Portland Real Estate Outsider: Portland Existing Home Prices Drop 13.1% in December - Case Shiller
The December Case Shiller data was released this morning and November's median price for an existing home in Portland was down 13.1% year over year. (click on any chart to expand it to readable size)The monthly change was even worse, down 2.5% from November, the largest drop we've seen to date. Or ever.
Portland is now down 15% from the peak in July 2007.
In the fall of 2008 I started working on a series of images whose main characteristic involved moving the camera while taking the photograph. This is a process I had tried in Paris in the early 1980s under the guidance of Scott McLeay with whom I was studying photography at the time. Unfortunately, at that time my attempts had been unsuccessful for reasons we will see shortly.The motivation for creating this series was related to my study and research of color and composition. Because these images cannot be composed as precisely as non-blurred photographs, and because colors get mixed with other colors when the camera is moved, I thought that they were near-perfect examples of composing with color instead of composing with shapes and objects.
The Godfather Wars | vanityfair.com
“There’s a story there,” says Beatty. “I was offered The Godfather before Marlon was in it. I was offered The Godfather when Danny Thomas was the leading candidate for the Godfather. And I passed. Jack [Nicholson] passed, also. And I remember something else. I was offered The Godfather to produce and direct. Charlie Bluhdorn was a fan of Bonnie and Clyde and sent me the book.… I read it. Sort of. And I said, ‘Charlie, not another gangster movie!’”
2008.03.16 - LoFi Porteur Rack - a set on Flickr
An experimental, budget, DIY, front cargo rack based on a cut-down milk crate.
FRONTLINE: inside the meltdown: watch the full program | PBS
On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. "There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left," says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).
High Speed Sync w/ Bees and Others February 14th, 2009Okay all, we’ve had a little gem in the bag for a while now. Time to share yet another feature of the new RadioPopper X system. How would you like to activate nearly any light source ever produced - including large powerful studio lights - using high speed sync - by radio. Another world’s first, right here.
PIX Feed: PIX CHAT : Jeremy Wilkins, Digital Retoucher
It was exactly at that time that I was introduced to Daniel Kopton, who runs a retouching business called Danklife. We met through a friend of a friend, and he invited me over to see what kind of work he was doing. I was completely blown away. What he was doing was light years beyond any retouching that I had been doing in the headshot world. Daniel agreed to teach me his secrets and give me some freelance jobs, as long as I agreed not to talk back too much. I had some money saved up and knew that I didn't have the time to learn high-end retouching from Daniel and still be at Pixels full time. So, I quit my job and hoped for the best. The transition seems to have been successful. Daniel and I have a really strong working relationship, and I've been with Danklife for 3 years now.
Jeremy gets a little press time!
We are becoming a new species, we are becoming Homo Evolutis - Ars Technica
The day may come when we are able to take the best biology of the known animal kingdom and make it part of our own. This isn't just about being a bit stronger, or having perfect eyesight our whole lives. All of our organs and limbs have weaknesses that can be addressed, and there are also opportunities to go beyond basic fixes and perform more elaborate enhancements. At a private lunch on Thursday, Enriquez spoke of a young girl who, after suffering a knee injury, received tendon replacement therapy centered around tendons grown in a lab. It not only fixed her knee, but made it stronger than normal. Later in life as she pursued life as a professional skier, the coach actually asked that she have the same surgery on her other knee to increase her abilities.
It's called datamoshing, as experimented by paperrad, explored by Takeshi Murata, and theorised by Sven König. (Yeah, teraflop and Pronoiac, it's basically about key- and delta-frames.)
Epson 3800 Step-By-Step Printing Workflow
If you have a LCD display, I recommend setting your display calibration options to Gamma 2.2, "native white point" for the color temperature, and 100 cd/m2 for the target luminance. This last point is very important: new LCDs are capable of emitting a lot of light (and often are extremely bright out of the box). If you edit images on a super-bright display, your print will appear too dark by comparison. Even if your calibration software recommends setting the target luminance to a higher value (e.g., 120 cd/m2), I still suggest using a lower value such as 100 cd/m2.
Through A Lens Lightly: Soft Proofing
Step Three: Next, select View > Proof Setup > Custom. The Customize Proof Condition dialog will be displayed, allowing you to select the options for how the proof should be created. First, select the profile for the paper you’ll be using from the Device to Simulate drop-down box.
Japanese kitchen knives cost more than a camera, they can't be washed in a machine, are subject to rusting and boy, they are so sharp that if you slip you'll lose a finger or two before you can say banzai. There is no doubt that these are the best knives in the world. Nothing comes close to them in terms of sharpness. With one of these knives, you could slice fish so thin you could read a whole chapter of La Physiologie du Goût through the slices. Earlier this month, I had the chance to see how knives are made in Japan like they have been for the last 200 years, following Mr Bjorn Heiberg from Chroma, a company that sells these legendary knives.
