Sniped from the del.icio.us home page: “Breakfast” is a photo series by Jon Huck. Pretty damned interesting, too. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s a particularly novel approach or subject matter, it is extremely well-executed. I’m captivated.
Also: for all the diversity he represents here with respect to the food choices, let’s not kid ourselves. There’s really only two that matter. What we want and what we actually get.
Via DF (via Coudal): an animated remix of the Brett interrogation scene from Pulp Fiction.
Typography in motion. Delightful.
Blogged just about EVERYWHERE by now: The Simpsonzu — “The Simpsons” as if they were done anime style. Nicely done, even if Marge isn’t worried enough (and Smithers isn’t erm … “Smithers” enough).
There seems to be this camera and photography fetish among geeks and code jockeys. Or maybe that’s my over-extended exaggeration because of a few choice examples? Or maybe it’s not; maybe it’s just that geeks are drawn to cameras because it’s like any other fetish of taxonomy and technicalities. Regardless, I’m falling in love with the art of photography again (so soon?) — perhaps reluctantly and against my better judgment. But when I look at the results of my oh-so-amateur work, I think: Why not?
I say that I’m reluctant to re-admit any obsession or fascination with photography because it was photography that put me into the mess of optometrists’ offices in the first place. My ninth grade photography teacher was the one that decided my impressionistic take on the art was not an aesthetic thing nor was it a failure to master the equipment nor inattentiveness to technique. Instead (she discovered) it was my mildest of myopia that was at fault for those soft edges and out-of-focus subjects. Thus did it seem far easier to blame photography as a whole — the art, the technical aspects of it, and all of that — for the icing on the Nerd Stigma cake. Good grades and an eagerness to wax knowledgeable (if sardonically) were not enough; no, nature dealt me the Badge of Spectacles as well.
So photography and I parted ways for a while. We had different agendas, apparently. I moved on, working toward perfecting my principal craft (writing) and ascertaining some other new skills. Photography works it’s way back in (however) in mysterious and under-handed ways. You see, photography never really did go away. On the contrary, photography slipped in undetected as a point-and-shoot 35mm Canon and those little Kodak disposables. Photography toyed with me. Giving to me a thinly veiled false (??) confidence. “You see,” photography said, “you’re pictures aren’t that bad. You’ve got a decent eye. Your composition isn’t all that horrible. You just need to drop the pretension. You’re carrying around too much baggage my friend.” It felt a bit like cryptic advice, so I did what felt right and put my distance between myself and photography. “Screw you,” I said right back to photography. “If you’re so sure about that, then you won’t care if me and A. go digital, eh?”
Well, perhaps that was exactly what photography wanted yours truly to do. A. & I went to digital thinking: It’s for hikes and parties. It’s for the instant gratification and easy sharing. It’s because we’re amateurs and we know it. And so it goes. But three years into our point-and-shoot frenzy, I start to realize that we’re actually getting pretty good pictures taken with that camera. The composition is there after all and they’re turning out pretty well (the pictures) considering that:
And so over the past couple of months I have put some serious effort into rectifying #2 above. I have gone to town trying to teach myself about things like “depth-of-field” and exposure. I’ve tried to teach myself about focal length despite the fact that this camera has only one lense that ain’t going nowhere. I have taught myself about EXIF but I still have no real clue what ISO is (not in any meaningful-to-me way, at least). I experiment with the exposure and the flash levels and the white balance and have even learned when to use the macro feature.
All for naught? I think not. There’s a lot of joy to be had in taking these pictures. And especially in sharing them. What’s disappointing is that I find myself coveting fancier camera all the time. “DSLR” hangs in my mind often and I spring on each article and review that I see. You’re not a photographer, I remind myself. Don’t let youself get wrapped up in yet another labor/knowledge/cash/time-intensive hobby. (Jack of all trades, master of none?) Just another thing to keep me from writing, eh? Regardless, something tells me I’ll let this one creep in on the fringes. Linger, poke, and play. But I’ll remind myself to keep it to a tasteful minimum. And not bite off more than I can chew.
We meander through the museum and stop awhile in Gallery 238, which includes two paintings by Jackson Pollock. Galenson gestures toward the first, The Key, done in 1946, when Pollock was 34 years old. It looks like a child’s drawing – thick lines, crayony colors, underwhelming. “Pollock was a really bad artist at this point,” Galenson says.
Nearby is another Pollock, Greyed Rainbow, a large and explosive work done in 1953. It’s spectacular. Pollock was an experimental innovator who spent two decades tinkering, and this painting is a triumph of that process. To paint it, he laid the canvas on the floor, splattered it with paint, walked around it, tacked it to the wall, looked at it, put it back on the ground, splattered it with more paint, and so on. “This painting is full of innovations,” Galenson says, “but Pollock arrived here by trial and error. He was a slow developer.”
[...]
We walk back to The Key. “Look at this thing,” Galenson says. “It’s a piece of crap. If that weren’t by a famous artist, it wouldn’t be here.” [...] “If Pollock had died at 31, you never would have heard of him.”
26-04-1986.com: Flash heavy site but full of beautiful (if utterly haunting) images taken in [tag]Chernobyl[/tag] to comemmorate the event. There are some images of [tag]derelict[/tag] [tag]military equipment[/tag] that give me surprisingly more shivers than the images of the empty radioactive orphanage. (At least I assume it’s an orphanage.)
Previously on F_D: 20 Years of Chernobyl
A. showed this to me and I’m pretty stunned. There’s some images up on [tag]Washington Post[/tag]’s site about [tag]Australian[/tag]-born [tag]sculptor[/tag] [tag]Ron Mueck[/tag]. They’re pretty incredible. And you should check them out.
[tag]Nam June Paik[/tag] passed away yesterday at age 73. The world mourns the passing of a true genius. His legacy lives on in video installations and robot families everywhere.
Saw this yellow/black Poe stencil featured over on Beyond the Beyond. It’s cool. Check it out!
