I'm a big fan of illustrator Christoph Niemann, and have featured photoessays from his NYT blog Abstract City on TGR before. His latest post features leaves and is excellent; I found this panel particularly appropriate for Sesame Street's 40th birthday:

I’m driving around California for a week with a camera to keep me company.

I’m driving around California for a week with a camera to keep me company.

I'm driving around California for a week with a camera to keep me company.

I'm driving around California for a week with a camera to keep me company.

I'm driving around California for a week with a camera to keep me company.

From The Big Picture's coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission - this stunning black and white photo was taken as the astronauts made their way home. One of my favorites in the collection.

I've never seen these words used together before:

(Spotted last weekend in Cape Cod.)

I made my second visit to Citi Field Shea last night (Mets 4, Nats 3, Santana rocks) and was struck, again, by two things:

1. The stadium is awesome...
2. But I have no idea what team plays here.

In honesty, there isn't a bad seat in the house, and the concourse is open and uncrowded despite the number of fans.  The field itself is enormous and yet even the farthest seats seem closer to the action that some of the field-level seats back at Shea.  Coming from the concrete donut it really is a major and well-deserved upgrade. I'm happy the home run apple got upsized as well.

To my second point, however, there's a distinct lack of Mets branding on the field.  Sure, the scoreboard has "Let's Go Mets" buried somewhere among the advertisements, and the Mets logo peeks out here and there, but if I just saw the stadium on TV I'd have to think hard about which team called it home.  I mean, the outfield wall is black and orange!  Giants? Orioles? Blue would have made a simple but enormous difference. This sort of anonyminity is what earns a stadium a "cookie-cutter" reputation.  Yes, it is a fantastic ballpark. But without a strong tie back to the Metropolitans it is lacking a certain familiarity which, for all it's faults, Shea reeked of.

Here is my humble suggestion to rectify this oversight:

Tilt/shift photography in video form (with a timelapse spin) -- I especially like the plane around 1:25:

Las Vegas real estate summarized in one picture:

Annenberg Hall.  Unfortunately, there's some color noise in the background.

One of the first pictures I ever took with a film SLR, way back when:

Four shots from the last big snow (click to enlarge):