Sunday Photo

Still recovering from the wedding on Sat. When I shot some photos Sunday afternoon, I still had (un-uploaded) images on the card from Saturday night.

Saturday's Photo (Finally!)

Saturday I went to a wedding. It was fun. I took my camera of course, though I didn't intend to take a lot of photos, I ended up taking just over 300. While that's quite a few, I could have easily taken many more. At any of these occasions it's easy to take a ton of photos and never really enjoy the moment. I like to think that wasn't the case here, as I did have fun. Would I have had more fun without the camera? Maybe, but I had fun taking photos too.

State of the Arts

So I was thinking about some photography ethics, and about how technology is changing the landscape of photography. These changes have happened and continue to happen at an astonishing pace. Will digital photography be the death of photography (and photographers) as we know (knew) it? Amateurs can get essentially the same equipment as the pros. It's easier than every for anyone to take great photos. So how can one be a photographer? Isn't that a bad thing? It is for some, there's no doubt about that. I thought about painting and printmaking. I had thought that once these art forms had become "obsolete," that is, painting had been replaced in a large part of its market by photography, and traditional printmaking (ie. etching, woodcuts, lithography) had been superannuated by newer printing techniques. This gave me the idea that when an art process becomes "obsolete," ( I realize that's an ambiguous word in this instance, but bear with me) it becomes "fine art." What I'd meant by obsolete was that there was a new, faster, better way to do what the previous medium could do. I'm not an art historian by any means, and maybe this topic has been discussed to death in other circles, but I'm just thinkin out loud here. Any thoughts? Think I'm way off? Let me know. After giving it a little more thought, I figured its just the (for lack of a better word) common stuff that becomes obsolete. That is, in painting, I had originally thought painting, before photography, was about realism and recording events. It's of little coincidence, I thought, that when photography came along, painting started to become abstract. There was no need to paint realistically, photography could do it better and faster. I thought this caused painting to become a fine, or high art. But I realized, it had always been a high art. Michelangelo, Raphael and the rest of the Ninja Turtles were kickin ass in painting long before that French guy with a black box started making chemical paintings with light. So I think what happened with painting, is that the bottom dropped out and it became free to do other things. The guys with the cameras largely took over the realistic portraiture and historic documentation biz. Yea a lot of portrait painters may have lost their shirts. Probably the change was slow enough that they were able to adapt. Being pushed out of that market may have been a blessing in disguise, for painters, and the art world at large, because painters were then free to play with impressionism and cubism and nudes descending staircases. Some photographers today may feel threatened by the wide availability of high quality tools of their trade. Ultimately though it may push them out of some old markets, but into some new ones.

White Balance and Revelations

It's wicked late so I'll keep this short. Took a bunch of wedding photos Sat, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I'll post a good one and then take some more tomorrow, er, today. White balance This is something that I've sorta known about for a long time, but I had an interesting thought about it. Seeing takes place in the mind. So if you learn something, it can change/enhance the way you see. I realized that white balance is a prime example of this. If you're in a room lit with only red lights, you're "eyes" (actually brain) will adjust and you'll be able to recognize whites as white—not pink. Most people don't realize that fluorescents are green and incandescents are orange-ish. Now I'm not saying I can magically "see" the absolute color tone of all light sources, but I've become more aware of it, and sometimes I can, especially in mixed lighting situations, sort of tell where there are some cool lights, where there are some warm ones and where there are some green ones. Whereas someone else may just assume it's all the same color. I just thought it was interesting that I may never see the world the same way again, after raising my awareness of white balance.

Macros

Here's a couple closeups. Matt needed a shot of his bike derailer. I planed to do some other macro stuff, but it didn't happen.

Today's Photo

Took this on my way out of school today.

Gallery

Had a guest critique of my work today. It went well, got some ideas and things to look into. Finally took some pictures of people interacting with my work. Here's a wide shot.

Picture of the Day

Ok, I don't think I want to do the source code/script idea, unless I get an overwhelming demand for it in the comments. I'm kinda done with that stuff for now. A photo of the day project is much more interesting and will benefit me more. There's plenty of other photo of the day sites out there, and I'm not trying to compete with those; but just a project to motivate me to take photos. The idea is to take photos every day and post a good one on this blog, with a brief description. I got the idea/inspiration to do this when listening to an old Lenswork Podcast in which Brooks Jenson talks about how Dickens published many of his great, large novels as serials, that is, as one chapter at a time over the course of months. It was only much later that these chapters were consolidated and published in a single volume. He had suggested doing an image of the month kinda deal where people subscribe and you produce prints on an ongoing basis. I thought posting daily would be a good way to motivate myself to do more photography.

So here it is. UMASSD parking lot. I didn't say they were all gonna be good... Feel free to post comments or make requests.

Spring/Summer is here

Went running this afternoon—actually, yesterday afternoon. The weather was amazing! I've been dealing with a head cold for about a week now, but that couldn't keep me inside in that kinda weather! Since I hadn't been out on a run in a while, at first I thought I'd just do about 3mi, but once I got started I figured I'd just go nice and slow and really stretch it out, maybe even do 7 or 8mi. I think I ended up doing about 5. I've never done that exact route before—done all those streets, just not in that exact same configuration.

Did some sunset as backdrop photos on Sat. It was fun! Got over a hundred shots. Though not a spectacular sky filling orange sunset, it was still good.

Purpose

"It is purpose that drives us… purpose that binds us…" —Agent Smith(s) from Matrix Reloaded

I just might have come up with a purpose for this blog. Of course there can be more than one purpose. I want to start publishing some of my technical work for my visual thesis. I'm working on my MFA, and if all goes well, I'll have it in just a month or so. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out technical aspects of my interactive computer pieces. For computers, I'm using Macs, cause that's what I'm most comfortable with.

In order to do what I wanted, I had to write my own scripts, and later dabbled into some heavier coding (objective C). I didn't know anyone that could help me with this technical work. I figure if I did, it would have gone a lot faster. A Mac developer could probably have done this stuff in his sleep.

So, on the odd chance someone out there has similar questions about Mac scripting/programing, or just want to discover the madness to my methods, I'll start posting some example from time to time. Tis good to have a raison d'être. :-)

Semi-coherent ramblings

Oh, what to blog about, what to blog about… Going into this I can't help be be a bit self conscious. What could I possibly add to the vast ocean of blogs out there? I suppose that's something writers have always grappled with. I guess I'm a little slow getting into blogging because I figured it was all just people talking about what they do all day, or political extremists hyper-analyzing news events 24/7. But I realized there's lots of good stuff out there. Stuff I'm interested in, blogs that excite and fascinate me, that get me thinking.
Of course if you're reading this you already know there's lots of good stuff out there.
Stating the obvious perhaps, but I gotta start somewhere.

Losing my blogging virginity!

Starting things off with a scintillating title never hurts. I've never really read wired magazine before, but I finally bought a copy of it and it's very interesting—interesting—not much of a word I suppose, but it's late and I can't think of a better word. Anyway, it inspired me to start a blog. Now that I've started it, there's no turning back! Well, I could just one day stop posting and it will become a hollow ghost shell, an undead zombie of a blog. Also I'm inspired by strobist.com, another blog. I'll put a link later. Ok that's it for now.