I was just in a conversation with a friend about what sorta computer she should buy.. or more to the point.. should she get this particular computer.. and.. well she didn’t have a lot of money and.. we couldn’t actually see what the price was.. but this triggered me to thinking about net books.. which I know is pretty well trotted ground in the blogosphere.. but I figure, what the hell.

The first thing you must know about me is that “I’m a Mac.” I’ve always been a Mac.. ever since there were Macs.. sure, I’ve owned 1 PC, played with Amega’s.. etc, but.. I’m a Mac.

The Trouble with Macs 

The trouble with Macs, or Apple, as I contemplate it now, is that they don’t make a netbook.. Well they make the Mac Air.. which is there idea of an ultra portable laptop computer.. The Mac Air is great except for 3 problems.. #1 Expensive.. like starting at $1500.. #2 Weak.. I think it barely has 2 GHz.. and #3 lacks a CD / DVD drive..

See, the thing of the matter is.. if I’m going to get a netbook type computer..  besides being tiny and ultra portable.. I expect it to be a secondary computer.. a kind of computer I can  take and use anywhere without really thinking too much about it.. For it to be this tiny it must have a tiny screen which makes it totally not capable of doing most of what I do on a computer.. thus.. I’m unwilling to spend a lot of money on it.. especially when you consider that it doesn’t have much in the way of power.. Thus.. $500 might be more then I really want to spend!

Not having a CD / DVD drive is not a deal killer.. but I do want a laptop that I can at least watch movies on… but that doesn’t have to be the netbook.

So the issue is, at least right now, if I want such a computer.. it’s not going to run the Apple operating system unless I hack it to run the Apple OS.. which is maybe something I should look at because.. well.. there is the question of what I would, in practice, want to do on a netbook.

Net Book Ideals 

To me the Net Book ideal is as follows: You have this computer that’s so small you can take it anywhere without thinking about it.. has great battery life.. one way or another you’re connected to the internet..In this kind of scenario.. I might like to have the ability to take images off my camera.. or a video camera.. and perhaps even edit them.. adjust them a bit, and quickly post to the internet. I want to check emails, write blog posts, maybe edit a podcast or do simple audio things… 

So one super basic reason I’d prefer to run the Apple OS is because then I can run the software I already own that does that stuff..  I don’t have to buy, or learn how to use new stuff.See, one of the issues I’m confronting is..

I do need “a better computer” then my current Mac Book. Well.. I really need firewire so I can have a decent audio interface for live shows… and currently.. it looks like I might need the 17″ Mac Book Pro for its expansion slot.. and a 17″ Mac Book Pro is not terribly portable.. but.. I can do live shows with what I have now, so I’m in no rush.. 

Do you see a Tablet in my Future? 

All of this said, there is the Rumor of an Apple tablet… which might very well meet my netbook needs.. accept.. well.. its just a rumor.. The rumor is that it’s like to have something like a 13″ screen, if that.. will run the iPhone version of the OS.. all touch screen.. This would mean I couldn’t run my current apps.. but if you look at the iPhone App Store.. I think some of these needs would be met pretty easily.. though who knows about the video thing! 

I don’t know how realistic my video ideas are, or what.. my feeling at this particular moment is.. probably the most important thing is simply to commit to them.. in a long term sorta way.

Ok, here’s the basic deal.. Video is like.. big these days on the internet.. you may have noticed? I’m basically looking at video as packaging for my music.. or as an extension of the experience of my music.. as a part of the art object. I’m really approaching video from a unique sorta aesthetic perspective… 99.9% of all video production today is produced inside of a certain set of conventions that don’t really get pushed all that much. Sure, there’s great video and film work made this way.. This isn’t a giant value judgement about that.. but its also not what I’m seeking to do.. What I’m seeking to do is approach video from a very ART perspective.

At the moment this means.. screwing around.. It’s a combination of exploring certain ideas as they come to you, and trying to learn the tools… At the moment the tool I’m working with is Apple’s Motion… which is a part of Final Cut Studio.. as an aside, its breaking news that a new version has just come out.. but we shant speak about that.

The project started on a sorta doodling branding adventure a few months back.. I was working in Photoshop and Illustrator.. trying to craft out a logo.. based on some sketches I had done.. This also included messing around with photography.. what follows is a part of that project.. as it looked at one moment in time…

 Motion is a motion graphics / animation program.. and one of the things you can do is import photoshop files.. complete with there individual layers.. I did some funky things.. and placed the different layers at different places in space.. to basically turn something like the above image into a 3D image that I could fly the camera around.. and play with various.. well.. ideas.

