unbillable hours

Small Town No. 2

Belmar, NJ
Canon EOS Elan 7ne, Fuji ISO 1600

Picture Envy No. 27

Bildbevis, More B/W Fog (Jun. 21, 2005). 

I got up extra early today just so I could feel extra tired.  It makes me grumpy and confused, which is precisely the gravitas I like to bring to a room. 

Well, not the theme for Picture Envy.  If it were, you'd be getting links to stuff like this (or this example of police taking down criminal masterminds) all the time. 

Fortunately, I'm going with bildbevis' More B/W Fog.  Bildbevis is apparently Scandanavian (or as I would normally say at this sleep-deprived hour, Scandermanavian), and has a thing for panoramic photos.  I particularly like this shot.  I think the ghostly tone is well served by a panoramic perspective.  I think, in fact, the same sort of "up the empty river" perspective was used in a few of the closing scenes of Apocalypse Now before Col. Kurtz' montagnard army was revealed. 

I don't expect that they have montagnards in Scandanavia. 

Or much in the nature of armies for that matter. 

They used to have Saabs, but we took that over. 

Perspective and ambiance drive this photo.  I like the way the border between sky and water has been defined nearly at the middle of the image.  Normally, I don't know if that would work, but I think that the balanced emptiness gives this shot something clinical. 

Emptiness, ghostliness, and, er, clinicalness. 

Not that this would remind me of my vocation or anything. 

Small Town No. 1

Belmar, New Jersey
Canon Rebel 2000, Kodak Portra NC ISO 160

We Say Goodbye So Often

Asbury Park, New Jersey
Canon EOS Elan 7ne, Ilford Delta Pro ISO 400

Picture Envy No. 26

Mexican Pictures, Projects/Cambodia/Cows. 

Looking at this shot reminded me of how, since I first saw Apocalypse Now, I have wanted to see Angkor Wat, in Cambodia. Angkor Wat, which was completed around the same time that Spain's venture capital investment in Columbus was panning out. I know nothing about the Khmer Empire that constructed Angkor Wat. I know little about Cambodia other than the forty years of bloodshed that occurred there at the end of the 20^th Century. And yet, here is this object of beauty on Raul Gutierrez' website (which I think is Angkor Wat, but could also be Preah Ko), reminding me that the oldest building in my hometown, a red two story barn, is 100 years younger than a sprawling temple that is as impressive to me as Cheops or the Parthenon.

Gutierrez did a smart thing with this photo, I think. He minimized the temple's influence on the shot. The enormous foreground is dominated by the lush field and the cattle grazing there, with Angkor Wat occupying a high background position. The viewer has to focus on so much before getting to the often overwhelming, imposing temple that he or she is forced to think about more than the amazing structure. The viewer sees Cambodia, then Angkor Wat.

Untitled No. 15

Asbury Park, New Jersey
Canon EOS Elan 7ne, Ilford Delta Pro ISO 400

Picture Envy No. 25

If I can't do something one way, I'll try another.  I'm not proud.  I've had a block for the past two weeks against doing Picture Envy in the traditional, once-a-week, at least three photos per week format.  I'm going to try and break it down into a more daily, individualized process for a while.  Today, I woke up extra-special-early (05:15 instead of my usual 7:00), so I have time to give it a shot. 

Pixel@Day, Sailboat, Chicago, Il. (Jun. 3, 2005). 

When I first saw the top photo of the three linked above (the color photo of the sailboat's rigging), I made a comment on Pixel@Day, asking the author, Jean-René Geoffrion, if he had considered processing the photo in black & white.  I was thinking of photos I had taken that had come out feeling chaotic because color's presence gave the eye too much to take in.  I was also thinking of how many photobloggers mention that the "that's great" comments are nice, but they desire constructive criticism as well.  Truthfully, I do too, and so, at the time I made my comment, I was thinking about doing just that. 

