Virtual Vietnam Exhibition

This weekend I have worked on the pictures I took in Vietnam during the last month. In all there are more than 110 photos on different subjects: nature, animals, portraits, abstract, macro, PS-manipulated...
I have sent a newsletter to my friends announcing this online exhibition...
Comments are always welcome here!
;-)

Picture of the month on www.theBIGpicturelibrary.com!

Have just received a mail from Matt Woodage from http://www.theBIGpicturelibrary.com :

We have chosen one of your photos as our JANUARY Picture of the Month!!
portret02.jpg - showing two women carrying baskets along a roadside
You can see it by clicking Picture of the Month on our new BROWSE page here:
www.theBIGpicturelibrary.com

Great isn't it? This is the picture he is talking about:

In a mail I added the following comment:

Hi Matt,

Thanks for choosing one of my pictures as picture of the month! Quite an honor, and I'm very pleased! I have chosen your server because I like the interactive way you present the pictures in flash. Additions as comments and optional technical info will indeed be welcome.
The picture was taken on the 27th of December 2006 on the island of Phuquoc, a tiny southern Vietnamese pearl off the Cambodian coast. Taking portraits is not always easy. I try to take them while the people aren't aware, so it makes the pictures more natural. You can see many women like these in Vietnam, carrying the goods in baskets, balancing on a stick on their shoulders. They can carry their weight for many miles!
The exiled Buddhist Tich Nhat Hanh sees in his book "Being Peace" a parallel between the way people in the east carry their burdens and the way the 14 rules of the Tiêp Hiên, a guideline for a Buddhist life, are structured: the most important rule is the middle one (7th) - don't be distracted and exercise on the development of concentration and wisdom. All other rules keep in balance thanks to this one.
This picture was taken with a Canon 350D and an EF 100-400mm lens.
Could you please add a link to my homepage? http://www.hoefkens.be

The Big Picture Library

Time is definitely NOT on my side since I have more than a full time work on ICT-matters in my school, and a workshop in Saigon is coming up on the 16th of December...
Yet, my site has been a mess for a while, and I would like to update, even restructure and redesign it, if possible... I have recently added the two blogs (photoblog and ICT-blog) but I want a solution for the pictures. I have been looking for Flash solutions, but the problem is that I want too much... aesthetic presentation, explanation, metadata, even a shop if possible, but that can't be done in the short period that I have.
This morning, while watching BBCWorld's ClickOnline, I saw what appeared a great solution for the moment: The Big Picture Library. In a very quick and easy way, you can add pictures to a page, choose a style, and then embed it in your site...That's what I did...
You get nice, animated thumbs that zoom in when you click on them.
A few disadvantages: FOR THE MOMENT it is free..., you need an new login for each page, some thumbnails keep standing in front of the picture until you drag you cursor over it, and you cannot change the aspects of the template (frame size, background,...)
But as an interactive way of presenting pictures this is a great solution... and... I present them as they normally are arranged on my desk!! >> in a PILE!! ;-)
Just click on some of the albums!