[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	ego likeness: breedless	]

I am a very confused digital photographer.

I know how things were done with regard to film photography...but I feel very confused as I look at the photographs of today because I am just not sure if the photographers are using "old school" techniques -- or if the shots that I see are being edited post-production.

Your photograph "Heartless" for example, Did you shoot that with gel filters...? Or did you adjust lighting and color post-production? It is an amazing creation -- I just don't know how you did it! As such, I am a bit lost with moving forward. I've asked (MANY) photographers their technique -- but, trying to get anything out of photographers is like trying to pry state secrets from the lips of government officials. Many members of my own family are photographers -- and they will not divulge their techniques, at all.

Just discovered theres a new lj iphone app. V .6 -- it doesnt show up as an update of the old one, which is irritating. It supports READING lj now, which is nice, but not friend filters or -- crazily enough -- autocorrect.

Given that an iphone app seemed to be the #1 request in the responses to the recent paidmembers (?) post I'm a bit baffled theyre not putting more into this.

I noticed theres also a third party app called "journaler" which might work better.

Off to download that one.

Question: what features are most impprtant to you in a mobile app for lj?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

iPhone shot of trillian_stars. The lj app needs a bit of work but it seems okay for short photo posts.

Be swell.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	ratt: round and round (really loud)	]

Indeed, I had my iPhone. I'd been snapping photos of him for five years now or more as our paths crossed. I'm thinking I should do a booklet. Or maybe just start tacking photos of him to phone poles along Locust.

Omar deflated here for a moment, a brief one. I brought the camera up and took a photo. As if pushed suddenly, Omar jumped and ran into the street – he started waving at cars, doing some sort of dance, then picked up a stick and broke it in half waving the two ends like a ramp agent guiding 747’s into the gate. “Hey!” he’d shout at the cars, waving the sticks back and forth, “hey! PAY ATTENTION!”

The week earlier I’d seen him standing outside of the local coffee shop with a deck of cards, methodically flinging queens and jacks and diamonds at two patrons on the other side of the glass trying to ignore him. Things catch his eye, he follows them, then he moves on.

“Sometimes I don’t see Omar on my morning jaunt,” says Greg, “and I worry about him.”

“Me too,” I said.

Clickenzee to embiggen

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys	]

In other news -- this is an ex-bumblebee who expired in the flower garden after performing the noble duties assigned to her. She may now become the best known of all her kind who make the flowers bloom in my yard. 100mm f2.8 macro with the 24 inch Easybox softbox trillian_stars just gave me for Thursday.

I had a weird dream last night that I was in a really posh hotel room having a conversation with NPR's Stephen Beard, my friend Darenzia (this link is assuredly NSFW) and the Saint Paulie Girl. Please feel free to write a script for that one. (The conversation in my dream was rather dull actually.)

Be awesome today, wonderful things are afoot.

Clickenzee to Embiggen

Add me as a friend on LiveJournal, Add me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Amanda Palmer: Radiohead Covers	]

Omar from yesterday. When I saw him he shouted "NO PICTURES! IT'S AN ANGRY DAY!" and about thirty seconds later he said "wait, take an angry photo of me with something that looks angry." And then he saw a cat across the street and yelled to it "Thomas!" and the cat came running and jumped into his arms. "Thomas is my favorite cat," he said. Anger, at least momentarily, dissipated.

Clickenzee to embiggen

So if you see Omar, tell him his picture's on the Internet.

And Roswell, driving the sock drawer towards adventure.




Clickenzee to embiggen

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	rilo kiley: the execution of all things	]

2) Intern Monkey Llinds spent all of last night putting together big parts of the very disassembled Kyle Cassidy / Elizabeth Bear project. It's untraditional in a number of ways that make distribution a challenge and we're going to give Etsy a whirl. Is there an Etsy expert out there who'd be willing to volunteer setting up a page & making it look nice in exchange for swag? Drop me an email or post "OOOH! OOH! ME! ME!" here in the comments with a link to your own Etsy page (the advantage of that being that lots of people will see your page).

3) There is also a complete minor Kyle Cassidy / Michael Swanwick project but it's so ... unweildy ... I think the only way we'll be selling it is in person

4) If you know a vet in the Chicago area who's got service related tattoos, hook us up. If you're a bartender at the VFW, give me a shout.

That's about it. I'll post Thing1 & Thing3 videos to Twitter today. Be fabulous, write a poem.

This is the last video of them all playing together. Thing2 is the shy one in the back.



I'm sad we lost Thing2, but his brothers are healthy and happy and if Rich hadn't found them, they'd all be dead now. & Thing2 died safe and loved. I think that's the only way to look at it in the cat rescue game.

