I haven’t made a posting for nearly a week, as I’ve been busy 1) trying to get my apartment straightened up, and 2) waiting for back to feel 100% again. (I’m still waiting, though it does feel better now.)

As for this weekend, I’ve been doing things like shopping, laundry, watching the Mets beat the Yankees, etc. I had thought of getting back to filing more of my Tibet photos, but I think I’ll wait a bit longer for my back to get better before tackling that again. I was thinking of trying to get back to exercising by walking the stairs in my building again today (and I may still be able to do it), but I do have a lot of other stuff to do around here, including finally filling out the paperwork and prepping the photos for the Artful Nude exhibit in Colorado this summer.

I haven’t posted any travel photos for a while, and none from Cambodia since I returned from there a couple of months ago, so today will be the day that I do. Rather than putting up some photos taken across Cambodia in general, today’s images are from something specific.

The afternoon that my group visited the great temple of Angkor Wat (just one of many places in the overall Angkor area, by the way), we encountered a wedding party that was leaving the temple as we were departing, too. I don’t know if the wedding ceremony was actually held at the temple or if they just went there to have some photos taken. Either way, it was an interesting thing to see.

Cambodia is a very poor country, but it would seem that if people can afford to splurge for something important like a wedding, they do it. The bride was decked out in white with a lot of jewelry (though perhaps a bit too much makeup). The groom and his men were wearing bright white suits. The bridesmaids were wearing white and green and they all appeared to be having a ball, laughing amongst themselves and with others. (I even got one to pose with me for one of my arm’s length self-portraits – though her attention is obviously focused elsewhere!) The bride, on the other hand, seemed very serious the whole time.

I managed to get just one photo of the wedding party with my film camera (as I had just one shot left on the roll and no time to re-load), but I was able to get a few with my little digital camera. I think the best of the photos was the last one that I took, which is the one posted at the top – the bride and groom about to get into their car.

However, I have to say that my personal favorite photo of the bunch was the one I made next to last and that’s posted at the bottom here: the newly minted husband giving his bejeweled bride a drink from a bottle of water. In a place as hot as Cambodia, even brides need to make sure they stay hydrated!

I just saw a segment on the nightly network news broadcast regarding how much people are crunched for time today. With multi-tasking, people now do 31 hours worth of work in 24 hours, it said. The downside, of course, is that the more you do in any given stretch of time, the less quality you achieve with each thing.

That news segment was rather coincidental, as I was planning to write today about managing my time and something I have dubbed “the 8 o’clock rule.” I may be good at photography (or so some people tell me), but I really need to work at managing my time better. One of the problems is sitting here in front of me: my computer. I guess I’m not the only one who can sit down and find that hours have gone by and at which point you ask yourself, “What have I accomplished?”

So, I have set a goal for myself: to be finished with all of my internet business for the day (including wasting time surfing around) by 8 p.m. After that, it’ll be time for other things: relaxing in front of the TV watching a video or a ballgame, developing film, filing negatives or even using the computer to scan negatives. I also want to finish off things like paying bills before 8, too. I’ll also continue to check my e-mail and such things briefly before going to bed each night.
So far, in the few days that I’ve implemented this, I’ve been pretty successful. Let’s hope that I can keep up with it. I’ve recently switched to a new e-mail account because of the avalanche of spam I’m getting out the old one, and that takes up time, too.

By the way, the photo at the top was made at a workshop in Woodstock, New York, a couple of years ago.

******************************************************************

I read with sadness today that a photographer named Yuri Bonder died a week ago at the very young age of 41. I really didn’t know much about him, other than that he lived in Israel and had apparently moved there from Russia or another part of the former Soviet Union. All I knew about him were the photos that he posted on Deviant Art – and they were great. Yuri excelled at both nudes and portraits (the latter both formal and on the street) as well as things like landscapes.

I think I once sent him a message on Deviant Art saying that if I ever were to visit Israel again, I would want to try to meet him. I never received a response, but now the point is moot. That meeting will never happen. An excellent photographer is gone – and as a photo of his son is prominently displayed on his DA main page, obviously a father, too. My thoughts go out to his family.

You can view Yuri’s Deviant Art page at http://yuribonder.deviantart.com/ and his website at http://www.yuribonder.com/?lng=eng .

I don’t normally post other photographers’ work on my blog here, but in this case I think it is appropriate. You can see a few of his photos below.