I’ve been working steadily on this for the last 3 or 4 days; creating these various little psychedelic video clips. The resulting clips seems to be about some kind of exploration of identity and personal branding… or at least that’s what they made me think of.

The idea originally was to simply put out a sorta complicated screen cast of my DAW.. put it on Youtube.. so that I could sorta share what I do in a certain way..  and I figured if I did that.. I’d at least need some sorta titling / motion graphic sequences.. to sorta.. make it look serious.. I may still do this.. I don’t know.. but now I’m thinking of it more like music video elements.. to be sorta remixed together latter on.

There’s a whole sorta visual language.. set of icons.. symbols.. whatever.. that make up the visual identity I plan on making for myself. [editors note: Matt has been working on this language since at least college] It’s something you are much more inclined to read as Fine Art then.. well communications / graphic design.. Though as I elluded to earlier.. I am thinking about this from something of a design perspective.

My kinda goal is to try and produce something that looks like a million bucks.. something that makes you go “wow, that’s fucking cool.” Make something that would seem to have the sorta production values you could expect from the music video of a major label artist.. way back when they had big budgets…. But something totally different.

The hard fact of the matter is I’m early in on learning to do this stuff.. and a great distance from where my ambition is aiming.. and it is not totally clear that I’ll be able to realize these goals I’ve set for myself…

Well.. whatever.. I actually don’t think those kinds of production values are all that important.. I mean they are for my vision.. but I also think if you just do good story telling.. and put together a number of good pieces… I think you really can have something.. so that’s really kinda what its about.. but.. why not aim high?

[editors note: This was meant to be posted about a week ago] 

I just received word on this.. well moments ago.. and I’m all shook up by it.. more so then I had expected to.. I had gotten word that she wasn’t doing well as of a week or so ago.. sounded bad as a couple of aunts had made there way to upstate NY.. which.. you know, is not a great sign.

I, and my parents.. lived in Mass.. I grew up out here… its a 3 hour and 15 minute drive up to Rhinebeck NY.. where.. well my mom’s side of the family is from.. so we pretty much make it up there for Christmas.. every year since I was a kid.. and maybe other times here and there to.. but.. on some levels its like visiting another planet.. and some how in the disconnections of distance I find myself wondering why I feel so shook up.

The picture above was taken.. what, last summer? We had a family reunion..  

A little latter:

I’ve been going through the various picture I have of her.. that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet.. here’s a couple..

The blog theme kinda squishes it a little, or I imagine it will…

Latter that night

I think the shock of it.. has sorta settled a little bit. Now the mind turns to other things.. like getting my father ready for the trip up.. and all that might entail.. and what have you…

Seems kinda like a rough time.. I lost my mother a year ago last december.. which seems, in someways, almost like a life time ago.. and now loosing my grandmother.. seems like a lot of loss in a short span of time.. going from feeling like life is almost immortal.. to mortality meditation just barging down the door of consciousness.. regularly.. 

Right now its kind of difficult to take it in.. that I won’t see my grandmother living again.. that that presence wont be there in the same way..

I think you can kind of feel her presence in these pictures…

I’m not even sure how many years ago it was now.. when her health came into question… That it was as many years ago as it was… is something.

I feel a little bit of a sense of loss of words..

A couple latter: 

In the following picture.. I don’t know if you can really see it in this picture.. at this size.. you’d have to see it at its original size on flickr… but its like a patented ”Mammy gesture,” the way her lips are sorta… 

tucked in a little.. Having something to do with her sense of humor.. as she interacts with my Dad.. its def a family with a lot of personality… that much is beyond doubt..

These are definitely pictures to be seen at full size.. (and not this size)

There’s something about the realism of photography, and these pictures, that draws me in… Something about traditional media aesthetics.. and the sorta mediation effect they have between us and reality.. how this all shapes us.. and then to have this little window here.. that in someway says “now this is what life is really about.” 

The oldest of these pictures are.. well less then a year.. most around the 6 month mark..

Isn’t that a beautiful picture?  

Reminds me of this bit of Jung:

I could probably go on for some length talking about this sort of thing.. they psyche and life and death… these stages of our lives..  but I’m feeling a bit tried at the moment.. perhaps I’ll pick this up again latter.

Many days latter:

I plan on posting more.. about my time in Rhinebeck NY, and all this sorta thing… 

So I wanted to try and post some stuff on my Christmas experiences..  And today’s story will start out with on December 23rd….

I had sorta lost track of.. when Christmas was, it was creeping up on me, and in the last moment I discovered Christmas was only a couple days away.. so at the last minute I sorta put together the plans for a trip to Rhinebeck NY..