If you want to leave a message here for Rich who was the one who woke up every 2 hours to bottle feed him, who wiped him with damp cotton balls, picked off his fleas, and essentially filled all the roles of mother for all of the kittens for the past few days, you can leave them here, he'll see them.


You can still help the kittens out here by sending money to City Kitties, they're 501c so it's tax deductible. You can also help by reminding your friends to spay & neuter their animals, loving up your own fluffies, walking a dog for a neighbor, volunteering at a local animal rescue or by being kind to something or someone for no reason. Be good people.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	smash palace	]

Those of you who are thinking "Dear god, please stop with the freaking kitty pix," you know, I'll try and hold back. But, they're so cute.

I'll let you know when I find out how much money we've raised for them. Until then. Thanks for everything. Be good to something or someone today.

This is Rich feeding Thing 2.








You love them, you know it.

[	Tags	|	city kitties, homeless, kittens, thing 1, thing 2, thing 3	]
[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Lady gaga: Paper Gangster	]

These little buttons need round the clock care, eye dropper feeding every four hours and lots of love as they wiggle around and mewp, searching for love and their purpose on Earth.

These guys need three things right now:

1) They need homes. Foster homes and forever homes. (City Kitties will cover their foster care expenses, you provide the love, we provide the litter.)

2) They need NAMES because every kitten needs a name

3) and lastly they need MONEY for their vet bills.

Can you help out with any of theses? What shall we call them and what shall become of them?! To be sure, there will be kitten pix for the next couple of weeks as these fellas start wobbling around. And the big question -- will they inspire Roswell's inner mother to play with them & lick their tiny little heads?

You click to see larger pictures of Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3.

You can donate money to help them out here by sending money to City Kitties and you can tell us what you think they should be called! Post your name suggestions in the comments.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	lady gaga: Paper Gangster	]

I discovered Lady Gaga relatively late in the game when everybody on my friends list seemed to be posting the video for "Bad Romance".

There are a few times in my life when the world seemed to stop and allow itself to be perforated for an album. Guns 'n Roses Appetite for Destruction, Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten all come to mind as times I could walk from the car to the mall to a party to the boardwalk and not miss a track. And like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Guns 'n Roses, this didn't happen by accident for Lady Gaga -- they're good albums. Though I'd vowed years ago to never go to a stadium show again as long as I lived, I was willing to make an un-grudging exception and really looked forward to the show.

There was a wonderful joy outside the Enormodome in Boston, people shrieking and hugging and dancing in what I suspect was the largest micro mini-skirt convention Beantown has seen since 1969; everybody was friendly, lots of people were dressed up. Amanda and I decided to livetweet it -- which is one of the things that Twitter has to offer in conjunction with blogging -- and for the next two hours I found, perhaps sadly, but perhaps not, I was watching the show through my phone, relating it to other people as it happened.

It's difficult to attach meaning to songs like "Cherry Cherry Boom Boom" and "telephone", but there was an explicit message to the concert which was "it's okay to be weird, it's okay to be yourself" -- which is, I suppose, nothing new, it is, for all intents and purposes, the same message Twisted Sister had, but every generation needs to hear it again, and hear it expanded, and hear it retooled for them. And were I 17 and standing there, as I remember being 17 and standing in the back row of The Rocky Horror Picture Show -- I probably would have been profoundly affected by this.

As it was, the Monster Ball was not the Riot of Awesome I was hoping for (though I loved the giant Chuthulu Anglerfish), but my yardstick isn't the one that Lady Gaga should be measuring her shows against. I found it an entirely passable stadium extravaganza, with dancers, pianos that came through the floor, subway cars that descended from the ceiling, smoke, lights, harps and a mad-max car, but without anything, apart from the experience of being in the room, that left me stunned.

( larger behind this cut )

The thing that the show did, more than anything, I think, was offer a platform for me to evaluate my own life. Afterwards, Amanda and I sat out in her back yard talking about life and careers and such and I realized that I'm about the happiest person I know -- I feel very fulfilled by this life. I work with amazing people, I'm happy with my peer group, I feel invigorated and challenged by them, I feel my life is pushing onwards and upwards, that I'm driven but not overrun, and, I think very importantly, I feel in control of my life. Earlier in the day I'd sat in on a photography class in Brookline and listening to the professor I suddenly felt very happy about the lines I've delivered in the conversation that is photography -- people know who I am, I feel my work is respected, but it doesn't hamper my ability to do anything. Walking past a television playing CNN a couple of weeks ago, I saw that it was news that Lady Gaga had gone to a baseball game with friends. Cameras zoomed in on her and their every move was scrutinized and, eventually, after numerous obscene gestures at the media who still wouldn't leave her alone, Jerry Seinfield invited her up to his luxury box -- which it seems is really a privacy box, a price that Jerry and Lady have to pay to have the same type of conversation that Amanda and I could have in her yard, or in a restaurant, and the worst thing that ever happens is that someone comes up and asks for an autograph on a napkin.

