I went to B&H Photo when I was in New York. It’s a Mecca for photographers (funny simile), and I thought they might have a lenscap for the old P. Angenieux lens. The business end of the lens is very small, with a 44mm outside diameter, and I hadn’t been able to find a lenscap to fit it.

I went up and got in line for the next available helper at the SLR counter, which is a row of maybe 25 clerks seated behind a counter that runs the length of the store. The person directly in front of me became available, and I explained that I wanted a lenscap that was much smaller than normal, and hard to find.

He said, in a light Eastern European accent, “For SLR?”

I said, “Yes, it’s an Angenieux,” and started to pull it out of my bag and unwrap the balaclava and cycling cap that was protecting it.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” he said, taking the lens. “You will never find a metal cap for this lens.”

“Pinch-cap is fine,” I said. The Angenieux caps I’ve seen on eBay are always about $90.

He rotated the barrel of the lens, racking it out, “Mm. That’s actually pretty smooth.”

I said, “It’s a little beat-up, but it’s a good lens. It takes nice pictures.”

He looked at me. “Takes nice pictures.” He paused, and I thought he was going to lecture me on photographers taking nice pictures, not lenses, or something. Instead he announced, very distinctly, “This is the best lens on the floor.”

What? Behind him, I could see giant multi-thousand dollar Nikon lenses. I knew there were legendary lenses down in the used department. This was the best lens on the floor? It turned out that the clerk was the biggest Angenieux fan in the entire world, and I had randomly walked up to him and pulled out one of his favorite lenses.

Over the course of finding me a $12 plastic push-on cap, and getting it sent up from the basement (“have you ever seen that place? It is more impressive than the rest of the store put together”), he told me about the unique color properties of the Angenieux lenses (which I’d noticed), their semi-affordable c-mount movie camera lenses, and the Optimo lenses they now make. B&H can order them; they cost $20,000. He was pleased to see the Zeiss Biotar (“Bee-otar”) on the Nex, and we talked about the new Sony Nex cameras, too.

My little lens cap errand made my day.

The last time I saw this graphic, it was on a tape gun.

What do I get for my money? (You might ask)

You need to register the domain name. The registrar keeps your ownership of the domain on record, like a deed at the county courthouse. You need a functional, attractive site. You might build it yourself, or get an expert to do it for you, similar to a contractor building a house. You need hosting for your site, which is the internet-connected computer (the “server”) the site is stored on. This is the physical property that the registrar will direct people to.

How will people find me? (You might ask)

I’ll put your domain name into my browser. My computer will ask around, “where is this address?” The registrar has spread the word about where to find the computer that hosts your site, and directs my request to that server. The server fetches your homepage off its hard drive and shows it in my browser.

I click a link on your site, and those same steps all repeat for another site, in the blink of an eye.

A wooden saint; 8 or 9 buttons; a bulb; another bulb with a small ceramic block; a marble and a piece of circuit board; nothing; blobs of brass, aluminum and glass from Glass Beach; a die and flower photograph; a small ceramic block that says “Thomas;” a fly and marble.

I made this from an electric typewriter and most of a plastic “Mr. Thrifty” anatomical skeleton. I traded it to my friend Sharon for a disturbing painting a long time ago.

The help page is organized around giving people the Least They Need to Know, supported by Advanced explanations of each element and area. That way there’s one page as a reference, no one is sorted into newb/expert user, and people get the idea it’s an approachable process.

I have a cleaned-up layout ready to go, but implementation is queued behind locking down the new shared images, and moving all our clients to Cloudsites. Awesome technology courtesy of Kristopher Ives and Lucas Green.