I have new shoes!
First pair of sneakers I’ve bought in about 15 years. (The old ones were getting a bit worn, believe it or not).
I like em.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
There are images that should be captured. Moments that feel like they exist to show you something. Beyond just “I wish I had my camera”, they have everything coming together, and you can see it all slipping into place, and you know something’s going to happen.
That’s about what I felt for the above photo. I was just watching a protest coalescing on the far side of the street. I was in a small group of reporters from various media sources. They were all trying to figure out what to shoot next, while I was just thinking that the protest had pretty much run it’s course. It would still go on for a couple hours, but the passion and excitement was gone, and people were only protesting because they were there to protest.
And while I’m watching, this black-robed group detached itself from the main body of protesters, and started sweeping across the street. And that was it. I could see this was the image. I took a quick glance around to see how many people I’d have to fight to get space to make the shot. But no one was paying attention. None of the professional media people cared. None of the vastly more numerous public photographers was watching. You can even see photographers in the background of the image, ignoring them completely. And there was an empty spot just 5 feet away, right in front of the smoothly approaching image.
I swung around and pulled up my camera, and cars started driving in front of me. Bastards. And seconds are slipping by, and it’s only 4 lanes, and they’re getting closer. And then… click. One image. I normally shoot a 3 or 4 shots of anything, just to avoid a blink or a sneeze or… but no. I got off 1 image. And they were gone. But I love it. Contrast, repetition, art, humanity, the unexpected.
This wasn’t my most popular shot of the morning. But I like it the most.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
The picture’s a couple weeks old, but I still love it. It was a sort-of-miracle capture. I’m walking down the street, in the cold, while my friends are goofing around and walking at the same time. It’s dark, I don’t have a flash. Even shooting wide open on a 2.8 lens, all my shots were blurry. And then there was this one.
We’d gone out to a club (Spellbound) and gotten kicked out at about 2:30 in the morning, as usual. We were walking down the street to a crepe place that stays open ridiculous hours just for such stupid people. And Nguyet wanted a piggy-back ride.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Most new buildings in this city actually go as far underground as they do above. Always disturbing to see these gaping holes in the earth, filled with little ant-sized men doing funny things.
Of course they put parking down there. And I’m sure they offer generous storage space, since so many above-ground office spaces are already just used to store boxes. And no doubt they’re trying to build as solid a foundation for the building as possible. But really… what else are you gonna do with all that space?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
It’s now a bit after 6:30 am, and I just sent off some art to the client. I promised them something by this morning, and unfortunately I seem to be better working on this particular project in the wee hours of the day. But I quite like the design, (*knock on wood*), and the payment for the job is pretty good.
This was yesterday’s “picture of the day”. I took it on my way down to Penn Photo to get some pictures developed. I like it, though I’m having a hard time thus far saying why. It has nothing that jumps out at you. But it’s distinctly city, and of a street not yet made up totally of homogenous boxes.
Gawd. It’s getting light out. I really need to go to sleep now. I have a hard time sleeping in daylight.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Another one of my favorite photos. This time, it’s Shannon, as taken at the halloween party thrown by Jeff, last year. I love the look on her face, and the hair being pulled up by the static electricity. I love the ominous balloon looming overhead, and the skeleton peeking over one shoulder. This night was my first real test of my external camera flash, and the lighting came out great, here. There’s detail and texture I never would have captured with just a fast lens. And I love it because it’s such a wonderful picture of a friend. Shannon so often goes blah in front of a camera, that I love it when she’s playing it up here.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Yeah, I know. It’s a pretty cheesy mirror shot. But it felt right. Five months ago, I tried pretty much the same thing. But I couldn’t lift one arm, and the other was shaking. And within a couple day’s I couldn’t even walk.
Time passes, and I feel fine.
But why does my hair look better before I’ve even combed it?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Something just occurred to me. I took some pictures over to CVS to be developed, at 8×10 inches. Their kiosk, when you choose 8×10, gives you a blow up of your photo showing a proportional box where you can define the area of the image you wish to print. It’s not the first time I’ve done this. But it never really struck me how much of an improvement this is. Before these kiosks, you were always left to the whim of the photo developer, who would decide how to crop your image. More than once, I sent off images in a very specific layout, only to have the developer, (both storefront and online) recrop it to their liking. Annoys the holy fuck out of me. Not that people were trying to be mean before, but until you have a technology like the kiosk, printing from digital images, it’s hard to do those custom adjustments on a mass scale.
