As to the rest—long form writing and photo galleries and more—that will come soon. For now, journal.duncandavidson.com is the place to keep up with me. More to come…

In late 2008, my sister Joli was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. A type of lung cancer that doesn’t come from smoking. It had already spread throughout her body.

Treatment started immediately and—for a while at least—it worked well. The stats gave her around a year, plus or minus (mostly minus, honestly) depending on which stats you looked at. She beat that with the help of all sorts of treatments. Radiation. Chemo. Experimental pills. But, eventually, the treatments stopped being effective. The most horrible thing about watching a cancer like this kill your sister is that you can’t give up hope, yet hope is something that you can’t drum up in large doses. Evidence and facts work against that. But still you hope. And pulled between the two, eventually you can’t even breathe.

You can pretend to breathe, and you do. But you don’t. A bit of oxygen manages to leak into your system somehow. Enough to keep you going.

After being in Dallas the last week of January, watching my sister in the hospital, my even that last little bit of oxygen leaking in stopped. The cancer was eating her blood. She couldn’t maintain platelet counts. She was living because of transfusions. I watched the doctors do a bone marrow aspiration on Joli to determine if the cancer had gotten there.

It was.

They sent her home while I was still in Dallas. With oxygen. Transfusions continued. No further treatment other than pain management, however, was an option. It was just a matter of time. On Febuary 6th, I got the word that they had started morphine. I was driving to LA to go to TED. I sped up. I raced down the 5 to get to LAX and fly to Dallas to see her one last time. I could sneak in one more visit. But, even though I was blowing speed limits out of the water—I’ve never driven so fast for so long—I wasn’t fast enough. While still in the Central Valley of California, I got the call that she had died.

I checked myself into a hotel. And just… I don’t know. Stopped.

The next morning, I had to decide what to do. Fly to Dallas or go to Long Beach. My sister had donated her body to medicine, so there wasn’t going to be a funeral. No cremation. No macabre viewing. I was happy with her choice, but it meant that I had to live with the fact that I wouldn’t see her again, no matter what. The family was scattered, gathering later in the week. So, I just headed to Long Beach. I decided I had to keep living. I had to do the things that made me myself. I had to do that because I know that’s what I’d want her to do if the situation were reversed.

My week at TED was manic/depressive. It sucked to work so hard, yet I found that keeping so busy was great medicine. I cried when people talked about how cancer was affecting their lives. I helped lead a standing ovation for cancer researcher William Li, even though it certainly isn’t the place for a staff member to help instigate such a thing. I was a wet mess behind the camera when June mentioned that a member of staff had lost their sister to cancer from the stage. I had a hard time shooting the rest of that session.

The undeniable blessing of being at TED last week, however, was that I was surrounded by proof that life was meaningful. People doing great things. People looking for hope where there shouldn’t be any. People fighting to figure out how to keep the human race vibrant and rich over the years to come. And I was surrounded by the support of all of my friends on the TED staff. No matter what was going on, how busy they were, there was always a time for a hug and a moment from all of them when it was needed most.

I executed probably my best live stage work ever last week at TED. My mind, however, was never far from Joli. Nor her family. Her children. Her mother. Her husband. I dedicate all of the work I did there to Joli. I know that she would have loved to be there. To see the things I saw.

As soon as the event was over, I was on the first jet I could catch to Dallas—where I am now. Because of the nasty weather this last week across the east and south—along with the NBA all-star game in Dallas—it was almost impossible to get a flight that night, but I did even though it took paying cash for a one-way first class ticket. An extravagance but worth every penny. I made it. I’m here. I didn’t have to wait another day to be here. I was able to meet my family while they were still gathered here.

I miss Joli, I know that her life was a good one. She did lots of good things. She saw a big chunk of the world. She had a lot of fun, even during the times when things were stacked against her. And she has, as part of her legacy, four great children—my nieces and nephews—that will take that spirit forward.

I hate the fact she’s gone. But, in the process of accepting that fact, I’ve started breathing again. And breathing is good. I’ll use that breath to do my own life’s work. To travel. To see things. And, every time I see something gorgeous or amazing in the world—every time I go somewhere new—I’ll probably stop and think, “Wouldn’t Joli have loved to see this!” And yeah, she would have.

I really should have known better. It was like leaving a drum of gasoline sitting in the middle of the street without a top and a box of matches sitting next to it. As friend told friend, word spread. We saw the order volume ramp up a bit over a day or so. Then, midday Monday, hits on our site and our order volume exploded.

John Gruber had linked to us on Daring Fireball.

I’m insanely happy it happened. John’s kind words about the Loop are high praise indeed. They set things into motion. We got follow-on links from Gizmodo, MacWorld, Laughing Squid, and Hivelogic. As much as it meant that we were going to be in scramble mode for the next few weeks, I can’t have asked for a better way to launch. Well, more accurately, to be launched.

Really, I shouldn’t use the word launch. It wasn’t a launch. It was an out-and-out escape of the product. That’s what it was. Plain and simple.

