During this past weekend, my wife and I made a quick trip to the Tampa Bay area to visit my in-laws. Below, I’ve embedded a couple of photo sets from the trip. The first is four shots of a sunset on the inner coastal waterway, taken in the small residential community of Belleair Bluffs, Florida, in the Clearwater-Largo area of Pinnelas County.

The second is from the Yellow Banks Groves packing and shipping facility on Indian Rocks Beach, adjacent to Largo. As I note on the set description, at one point before World War II, Largo was the world’s largest citrus shipping center. The advent of concentrated orange juice during that period would, however, change the economics of the citrus industry and do away with much of the shipping of florida oranges and grapefruit, as it was then carried out. (Why? Well, that’s a longer post for another day.)

It’s a bit cold in Nashville this morning, so I thought I’d post both sets here to help remind me why lots of people go to Florida in the winter:

[Last update: 5/5/2011, 12:11 pm, CST]

[This is a post about why photography is a unique and powerful medium, even in an era when I spend a lot of time preaching to people that learning to edit video on the fly is a required skill anyone who communicates for a living must master -- right up there with knowing how to type and how to make a presentation without using bullet points.]

Yesterday, when I saw the White House had used Flickr to release a set of photos of President Obama and his security team monitoring the Bin Laden raid, I was immediately captivated by the photo above and posted it on my Tumblr account (http://RexHammock.com).

Later last night, I went back to the Flickr set because I wanted to study the photo a bit more closely to see what made the photo so compelling, beyond its obvious historic significance. (I can assure you the photographer took dozens of photos of equally historic significance, but this is the one not culled and released and that will be the shot associated with this moment.)

At first, I thought it was the intensity of the President that made the shot — it did when I first saw it. Obama’s crouching position (while others are erect or leaning back) is probably going to be analyzed by body-language experts, but any group of people who’ve watched a TV sporting event (and I apologize in advance for the following comparison, considering the serious nature of what they were watching), will recognize Obama’s position as that of the person in the room who in addition to being a fan, has just made a call to his bookie.

My second thought was that the photo was captivating because it was so different from how such scenes have been depicted in countless movies and TV shows. In such dramas, this would not be taking place in a spartan, crowded conference room with all the aesthetic appeal of a Marriott Hotel business center — and a table full of HP laptops that still have Intel Inside and Windows stickers on them. In an episode (in every episode) of “24″ this would be in an expansive subterranean room filled with translucent touch screens that make all sorts of electronic beeping and screeching sounds when they zoom in to watch the action of each soldier on the ground.

But, upon further examination, I’ve decided this photo’s true power can best be understood by looking at it, as one can do on Flickr, at the original size it was posted, 4996 x 2731 pixels (click to slide show, then “view all sizes). At this size, you can see the photo as its photographer saw it through the lens — or the photo-editor who chose it might.

At 4996 x 2731, you can immediately see the photo’s focal point is Hillary Clinton — more specifically, her eyes.

The photo tells a story of an entire room of people, but this is a photograph of Hillary Clinton. And, frankly, it is one of the most powerful, honest photographs you’ll ever see of a public figure.

Update: (via Flickr) In addition to the President and Vice President, identification of people in the photo: Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Update 2: On Flickr, the copy accompanying the photo indicates the document on the table is obscured because it is classified.

Update 3: Photo credits and settings: Photographer: Pete Souza; Canon 5D MkII, 35mm f/1.4L USM, f/3.5, 1/100s, ISO 1600 (via: John Goldsmith, see comments below).

Update 4: The photo has turned into an internet meme, via: Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic

Update 5: If you haven’t visited the situation room Flickr set, you should at least take a look at this photo, as it will provide you with an idea of what the rest of the room looks like.

Update 6: According to TechCrunch, the photo is on its way to being the most-viewed photo on Flickr. (This post is going to set similar records for this blog.)

Update 7: Clinton says she doesn’t remember what she was doing when this photo was taken — perhaps trying to keep from coughing, she says.

Here’s a slideshow of photos people have uploaded to Flickr using the tag “supermoon” that, according to some super-secret algorithms, are considered to have a high degree of “interestingness.”

Perhaps a bit less interesting, but more personal, here’s a photo I shot last night of the moon shining brightly over the Tennessee State Capitol:

[See note at the end of this post.]

During a vacation in Maine last week (the vacation photos are here, but it now seems like a month ago), I saw a stainless steel inner tube-like thing (if you’re reading this on my blog, it’s pictured on the left and in a slide-show at the bottom of the post) hanging from the rafter of a shop filled with, well, lots of junk. When I asked what it was, the owner said, “I have no idea. It floated up to the shore near my house.”