I'm not saying I don't want to be more well known, but I am saying I'm happy with my trajectory.

Wherever you are Lady Gaga -- I hope you're happy. You made a good album, you made people happy, you deserve it.

And Amanda, you too.

( larger behind this cut )

---

Add me as a friend on LiveJournal, Add me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Meatloaf: the monster's loose	]

I did two tests this weekend, the first with April Mayi (I posted a couple of those to facebook) in which I had some trouble getting the camera to focus and as much trouble with hot spots & lighting, and then again the next day with Daphne & Heartless revival during which I was able to get a better grasp on the light that it wanted.

Putting this together this afternoon made me realize that it would be a Good Idea to sponsor an artist this summer, more on that later. And more on the Great Photo Closet Junk Clearing Out Giveaway, sometime this weekend probably.

In the meantime, iPhonetography!

Clickenzee for 5 mb of iPhonetastic awesome .pdf

---

Add me as a friend on LiveJournal, Add me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter.

Hello from boston Spent the night in Amanda Palmer's tree house. Story of that and the unexpected Lady Gaga experience on Monday. Off to take photos. Testing out lj app for the iPhone....

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

It's portfolio day - if you've put together your 12 best images (or paintings or sculptures or hats or cakes) let's see them!

(I'm on a bus to Boston. But it's got wifi.)

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Two, Really Weird Thing happened last night.

Trillian and I stayed up till midnight watching LOST which is finally starting to get strange, we went to bed & locked the bedroom door (as is our habit.) The cats couldn't be coaxed into the room because, you know, it's hot and miserable in the rest of the house and they wanted to lay around like tortured artists.

I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Got up, checked my email, posted an old photo of Roswell to Twitter, finally went back to bed around 5:30 and had a series of really fast & strange dreams, I'd wake up after each one and immediately fall back to sleep and instantly back into a dream. I don't remember any of them, but I know they were at least semi lucid. I finally woke up around 7:30 in the morning and got out of bed and there, on the night stand, next to the lamp was a dead bird.

"Trillian," I said, "there's a dead bird here."

She sat up and looked over on the night stand; at the time I wasn't really sure that I wasn't still asleep. The look on her face confirmed that I wasn't hallucinating. It looked like someone had carefully laid it there, centered on a lace doily. I picked it up -- it was dead, but still warm. We checked the windows, they were closed and so were the doors. I looked out into the hallway & all the cats were passed out on the carpet looking like unfortunate throw rugs.

About four months ago we had a bird come down the chimney -- it drove Roswell insane. She could hear it flitting around in there and finally it shot out and flew through the house like a freaked out tennis ball, frantically banging into things. I opened a window and it shot out. The only thing I can figure is another one got in the house through the chimney flew frantically around the house without us noticing made its way upstairs into our bedroom and ... stayed there quietly (sitting on a bust of Pallas?) until seven in the morning and then dropped dead of unknown causes without making a sound.

It seems like a stretch, but short of Voodoo priests or reverse-bird-burglars, it's the only thing I can think of. I wrapped the bird up and took it outside but at the last minute brought it back in and took a photo, just in case I wake up tomorrow and can't remember if it actually happened or not.

It did. There's a dead bird on my coffee table.

If you have any theories about this locked door mystery, I'd love to hear them.

Click for high res

---

Add me as a friend on LiveJournal, Add me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	andy guthrie: you'll be king	]

1) WWII and Korean War veterans with tattoos related to their military service. If you have a grandfather, or uncle, if you work with your local VFW, let me know.

2) I'm looking for active duty military personnel who live on or near a base or people who run tattoo shops that cater to military personnel.

3) I'm specifically looking for people in the Boston Area as I'm going to be up there for the 4th of July Weekend.

4) This book is an effort to draw attention to what people put on the line when their country asks them. When you see a vet, thank them. Some people come back with invisible wounds, and others, perhaps not wounded at all, have spent months or years away from their families, and recently, months or years away from their families baking in 120 degree weather.

So, that's it, for the moment. I'll be booking trips in the upcoming days, so if you live at Quantico and know six Marines with ink, or if you run the reunion for your grandfather's Korean War veterans reunion, drop me a line.

Thanks. More later. This is Bobby Martin, he got shot in Vietnam.

Bobby Martin, Corporal
United States Marine Corps
E Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Division
September 1966-September 1968

I got my tattoo on Fathers Day 1987 or '88, we stopped at a red light, my wife wanted to buy me something, I looked out the window, we were right next to a tattoo parlor, and I said "You know what? I want that Marine tattoo" My oldest daughter designed the letters along the top, and I went and got it.

