in the year we'll take them for granted, but not today.
Prairie photographers will soon start to carry their cameras as they walk in the countryside or in the cities. They may not use them much, but one never knows what's around the corner.
The temperature today: six degrees of inspiration (that's Celsius, of course).
Enough indoor blogging for the day. I think I'll check to see if the tulips are up.
Enjoy the sunshine.

A new standard for e-books

I spoke at the Tri-Province Forum on Publishing in Winnipeg last week about e-books and e-journals. The audience was a small group of publishers from western Canada and funding agency representatives from the Government of Canada and The Canada Council for the Arts.
I told my audience that e-books were here already and would be used more and more in various areas of publishing, including fiction. The reaction to my presentation was quite positive, considering that this is a subject on which publishers are seldom neutral.
I used the term 'traditional e-books' to describe e-books which were simply words on a screen – digitized text that looked the same on screen as on paper. Such e-books still have a lot of advantages or potential advantages including the abilitiy to search for key words. The cost of a digitized text is usually significantly lower than that of a paper product and, of course, e-books are easily stored, shipped and carried (students need not carry Mt. Everest backpacks back and forth to class).
The new standard I suggest for e-books has nothing to do with DRM or witch hunts against PDF: it involves interactivity and features which can make an e-book an experience rather than an imitation of a paper book.
The letter E in the born-digital e-books of the future will stand for Experience: the experience of hearing and seeing the author or critics discussing or reading the book; the experience of linking to other books, sites and experiences; and the experience of using incorporated video, audio and even game components in the book.
You'll hear more about such products in the near future, and the e-books you currently have on your laptop, PDA or iPod will seem very traditional and clunky.