Walmart is Evil 

Now my investment in new cloths has been pretty close to nil for the last year or so.. so I’m a down to about two pairs of pants… or was.. and one of them had holes in them! I had spied cheap pants at Wallmart.. So I headed out there.. and it turns out that Wallmart was going insane at about this moment.. a total pain in the ass…  while I was there I thought I’d pick up a Guerrilla pod for my camera..  and I always kind of have to look at DVDs when I hit Wallmart…

If  you see this image full screen, you’ll note the frustration on that there shoppers face!

As near as we can tell.. this is a $5 movie rack, right?

Looks that way, ha?

Now do you notice Braveheart in the upper left there? I’d wanted to buy this film forever… but found it hard to substantiate paying much more then $5 for it on DVD.. I’m cheap that way, don’t cha know… So I was really excited to find it for $5!..  

So the lines were F’N long… who knows how much of my life was waisted there.. when I finally got to the end of it.. turned out the DVD… there was a sku problem…. So someone had to go check it.. so more waiting.. and everyone else in line has to wait.. cause Walmart can’t get it’s act together, right? Till finally they are taking other people in line.. while I wait.

I was in such a pissy frustrated mood by this point.. was in a rush anyway.. I’m not communicating to you why…. I can only say I wasn’t a happy camper

The women who did the price check.. comes back, and tells me it was $10…

Excuse me, that’s $10? Everything on that rack is $5, did you notice? I’m argue with her.. no she tells me.. that’s what they said.. So I’m ready to rip her fucking head off.. I’ve waited and waited and waited… cause they can’t get there fucking shit together… and now they’re going to tell me it was $10 fucking dollars? How many times has Walmart, in the past… fucked me this way.. cause they don’t put the prices on the DVD? People move things from one rack to another, and you don’t know how much the thing costs.. cause there systems sucks.. and I’m sorry, but I REFUSE to pay for something when its a product of this bullshit.

I know.. I know, why am I getting so pissed off about $5? I couldn’t really tell you now.. the moment has passed.. but I was pissed enough to go pick up my camera and kinda covertly pick document there bullshit.. and post it online…  A kind of “I’m madd as hell and I’m not taking it anymore” kind of feeling.. a.. at least I can participate in the.. rage against Walmart thing…

I’ve had conversations with marketers lately.. about the bad brand experience of Walmart.. shit like this would be an example.. a bad brand experience..

It’s also worth mentioning that the version of a Guerrilla Pod I picked up there.. turned out to be a worthless piece of shit..  

Ok.. deep breaths.. Ok, I’m going to be ok… everything is alright..

Ok.. so this brings us to.. why, perhaps, I got so upset.. that is.. the other stuff going on in my life that might lower my tolerance.. 

Getting Dad Ready for the NY Trip 

Dad has had some health issues lately.. and among other stuff.. is the realization of his declining health. It doesn’t help that my mom died about a year ago.. with all the implications of that.. but now dad’s dementia and alzheimer’s gets worse.. and along with related things.. I’m beginning to wonder how long till I pretty much have to put him in an assisted living situation.. Thus the following story…

Dad would seem to be suffering from incontinence..  so.. laundry must be done before we leave.. and how much of a mess he looked like on our trip to Rhinebeck for Thanksgiving.. 

Getting Dad to do stuff like this had turned rather difficult..  thus, keeping the house in order has fallen more and more on my shoulders.. (which I’m not coping with well) so I figured I needed to kind of monitor him.. to make sure nothing gets too messed up.. and to try and glean more insight into the where Dad is really at… 

Dad had forgotten his glasses.. and had trouble reading the dial… further more.. I discovered him forgetting to put in the soap.. 

All of this kind of thing was like a growing revelation for me…  

There was a lot I had hoped to get done this day.. get Dad to do the laundry, take him to the hospital for an x-ray, get his hair cut, my trip to Walmart, pick up his medication from cvs… make the plans to actually go to Rhinebeck.. get Dad packed, and I can tell you we got very little of that done.. and some of it not done the next day.. when we actually left.. which is why we didn’t leave for Rhinebeck till about 7 PM.

Meanwhile, Kitty watches the whole thing 

So yeah.. that was some of my get ready for Christmas fun

I don’t know if I’ll actually post this or not, we’ll see, but I’m suddenly possessed by the desire to talk sex. I was just at my computer, playing a computer game, when the TV went to a paid infomercial for a product designed to make a guys penis larger.  Being consumed with the game.. I was forced to listen to this crap.. and felt the need to say something.

So lets start.. does size matter?

LOL, sure, why not.. I mean.. if you think about it the right way.. everything matters, so why shouldn’t size? I mean.. we’ve all heard that size doesn’t matter enough to know that it must… But you know.. if you seriously fall for someone, does it matter? I like breasts… but if I’m in love with a women.. it doesn’t really matter… and frankly.. it doesn’t really matter for crushes, or any of that..