(But really… people… printing a 8×10 from a digital file is NOT an enlargement. The file was NOT small to begin with. Digital photos do not have a set physical size. And if it’s not smaller to begin with, it’s not really an “Enlargement” is it?)
But what I want now, is a kiosk with internet access. It’s kind of silly that I have to burn a CD each time I want to take photos over to CVS to develop them. I want to walk in, pull up a service like Flickr, and say, “Give me 10 copies of this photo”. I don’t see how this would conflict with flickr’s existing online photo developing. It’s not like the type of people who use online developing are suddenly going to stop, just because they can go to the drug store and get their prints. Online developing is a convenience business. And in flickr’s case in particular, they already have licenses on every image, that the kiosk could follow for permission-to-print.
1. Customer Service Tip #3418: Never answer a sincere question with a sarcastic remark. It just fucking pisses me off. Regardless of how common-sense you feel the answer should be, the other person obviously doesn’t know. Being sarcastic to anyone except a friend is just going to leave them feeling put down or insulted. Or in my case, leave me wanting to bitch-slap you ’til you cry like a little girl for your ignorant action. “Yes, this is a one-hour photo, but this would hardly be the first time I walked into a one-hour that was so busy it would take longer. Just trying not to rush you, you pompous fucknut.” or “Pardon me, I just assumed a place called ‘The UPS Store‘ would actually offer ALL of UPSs services instead of just the most expensive ones.” Or really, just about anything. Sarcasm is almost never well received by friends. Can you imagine what it does to people you work with?
2. Quick Money Tip #4532: Are you in Washington DC, and looking for a Bank of America ATM? Are you near Metro Center’s 13th street exit? This is a pretty popular, central area, for locals and tourists alike. And that set of ATMs is almost always busy. But what most people don’t know, is that about 15 feet away is a door that goes into a vestibule where there’s another BoA ATM, that is seldom busy, and even when it is, it’s better than waiting in the rain.
3. Cleaning for the Lazy Tip #3145: Do you feed your pet dry food? And inevitably, there’s those last crumbs and bits of food in the bowl when you pick it up to refill it. They won’t just pour out, because your pet has drooled on them. And who really wants to scrub them out and deal with brown, smelly chunks in your sink? But if you start swirling the bowl, the few loose buts there are start acting as an abrasive, and very quickly scour the rest of the food off the sides of the bowl. The more it scours, the quicker it goes. (Would this qualify as a stupid pet trick?)
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Indri sent me this picture the other day. Not bad at first look. But the more I looked, the more I liked about it. The lighting and the colors are at the same time subtle and bold. This pile of comfortable, bohemian fabrics across the bottom of the image–which is pure “Indri”–is balanced against the tall, empty vertical elements of the architecture, which is pure NYC.
Doesn’t hurt that Indri‘s cute, either.
Speaking of disturbingly-cute, little women, Nguyet participated in her first art show, this past weekend. She has 2 pieces hanging at the MoCA gallery in Georgetown, for the next month, I think. And her work was considerably better than most of the pieces in the show, by both quality and artistic-ness.
Nothing exciting or new. Just working this week on a couple websites for clients. Neither of which did I get to design from scratch, so there’s only so much you can do. Work still seems a little slow. I could be doing something about that, I suppose.
Yeah… that’s all for now.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
About two months ago, I went through my print photos. This wasn’t a small job. The main collection alone averaged about 2,500 photos. There was no organization, and probably half of them were not in albums. Most of them had never been labeled. And frequently, the negatives had fallen out of their envelopes and become mixed with the negatives from 20 other years worth of photos. But they’re now sorted, labeled, and booked. The negatives have been broken down by subject into envelopes.
One of the things I noticed, was how frequently I would look at a negative and realize I don’t have a print of at least one of those shots. For the most part, this doesn’t particularly concern me. Ninety-five percent of the pictures were taken on 35mm film, which can still be developed by every street corner drug store and grocery market. Besides which, one of my long term goals is to get a negative scanner–preferably with an auto feeder, so I can have some high quality digital versions of all of my images.
But I did find one ‘roll’ of film from a disc camera. A miserable failure of a camera format, that went too far in trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. (*cough*APS*cough*). I didn’t have prints of any of the shots on the disc. And unfortunately, I haven’t seen any place in the last 15 years that regularly develops Disc film. But as with everything else, the internet is the answer to all things. Dwayne’s Photo will for a reasonable price, develop your antique film formats, and for an unreasonable price, ship them back to you. (They charged me $5+ for shipping, but spent about $1.88 on the envelope and postage).
