Archive for September, 2007

In case you have not had a chance to check out my photography lately, then here are the top 13 photographs(according to Flickr) that I have online. Enjoy!

#1 Galleria Vittoria Emanuele

#2 Churn on the Green Hill

#3 Limksy Canal, Croatia

#4 The Louvre

#5 Pink Clouds

#6 Cave & Doll

#7 Dock

#8 Sunset on Water

#9 Boy Drawing on Charles Bridge

#10 Les Halles

#11 Church

#12 Down by the Bridge

#13 Wheat, Lake Pilak, and Sunset

Click for Fullsize

I have always liked street photography. It is raw, it is in the moment, and as a photographer is the most challenging. The hard part, for me, has nothing to do with technique or gear, but has to do with people’s personal space.

Street Photography is random and in a lot of cases is unknown to the subject. To get the picture you have to become part of their personal space, while they become a subject through your viewfinder. You are sharing the same air, the same sounds, the same personal space, and I become very conscious of myself and find it hard to relax.

I have read a bunch of articles and blog posts about Street Photography and overcoming this fear and most of them talk about becoming part of the environment and remembering that you being there in that moment is just as natural as the subject being there.

Yeah…no…doesn’t work for me.

I did find something that did and I recommend you try it. I went out for a walk in Amsterdam the other day and was listening to my IPOD, and I realized that by creating this artificial barrier between my environment and the world around me I was able to relax and take pictures. It was a breakthrough.

There is reciprocation as well. Think about how many people you have seen wearing headphones and instantly pushed then out of then-and-now of your reality. This was happening with the people I was taking pictures of, I would take a quick shot, and they would look at me and see that I was wearing headphones and then they would just move on. Room for public objection, or even a brief uncomfortable grumble, is all but blanked out completely by “plugging in”.

Here is just a little something fantastic. This is a fan video for a Modest Mouse video contest. Apparently they did not win, but I cannot imagine why. This is a stop animation video and if you don’t understand what is so cool then realize that the clips of the performers are printed stacks of paper with a page ripped off with each shot. Cool as hell!

Having a young child and trying not to screw them up is a daunting task. You have to make sure that they eat, drink, brush, poop, pee, wake up, go to sleep, get into college, and most importantly not say naughty words.

Of the entire lexicon of naughty words out there, you find yourself finding every conceivable way to make sure that if a word is heard by your child that is does not stick, imprint, linger, or otherwise become part of their vocabulary. There is nothing more embarrassing than a two year old dropping the F-Bomb, the S-Bomb, the B-Bomb, the C-Bomb, or the A-Bomb at an inopportune moment, which is any moment.

So, if you are like me you focus all of that swearing energy, normally distribute amongst all bad words, into one more benign word. For me this is “JESUS CHRIST”, my Achilles heal of explicatives. It is rooted from my childhood, passed down to me by my father, and maybe to him from his father, as our catch-all swear. Used in times of joy, panic, stress, anger, and sleepiness as the master descriptor. It is the swiss army knife of profanity, allowing you to express it in so many ways.

There is the “what the hell is this” version where you slow roll it – “jjjjjjeeeesus ccchrrrist” or the substituted variation – “jjjeeesus h. christ”

There is the “just got the crap scared out of me” version gasped out like a gun shot – “JESUS CHRIST!” and the “I can’t believe I have to go to work” version exhaled through clenched teeth from a groggy I just stayed out drinking until 4 a.m. brain – “shhejusss chrissst”.

We cannot forget the pièce de résistance, my favorite, the thunder booming “I shall smote thee with great vengeance” version – the straight up “JESUS CHRIST”.

Our three your old appears to be an expert with all of them. Sometimes you can hear her practicing. “JESUS CHRIST”. “Jeeeesus Christ”. “Sheejus Christ”. She has great enunciation and is able to provide the right JC for the right situation, for example dropping a toy or being asked to get out of the bath.

In trying to compensate for all the other bad words I ended up searing just one swear into her head, and to reverse the situation have been trying to change the words up, hoping that she will think that she is saying it wrong.

She says “jesus christ” and I respond with “cheesy rice?”, in which she giggles back “cheesy rice”. I am not sure if it is working or if she thinks she has me trained to play this word game with her. Time will tell.

“Duck it, what the shells can I do. Cheesy rice save me.”

From BoingBoing via the onslaught of evening depleting feeds in my Google Reader I wandered across this post on the partial celebrity face transplants created by skilled photoshop ninjas.

Having spent a good deal of time (while at work) creating my ex-coworkers into the likenesses of characters from M*A*S*H, I was in lust with Freaking News and for the next hour I was laughing my seat warmer off to the likes of HillBillary Clinton & multiple Tom Cruise mashes. Enjoy, but if you click, be warned you will most likely hear the giant sucking sound of time being wasted and also of your own uncontrollable laughter.