So it just strikes me as incredibly shallow stuff..  

I’ll tell you what is important to me.. it’s who you are as a person.. love is important to me.. its the humanity of a thing. I mean a women can be crazy hot.. and sure.. I’m effected.. but if it turns out that I don’t like who she is on the inside.. she really just becomes ugly to me.

Now if we want to just totally objectify women.. or if we are just to focus on sex in a kind of…  well causal sex sorta way.. to me.. who the person is on the inside still matters.. though perhaps not in the same way.. and general hotness has a different kind of value..

But.. and this is important… what turns me on the most? It’s kind of psychological… or.. it’s like a sexual kind of charge.. I like.. a little dyonesian.. a wild impulse..  an impulse that over takes reason and rules.. and thus.. is potentially destructive.. I like Nietzsche’s suggestion on matter.. that we should seek out “our most dangerous play thing” which I suppose is why a woman’s humanity is important to me sexually.. 

I don’t want to say this in such a way as to suggest that.. my animal impulses are some how elevated… only that there is an ecology of factors..  and its a mistake, in my opinion, to try to reduce it all down to one thing.. on the other hand, I’m pro freedom enough to say that.. if that is you’re thing, that’s cool..  I mean.. I don’t mean to call you shallow for it.. you may very well not be.. but the general idea strikes me that way.

I’m really.. on my deepest levels.. a kind of romantic I think.. Love as a physical manifestation of the divine.. which may sound a little crazy and unrealistic.. but I don’t think it is without its truth…. and a very deep truth at that. The seed of it in my soul.. I have a kind of sacred relationship to.. even if, up till this point.. it seems like my love life has not always been the best exemplar of this sort of idea.. but to really get into that.. might be taking this whole social media transparency stuff further then it needs to go..  lol..

But its those dreams of the heart.. that I feel like.. well like that’s the sorta stuff to try and make manifest in my life.. romanic or other wise, even if it sometimes seems a little…

How about we end this post with a very special kind of spiritual love song..  

Can you dig it?

(err, guess the talk never got as frank as I was expecting to get) 

Yeah… lol, so what do you think? 

Long time readers will no doubt know that.. I have some interest in photography.. I bought my first DSLR, the Cannon 40D, this past summer.. sorta early summer. I had wanted to take up photography since I was a little kid.. but never got the chance till now.. not only this but I’ve taken very few pictures in my life.. so.. going digital here.. means I get to really knock myself out.

I’m still kind of blown away by my Cannon 40D.. The 40D is considered a “mid range” pro type camera.. If you’re a serious “arms race” style photographer.. meaning you need to have more or less the latest and the greatest.. or you’re serious enough.. and in it enough that.. spending a lot of money on photography gear makes sense to you.. the 40D would be considered a respectable “secondary” camera..

For me.. the 40D is just about right.. and I have no complaints. From what I’ve seen the camera’s that are little lower end.. they just feel like they’re missing certain things or.. they seem to all present some sort of hassle that get in the way of your photography stuff.. like “what do you mean there’s no dial for controlling aperture?” the cameras that are higher end.. well there’s a number of them I wish I could own.. but.. considering how much money I’ve spent on different sorts of media arts gear in the past year.. and everything else.. never mind what I see on the horizon, I find them hard to justify.

My lenses are not the uber grooviest.. and you’re supposed to spend more money on you’re lenses then you’re camera.. so sometime in the future I’m sure I’ll upgrade those.. and maybe consider a flash.. or a nice tripod, or a better case, etc..

Where I’m at photography wise

Like I said, I’ve been shooting for less then a year.. I’m serious about my photography when I shoot.. but I don’t think I really shoot enough to consider myself super serious.. or there’s just other stuff going on in my life right now.. and so I have a hell of a lot of growing to do.. and a lot to learn.. but I am learning.

Today’s Photography Fun 

The photos I want to share with you today are mostly my first night photography pictures.. this is where you put you’re camera on a tripod and keep the shutter open for a while.. in order to shoot in dark.. This is also my first time shooting with a tripod.. The tripod I’m using is probably an antique.. it’s my dad’s.. who’s.. what, in his 80s these days? He was big into photography when he was in college.. but hasn’t done much since I’ve been alive anyway..

That steak would be the lights from a plow in the background there… his head lights lit up the street area there…

These night shots are actually taken from my second night out.. the first night pictures were lost by the evil Aperture.. which would be the software I use as my digital darkroom, so to speak. 

What you’re seeing in the above shot.. as well as the next shot.. is my car stuck at the bottom of the drive way.. couldn’t get it up the drive way, or out of the drive way the next day (running late for a tweet up I realized if I had to shovel my way out, I’d likely get there after everyone had left).

I had gone out to get some food.. and do a little grocery shopping.. which was nuts, given the weather.. The roads were so bad I was afraid to stop at any of the fast food places less I get stuck in there parking lots.. I did, however, manage to make it in and out of the Walmart Parking lot with out too much trouble..

Just to give you an idea how crazy it was… check out my visibility in this shot!

 Ice kept forming on my windshield whippers rendering the whippers largely useless..

When I got home.. I actually had to shovel part of the drive way just to get the care off the road..  

What follows is some shots from around the neighborhood the previous couple nights..  

I live in a very hilly area, on a dead end street no less.. This would more or less be the view you’d have driving to my house.. just before you actually got there… 

 Much less snow going on there then.. say, here:

 Those, of course, would be the trees that I and the other kids in the neighborhood liked to play in best.. much to my parents dismay… lol.. I used to have a rope on it so I would swig out in front of cars as they drove by.. lol, can you even imagine?

This might be a good time to show you the house I’ve lived in all my life… minus the college-ish years?

 My studio.. where I make the music would be the room where we see the air conditioner..  above which you may notice a slightly.. ganging too low gutter? Yeah… well it bent / feel down under the weight of the next days snow fall.

Now.. you see where that light poll is? Here’s a view of it from the drive way:

 And of course if we just rotate a little to our left, we get this point of view….

 Of course that’s before the car was stuck, right? 

The last picture I want to share with you is one taken from.. well the street.. just about where I used to swing out above on coming traffic from those trees…

I think all these pictures look a lot better more full sized.. which of course you can find on my flicker…. speaking of which, if you’d like to check out / follow my photography fun.. why not check out my flicker? …and feel free to friend me up, should you like.

To conclude…..

After I took these pictures.. I spent sometime looking through my Flickr feed to find that I really didn’t have too much up.. which means I gotta start posting more pictures! I also went through my Aperture library.. all the photos I’ve taken since I got the camera.. and discovered that there’s quite a lot of photos in there that I really like.. so..  I’m really going to have to start sharing more! ….and then the final thing I realized is..  I need to take more pictures!!!

So what do you think, is my photography coming along well?  Hope you liked it.

Ok.. well finally I want to share some of my pictures from a hike I took around Blue Hills about a week ago.. there’s been a few requests so…  gotta get on that, right?

Before we get started.. let me just say I’m new to photography.. really only picked up a camera for the first time at the early part of this past summer.. but that said.. I don’t think I’m really that bad at it.. really just learning… and as I take you through these, I’ll no doubt talk about it a little… 

Ok, so Entering Blue Hills

We are entering via the main pond.. and before we get to the main field.. by the main pond, well it looks kinda like this, right? 

If you walk up the hill towards the big dark tree there.. and look out over the field.. here’s your view:

Kinda pretty, ha?

If you walk into the tree line.. and then just a bit to the right.. you’ll come to this view of the pond / beach…

Not really sure if that was the pic I meant to post for that scene.. but oh well…

Here’s one around the same area.. but with the tree’s obstructing our view.

And here we have another view of the water:

Should I add that these are all taken at about the same time of day?

Shit.. I def posted the wrong one here!

Anyway.. its a bit of a walk from here.. across a few fields.. and you eventually end up on “The Old route 128.” Which.. I guess is 128 before it.. was moved? lol, clearly I don’t know anything about it…

This is all more or less the order shot.. and me looking for something worth shooting.. well, I was messing around with focal ranges.. which is different from how I normally shoot.. and wanted to see what I’d get with this aperture if I zoomed in on something and.. with the background kinda out of focus.. and here’s what I got..

Which lead into this series.. who’s mood I rather like.

I do rather like the super saturated look.. along with that very high contrast. 

This little series was more or less taken with me standing in the same position.. just rotating around. 

And.. if we get out of this little mini series.. and rotate around to the street.. we see our bicyclist friend again.. riding away from us…

You know its kind of funny.. cause this pic is just sooooo unusable!  I mean its way out of focus.. you got that mad lens flare.. before I digitally developed the hell out of it.. it looked way the hell over exposed.. so that this was really an experiment of taking an unusable picture and making it usable.. not that it’s so great even as is.. but.. I still sorta like it.. perhaps with an “if only.”

But you know.. good enough for telling our story.

Anyway.. so its about at this point where we get to a place on the old 128 that I was really digging.. if you pay attention to the marks of the street.. you’ll see an awful lot of the following pictures take place around the same place.

