Thoughts on Change

You live your life like chapters in a book. They come and linger for awhile and then pass. You can't cling to these moments as they come, for to do so brings you nothing but unhappiness and sorrow.

To cling to these brief moments of your life is like chasing after light. It is always on the horizon and deftly out of reach. To let them pass gracefully, even to revel in them is preferred. For clinging to a moment and attempting to shun change brings only sorrow and fear most certain.

With the future, sorrow and fear are only possibilities if you close yourself off to it.

People's unnatural fear of the future comes from their own root fear of change. To open one's self up to change is to remove that fear completely and forever.


--Another bout of insomnia last night got me to thinking. The rain is nice though in helping me relax.

William P. O’Connor: Reflections of an Average Joe

Joe the plumber, stripped of the protection of effective representation, is convinced by the corporate media that wages like Wal-Mart’s are sufficient. Salaries stagnant since the seventies have forced the general populace to borrow on the equity in their homes, and maximize their credit card debt. The bankers and corporations are delighted to lend people money at compounded interest rather than see them compensated with fair wages. Meanwhile credit card companies fled to states without usury laws, like Delaware, to screw Joe even more. Corporations rewrote bankruptcy laws while financiers wiped out his pension and 401 K’s with credit default swaps, derivatives and other sophisticated financial instruments. When the pyramid scheme collapsed, the same banks and investment firms which screwed him for years used a complicit Congress to tell Joe it’s his shoulder they must cry on. Ninety-five percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. is now controlled by 2 % of the population; yet, Wall Street reached into the 5% already spread out among 294 million people to bail out Corporate America. Ironically complicit in this massive transfer of wealth has been Joe himself. Convinced by corporate media that any sentence containing working man and higher wages is socialism, he has venerated the ruling elite like Reagan and Bush, forgetting true champions of his cause like Walter Reuter and Eugene Debbs. These false idols have done as much to retard the common man’s progress as Robert Taft and Fred Hartley.

Curious Expeditions

Ravens are smart. Common ravens have among the largest brains of any bird species and they have been shown to fashion tools of leaves to use them to extract grubs as well as solve complex puzzles. Young ravens are exceedingly playful and have been observed sliding down snowbanks, feet akimbo, squawking in delight. They even play games and seemingly tease other species, such as boldly playing catch-me-if-you-can with wolves and dogs…and then there’s the talking.

So smart, in fact, is the Covus Corax, that a single bird, a raven named Grip, is responsible for two, count them two, contributions to the cannon of classic literature. Not even Lassie can compete with that.

I found myself with a does of insomnia last night and for whatever reason I was thinking about winding film onto reels for developing. Something that I think I have not done since 96?

Just remembering the whole process of laying out the film canister, the reels, the tank, lid and trusty bottle opener. Laying them all out and taking one last look at them before turning out the lights and having to work in total darkness. Standing there and memorizing where everything is with your hands one last time before popping open the film canister with opener.

Sometimes it would take forever to get the film canister open as well. The sharp end of it just itching to scratch your film. Then once freed how when you peeled the tape from the plastic spool you would get a ever so slight blue static spark from the adhesive giving away. Standing there in the dark with about 5 feet of film in one hand and trying to find the reel with the other.

The tank was like a fat can of soup and the reels were two stainless steel spirals with a clip on the center. What you would have to do is clip the film into the center clip (or hook one of the film sprockets to the last loop of steel if your clips have long since fell off) and then holding the edges of the film to avoid fingerprints, start to roll the reel counter clockwise to roll the film onto it with about a cm separating the film from itself on this reel. That allowed enough chemicals to slosh between the film so it would get developed properly.

If you were to rush it and pull to tightly the film may skip it's track and wind directly onto itself, which caused any areas of film that touched to be ruined because it would not get the proper does of chemicals. Sometimes it would get none at all and you would have these non developed grey blobs. No way to check your work till you were finished with the whole developing process. There was kinda of a knack to it.

So in a way it was a zen exercise in complete darkness. Which probably came up cause I was staring up at total darkness and unable to sleep last night.

the kettle begins to rumble and boilmuch as kettles have for how many years now? how many lifetimes? how many epochs? while the world falls down around us and eventually get back up to wipe the shit from the fan and plant a garden the kettles will boil on and whistle just like they always have.

