This will keep you awake at night. This guy in the 30s discovered that numbers that are taken from real things; heights of buildings in New York, number of people on the city bus, number of minutes it takes to get to work, the number house you have in a street address, all these numbers will most likely start with the number 1. The next most likely number that they will start with is 2. The next? That’s right 3. And the least likely number to start these seemingly random sequences from nature is the number 9. Read the rest of this entry »
I finally got around to watching “Where the Wild Things Are“. Dave Eggers and Spike Jones created a beautiful film, but it is definitely a downer. It’s one of those films that makes you genuinely unhappy and discontent after it’s over and you can’t quite figure out why. Just unsettled.
I have also been hooked by the infectious while simultaneously depressing album “Hospice” by The Antlers. I am probably not great company right now, but I got a bottle of scotch last night as a Christmas gift from the studio, so we will see if a night of drinking alone can turn this around.
So I went up to the Stokes Auction in Port Orchard today to take some shots for an article my dad is writing about the history of auctions in America, and the culture that surrounds them. One Saturday a month they auction any and everything, cars, tools, guns, swords, nick-nackery. One guy bought 100 office cubicles for 5 bucks.
My first rolls through my Rollieflex came back from Blue Moon Camera and Machine the other day, and I have been reflecting on my compositions. So far everything has been pretty predictable. Above are a couple of photographs that didn’t make it in to the current project, but I liked quite a bit.
My inclination when framing within the square seems to be not to use the square at all, but to break up the composition into more comfortable proportions using framing elements resulting in the 2:3 ratio I am used to. The photograph on the left has the branch following the top horizontal line breaking up the composition. The framing of the speckled out of focus leaves on the bottom don’t go above the bottom red line.
The second one breaks the composition in a similar manner, leaving the top 2/3 of the photograph out of focus, and the real focal point residing exactly where the rule of thirds in every shitty photography handbook tells us it should be.
I hope to bring a little more interest into my next series by avoiding the predictable composition breaks. It will be shot on the far less forgiving Provia 100. It’ll be good to see how color factors in as well.
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:54 am by Administrator
So when most people think of Vancouver “The Couve”, they think “a derelict urban slum comprised of taverns, pawn shops and cheap motels, surrounded by a massive sprawling suburb, made up of the cartoon-like repeating backgrounds of, Safeway-Radioshack-Nail Salon strip-malls.” And although this may be a fairly accurate generalization, there are a number of people who have invested in the possibility that there may be something more.
Paper Tiger Coffee started just a couple of months ago, and I would definitely say that Vancouver could use more places like this. The owner is a well mannered young fellow with an affinity for antiques. When you buy something with cash, he will even pull the rotary on his fully functional 1943 cash register. I also scored a terrific book of Dostoevsky short stories for a buck and a half, and I think the price label was actually typed with an old turn of the century Royal type writer set up in the back of the shop.
I think this is where I will spend the rest of my free time in the couve.
