Recently in photography Category

i just rode by the remains of the
james hook lobster company
downtown
it was still warm and smelled like cooked seafood
among other things
the only real association i have with the place is a
cold and damp day in october 2004
where i was struck by the torrents of water coming from the strange
wooden building surrounded by glass skyscrapers
i'd practically never noticed it before that day

it hasn't really been a good week for a lot of people
crashes and fires and things like that

i don't even watch the local news
but it nevertheless has an effect when you see something that
was some part of your life
large or small
in the newspaper
destroyed

it has been some time since i've undertaken one
but sh1ft.org's photo projects are a good time
and a fine excuse to go out and try to take some interesting pictures

with the weather getting nicer and me getting
fractionally less swamped at work
and back on my bike
there's no better time to take a hack

and i do mean hack

at 26things

check back at the end of the month to see how it comes out

i’m back from budapest and vienna.

work is busy, so instead of writing about it, i’ll just scan and post my chicken scratches from my little black book, and my solitary loyal reader can try to interpret them. links to pictures at the end.

pictures from the trip. some with a real camera, some with the iphone.

it sounds awfully pretentious to say i have a favorite photographer, but i totally dig (and i’ve mentioned this before) edward burtynsky’s work since i saw it in a gallery in san diego a few years ago. suz would probably say that i like it because it’s the apotheosis of all the idiosyncrasies she accuses me of (which is to say, excessive use of lines, a love of large scale, and flashes of bright color), and maybe she’s right, but at the same time, i’m not the only one, either.

so i watched manufactured landscapes last night, and was really intrigued by it; i wondered how a movie about photography would really work, but it seemed to be to be more of a framework for a few parallel commentaries, as if the filmmaker just kept running into burtynsky while happening to make a movie about the same stuff. for one, it’s really ballsy to put one’s film up for direct, immediate comparison with the work of an acclaimed photographer, and to the immense credit of the filmmaker for coming up with images of her own that stand up.

the other thing that was interesting about it was to see the far far end of the work i do—manufacturing. it’s one thing to talk about contract manufacturing in the far east for this product or that, another thing to see what that actually entails. i’d like to say it makes me want to redouble my efforts to make things easy to assemble, but that’s not always an option. how do you say “sorry” in chinese?

it's a little strange going from hot summer-like days not so much more than a week ago, to early fall in denver, to late fall, saturday in breckenridge, to winter on sunday, now back to a proper autumn here.

since i only had a couple hours at a stretch in new york, i couldn't hit any museums or anything like that, so i basically just wandered around with my camera.   as i wandered around midtown late friday night, i ran into a drunk guy slumped against a building.  actually, i nearly stepped on him.  he was out, complete and utter naptime.  i looked to see if he was alive; he was dressed better than i was, and probably a little younger than i.  i debated whether to wake him up and do something, but then i thought that maybe he wouldn't necessarily be appreciative, possibly quite the opposite.  so i didn't do anything.  in retrospect, though, i wish i had.  i hope someone did.  

i took a lot of other pictures too.

i rode 56 miles yesterday. not for any real reason, i just needed to get on my bike and clear my head some, so i just pointed the handlebars west and pedaled like a motherfucker. interestingly, while climbing hills makes your quads burn like crazy, they're never what i feel the next day; for me it's always the shoulders that are worst, too much time hunched over with stiff arms transmitting every rut, pothole, and patch directly to where it hurts. but it was still awesome, so wonderful and cool, so many smoothly rolling hills, so few cars, what with people all watching the football game, i imagine. i found a few new satisfying climbs to sate my urge to mutter profanities while turning over a stupidly high gear going up them. i broke the speed limit, doing 37 in a 35. usually i don't get out again after the pmc (there's still time to donate, dear reader!) , for a variety of reasons, but this year i was dying to go ride again for some reason. getting my room put together, finally, which is to say there's now a more respectable pile of clothes on the floor. at some point i will get pictures hung, crossing my fingers on a curtain-rod-wire solution from ikea. speaking of ikea, i've been taking pictures in stores surreptitiously with my iphone lately, because it's interesting. stores don't like it when you photograph stuff, say some coworkers who've been nearly thrown out for doing so. i was struck, after going to costco friday night and then ikea saturday morning, by the difference between the two. they're both hell-bent on efficiency, but the former focuses on excess, offers scant choice between generally poorly-designed products, and treats you like a valued criminal, whereas the other feeds you on the cheap, makes sure you're comfortable, and makes it obvious that they'd prefer the relationship be mutually beneficial and pleasant. and fucking costco no longer carries gatorade mix. Also, here's an awesome picture of dan from last weekend: