Speaking Of Which

Three years ago exactly, I decided to post images and words to a blog every day. Yes, I realize that I missed the blogging trend by about a decade. Story of my life, if I'm honest, and in that sense, a very fitting thing for me to do. It doesn't matter that much in any case, cuz, like, I'm in search of neither money nor fame. 

My goals were pretty basic: keep in touch with a handful of family and friends scattered around the world without having to rely on social media, which I kind of hate; and get into the habit of writing down my thoughts about photos. Nothing profound. Just simple stuff, really, stuff I wish someone else was writing, but they weren't. 

Mission accomplished, then. In the meantime, the world has opened up again, I can mostly keep in touch face-to-face. And I've established a writing habit, which I can continue in a private journal. 

Perhaps I am like a dog, marking the fire hydrant and moving on. I'll leave my little project for other dogs to find and know that I passed by before.  

Anyway, I'm off to Japan next week, so sayonara, y'all! 

Whither Your Pandemic Projects?

Most of us likely documented our experiences of the pandemic, more intently as we realized that it was more serious than we first thought. And most of us wisely kept them to ourselves, these 'projects'. Wisely, too, judging from some of the utter crap we've been exposed to from others, including well known artists. 

You know. Dirty N95s strewn across sidewalks and into gutters. Some of this imagery seems a bit cringy to me now, barely months later. According to the NYTimes, the early 21st Century is among the least interesting periods in cultural history. 

But still, what are you going to do with the work you made? Me, I created a series of imaginary landscapes from TV shows we streamed. Deep stuff, sure, but still a few turned out kinda decent.  

Sources Of Inspiration

As visual artists, it of course comes as no surprise that the natural world is a major source of inspiration for our work. Looking at the patterns of these leaves more closely, I think I'd say the same about our local baristas and their latte art. Cheers!

Halloween-ish?

Is this some kind of color code the city uses to tell someone on the maintenance team to please go ahead and grind these stumps already? Or is it some kind of chemical or pesticide treatment? I'm not privy to the codes, so it'll just have to remain a mystery. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that it wasn't done for Halloween. Or was it?

Hyper Local 2

I suppose I should have gotten my ass out to Texas or New Mexico to shoot my very own personal ring of fire eclipse shot, but I had more pressing matters to attend to, a life to live, etc. At any rate, for most of the morning it was very overcast, but toward noon the sky began to clear. And, the patchy cloud cover actually worked to my advantage here, reducing the brightness of the sun to a manageable level. This shot of the partial eclipse was taken with my 11 year old X-Pro1, which I've been messing around with lately.

Shoot local, y'all.   

Hyper Local

In certain parts of the Deep South, you gotta be careful when telling folks you're from LA. You see, LA can also mean Lower Alabama. No, really. To avoid confusion, just go ahead and say 'Los Angeles'. Then folks'll understand right away why you have a funky accent. You won't have to explain. And just go ahead and say 'University of Texas' when you tell 'em where you went to school. If you say 'UT', they'll ask you about your favorite places in Knoxville, TN.  

My Name Is Smith, And I'm A Workist...

About twenty years ago, I had the once in a lifetime beautiful experience of watching a building I used to work in get demolished. From the comfort of my new office, but still. I loved the show. I have a series of documentary photos taken using my old 3 megapixel digicam. 

For many years, I was a committed workist. Work = me. Man, I've got to live with that tattoo for the rest of my life! Thankfully, the scales did ultimately fall from my eyes, and I never turned into a cockroach, but still. They got their pound of flesh!

Good light this weekend, fellow traveler.