Ok, now pay attention to these leaves coming up… as again they’ll give us a sense of where we is at.. looking in the opposite direction down this street.

lol, it’s like a Terry Gilliam movie, ha?

And look.. its that guy again… (notice the leaves still?) 

And yet another unusable.. though I like it.. him going the other way.

And again we turn our attention to the trees…..

If you note the look of the ground.. you see we’re still in the same place.. more or less.

And just a we bit further up the road…

I like the sense of how far the road goes up there.. and then the mood of the leaves and the light.. and all that. 

And this is where I started getting into exploring color in the digital darkroom, in a slightly different sorta direction:

And a different angle on the same fallen tree: 

And then just up the road, just a little bit.

And this is more or less at the end of this little walk of ours:

So that’s the main of our little walk, right? 

With that, I leave you… Want more? My flickr photo stream can be found at flickr.com/photos/mattsearles and.. the photo set from this hike can be found here… with much bigger versions of these pics.. which kinda helps.. in many cases.

It’s been kicking around in my head for a little while now.. well the past few days, feeling inspiration to make something great. It started with DIYDays… which got me inspired to get serious about film making… and what of the From Here to Awesome Film festival stuff played at Mass Art recently….. That really got me going bit.

Then I took a look at my first attempt at video podcasting..  My impression of it, after not looking at it for ages was.. well that yes it has flaws but.. the potential it speaks for knocked me out.

My approach to film making is in no way conventional.. I would describe it as “a painters approach to film making.” Or maybe that’s my approach to editing and post production.. A way of thinking where this end of things becomes the core of the process.. and the other parts are more like “lets go get some raw materials.” In any event.. the process is that of an exploratory painter.. really. 

Raw Materials 

As it turns out.. I have some raw materials.. video I’ve been shooting for the raw materials of a project.. I have a tun of tapes going back the last.. oh, I don’t know.. lets say 8 or 9 years.. plus a few that go back a whole lot further.

The idea behind my shooting was to make a kind of record.. to kind of show you life in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise see. To try and open the worlds eyes to reality.. or something like that. Who knows, I was on LSD or some psychedelic when I conceived of it, right?

But now I’m contemplating “a new stage of raw material acquisition.” To put it another way, I’m thinking of buying new cameras. 

Thinking about Cameras 

Generally, in thinking about cameras, we have a few categories of video cameras.

1. Social Media Cams: These are generally cheap.. usually pretty pour quality.. but the kinda things you can always have on you, which is the real key here.. and they don’t really call attention to them selves.. we are talking flip cams (that run around 100 bucks) or perhaps smart phones that let you broadcast live over the internet via qik. These could also be just basic photo cameras that also let you shoot video.. even the cheapest of cheap cell phones often have this sorta option
2. Spy-ish Cams: These are cheap from the perspective of video quality.. and actually not all that expensive..  The cameras them selves are usually sub $1000, perhaps sub $500.. The real point of these cameras is that nobody knows your using them. I like the idea of being able to shoot without calling attention to myself.. both from the perspective of documenting something as it is.. without the subject becoming self conscious.. and the idea that you could create a narrative film.. taking place in real spaces.. without anyone knowing there’s a film going on.
3. Quality Video Cameras: From my perspective.. we are talking about the ability to have a lot of Aesthetic control here.. If we are talking from a serious film making perspective.. all the other cameras are rather “punk rock” where as.. here we are talking.. cinematography. These are cameras that cost many thousands of dollars.

Quality Cameras Canon EOS 5D Mark II  

Let us start with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. This is really a DSLR.. which is to say a camera for photography.. a very professional camera at that.. It lists for $2700 for just the body, and $3500 for the body and the lens. (The lens being worth a bit more then a grand I believe). 

Besides being a pretty serious DSLR, the 5D Mark II is also a camera capable of shooting 30 fps 1080p… which it records to H.264. From a film making perspective.. being limited to 30 fps is not really ideal.. though firm ware could change this.. But over all.. for the price, it’s very difficult to beat this camera.. as a video camera. I mean.. for this price and having a lens system? Not to mention that you’re also getting a very nice DSLR? So I’ve been thinking seriously about the 5D Mark II. 

Red Scarlet 

Ok.. this is what we call in the biz a game changer. 

And

Ok, since most of my readers are probably not the type to be following this sorta thing.. let me kind of break this down for you a little.

Here’s a link to a little thing that explains what 3k means. This isn’t a totally accurate statement.. but it’s something that will point you in the right direction “3k is to HD what HD is to standard deffiniton.” 3K is ideal if you want to bring what you’re shooting to theatrical release.