Mindfuck Movies by Matthew Baldwin - The Morning News
Here are the makings of a fun evening. Step one: Take your parents to see Mulholland Dr. Step 2: Endure the hottest girl-on-girl sex scene in the history of mainstream cinema while sitting a foot and a half from your mom. Step 3: Take your parents out for dinner afterwards, but instead of making chit-chat spend your entire meal staring into the middle-distance while attempting to make sense of the previous two hours.It’s amazing that this film isn’t a mess. David Lynch originally filmed the story as a pilot of a television series, then re-shot some scenes and cobbled together a feature-length film after the studio executives took a pass. And yet somehow this rejected half-breed wound up as Lynch’s finest work to date. (“Better than Dune!” raves Matthew Baldwin of The Morning News.)
The McNally Tripod Rig | Joe McNally's Blog
I use the Gitzo GT-5560SGT tripod, and mount the Manfrotto Accessory Arm 3153B to it, and then the Gitzo G065 Laptop Platform to that. Couple that up with a ball head such as the Manfrotto 468MG, and you be cooking. I keep the platform at eyeball height so I don’t have to stoop to see the computer. I’m tethered via Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 and a USB 2.0 cable with an extension. Everything is taped down, cause I’m excitable and accident prone. It works real well as a location rig.
Rat Park and Other Children's Stories | MetaFilter
"The denizens of Rat Park overwhelmingly preferred plain water to morphine (the test produced statistical confidence levels of over 99.9 percent). Even when Alexander tried to seduce his rats by sweetening the morphine, the ones in Rat Park drank far less than the ones in cages. Only when he added naloxone, which eliminates morphine’s narcotic effects, did the rats in Rat Park start drinking from the water-sugar-morphine bottle. They wanted the sweet water, but not if it made them high...In a variation he calls “Kicking the Habit,” Alexander gave rats in both environments nothing but morphine-laced water for fifty-seven days, until they were physically dependent on the drug. But as soon as they had a choice between plain water and morphine, the animals in Rat Park switched to plain water more often than the caged rats did, voluntarily putting themselves through the discomfort of withdrawal to do so...
Rat Park showed that a rat’s environment, not the availability of drugs, leads to dependence. In a normal setting, a narcotic is an impediment to what rats typically do: fight, play, forage, mate. But a caged rat can’t do those things. It’s no surprise that a distressed animal with access to narcotics would use them to seek relief." (2)
On January 2nd, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino proposed a one-year wage freeze for city workers, including the Boston Police Department. The Boston Police Superior Officers Federation agreed to a contract on January 23, but not until after the city dismissed its residency case against West Roxbury Police Sergeant Michael Hanson. In the mix of the deal was an alleged list of more than 25 superior police officers who are living outside the city in violation of their contracts' residency requirements. Through the use of strong-arm tactics, the Mayor got his wage freeze and at least 25 of Boston's Finest got to keep their jobs. The following day, two warrants were issued for Shepard Fairey's arrest.On Wednesday, February 4th, Mayor Menino met with Shepard and was photographed shaking his hand following the unveiling of Fairey's 'Peace Goddess' banner on the North wall of City Hall at a public event to promote his show, Supply and Demand, at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. Thursday night Shepard sat for a Q-and-A talk at the ICA which was publicized by the museum after which he signed autographs for more than an hour. Shepard was not arrested until two full weeks after the warrants had been issued and after numerous public appearances in Boston.
Meet Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart, the two artists who have single-handedly (well, with four hands) revived the pop-up book for a new millennium. Chances are your child owns one of their awe-inspiring creations, be it The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with its spinning paper cyclone, or Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs with its jaw-gnashing T-Rex. Maybe you've received one as a gift yourself, from a friend who appreciates your inner child.
Bought the star wars one for a friends kid. It was very impressive.
The Next American Revolution: Main Street vs. Wall Street -- Seeking Alpha
The impetus for the French Revolution can’t be summarized in a blog post, but there were two core elements that strike me as perfect parallels for the ongoing lack of judgment among some elites south of the border. I’ve always thought that average Americans shared many of the ideals of The Enlightenment, particularly equality and freedom of the individual.Now that American taxpayers are bailing out many of the elites of their society, the parallels to pre-Revolution France begin to appear. Louis XVI took power during a financial crisis. France was nearing bankruptcy and the costs of the government exceeded tax revenues. Some of the most blessed in society didn’t pay tax.
As the post production lead here at our studio, I'll use post as a microcosm for the shift in the stock industry. I learned post production skills out of necessity, and the initial response that I had to the immense power of post production was to make the most technically perfect images that I could. Detail in every pixel. Perfect transitions between light and color values. Smooth, pleasing skin tones. Enhanced eyes and teeth. Erased blemishes. Grey cards, noise reduction plugins, hell, I wrote an article on the minutia of edge specific sharpening. You get the drift. I was a dream come true to stock agencies. Every image that went across my desk was PERFECT.But creativity requires change. In this instance for me it was embracing the "imperfect". If you look at Chase's images that I've been working on lately, you won't find detail in every pixel. More likely you'll find that the highlights and shadows are gone, the colors have shifted due to a heavy hand with the contrast and saturation controls, the transition areas might be a bit harsh.
I agree with this. Stock companies demand more then 100k ads. It sucks the life out of it... lol!