I love Flickr, but the good times are killing me. It's got too many amazing high-def and beautifully composed photos. How do they do it? After doing some research, I decided to step up my game and picked up a fancypants camera. Above is one of the first pictures I took with it, a panorama of downtown Kansas City from the Liberty Memorial. The bent horizon is the result of a cheap‑o fish-eye attachment that I bought on Amazon. I used the 30D/fish-eye setup throughout the holidays, as you'll see in this set, and while I had fun, I also had the inevitable realization that an equipment upgrade doesn't automatically result in glorious, high-def photos. Back to the drawing board. Or the dark room. Or the Internet forums. While I was in KC, I sampled some of its finest. I visited some homegrown letterpress printers (Hammerpress), ate some legendary BBQ (Fiorella's Jack Stack in Martin City and Gates on Main), and made a pilgrimage to a basketball temple (Allen Fieldhouse, to witness KU's run-and-gun thumping of Boston College). All in all, a merry and bright time.