More than six months after I first created a blog and took these humble first steps, I'm delighted to finally unveil esthet (v2). Thanks to MJ, we've given this blog a giant-sized and much-needed facelift, so that I no longer have to be embarrassed about visitors arriving at my site and finding a bland, generic Movable Type template blog. And if you're one of those people who regularly visit esthet, but have resisted linking to me because I asked you not to, then consider this site finally open to the public--link away! For the first time, we have also enabled the comments feature, as I have been receiving feedback that some visitors are frustrated that they haven't been able to leave a comment.

MJ and I still need to tweak the overall presentation and finish applying the layout across secondary areas, but I think we're getting there. We've tested it in IE 5.2 and Mozilla 1.2 for Mac, but we still need to do more cross-platform testing. So if you come across anything a bit odd-looking in the presentation, feel free to let me know.

In case you were wondering, the header image comes from a 1940s photograph that I found about three months ago at an antique fleamarket in Harajuku, Tokyo, a regular source of images for my Japanese pre-1950s found photography collection. There's no shortage of studio and war photography, but, taking my inspiration from collector, Thomas Walther, my selection leans towards snapshots or family photos capturing regular people in western dress and depict every day life, those unposed moments, spontaneous living--in other words, the vernacular.