JR humored me (he's a pro, and I'm sure was thinking "who the hell is this twerp"), and produced two different images, one with a stylized color processing and the other in b&w.  This is a neat opportunity, then, to look at one image presented three different ways for the way color helps and hurts a shot. 

In the original, top shot, JR brings out the cast of the clouds pretty well.  They're dark.  They're foreboding.  When I had made my suggestion, the storyteller in me wanted them to be more foreboding. I think that comes out in the second, highly-post-processed image.  However, some of the detail in the ropes is lost in the second image.  It's a trade-off for the impressionistic tone, and it's a good trade-off.  The b&w - the one I suggested - actually doesn't bring out the clouds as well as the color shots, probably because of the loss of warmth when the golden color of the wood is stripped away.  In other words: I was dead wrong in my suggestion. 

I've been reading Freeman Patterson's Photographing the World Around You: A Visual Design Workshop for Film and Digital Photography.  I pick up a lot of these "how-to" books because I have never taken a class on photography and I hope to learn something new, something that will improve my style (that's why I want the constructive criticism here as well).  Patterson spent a chapter discussing lines in photos in a fashion that could be described as neurological.  The brain interprets vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines in a certain fashion, with each representing something.  Vertical lines not only provide definition to an image (as we tend to look at them as dividers) but also strength (think of the bars of a prison).  Diagonals provide a sense of movement or decay (as in a vertical line that is losing its strength).  JR has a lot of movement in his shot because he allowed the rigging and mast of the sailboat to hold a diagonal position.  The b&w shot captures this with the most clarity.  The impressionistic shot, though, does it with such power - through the stylized post-development color editing - that I think I was wrong to suggest the change to b&w.  The color was more critical than the forms upon which I focused. 

In the heat, we meme like lovers

Yeah, yeah.  The brain is off.  I have a Picture Envy that I've been working on for days now that is just eating my brain.  Sorry. Complete lie.  Work is eating my brain.  Here's a Lileks-approved meme.  Memes are like the blog version of the clip show.  Here's my "remember when the writers guild wasn't on strike" moment:

Total Size of Music Files on PC:
18.04 GB.  (238 hours, 28 minutes, 8 seconds)

And it's all Burt Bacharach.  (Okay, I do have two albums by Bacharach on here.  I've no shame in that.  The shame, as you'll see, comes later.)

Last CD Purchased:
I bought a bunch.  I claimed, when I was given XM Radio for my birthday, that I wouldn't buy many CD's, but this is clearly not the case.  All XM Radio has done is refined my music purchases. 

1. Hans Zimmer, Gladiator - I really have a thing for Lisa Gerrard's voice, and this album, along with the soundtrack for Black Hawk Down (probably my favorite soundtrack) really showcases her voice. 
2. Craig Gordon, Layer Cake - Another soundtrack, this one to a poorly-hyped, excellent little British crime drama.  More Lisa Gerrard, plus The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary, Starsailor's Four on the Floor, and XTC's Making Plans for Nigel. 
3. David Bowie, Hunky Dory - It has Is There Life on Mars? on it, which is just a kick-a** seventies pre-glam piece. 
4. Peter Gabriel, The Long Walk Home: Music from The Rabbit-Proof Fence - which became a lot of the instrumentation to his underrated album Up. 
5. Mary Gaulthier, Mercy Now - A great roots rock sound, akin to Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. 
6. Clem Snide, End of Love - I get such a kick out of the voice of this band's lead singer.  Somewhere in between country and Jonathan Richman (although not so twee). Joan Jett of Arc remains one of my favorite funny songs. 
7. They Might Be Giants, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants - Okay, this is pure nostalgia.  This is me at fourteen riding my mountain bike to the local fields to hit baseballs or at seventeen driving out to The Inkwell, the dilapidated all-night coffee house to have bad coffee and fries with friends. 