The price of $3000 is.. for a red scarlet.. is probably about what you would be paying to rent, for a weekend, a current 3k camera. I could point you to $10,000 camera’s I’ve lusted after.. that are not capable of half of what this Red Scarlet is capable of.

Now the final thing that sets the REDs apart is.. its a bit like shooting with film, in the sense that you have something like a negative.. which you can develop from.. a negative having more dynamic range then actual picture out putted. This means a much higher level of aesthetic control..  

Well, I think I’ll end this post here, for now.. there’s many more subjects to cover on this subject.. We’ll see what happens. 

My last blog post featured some of my best pictures so far.. given, I’ve only been at it since Monday.. and as someone who’s barely ever handled a camera before.. I’m feeling pretty proud about those pics.. Though at the same time my honest assessment of my photography is not so high.. and I think this series will sorta show this off a little bit.. I like how these pictures function as a series, but if you look at them individually.. they are less then red hot..

Ok.. moving right along….

I love taking pics of my dad “for some reason.”  One of the things I’m learning about photography is that it’s “all about observation.” It’s in large measure a process of looking. You take once slice of time.. framed.. what have you.. and you can look at it for eons..

This amplifies that one moment beyond its significants in the flow of time.. to put it a certain sorta way. Significants, in this sense, meaning.. well what underlies… well how you remember things.. how things stick out in the mind. Another words.. I have an image of my father that is produced through a process of interactions.. let’s say.. and those interactions define the production of that image.. they define what stays in mind and what slips away.. which often might has more to do with my own interior.. whatever is driving me, then it has to do with my father. Taking pictures takes me out of that.. to one extent or another.. and now we are studying my father as a subject.

My relationship to my parents is a complex one.. psycho-socially speaking. Perhaps this is true for all of us? At this moment in my life.. shortly after my mom’s passing, in a situation of taking care of my father.. still feeling dependent on the money that is whatever wealth they managed to amass in there life times.. all this, along with other life issues.. puts me in a strange psychological situation.. which basically amounts to feeling like the challenges of trying to grow up.

A few latter: 

I’ve been reading some essays by Carl Jung recently.. which have re-lead me into a certain way of thinking about my own psychology. A somewhat simple way of saying it is that beneath the surface of waking life, and all our “reasonableness,” lys a “psychological reality.” Reality is, after all, never experienced outside the context of consciousness or our “psychological reality.” The empiricism of science, among other things, has lead us into a spirit of missing this underlying psychological reality.

I’m not blaming science.. Its simply that the scientific age, to put it a certain way, has lead us into a kind of psychological makeup that’s.. somewhat one sided and materialistic. Materialistic in the sense that we search for answers in the material world.. and understanding psychology from a material perspective is.. at the very least complicated from the stand point of our current understanding.. which is to say neuroscience is in it’s very very early days. 

Bug I digress…

So what of this underlying psychological reality? My sense is that it’s through a kind of dialectical relationship with this that I’ll make it through my current life challenges.. Though photography, at least as I’m exploring it at the moment, is slavishly tied to the material world, it has become a tool for exploring this sorta dialectical process.

So lets see if I can kind of wrap this up into a nice little bow: In a certain sense, photography is giving me an experience of reality that is out side the context of a certain psycho-social drama.. This is to say we are looking at the subject / object… err, how do I put this? Well in the case of the following series of photographs, I’m moving out side of “my idea” of my father, to my father. “Idea” here being a psychological idea that is out side of a purely conscious idea.. or one that is beyond conscious will. In so doing we shape the psycho-social drama in new ways.

I’ll conclude this part of the blog entry by telling you that what I’m saying is an over simplification of the matter.

Some background on these pictures:

There’s a couple things you might like to know.. #1 The cat in these pictures is named “Kitty.” Well actually he’s named Ginger.. or thats the name my mom and father use.. This would be our second cat to have a feminine name..  so that’s where I draw the line, and thus we shall refer to him as Kitty.

Kitty is an indoor cat who does not like being indoors.. All he wants in life is to go outside.. trouble is that our last cat probably got eaten by a coyote and thus… well my mom just couldn’t see letting Kitty go out after that. Personally, I believe in living dangerously.. so I side with letting kitty go out.. but at least for now.. the household continues to, kinda sorta, run as it did when my mom was living.

Anyway.. so Kitty is always trying to get out.. and no one accidently lets the cat out more then dad! 

#2 My dad has dementia. His dementia has not lead him to being totally unfunctional.. and he still has some short term memory.. but for the most part he’s not very capable of remember much from 30 minutes ago, to put it a certain sorta way. So a lot of really basic things can be very difficult for him.. and I think you can kind of see this in the pictures.

#3 My dad has a habit of sleeping too late.. so its my job to wake him up.. and thus we begin.

