All photos taken at Michael Musto’s 25th anniversary party and licensed by David Shankbone as Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Joan Rivers on stage, with Musto to her left and FifiBear on her right.

Michael Musto on stage with Joan Rivers looking on.

Rivers up close.

Joan Rivers enjoying the revelry.

Last night was a star-studded salute to one of the main reasons people pick up the Village Voice:  Michael Musto, who has written for the newspaper for 25 years.  Pick up his new book, Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back, and you’ll be as enchanted by his acerbic wit as is the rest of New York City.

Below are photos from the celebration, all taken by David Shankbone and licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Joan Rivers hosted the party.

Countess LuAnn de Lesseps of the Real Housewives of New York

Irina Movmyga and artist Andres Serrano

Miss Dirty Martini, Michael Urie and Michael Musto

Ronnie Spector serenading Michael Musto

Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes

Joan Rivers enjoying Murray Hill’s performance.

Michelangelo Signorile and Linda Simpson.

Michael Urie of Ugly Betty.

Robert Verdi (center) and artist Robert Richards (right)

Burlesque sensation (and Karl Lagerfeld muse) Miss Dirty Martini.

Lisa Levy and David Shankbone (both of whom fought this People’s Court case for a dog rescue)

Epiphany, Brooke Crescenti and friend.

Party-goers

Robin Byrd

Musto and Judy Garland (Tommy Femia)

More party-goers

For a long time the photograph to the right has been one of my signature shots.  It was taken in 2007 by me using a timed flash.  It’s still the shot for my Wikipedia user page.

I took it during a shoot with Governor Jim McGreevey that remains a sentimental favorite of mine.    His was one of my best portraits for Wikipedia.  Jim now attends the General Theological Seminary and alsoconducts a former prisoner ministry in Harlem.

But that photo of me above was 2007, and since it’s 2010 I started to think it was a lie.  When does a photograph become dated enough to become deceitful?  It’s a real question in the Internet age.

I’ve often heard people reason that they don’t update photographs swearing that they look exactly as they did four years ago.  But does anyone ever?  Regardless, if one looks the same there should be no trouble going through the routine motion of uploading a recent shot to quell any doubt.

What’s the rule for when you should change your profile shot?

If it’s a favorite photo, you should update it once the year is +2; so for the 2006 shot above, I should have changed it in 2008.  That’s the rule. Anyone who does less is shady (I have many, many recent shots uploaded so that’s not an indictment on me).

So since you have to update your profile shot, try to make it special.  It’s like buying a new coat: put thought into what will be one of you most highly visible symbols.  For me, there was no better time  to do my overdue signature shot than this trip last weekend to Washington DC.

My sisters and I have often talked about and tried to do a vacation together just the three of us, but they both have multiple children and  important careers, so time and other considerations often frustrated our attempts.

It was on Wednesday that Tracy wrote Cheryl and I that she was suddenly going to DC for a conference, and could we possibly make it down that weekend.  Cheryl and I were so enthused at the chance, that we both within hours had arranged to get Friday off and take the train down.  It spun all our heads.

It was the sort of weekend that reminds you of why family is so wonderful.  We took a leisurely pace, focusing on dining, shopping and seeing two things: the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.  Nothing else.

It was fantastic, and we reaffirmed that our love extends beyond family ties and into friendship.  It is difficult to articulate how blessed I feel to have Tracy and Cheryl.

Below is the new shot for the “About David Shankbone” page.  It was taken during a particularly special family vacation by my sister Tracy, and I’m as happy as can be:

This website receives an average of 800 to 1,000 article reads a day.  On days when I have a particularly interesting story, such as the Stefan de Rothschild Huffington Post hoax, it jumps to near 10,000 hits; whereas during periods of inactivity and neglect, it plummets to around 250.

Where does the traffic come from?  The answer is: not Wikipedia.

From the lead photo on Madonna’s article to that on the Dead Sea, my photography illustrates over 4,000 subjects on the English Wikipedia alone (far higher if you count all global Wikimedia projects).  On each of those photos are links back to this website.

And while Wikipedia is one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world, the reality is that it provides very little traffic to here.

I’ve run this blog since 2008 and I’ve long known that Wikipedia’s ability to drive traffic is relatively limited, at least when it comes to the author links on imagery.  In fact, the Google Analytics for my website tell me that Wikipedia is responsible for only 7% of all my traffic, despite having some very high profile photographs on the site.

As an illustration, yesterday, February 14, my photograph of Salman Rushdie was featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia for their “On this day…” factoid box:

1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.

Wikipedia’s home page is one of the most viewed Internet pages in the history of the Internet; yesterday it received 4.4M hits.  Placement on this page immediately brings a wealth of visitors to the subject articles presented. Whereas Salman Rushdie’s Wikipedia biography typically receives 2.5K hits on an average day, Rushdie’s biography yesterday skyrocketed six times that number to 16.3K hits.