Five Songs That I Listen To A Lot or That Mean A Lot To Me

1. Bruce Springsteen, Dry Lightning - I don't live on the Plains in a white farmhouse with a bad screen door but that song feels like a vision into the home I've created in my mind. 
2. Thomas Newman, The Shawshank Redemption, So Was Red/End Theme - This is really two separate tracks on the album, but they flow into each other perfectly.  The songs are the ones used in the scenes in Shawshank that begin when Red (Morgan Freeman) is parolled and end with him reuniting with Andy (Tim Robbins) in Mexico.  Lilting strings and piano arpeggios (yes, politician, I said arpeggios) that evoke Britten before the crashing wave of a crescendo that I used to listen to before every exam in law school.  It helped keep me inspired.  Nowadays, it's just wistful warmth. 
3. Whiskeytown, Factory Girl - Recently, someone asked if I was having a bad day because I was thinking of old relationships, and my best answer to that question is "not really."   I manage to drag myself into ruminations like that on many an occasion.  This song, without any effort, makes me think of someone I chased after for about a year to no avail.  We all do dumb things. It's just that I like to torture myself with it afterwards.  Here.  You can play along:
   
   So, the factory girl she listens
   For the sound of her daddy’s engine
   Till the work bell sounds and she leaves town
   
   Oh, the summer’s here are hot
   All she seems to do is work and sleep
   And wish that she was still with you
   
   Chorus:
   
   Now you don’t know where she is
   Lying in her mother’s bed
   Or who she’s sleeping with.
   
   Oh, the kids will laugh at her
   Cause she seems so sweet and pure
   Oh, I took this shift because of her.
   
   Oh, I’ve never said a word
   I once smiled and looked at her
   Till the shift-boss said ’get back to work.’
   
   Chorus:
   Now you don’t know where she is
   Or who’s bed she’s sleepin’ in
   Or what man she’s sleeping with
4. Gillian Welch, I Dream a Highway - This is a fourteen minute long song by the utterly fantastic folk/rock/country singer who did many of the vocals for Oh Brother Where Art Thou?.  I usually find myself listening to it on a Friday after a long week of work, sitting in my bedroom with a cool beer.  It's a good song to just let wash over you as you decompress. 
5. Sun Kil Moon, Carry Me Ohio - this is the only one I'll link to, because this is the one you need to purchase.  Now.  Amazing, underrated, underplayed stuff, the album - Ghosts of the Great Highway - is perfect driving music, especially on stormy summer nights.  This song and the first, Glenn Tipton, are probably the most powerful on the album.  Both deal with nostalgia, although Glenn Tipton has a sinister revelation at the end.  Carry Me Ohio's lyrics aren't published, but are pretty easy to make out, and deal with a man driving while thinking about the wife/lover that he left.  (Yeah, I know.  There's a theme going on here, but it's unintentional.  It just seems that heartbreak-oriented songs are better written than songs about, say, puppies.  That doesn't mean I'm an incredible sulk or anything.  Particularly not if you give me a puppy.  Preferably a schnauzer or bulldog.)  Plus, for some reason, the guitar riffs in this song remind me of late-seventies/early-eighties "sincere" rock.  You know, like Kansas and Blue Oyster Cult.

Oh the shame in admitting that I like them. 

If I Lived Till I Was 102....

This should be the theme song to my relationship with nearly every woman in my life:

Colin Hay, Just Won't Get Over You, from Man at Work (2003), and Garden State: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2004). 

I drink good coffee every morning
Comes from a place that's far away
And when I'm done I feel like talking
Without you here there is less to say
I don't want you thinking I'm unhappy
What is closer to the truth
That if I lived till I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you

I'm no longer moved to drink strong whisky
'Cause I shook the hand of time and I knew
That if I lived till I could no longer climb my stairs
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
Your face it dances and it haunts me
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears
I still find pieces of your presence here
Even after all these years

But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner
'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do
Even though I may soon feel the touch of love
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
If I lived till I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you

Continuity

Asbury Park, New Jersey
Canon EOS Elan 7ne, Ilford Delta Pro ISO 400