Trip Preparations:

Well, I'm one day away from departure, and this trip will be a three month gig, starting in Sri Lanka to shoot a story about post-war peace building efforts (pdf about peace building) on the east coast of Sri Lanka for The Asia Foundation , and then to lead several photo tours in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Vietnam. There are a few open spaces left on the Thailand Laos Cambodia trip, and one spot open on the Vietnam tour, so if you are interested, just click on the link to get more information, including other trips lead by Jim Cline as well.

Since my return from India in late November, I have been busy with lots of clerical and communication issues. I've moved my website to a new hosting company, started a new and improved blog, (which is currently off-line...sorry for the delay) and I also upgraded and moved into a new laptop, the Sony VGN-SR.

With all the photo tours and my work with NGOs I will be busy around the clock, but my work is so much fun that I'm really looking forward to hitting the road. It seems that my life has centered around computers for the last several weeks and I am anxious to get out into the "real world" again.

In other news.....I was interviewed by two different on-line photography shows. I will be posting about that, and including links to the podcasts closer to when the programs will debut on line. So please stay tuned in.

Finally, I'm happy to announce that on this trip I will be testing a new product called the Spider Camera Holster. As you may remember, during my last trip I was evaluating the Cotton Carrier. This time, I'm going to evaluate the Spider Holster, and I'm really excited about it. It's a low profile "mimimalist" approach to a quick release, hip based, camera carrying system. I think it's going to be the "killer product" of the decade. Finally, someone has come up with a fantastic way of making cameras easy to carry, and ready at a moment's notice.

Above, you can see a close up of the Spider Pro capture mechanism, with the addition of a "pin" attached to the bottom of the camera, your camera slides into this "receiver". To get a better look at it, check out Spider Holster's website by clicking here. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be posting my impressions about the Spider Holster, so please check back here for updates.

I hope you all had a nice holiday and I wish you all the best in 2010.

Take care and thanks for reading....and I should have my new and improved blog up and running soon.