This was the “random text” part of a spam email I got today:
betray caustic wolves
brownian remittance dessert
Makes me think of my old band. Partly of course because we were once called Caustic, but also because before that we were called Gulch, and Gulch was derived from “Bromide Gulch”, a name which Ed came up with for the darkest techno act you could imagine, and bromide always makes me think of Brownian motion (no idea why), hence Brownian Desert = Bromide Gulch.
It’s funny the way the human brain works sometimes.
Came home tonight to find this note from Rowan on the computer keyboard. A while
ago I bought her the Usborne Book
of Graphic
Design, more
for my sake than for hers, but I’m happy to say that it’s become one of her favourite books (recently, when
all of the children at her school were asked to dress as a character from their favourite book as part of the World Book Day celebrations, she seriously considered dressing herself up as a typeface
from this book!) She loves tracing the different fonts in the book to make up her messages, and the lettering for the top half of this note looks
very familiar.
Yesterday and today I took Gizmo on a couple of long walks in some woodland which I’ve never visited, despite the fact that it’s less than half-an-hour’s walk from here. Yesterday we went along the bottom of Rivelin valley, and today we headed out from Loxley (home of Robin Hood), across the river, up the hill and towards Stannington.
Both times I took my camera out with me, and because I wasn’t particularly interested in photographing anything on the way I used the opportunity to practice my technical skills on nothing in particular. Having spent the last few months taking deliberately under-exposed photos (so as to avoid white-out in over-exposed areas) I just discovered that I should actually be over-exposing wherever possible, as long as I can avoid that white-out. As I’m not an expert at judging exposure anyway, I tried to get as much as possible into the “top half” of the exposure histogram without clipping - not very easy to do, especially when photographing fairly dark trees against a bright sky (yesterday morning was lovely and sunny, today was a little more overcast but with some sun breaking through for a few seconds at a time).
I’m not sure of the value of my finished shots - they’re certainly a lot better than “random tree shots” I might have taken a few months ago, but not of them really gets me fired up. But then that wasn’t the point. My appreciation of correct exposure has certainly improved, and I seem to be getting a bit more detail in my photos.
Over on the Street Photography Forum folk seem to get pretty excited over pictures of trees, or rather there are hints of strong pro and anti-tree factions, but for me they’re best as a technical exercise. Perhaps I’ll work some of them up into something at a later date. Meanwhile, here’s a nice little 1600×1200 wallpaper I made from some twigs (I know, I managed to over-expose this one a little, but it works in the context of this wallpaper).
I got my video camera out last night and filmed the family for the first time in yonks. Used my new iLife06 to download and edit the video, in less than five minutes I had something ready to upload and send to my mum for mothers’ day. Unfortunately it took me longer than that to work out how to upload it in iLife without having a .Mac account, seems that Apple are trying the old Real Networks “make it hard enough to do what the users want to do, and hopefully they’ll pay to do it your way instead” trick. I eventually gave up and did it with Dreamweaver.
Here is the completed video (approx. 11Mb Quicktime file, but worth the wait!)
Last weekend, I dreamt I was playing my bass. I woke up feeling an urge to pick it up and play, then got sidetracked.
Yesterday, I went outside to get in the van, and there in the road, right in front of my van, was a dark grey Jim Dunlop plectrum. I picked it up and turned it over - 88mm - exactly the same thickness I used to use: it’s heavy enough to shift a bass string, but light enough to have a bit of give, so you can do some nice fast stuff with it.
It’s been years since I played with a pick, but I took it off the floor and put it in my pocket. Later, I picked up my bass and played for the first time in a month or two. And the first time in about 10 years with a pick. It felt so right!
The theme for the current salon at the Street Photography Forum is Diptych. I’ve got lots of photos which might work nice in threes and more (e.g. my recent band pics), but a diptych seems to demand a totally different approach.
Simultaneously, I’m going through all of the photos stored on my computer (about 25,000 of them) to find some really good ones which I can make a portfolio site. I find myself looking at them with very different eyes than before, and several which I hadn’t previously given a second glance now jump out at me as among my favourites. Most of them didn’t even make the cut when I edited out selections for my life photo pages.
I chanced on a set I never got around to putting online, taken in 2004 at the museum at Elsecar Heritage Centre. I seem to remember that I was bored with photography when I took these, and didn’t feel in the least excited about the pictures. Now I think it’s got the highest “hit rate” of any group of photos I’d taken until then. Most of them are random slow-exposure shots of Rowan, Lola and Jessie dressing up and acting out invented plays in the museum’s small theatre. But two photos of the exibits really scared me when I flicked onto them, and they seemed to make for a nice diptych so… here’s my diptych of “owd Yorkshire”.
I never did get around to writing up my stay at the Buddhist Centre, but in summary, although I met some great people there and was glad of the break, I didn’t really take to Buddhism, or at least their take on it. For now I’m sticking with this one piece of wisdom:
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Buddha (563BC-483BC)
Some more pictures from last week, and the last night of my photojournalism course - Cheenah live at the 1234 records night at Vice Magazine’s Old Blue Last. This band were awesome, they were so lively that the best way to capture them was with some slow exposure shots like this, which ended up looking like Francis Bacon paintings. The pictures above link to two action-collages: Cheenah collage one and Cheenah collage two.
I got some more pictures of them, which I may post soon, plus some of the following band Trafalgar, including Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Geldof, on tambourine & backing vocals, and who were all 15 years old and were fairly sloppy & noisesome.
OK, here we go… my eyes are drooping, and I hate editing images on this Mac, but don’t have the energy to push any further, so here are my first ever set of self-portraits.
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