Being the curious person I am, I thought I’d take some photos to later see if I could find something via Google or one of the visual search engines I’ve been hearing about.

When I couldn’t find anything after a few minutes of cursory searching, I decided to turn to someone I know is a leading expert in finding obscure stuff: my friend, Dr. Joe, at the blog, BookofJoe. Taking the “lazy web” approach, I asked Joe if he had any suggestions.

He pointed me to a great post about visual search on SearchEngineJournal.com and told me about Tineye and BYO. Tineye, which Dr. Joe says has worked for him in the past, was a complete bust and BYO’s searches made no sense.

On the other hand, Gazopa.com did a great job suggesting images that were at least relevant. Unfortunately, none were what I was looking for. (And while they have something called “Ask.Gazopa.com,” there doesn’t seem to be anyone answering.)

As my five-minute attempt didn’t work, I’m doing some early-morning “social searching” by posting a Flickr set of photos of the mystery object (see slideshow below) and asking if anyone knows what this stainless steel, precision tooled and professionally welded “inner tube” thing is.

As it “floated up to the Maine coast,” I’m assuming it may have come from a boat or ship. Also, it is hollow and when I tapped on it with that yard-stick, it had a nice bell-like sound to it.

Any ideas of what this is? Or, for places on the web where such visual mysteries can be solved?

Later: The best guess so far is that the object is the inner core of a life buoy or life ring. Some commercial-grade life buoys have a metal ring rather than a foam ring. As I haven’t had time (nor inclination) to track down the “How it’s Made” info on life buoy manufacturing, I’ll stick with that theory until someone has a better theory.

Later #2: Over on the Book of Joe, a commenter has come up with a suggestion that I will declare a winner, if for no other reason, the Google image search for it returns so many things that look very, very close: toroidal tank.

The Last Later: Okay. I take that back. Again, over at Book of Joe, a commenter nails it with a non-debatable call: It’s an “exhaust donut” used in the creation of custom exhaust systems. A google search of “exhaust donut” led to this page that is precisely what the object is: http://secure.chassisshop.com/partlist/5845/. This has been a great way for me to learn about two things: Visual search (and its limitations) and how some things can only be solved by the collective wisdom of the crowd.

Link: Boston.com

I predict this AP photo by Charlie Riedel will win a Pulitzer. It is one of those images you will remember forever — it is that searing.

Despite me being a teenager at the time, I can still remember the personal impact of first seeing the Pulitzer Prize images that defined the Viet Nam War era: one of a young girl fleeing her village after a napalm bomb was dropped on it; the execution of a Viet Cong Captain and the iconic Kent State massacre photo of Mary Ann Vecchio.

I’m not suggesting that an oil-covered bird is the same level of tragedy as the loss of life depicted in those photos from the Viet Nam War era. Rather, my point is that an image captured in less than 1/32nd of a second can be an image that captures the essence of a story that takes months or years to unfold.

Like those earlier photos, this photo too could be the image that changes the minds of many people regarding that which they may have been convinced before seeing it.

Later: Despite my claim that BP’s problem is not merely one of PR (in other words, even the most skilled and telegenic CEO could not have helped ), I will admit the CEO they have provides the un-role model of what should be the “voice” of an organization at a time like this. This sentence from an article in Friday’s New York Times captures my opinion well: “Instead of reassuring the public, critics say, Mr. Hayward has turned into a day-after-day reminder of BP’s public relations missteps in responding to the crisis, which began six weeks ago and looks likely to continue well into the summer.”

I feel certain that after you read this PDF from the Congressional Research Service about the global e-waste crisis, you’ll join with me in starting a worldwide movement to encourage people to stop consuming content from e-waste producing devices (that also require electricity from coal-burning, river-polluting plants) and go back to exclusively reading news from print: the recyclable medium.

(via: docuticker.com.)

Flickr has long had a feature called “sets” that allows a user to organize groupings of photos in any way the photographer wants to share them. Flickr recently added another feature that, at first, seems to be the same thing — but the new feature allows users to collect, annotate and display their favorite photos taken by other Flickr users. These “galleries” allow anyone to curate up to 15 photos — none of which can be their own. As an example of what you can do with such a gallery, I’ve curated a gallery of some of my favorite night-time Nashville photos found on Flickr. Another example of something you can do: If several friends are photographing the same event, it’s a great way to display a “best of” collection. (Note: a user can opt-out of allowing any of their photos to be displayed in such galleries.)

Boston.com’s “Big Picture” collection of moving photography of flooding from the southeast makes me think there’s an instant magazine in there somewhere (see yesterday’s post).

Boston.com’s “The Big Picture” is displaying some incredibly moving photography related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These images are worth all the words I could possibly write.