What about my portrait of Rushdie that also made its way on to this highly visible piece of web property? The photo on the article is hit–as in a person clicks on the image itself to make it larger–an average of 25 times a day on English Wikipedia. On February 14, the cropped version on Wikipedia’s home page caused that number to jump to 7,000.

How many of those 7,000 hits then went to explore the author of the photograph’s website?  Two (2).

The lesson is that if, like me, you are an artist who cares more about having his work seen, there are few better public places than Wikipedia as long as you are willing to be loose with the copyright.  But if you are reading Chris Silver Smith’s blog post about the “powerful” effect of traffic to your website via Wikipedia photography, I can attest that I have seen very little of such an effect.

In contrast, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writing two short blog posts–Stefan de Rothschild and Susan Sarandon doesn’t know what Wikipedia is–brought tens of thousands of hits.  Sullivan drives more traffic than Wikipedia.

I thought this was one of the most over-hyped blizzards ever.  It’s embarrassing how the city shut down over an average snow storm.  Below are photos–licensed Creative Commons 3.0–of “Snowmageddon 2010″ New York City (yawn) that I took with my Samsung Memoir cameraphone:

Snow plows in the East Village on the corner of 1st Avenue and Houston.

Little Man in front of our building, trying to deal with the snow.

The view overlooking Wall Street.

Looking down toward the street, financial district, Manhattan.

Looking toward City Hall.  The tall skyscraper in the distance is the still under construction 99 Church Street.

New photos were released from both the NYPD and ABC News of aerial views of the burning and collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

When I look at these photos, I think about how people all over my country who only saw it from their television screens now use it in a way many New Yorkers disagree with, including myself.

Click either image to see more at the BBC.

I took this early in my photography, on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2007, two months before I bought my Olympus.  It’s the stage that is shared by both the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera.  I had a cheap Panasonic, but a guy who I had fallen in love with once offered to show me around because he had access to what was then the New York State Theater.  I didn’t want to waste the opportunity, so I used what I had, but it still came out decent enough.  I believe this is my one and only panoramic shot.

Man, I had to go to the ballet a lot when we dated, because he had been a ballet dancer and I thought I should give it a try but after two I was burned out.  Nobody can tell me I don’t have a right not to like Balanchine, as it was his anniversary season so every show was Balanchine.  I’m sure he’s great, but I learned ballet is not my thing.  Particularly as I associated it with this guy.

Two years before on Valentine’s Day, 2005, was one of the most miserable moments of my life, and he had a good bit to do with it; that and MacroCat prematurely dying on that day as law school exams loomed.

I hadn’t spoken to him for over a year after he left to work in Europe, and in that time I had finally forgiven him for the lies and betrayals, forgiven him enough that I pined for that in-love feeling I had felt.  We tried to make a go of it again for about a month, but whatever we had was lost.  Worse, discovering new indiscretions and trying to remember what I had even seen in him cheapened what had been a proud bittersweet memory.

The photo I took that day of a ballerina working with her coach in the empty theater is used on 143 pages on 31 Wikimedia projects around the world.

Over on my Facebook account I put up a photo essay of the 100 favorite shots I took for the Creative Commons, such as the above 2008 shot of Ian MacKaye of Fugazi with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in Brooklyn.

My photography days for the CC are over, but I’m proud of the work I put into the project.

I have something special in New York City:  a community.  My building in the East Village is exactly that.  It’s a co-op, so most people own their apartments, but the few rented places–like mine–are owned by the building itself.

I have lived here since February 2002, and the people you see  below are like family.  Over 8 years (the longest I have ever lived at one address) they have been there for me.  The photos of them below are labeled by their relationships to each other.

New Year’s in my building is cool because many people open up their apartments, so we all shuttle between each others’ places and the main party rooms downstairs.  Few people in New York City have anything like this, and that I have such close relationships with the people I live next to is a source of tremendous pride and gratitude.

People often assume I spend my New Years in some exotic way.  For years, I have spent it with my New York City family, and they are below:

It’s almost midnight in this picture, and everyone is beginning to pile into the main room with the TV.  It’s only seconds away.

It’s the New Year – hugs all around.

More hugs for the New Year.

Looks like another hug is coming my way…

Mother and son.

Daughter and mother.

The young always make the holiday.

Mother of the building.

Grandmother and granddaughter

Dating.

Me and my Puerto Rican mom.

My Creative Commons photography for Wikimedia is one of the most personally rewarding things that I have done in my life, and I knew that it would be a continuous gift when I gave it all away.  Here’s one example.

Time Out New York was my main magazine–almost my bible–to learn about free events going on in NYC with notable people where I could go photograph them. One of Time Out’s graphic artists, Rob Kelly, turned one of these photos into art for the magazine for an interview with Mariah Carey.

I chanced upon the photograph because I have a subscription to TONY, and what a thrill it was to recognize an excellent derivative of my own work in a magazine that was indispensable to the project that created that very image.