I again collaborated with Colin Frangos, to create a dynamic WordPress website that allows REMS to easily reach out to current students, as well as prospective students. In the brave new world of CMS (content management system) websites, WordPress continues to shine as a stable, innovative open-source platform that allows clients to manage their own content and reach their target audience.

Here’s what photographer Annie Leibovitz tells people who want to know which camera they should buy, NBC’s Brian Williams reports.

I agree with Annie. Though I love shooting with my DSLR cameras, or my antiquated Leica point-n-shoot, the i-Phone is always with me and the camera is flat out great. I find myself finally having the right tool for the job when the light is perfect and I’m driving or walking and those fancy cameras are in a backpack on the floor of my closet.

Enter, Instagram, the free social media app. I got interested after reading about the free filters available for photographers. It took a month of randomly playing around in my spare time, but I started assembling a photo portfolio and finding amazing photographs from other photographers all over the world. Instagram allows you to save great images by others and receive comments and feedback about your own work. It’s the visual equivalent of Twitter.

Here are some examples of my iphoneography. If you are on Instagram, please check out my images by searching the tag, stefangoot.

The first image is an old boat shot with iPhone in natural light. It gives you a sense of the iPhone camera, unfiltered. The second image is another iPhone shot of the Petaluma River. The final image, is that same photo with an Instagram filter applied.

The Instagram filters are fast and easy to use, so editing photos is fun. Whether you filter an image or not, it’s quick to post and share. Cultural institutions such as MOMA, both in SF and NYC, have Instagram accounts and post images.

Part junkyard transformer, part beautiful shrine, the car is wonderful to ride in. It glides along on massive tracks, elevating up to 8 passengers above the gritty streets of the Bay Area, or the playa of Black Rock City. Powered by bio diesel, Maria Del Camino, subverts the speed and grace implied in the elegant lines of the Camino body, as she chugs forward at top speed of 3 MPH. Yet the sense of freedom, of movement and grace, that the car originally possessed, remains in Bruce’s hybrid. photos by gutermuth.

Amid the commotion of shouting onlookers, numerous bikes in the center of the velodrome, and other velodrome riders, it takes great concentration to participate and not wipe out. Pictured below is my son, Tobin, on his own ride. He contemplated the scene for quite a long time before donning a t-shirt and successfully conquering the drome! photos © 2011 stefan gutermuth

Dwarf minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia by Jürgen Freund

Brood of jellyfish found in northern British Columbia by Thomas P. Peschak

The giant Pacific octopus (Octopus doeflini) by Stuart Westmorland

Manta rays (Manta alfredi) and bait fish in a feeding frenzy in the Maldives by Thomas P. Peschak

Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) off Mabul Island, Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, by Stewart Westmorland

A caretaker transfers live fish into fish pens in Tampakan, Kudat Bay, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia by Jürgen Freund

The giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama)  found in waters up to 100m deep off the coast of Eastern and Southern Australia by Michele Hall

With the arrival of Fall, another recent design project has finally come to fruition.

The department of English at U.C. Berkeley came to me in 2010 with a very limited budget. Even with those constraints, I was able to create a stronger brand for their relaunched website. Darrend King Brown, technology specialist in English, did the coding, while I created new graphics and consulted on the color palette.

The banners were assembled in Photoshop from several photoshoots I did in the department library. While most of the banners in the rotation feature faculty books, this image is of the library itself. I like how it conveys the warmth of that beautiful old room.

Just finished designing the whopper book project of the year for my office. It’s the 252 page Oceans: Heart of Our Blue Planet, published by Earth In Focus editions, featuring 141 color photographs. As I transfer both the English and Spanish versions to the printer in Shenzhen, I’m excited to post about this book that has consumed me for the last 3 months. The magic and mystery of The Oceans becomes clear all over again when you look at these assembled photographs from around the world.

The “oceans” seem to be a hot media topic. That’s good because the resources of our oceans are very, very finite. The depletion of coral reefs, impending extinction of big species like tuna, increased pollution, and so many other threats, will change the seas we know today in many drastic ways.

A major challenge with this project, is that a Spanish edition has to be created in about ten days after months of work on the english edition. Spanish text runs longer than English, but the spanish version must fit exactly in the same pages as the english so that Legend Color can use the same color plates for both editions.

I like the Spanish cover better than the English, because the title typesets so nicely.

The cover photograph by Ralph Lee Hopkins shows a pod of long-beaked dolphins (Delphinus capensis) in the Sea of Cortez, Baja California, Mexico. © Ralph Lee Hopkins/ iLCP

I love the free live music, Lagunitas beer, and spectacular people watching, all at a unique riverfront site under the benificent Petaluma sun. There are some amazing vehicles puttering around, too.

Enjoy a few photos and don’t miss the event next July!

And, I forgot to mention the baby goats, making it seem even more like a surreal county fair.

In the second image, the crystals are growing. After the crystals finish their work, I’ll post an image of what’s left of the original photo. After that, only the digital copied photos will remain, as stable (or not) as a heap of data, at the end of a power cord.

© stefan gutermuth 2011

Ai Wei Wei disappeared on April 3rd, 2011. He was detained by authorities as he waited to board a plane for Hong Kong. When the Chinese foreign ministry finally commented on his case days later, the primary accusation was suspicion of “economic crimes”. Mr. Ai’s 78 year old mother replied, “It’s ridiculous. They must tell the family why and where they are holding my son. They have no right to keep us guessing. Where is the constitution? Where is the law?”

There has been scant media attention in the U.S., yet Ai Wei Wei lived in New York for a years and still maintains an apartment there. Architect, sculptor, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. A BBC documentary tells his story, Ai Wei Wei, Without Fear or Favor.

These fliers appeared on the U.C. Berkeley campus this week.