September's edition of The Digital Journalist contains two moving collections of images and stories in remembrance of the September 11 attack two years ago. It also presents a selection of bold and memorable photographs from Life's 100 Photographs That Changed the World.

The Summer 2003 issue of la modern association features Beaugrenelle, a short scratch-style QT video of urban architectural views close-ups by Paul Grivas as well as a new Cross Atlantic Report with images from New York, Brussels and Paris.

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, ZoneZero is presenting a three-day colloquium, Ten Years from Analog to Digital, in Mexico City from today onwards. As part of the celebration, they are also creating a film to document personal experiences with the internet, new technologies, and views on the future of photography. There are also two new feature photo essays using digital camera phones by Alice Hawkins and Mark Lebon.

Issue 4 of BlueEyes Magazine features 90 photographs in 2 photo essays by 13 photographers and commemorates the events of September 11. John Loomis has done a fantastic job in putting this special edition together.

Jerome Ferraro is a portrait and reportage photographer based in New York City (Thanks, Benjamin, and congratulations for winning 1st Place in the New York 2003 PDN/Nikon Self-Promotion Awards for the photography site, SugarLove Pictures!

Guido Mocafico's magnificent architectural and landscape photography is simply delectable: perfectly lit, clean composition, and elegant lines (via Conscientious).

The new Canon EOS 300D Rebel digital SLR camera is now out on sale in Japan. Retail prices start from ¥104,700 (US$930) for just the body and ¥123,800 (US$1,100) for the body and lens kit at the cheapest stores in Tokyo; this camera appears to be selling like hot cakes! Digital Photography Review, Digital Camera Resource, and Steve's Digicams weigh in with their reviews, comparing this camera to the Canon EOS 10D.

Following the success of the 26 Things Photographic Scavenger Hunt, Tracey from sh1ft has come up with an intriguing new photo submission project called Connect8, where you have to shoot 8 individual photographs and each new photograph relates only to the previous shot and should not be a series or convey an overall theme.

Octaplex is a gorgeous flash portfolio site containing architectural and city details (via thingsmagazine).

Andrew from asbcreative has compiled a really helpful guide to new and used camera stores in Tokyo.

brunoespadana has a photography-related blog in both Portuguese and English.

Perfect timing--a day at the beach at Cape Verde, a group of islands off the west coast of Senegal, by Czech photographer, Ladislav Drezdowicz. His images of Tibet are also worth a closer look.

I *LOVE* 28mm.org--it's great to see them back online since running into a bit of a bandwidth crisis last month. Two issues have come out since I last posted about this great online photography 'zine. Highlights from the August issue include a story on Mozambique Island by Dominic Turner and Peter Hovering's photo essay on young Iraqi boys' fascination for weapons and arms.

In the September issue, the standout gallery for me is Doug Burgess' collection of portraits shot in 1978 of people waiting for a train in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station.

Jason Kottke did some experiments with stereoscopic photography back in January. Now check out these delightful animated stereoscopic images (via The Morning News).

Olivia Gay's beautiful portfolio site contains some interesting portraits of sex workers and strippers from France, Brazil, Cuba and Argentina (via thingsmagazine).

Recent photography-related deaths in the news: The Latvian inventor of the legendary Minox spy camera, Dr Walter Zapp, died in July (just an aside...while in Latvia two weeks ago, I went into a number of used and new camera stores to see what Minox cameras were on sale, and was told that they had never heard of Minox: "Did you mean Minolta?!"...umm, no?!!).

Leni Riefenstahl passed away on 9 September, just after celebrating her 101st birthday. Joerg of Conscientious has written an interesting post about his opinion of her role in documenting Nazi Germany.

Canadian and Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested and beaten to death by intelligence agents in Iran in July of this year. The Iranian government initially denied all involvement in her death but did an about-face late last month and has begun serious investigations into what really happened.

I wasn't the only photography enthuasiast on the road this summer. Kevin Cameron, author of the nifty little mfop moblogging tool, cycled around Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures with his partner. Two of his recent posts contain vibrant images filled with lush colours and textures.

Heather from Harrumph took a road trip with friends to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for this year's Burning Man festival. She shot a delightful collection of pinhole and polaroid portraits as well as Lomo documentary images.

Breaking out of the habit of daily blogging is certainly easier than getting back into it again. So, now that I'm back in Tokyo, I'll start off slowly with a small selection of Tokyo photo-based blogs I've recently come across.

Pixmaniac is a redesign of an earlier site by a Japanese Contax enthusiast and features a lovely new collection of black and white shots recently taken on a hot day in Asakusa.

My Private Tokyo is a new photoblog of an Australian photographer residing in Tokyo with a passion for Lomos. I particularly like his latest entry of nightlife in Shibuya (unfortunately there are no permalinks for individual posts).

asbcreative is Andrew Beveridge's newly launched photoblog. The latest selection of manipulated abstract images (click on the thumbnails in the left-hand column) are vivid and original views of a city that has become all too familiar to us Tokyo residents.