The pictures are from a weekend trip I took to my friend’s (Michelle Rink) graduation, back in high school. (Yes I had a crush on her, but living a couple hours away, without a car, took care of that.) As stupid as I may have been back then, I do remember very good things about that weekend. Back then, just getting to see her was great. And she lived on this beautiful bit of land near Cazenovia. The strongest memory from that weekend has to be from the party after graduation. At one point, we were watching movies in a media room, and it was her and I curled up on a couch, yelling at other people in the room. And it felt like the best thing ever.
*shrug*
Gawd. Looking at these pictures now, I can’t believe how cute she was. And she was so sweet, and looking back, so smart. I was soooooo stupid not to stay in touch for longer after she joined the Navy. I regret many of the choices I’ve made or had thrust upon me, about women. But somehow the earliest one’s are the hardest to live down.
I remember getting a letter from her a couple years ago. She was married (now Michelle Eiband) and living somewhere new. Never heard anything after that. I found her the other day on classmates.com. But I don’t exactly have the money to spend $30 just to send her an email right now.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
When a high school student takes a picture of themselves giving the thumbs-down to a tacked up magazine photo of The Shrub — as part of a project on the Bill of Rights –, the photo developer turns it over to the police, who refer it to the Secret Service. The Secret Service proceeds to show up at the school, question the student, and confiscate the poster. I’ll give it to the student… he was more polite to the SS than I would be.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Didn’t accomplish jack shit, this week.
Since Tuesday, I’ve had this throat-infection thing. It tried to start out as the flu, but the muscle pain went away relatively quickly. The pain in my throat, however, kept getting worse. I was awoken at 4 in the morning on Friday, ready to go the the hospital, (because no doctor would be open at that hour). Instead, I finished a bowl of ice cream to numb my throat, and got back to sleep just as the sun was coming up. I wasn’t feeling as bad about myself though, because while eating, I’d watched a documentary on terminal salmonella caused by contaminated ice cream.
By the time I’d woken up yesterday, despite still feeling bad, there was a definite improvement. The soreness is gone today, but the coughing is still there. It’s that really pitiful coughing you get when your chest muscles can no longer really hock a good wad of phlegm up. I sound like someone who’s been smoking for 40 years.
All in all, a good reason not to go out tonight. Clubs are full of cigarette smoke and loud music, which must be talked over. And considering I still sound like Barry White every morning when I wake up, I don’t need the additional strain.
Good thing it was slow this week with work. Looks to be much busier next week.
Incidentally… I would like to thank all my family and friends for not wondering why I had dropped off the face of the earth.
Anyway…
Note to everyone in business out there, who must accept large files online: Get a real FTP site. If you have something you call an FTP site, and the address starts with “www”, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you want me to use my web browser, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Web sites are NOT FTP sites. Web (usually done via HTTP) and FTP are 2 totally different protocols. They have completely different feature sets. They have completely different software. You will note the difference in software the first time you try uploading that 80 megabyte tiff via that form on your website. I have never seen a web browser that gracefully, or even humanely, handles large file uploads. (And if it’s a small file, just email it). Frankly, they all suck at it. They crash. They time out. They never show you the progress. Whereas true FTP is industrial strength file transfer at it’s best. The better clients make the process almost second nature. You know exactly what is happening the whole time. I’ve never had an FTP client crash on me. They don’t choke, because they’re actually built to upload files. If something should happen to your upload, you can often resume it from where it left off. You know you need an FTP server, or else you wouldn’t be calling your web page by that name. So please… do it right.
Some politician’s website lifted an image from my ‘snapshots‘, for use on their own site. Only they hot-linked it, which meant they were leaching off my bandwidth. I dropped them a polite email, telling them they should have asked first, and would they please move it to their own server. And, you know, a photo credit would be nice. Their final solution? They lifted someone else’s photo. Someone really ought to remind them that the one thing a politician doesn’t want to get nailed with lately is copyright infringement.
Do you use iPhoto? Then go, go, go. Download Keyword Assistant. I’ve always liked the idea of keywording my photos. But iPhoto’s built in method makes it a tedious, difficult, time consuming process. It’s amazing how quick and easy KA is to use. I tagged my whole library in one sitting.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!