I think about a lot of things when I think of those days. It's mostly the comradeship; we were like a family in that short period that we were together. I miss the hell out of them. But I also remember the day I got wounded. October 21st 1967 -- mortar round. I knew I was hit bad because I was bleeding in the front -- tore a hole in the front of my stomach, and there were holes all in my arms and I could feel the blood all rolling around in my back -- I had a hole up in the middle of my back, that missed the spine, fortunately, but just nicked the artery. My best friend said to me "Bobby, I can' t stop the bleeding." I was weak, I was tired, I knew that I was bleeding to death.

Read the rest of Bobby's story at the website.

---

Add me as a friend on LiveJournal, Add me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	jason webly & sxip shirey: days with you	]

One more photo here.

Check him out with his magic harmonica and beatbox Adam Matta! From there you can begin a youtube odyssey that will take you long into the night.



More emwowbenating photos from the EE show coming up.
Be awesome my friends.

I'll be at the Evelyn Evelyn show tonight. Do stop and say "hi" if you see me. trillian_stars will be there too.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	rammstein: Frühling in Paris FOR THE 6200TH TIME!	]

clickenzee to embiggen

In the year buildup to it's publication, Jared is doing a series of podcasts that tell an entire backstory, trillian_stars was in episode three, in fact, she was episode three. You should check them out and learn more about Jared's graphic novel, it's all at Fables of the Flying City.

It's about a flying city, how can you not like it?

That's it. Be fabulous today.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	Exile Mix	]

Yes, lots.

Photography is a mixture of Artistic Ability and Technical Skill -- the magic of the mix isn't written in stone. The world is filled with technically proficient but artistically uninspired photographers, there seem to be a smaller number of artistically gifted but technically unsavvy artists, but they're out there as well. But the most successful people have a mixture of both -- they have an artistic vision, and they posses the technical skills to know how to make that a reality. The technical skills are the easy part, you can learn them from a book -- f-stops and shutter speeds and light modifiers, etc. The difficult thing to come up with is an idea.

0) Possibly the most important thing of all: Find creative people and make them part of your world. They don't have to be photographers. They can be writers, or musicians, or actors or puppet makers. Have a peer group of people who are doing things. They'll be your inspiration, your facilitators, your idea makers, your artistic partners. Do this for the rest of your life. Artists rarely survive in a vacuum.

1) Get a camera. It doesn't matter what kind. Eventually you'll most likely end up with a Digital SLR but in the meantime a point and shoot, your cell phone, a 1946 Brownie Box Camera, all these will work to start out.

2) Study photography -- this doesn't mean go to school for photography, but it means pay attention to photographs tear photos that you like out of magazines and keep them in a scrap book, get photography books from the library, from the bookstore, at yard sales. Learn what types of photography you like. Landscapes? People? Bands? Artificially lit? This will start to provide you with your visual vocabulary -- which will be important in figuring out what you want to photograph. Given a camera many new photographers are left baffled as to what they ought to be taking photos of. Subscribe to photography magazines, fashion magazines, travel magazines.

3) Take photos. What is it you're interested in? Enlist friends. Take trips, set up elaborate hoaxes, copy great works of art, copy not so great works of art.

4) Make a portfolio of your 12 best photos. these can be 4x6 1 hour prints. Every month try and replace at least one of these with a better photo. Do this for the rest of your life.

5) Evaluate your equipment. When you know specifically why what you have can't do what you want, it's time to think about upgrading. Do this for the rest of your life.

6) Find someone who will pay you to take photographs. It's always easier to learn on someone elses dime. It doesn't matter what the job is -- assistant to another photographer, part time local newspaper, photographing houses for a Realtor, etc.

7) Go to school. You can learn a lot more quickly this way. Things like advanced lighting techniques, gallery framing, etc. can be more quickly figured out in an environment like this.

8) Show your work. It doesn't have to be in a traditional gallery, it can be in your parents garage, or in your stairwell. Some friends and I used to have an open-air art gallery we called "Show up and Show" where we'd meet along a length of chain link fence, hang out photos up and stand around and talk to passers by.

9) Take lots of photos, throw out the bad ones, only ever show people your best. Do this for the rest of your life.

10) Stay busy. The opposite of busy is bored. Don't visit that place. Do this for the rest of your life.

Hope this helps.

[	mood	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	rainer maria: ears ring	]

"She was found severly emaciated, dehyrated and is currently unable to control her bladder or bowels. At first she needed around the clock nursing care. Every 3 hours she needed to be hand-fed, bathed and towel dried. We've had several blood tests done, but the underlying cause has not yet been found yet.

We know "Vanessa" has the potential to grow into a beautiful, healthy cat. She just needs a little help and love. We are asking for donations to cover her veterinary bills. You can donate money to help Vanessa By clicking on this paypal link here."