On a personal note, tomorrow is my 33rd birthday...another year older and I keep wondering when I will feel like a 'grown up'. I have the dubious honour of being born the very day Jimi Hendrix died and share my birthday with Greta Garbo (last week, I actually visited Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm where she is buried, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site which is acclaimed for its early twentieth-century landscape and architectural design).

Since I learnt of the Hill of Crosses near Siauliai in Lithuania some months ago, I tried to imagine the experience of actually seeing them. I visualised several thousand (perhaps even tens of thousands) crosses made of iron, wood and stone on an open hill resembling some kind of cemetery. When making my own photographic pilgrimage (travelling 500km in one day for the return trip from Vilnius), nothing could quite prepare me for the breathtaking sight of literally hundreds of thousands of crosses and crucifixes of all shapes and sizes, colours and materials hanging from each other--even crosses hanging from crosses hanging from crosses--smothering a tiny double hillock, all having found their way there since 1954. My latest Typepad photo album contains my personal perspective.

So here I am at last, still in Stockholm, at the very end of my month-long trip of many highs and lows and intriguing discoverings, posting my very last entry from Europe. Tomorrow I catch a mid-morning flight to Moscow on my way back to Tokyo and I'm not exactly looking forward to the experience, given my past two encounters with Moscow Airport on the way to and from Biskhkek. After a 2 1/2 hour flight from Stockholm, I have a 5 hour layover in Moscow followed by a second flight (10 1/2 hours) with Aeroflot, arriving in Tokyo at 9:30am on Thursday morning. Let me just add that Aeroflot are pretty much the worst airline I have ever flown with...one to be avoided at all costs unless you are desperate to pinch pennies!

Regular esthet-style blogging of interesting photography discoveries should resume after the weekend, so check back then if you're interested in seeing some good global photography eyecandy. For those of you who have written to me over the past month or two suggesting links and offering helpful comments, rest assured I have kept all of your recommendations and will begin posting those shortly. See you back in Tokyo!

During my stay to Vilnius, I made a special effort to track down the hard-to-find former KGB Prison, which is now a museum and memorial to the people executed by the Soviet regime. The building, located just off the main street, was used by the KGB from the 1940s up to the early 1990s (abandoned in its present state when the USSR broke up and Lithuania achieved independence) to interrogate tens of thousands of Lithuanian prisoners and torture them over a period of weeks or months to induce confessions, and then either deport them to Siberia or execute them in the prison's specially built execution chamber. This is first museum of its kind in any of the former Soviet states, and I found it to be a deeply moving experience. I hope the latest images in my Typepad gallery speak for themselves.

Meanwhile, I've been keeping up with my Mirror Project submissions. This photo was taken in a fabulous little not-yet-discovered-by-Latvians Pop Art-inspired cafe in Riga. The ambience was playful, colourful and youthful and had a tasty international cafe style menu to match. It had only been open a month so it was a delightfully unexpected discovery....and one of the reasons why I love travelling so much!

Light dictates photography opportunities while you are travelling, and it certainly hasn't been my friend over the past few weeks. While in Latvia, host of the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest and soon to vote in the people's referendum to join the EU, juggling my umbrella with multiple cameras, I continued to focus my lenses on the fine details, colours, patterns and textures unique to Riga, while trying to avoid the rain-soaked views traditionally captured by most travel photographers. So this next Typepad photo album contains some views of Riga's Jugendstil (as art nouveau is known in the Baltic, Germanic and Nordic regions) architectural details--some buildings are beautifully restored and some decaying but still captivating.

Since my last entry, I've travelled about 350km overland to Lithuania where I spent two days in Vilnius as well as taking a lengthy day trip to the Hill of Crosses, the famed Christian pilgrimage site near Siauliai (250km north-west of Vilnius). Lithuania photos to come shortly. Early yesterday (and a hideously expensive airfare later), I arrived in Stockholm where the bad weather experienced this trip has finally broken! At last, the air is fresh and the light is clear and bright, so I'm looking forward to experiencing the sweeping archipelago views and clean Swedish lines unique to this city.

Though the Japanese yen-Swedish krona exchange rate is NOT working in my favour, the quality of shopping is totally fabulous here...yesterday I picked up a pair of gorgeous Costume National (Tokyo) heels on sale at 20% of their original price and a cute pair of black satin Karen Millen (London) 1930s-style heels that were 60% off! They'll go nicely with the little vintage Chinese silk clutch purse I picked up in Helsinki. Must...resist...further...shopping...
Must....take....more....photos....

Dogged by rain for the past two weeks, photographing the cities I've been visiting has been rather challenging. Here in Riga, it's been downright miserable. Street scenes marred by hundreds of cold, umbrella-carrying or raincoat-wearing locals and washed out grey skies as a backdrop for otherwise impressive architecture just doesn't make for good photography. So I've been forcing myself to come up with different travel photography perspectives that don't require a clear blue sky...or people. Perhaps I've been successful at my attempts, or perhaps not. Feel free to be my critic.

My latest Typepad album contains views of Tallinn, selected with a medieval theme. Fortunately the sun came out for long enough for me to photograph the extended city walls and castle. Returning to the same location the following day also allowed me to get the shot of Toompea Castle, drenched in sun after emerging from the storm.