Philadelphia

With Philadelphia on the brink of its second major winter storm in a week – and third of the season – I was reminded of this photo I made there after the Blizzard of 1996 – still the city’s all-time greatest single storm – which buried the City of Brotherly Love under 30 inches of snow.

1995

Space shuttle Endeavor is on schedule to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in a few hours. I photographed this previous Endeavor night launch in 1995, from nearby Titusville, Fl., using a Nikon F4 and Nikkor 500mm f4.0 lens on a monopod, with Ektachrome 400 35mm film.

I had been in Florida to cover the Philadelphia Phillies at spring training, and drove several hours across the state, arriving with less than 10 minutes to spare. I photograhed the first few minutes of the flight, hopped in my car and drove back to Clearwater, just in time to go back to work. I was very sleepy.

NBC10-Philadelphia's Jamison Uhler, right, and photographer Brian Wasilauski.

Out of the blue, I got a call from NBC-10 in Philadelphia Thursday afternoon. They spotted me on twitter.grader.com, among the most followed twitterers in Philly, and wanted to talk to me on camera about the hottest platform in social media.

Coincidentally, I had already been planning to attend a program called Social Media Demystified!, organized by the Philadelphia Area New Media Association (panma.org) at the University City Science Center in West Philadelphia.

PANMA represents the leading edge of Philadelphia’s new media community – from designers and programmers to educators, marketing pros and more – and so I invited the TV crew to come along.

Just in time for my interview, I learned from the first presenter, advertising and social media maven Annie Heckenberger - @anniemal - that Twitter now claims 8 million users, including more than 50% who are over the age of 35. Twitter’s not just for kids anymore.

Thanks to NBC10-Philadelphia reporter Jamison Uhler and photographer Brian Wasilauski for coming out. If you are in the area, you can watch for the report during the 5pm and 11pm reports Friday, and I will watch for video links of course.

I Twitter @jimmacmillan

Sellin' o' the Green

Philadelphia celebrated St. Patrick’s Day Sunday with the city’s 239th annual parade – the second oldest in the country – with 25,000 marchers and 24 Irish dance schools scheduled to participate.

Today, I decided to grab a few photos of the souvenir vendors.