On with the Pics! 

Ok, so dad is more or less up.. but how can he start his day without getting the news paper or getting the mail? Hope he doesn’t let the cat out!

Aww, the taste of victory! 

So making a series like this was surely a lot of fun… And you know.. each picture, on it’s own.. the quality varies.. but as a group.. it’s kinda cool.

A final note / what we can look forward to in the future. 

These picts took about half of my monthly flickr upload allotment… they are, if you view them in flickr, about half the size of the originals.. So what I’m thinking of doing, in the future, is generally uploaded pictures that are a good deal smaller then this.. at least the ones for this blog.. 

I’m planning on releasing these kinda virtual photography books, in pdf form.. which will give you full the sized pics.. which you could even print out at full size if you liked.. 

I suppose the other thing worth mentioning is the pics are still not going through much of a digital work flow.. which is to say “photo post production” which involved working with them in Aperture and Photoshop..  which I of course hope to do for the books.. 

Finally, I’m hoping on putting Google Addsents in them.. so with any luck.. I could even make some money from the books! My ambition here being to pay for the cost of web hosting! 

So that all ought to be fun to do and play with.

Yeah, so I just got the EOS 4D.. and this is my first few steps into photography. I’ve wanted a do this since I was a little kid looking at the service merchandise wish book.. at SLRs and just dreaming of taking up photography…. aww, but my parents never helped me out along these lines… till now I guess.

There’s a number of reasons I’m interested in photography… everything from artistic ones to social media strategy reasons.. to it being helpful for the design side of my stuff to.. various other strategy stuff.. to.. it would be nice to document my paintings if I want to sell them.. to.. well it might be nice to sell stuff on EBay and what not..

A couple days latter:

So there’s a number of reasons I’m jumping into photography.. more so then I’ll get to in this blog entry, but it’s at least worth talking about to contextualize these adventures. Another words.. you have what I can only call “an ecology of goals.” That ecology defines what success is for me, and thus defines the sorta directions I’m taking.. and how I sorta evaluate myself.

Jesus, got a camera for less then a week and I’m already evaluating myself!?! Yeah, I have issues! I’m often told by friends that I’m too hard on myself, and too self critical. I don’t know how true this is, but I imagine there’s a hell of a lot of truth to it.. but I’m a rebel, and thus I continue on as always.. full of self doubt which.. lucky for me for the moment, fails to oppress forward movement!

The Experience of starting out in photography 

Well it started out via getting ripped off by an online camera dealer. The lenses they told me were $1400 lenses were $200 dolor lenses, the high speed SDI card they tried to up sell me to.. while me thinking they were nuts.. turns out my camera doesn’t even use..  aww the joys and shame of it all!!! All this I’ve tried to take in stride.. this and the slow growing realization that I probably need to invest in a lot of stuff I never budgeted for.. Or I would have had the budget for if I hadn’t been ripped off… but lets not dwell on that darkness.

I spent my first day of fooling around with the camera in manuel mode.. In manual mode you set all the controls.. everything from focusing the thing to shudder speed, ISO, and aperture. This didn’t work so well.. and I didn’t get too many good pics out of the deal.

A few latter: Ok.. screw this, lets just look at some pics!

Some Picks 

So this would be, like, the very first picture I took.. or close to it anyway.. shooting on auto pilot as it were.. I rather love this pic.. It’s sorta me showing my father my ultra groovy new camera.

This would be sorta latter this day.. I’m now flying full manuel.. though haven’t yet figured out how to control the aperture setting! This is pretty close to my favorite of the day.. but my favorite somehow corrupted.

This of course is dad watching Letterman..  at this hour I’m normally watching Steven Cobert or the Daily Show.. but dad’s a Letterman man…  the seat with all the light on it is where mom used to sit.. seems a little symbolic, ha?

That would be dad’s work bench.. kind of an interesting thing to explore.. you can explore it more by clicking on the picture and going to the larger version of the pic on my flickr account.. It’s a bit of a time capsule.

This, of course, is the leaf of death! It’s like a slab of beef Rocky would slam away on for training.. or something like that…

This, of course, is the leaf of life! Yup, can’t have a leaf of death without a leaf of life.. Through death comes life, don’t cha know? But we won’t explore all that stuff here today…  at any rate, this and the last one were taken during today’s Blue Hill’s hike.. I’ll no doubt be sharing more pics from this hike latter.. or at least I plan to.. but right now I must be rushing off to today’s Social Media Breakfast.. 

I’ll just make a concluding comment before I post.. It’s clear to me that I suck at photography!!! I’m struggling.. and.. well.. I’m fairly happy with these pics.. I meant to say more about this.. but for now I’ll just give you this.