So, there we were. Standing there at Barista looking at our iPhones. For a moment, we just babbled incoherently and made guesses as to the amount of traffic that was inbound. Then we did what had to be done. We threw out the game book we thought we were using. We called up our suppliers and manufacturing partners and shifted our supply chain into high gear.

Luckily, we have greate partners. Greg did a great job finding some of the best shops anywhere. The company that cuts the parts for our shoulder pad does custom production runs for the aerospace industry. Our sew shop works with the locally based sporting apparel companies. They’ve got our backs and we’re really happy to have them on board.

Now, a bit over a week later, we’re closing the gap on our orders and will be on top of things very soon. We’ve put together a quick and dirty video showing the Luma Loop in action. And, we’ve already re-started our plans to produce much more polished video that shows the Loop and how it works. There’s also some exciting movement on some of the other things we’re working on.

Exciting times. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

All a photographer needs to do to have their photographs included is post a tweet that mentions the @dailyshoot user, the assignment hashtag, and a link to a photo. For example, the following tweets resulted in the first five thumbnails in the screenshot above.

Note that you don't have to address a tweet directly to @dailyshoot. Just a mention, hashtag, and url anywhere in the tweet will do the trick. This makes it easier to submit assignments directly from applications like Best Camera.

Of course, now that we're grabbing the data directly from Twitter, we're taking things a few steps further. The site lets you browse photos by assignment or by photographer. While Mike and I were putting the finishing touches on this rev, I kept clicking around to see what different photographers had produced and was consistently amazed and proud. People are coming up with some really great photographs in response to the simple daily assignments that we're kicking out.

Finally, we've got a way for you to suggest assignments. We've also added an RSS feed to pull assignments, both current and past. We're hoping this last feature will find its way into some interesting places. For example, wouldn't it be cool if the iPhone camera application you used showed you today's Daily Shoot assignment? Now, it should be as simple as pie. (BTW, if you are interested in doing some integration, get in touch!)

Thanks to Patrick Lenz and Urban Hafner for some of the code that's running in the latest site. And many thanks to Mike who pulled everything together and made it all go. And lastly, thanks to Heroku for their platform. It's a joy to make webapps when the deployment process is so seamless and smooth.

I was off the clock, and the show floor was about to close down, but I knew I had to make a few shots. So I pulled my camera back out, switched up lenses, and rolled off a few dozen shots of attendees scoping out the phone. This was one of those shots:

It turned out to be one of the most widely used photos I've ever taken. Unfortunately, it was used by all those places that don't pay, don't ask permission, don't give credit, and put their own watermark all over it after snagging it from Flickr. But that's neither here nor there. The photo got around and showed up in an incredible variety of places.

Fast forward almost three years. My friend Jason Hunter just pointed me off to this Verizon DROID Pretty video where they are trying to set themselves apart from the iPhone. Here's a screen grab from the first few seconds of the video where the announcer asks, "Shoud a phone be pretty?"

It's better produced in the way you'd expect a staged shot to be. After all, they weren't working with strangers on a show floor. The models are hipper and don't have conference name tags. And it has a blingy post-production background. But the similarities are obvious aren't they? Three people, two on the left side, one on the right. The three most dominant people in my photo are all males, but many people thought the second from the left was a female and, sure enough, the second from the left in the Verizon add is a female.

I'm kinda speechless right now and I'm not quite sure what to think of it. Whoa.

It’ll be happening at 1PM EST/10AM PST this Sunday, November 22nd on the Tack Sharp Live page.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev at TEDIndia (Photo: TED/James Duncan Davidson)

And my travels are only just a bit over half way done.

Tomorrow, I’ll be photographing NewTeeVee in San Francisco and then I’ll be jetting off to New York to shoot Web 2.0 Expo NY. After it’s all done, I hope I remember my name.

First, however, I have to get there. I’m currently stuck at PDX due to a mechanical problem on my aircraft. It’s shaping up to be the longest airport wait of the entire trip, and I’m only flying 550 miles to SFO. But hey, the Wifi works and they don’t block sites such as Flickr like they do in Dubai, so it could be worse.

So, while I’m stuck, I’m going to take a few minutes and throw out a quick set of updates and random thoughts I’ve been having.

The LumaLoop

First, the strap project that I’ve been working on with my business partner Greg Koenig is just about to come to fruition. We’ve got a finished design. We’re able to produce in volume. And, through a test program that I snuck out on Twitter earlier this month, we’ve proven we can ship. We’ve gotten lots of feedback and we know we’re on the right track here. Even better, we’re almost ready to open it up to the public. The product is called the LumaLoop.

Some of our test recipients have published their thoughts about the LumaLoop. Check out Ted Leung’s writeup, @gnb’s tweet, and BWJones’ Flickr write up. Thanks to all for their awesome thoughts, both in private and in public.

So when is it available? Our To Do list is very short at this point. Look for it by early December.

