danklife

SKILL IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN STYLE.

"What almost all the people I admire have in common is that they have high levels of skills. Then on top of that, they use their skills to express their own ideas and personal quirks and styles.

Now most people today have little or no skill. Why? This is an era of amateurism. The whole idea of skill is a concept from the distant past. There are no schools teaching basic functional skills. There is no general high standard in the arts to look up to that you could at least reach up for or be embarrassed by your lack of the general level of skill in professional art."

-John Kricfalusi

This holds true in photography. Don't get me started about the American Apparel" or "Terry Richardson" look. We call those people "Camera Owners", not Photographers.

Maybe what the world needs right now is some good old fashioned elitism?

dayz

Today is just one of those days where I don't feel like much of anything besides numb.

Why go out? Why do anything?

Blah.

The Bush Administration did not try.

"Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonetheless. The headline is this:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration did not try."

New word

Security theater is the carrying out of actions which are designed to look as if they improve security whilst at the same time there is little improvement, or possibly even a loss of security through those actions. The term was coined by Bruce Schneier for his book Beyond Fear but has gained currency in security circles, particularly for describing airport security measures. It is also used by some experts such as Edward Felten to describe the security measures imposed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Security theater gains importance both by satisfying and exploiting the gap between perceived risk and actual risk.

Nice

True

"Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks."

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Via Alec Soth

More bullshit

You sit in a room chain smoke, cursing and pacing. Mad as hell over a cloggged print head.

Elsewhere in the world people actually have important shit to be pissed about.

Stop being so damn precious.

Random thought - NOt affiliated with Jack Handy.

Some people feel the need to be assholes. It somehow empowers them. When you meet one of these types simply telling them "No" is a assault on their very existence.

It is also entertaining.

Do

"Creation is what we do while we're waiting to die. If we're not, we sit around watching reruns, eating potato chips, and drinking Diet Coke - and we fall asleep. We don't even know when, finally, out of boredom and frustration, we die. And, even though we will die just the same, we can choose to stay awake, to create. When we create, we live."
- Ralph L. Wahlstrom
The Tao of Writing

VIA the Whiskey River. Always something good there.

Photo fun

Well, you may have seen the new website for danklife or not depending on how you get here. Went for a more professional look for the Retouching business side of things.

I may take Pixelrust and break that off as my pro photo site in a few months, we will see. In the meantime I have uploaded all sorts of new pics there.

Been having a lot of fun shooting as of late.

time warner can bite my shiny metal ass

Recently in SoCal Time Warner became our one and only cable interent provider. Yea for monopolies!!!! As soon as the switch was done I started to notice horrible upload / download speeds to this server so I ran a speed test. See the above.

Yes, I could upload and download from Lodon before faster then I can transfer 50 miles away now.

Awesome service guys!

On Plagiarism and Similarities

"First, what is plagiarism? dictionary.com defines plagiarism as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." (I'm sure other dictionaries will yield a very similar result [and note, that's not plagiarism]). Note that for photography, we will have to replace "language" with "photography" - and this is partly why things will get a bit tricky."

Good read.