- dan k

Vanishing Point error [Archive] - Planet Photoshop Community

I get an error message when I try to select the vanishing point filter that the operation could not be completed. I tried the vanishing point filter on two different PSD files and both times I got the same message so the error is not specific to any one file.

I believe the vanishing point filter somehow remembers an error in afile once you do something in it that the vanishing point filter doesn't like. (I had already run the filter on the two effected files several times before.) Using the save as command and changing the names of the files didn't correct the problem. It was only when I copied and pasted the layers of the files to new files that the problem was fixed. I think i this is is another CS3 photoshop bug. I found on the Adobe Labs forum that other users were having the same issue.

Chris Berens

painter, very interesting. starn twins, witkin, richter influenced. man, i am stoked to find him.

daniel barron

kinda a strange organic photoshop fest meets geiger. but more realistic. interesting any way you look at it.

Rare Interview With Gary Winogrand - O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

“You don’t learn anything from repeating what you know, in affect, so I keep trying to make (the process) uncertain. The nature of the photographic process - it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent; nothing ventured nothing gained. Hopefully you’re risking failing every time you make a frame.”

Amen to that.

Jupiterimages to be sold to Getty Images for $96 million

Jupiterimages to be sold to Getty Images for $96 million

The failure of Jupiter to succeed in this industry is another example of how inadequate the corporate world is when dealing with the ever changing world. Getty’s domination of the commercial stock business is also, indeed, scary and troublesome, but yet, not guaranteed.

Well there you have it. Fire sale prices and who is left? I think the era of stock photography is at a end. Getty only wants wholly owned shot by staffers and does everything possible to discourage people shooting content for them.

For the times they are a changin...

a window full of cobwebs and a pine tree impaled on a hammock

half a cup of coffee and a empty inbox

nothing to do but stare out the cobwebs and bask in the silence

damn, there are a lot of spiders up here.

The Dishwasher's Tears: Azucar Y Chicle

What I find is that if I can just observe my emotions without making them a big deal, I don't get as caught up in them. They become more like something my body does, and I don't have a lot of control over it, but I don't have to let it control me, either.

Retouchers are what web designers were in 1996.

"My cousin has a copy of Front Page, why do we need to hire some fancy Web Designer for our site? We can save a ton of money using him!"

Replace Front Page with "Pirated Photoshop" and you get the drift. One of the things that really get my goat is how people think retouching is easy work, so thats why they want to do it. Though now that I think about it, I guess that pretty much pisses off any professional in any field, but I digress. Retouching, though it is close to 100 years old, is still considered new in Photography because of all the digital whiz bangery there is. As if no one made a composite or retouched a in a chemical darkroom before.

Someone pirates a copy of Photoshop posts a postage stamp composite at 72dpi to WorthOnethousand and they think they can retouch professionally for print. LOL!

So anyways, stop emailing me for work. Rant over. I am gonna go drink coffee and stare at pixel at 500%.

whiskey river

"Nothing can hold you back - not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it.
If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power.
The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged."

I know I just said blogging here is at a freeze, but the world conspires against my plans. Firstly, Wired Mag just wrote a peice saying the personal blog is dead and out dated, so kill your blog. Nothing motivates me more to doing something then others saying it is "uncool and dead". Two, ScribeFire works again so I can blog pages I find without having to enter a editor. Lastly, I need a place to keep track of the things I am interested in. Really, actually lastly (For Reals, as the kids say), I am going to work on posting wonderous life positive things and art. No fucking news or politics ever again. I am going to try to link only to individual personal sites as well.

David Eskenazi

This is an investigation into elongating the time experienced by viewing an image. Rather than capture a single moment in time, the images exist at different points in time. The difference between the representation and perception of these moments creates a speed in which a viewer engages themselves. The photographs, lines, and dioramas inspect such productive effects of representation.

Posting here is at a Freeze.

Have not been posting here due to other more pressing issues, such as, well, the End of the World. So go listen to REM and have fun watching the whole shit house burn down.

"That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn, world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed it off an aux speak,, grunt, no, strength, The ladder starts to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government for hire and a combat site. Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped. Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down. Watch your heel crush, crushed. Uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine. (I feel fine)

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev. Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone) It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine..."

Yeah

For the record, fuck you all. Fuck the world old school, FTW. Not this for the win shit.

Just making sure we all have it straight.