The Website

Part of the reason I’ve been quiet on the blog here—in addition to all the travel—is that I’m working out what my main website should be. What photographs should be part of my portfolio. How it all should go together. So, my meager free attention for web stuff has been going in that direction. I’ve given myself a personal deadline to have a real portfolio of some of my best work, including some of the photos I made in India, up by January 1st. It’s an arbitrary date, and I may blow it, but I’m going to try not to let that slip. I think I’ve worked out what the next evolution is in my business as a photographer and the website is a key component of that going forward.

Sidi Goma at TEDIndia (Photo: TED/James Duncan Davidson)

India

My short time in India was awesome, inspirational, and humbling. It was a totally amazing experience. Throughout my career as a software developer, I’ve worked with outsource groups in India and learned a lot about their culture and how they work from afar. Being in India, even the glossy version of India that is the Infosys campus in Mysore, crystalized those lessons and brought them home in a way I wasn’t expecting. Indian time is fluid. Agreement isn’t always what you think it is. And great things are possible even if they’re not accomplished in a way that makes sense to the mind of an American.

Beyond the simple lessons of learning a tiny bit more about India by being there, being in the middle of TEDIndia meant that I met more Indians from more walks of life in a week than I might have in months of travel. Filmmakers, lawyers, photographers, sailers, singers, developers, musicians, farmers, scientists, politicians, doctors, inventors, and teachers. It was an intensely fascinating cross section of people who are moving India into the future. I may still be quite fuzzy on what it’s like to wander the streets and markets of current-day India, but I got a crash course in where India is going in the future and what the people that are in the vanguard of that movement are like.

Sivamani at TEDIndia (Photo: TED/James Duncan Davidson)

My only regret about the trip is that I wasn’t able to spend more time. Alas, I’d already had booked gigs the week before and after TEDIndia. Hence, part of my crazy travel schedule. However, I have an address book full of new friends all over India and I plan on using it when I return.

Photographs

For a quick photographic overview of TEDIndia, check out the TEDIndia Highlights set on Flickr. Also, check out the Web 2.0 Summit Flickr set and the eComm Europe Flickr set.

The application is definitely nice. It features several push button filters that give great looks. And, in a twist, the filter sets work as a stack and you can reorder them on the fly if you want. Once you've got the photo you want, the app manages pushing it to Twitter, the Best Camera website, and Facebook for you. One of the neat features about the Best Camera website is that you can see what filters photographer applied to the photograph.

For a 1.0 app, it's got a high amount of fit and finish. The only functional thing I've seen that you need to be careful of is the maximum size you process images at. Working with full size images really drags things down. It's better to stick to 800x800 or so. I'm just about to dart off a suggestion list to Chase for the next version (including *cough* metadata handling), but you can bet I'll be using Best Camera a lot.

Read more about it on Chase's blog entry about the Best Camera.

I can't tell you how totally stoked I am about this. When I was studying architecture and design in the 1990s, I totally would have done anything to intern at frog. To later in life get the chance to serendipitously get the chance to collaborate with them—even if it's just having my photography used in their design magazine—just thrills me to no end.

I can't wait to hold the print version in my grubby hands!

The venue for the event was an indoor skatepark. This gave everyone a chance to work with athletes doing their thing with strobes to freeze motion. For most of the people there, it was their first chance to really see what was possible when you combine high-power high-speed strobes with action. Strobes that can keep up with cameras motoring along at 8+ frames per second. I dove in and shot as well, but mostly I hung out with several of the attendees and we talked about how to set up shots, pick and angle, and nail a shot. I watched some kick ass pictures come up on many a digital SLR back.

So far, I've been lucky enough to trek up to Seattle for two of Chase's events. He's done a few more over the years and from what I hear, they've all been awesome. So far, I've not seen anything else like it anywhere else in the country and that's a shame.

To be sure, part of the secret sauce is that Chase has been super generous with his time, access, and staff. He's also got a kick ass studio to retreat to after the shooting ends to party it up in. But, really, I think this sort of thing should be possible to do anywhere. All it needs is somebody—or a few people—to get together and sort out how they want to reach out to photographers in their area. It could be anywhere. New York. Albuquerque. Kansas City. Sacramento. Anywhere.

It was a really quiet afternoon on the beach. The hotel staff were packing up the beach umbrellas for the day and everyone was migrating towards whatever their early evening had in store for them.

As a result, other than a few horse riders and other stragglers, we really only had empty beach chairs to keep us company. I was going to try to do some high-key portraiture if I could find some willing people on the beach. Since there were none, I just shot beach chairs instead.

After walking the beach and chatting about life, the universe, and photography, we had just a few minutes before the opening party kicked off and all the other attendees arrived. So, we shot some photos out front of the hotel. I got a bit into the fountain and went for the abstract with high shutter speed, backlit water, and wide aperture.

Of course, after we wrapped up and headed over to the party, we ran into what seemed like a dozen or so people who were bummed that they had missed out on the photowalk. What can I say? Maybe next year, we’ll be able to round people up a bit earlier. Assuming, that is, that Obie and crew have me out again!

You can check out CJ’s photos over on Flickr. Start with this photo and go from there.