Photography seems to be in the zeitgeist this week as I keep stumbling over photo news.

America in Color 1939-1943

First off, a gorgeous gallery of 70 color photographs taken during the war years in America; just pictures of life in small towns, carnivals, speakeasies and lots and lots of people. The Denver Post seems to be taking the cue from Boston.com's The Big Picture blog by featuring very large images on their gallery. Kudos to them too. The color really pops in these images or maybe life was just more colorful then. This is a treasure trove for costume researchers.

Not sure why this is suddenly up on Kotaku - a gamer site that I read fairly often -- but now they seem to have discovered Chinese artist Liu Bolin, who is famous for almost perfect painting ON himself so that he appears to blend into the backgrounds of photos like camouflage. No Photoshop. Yes, these are self-portraits. Imagine the difficulty of doing this when you are painting on someone else. Now think about how difficult it is when the subject is yourself.

A wedding photographer who had been filling in for a friend was shot and killed after he posed wedding guests with firearms. One of the guns was evidently loaded and went off, killing Calogero Scimea. Arming people at a wedding might be common in Sicily, where this took place, I don't know but I'm pretty sure if I ever engage in this kind of service I might ask also for a movie set arms master to be part of the contract.

More in the NY

Ian Martens of the Lethbridge Herald was on the scene when a CF-18 fighter jet practicing aerial acrobatics at the Lethbridge airport in preparation for an airshow flew into the ground and exploded. Amazing luck and timing for Martens to photograph the jet what must have been a fraction of an instant before it impacted (a later shot shows the fireball after its crash). His photo also shows the pilot's ejection and his chute in the process of opening. The pilot is in hospital and his multi-million dollar piece of equipment is now a lot of blackened evidence waiting to be examined by investigators.

People curious about the big Pacemaker Speed Graphic I was lugging around on Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival sometimes stopped and asked me about the images that battered old box put out and said that it must put out something beautiful. I agree but I also said that it depended on the photographer who is still very new at 4x5. Currently, with the very low number of 4x5 sheets that I expose I think I'm about 25% hit ratio which I think is the same for any format I am shooting, only I take an extremely low amount of shots in the same time that I would with digital or 35mm.

Here are a few snapshots from my three days at the Vancouver Folk Festival. Let me first tell you about this special event that I look forward to every year. Like most outdoor events in Vancouver it's kept pretty small. Jericho Park, which I explore every week now that I'm in the neighbourhood, is only a few acres square but in that area they manage to pack seven stages: one large stage with space for a few hundred lying wherever they want, and a number of smaller stages spread around the park.