B&W imagery

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats: Shutterbug Friday #4:Francis Wolff and the Empire of Cool (Vol. 1)

In his years as an executive at Blue Note records, Francis Wolff repeatedly called upon his earlier training as a Photographer to document a veritable pantheon of American musical wizardry. Here, in the first of three installments, is a sampling of that fearsome chronicle:

Found this over at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats and it just kind of drives home my thoughts about the timeless beauty of B&W imagery. The tones and intensity of these pictures puts 90% of band photography to shame. Look at that pic of Max Roach! That is classic cool.

Andre the Giant.

Modern Drunkard Magazine

Andre was in France visiting his ailing father when the call came. He thanked Vince Jr. but said there was no way he could get back in a ring, even though he very much wanted to. Not willing to give up, Vince Jr. flew to France to speak with Andre in person. He took Andre to see doctors specializing in back and knee maladies. Radical back surgery was proposed. If successful, the procedure would lessen Andre’s pain and perhaps make it possible for him to get in the ring for Wrestlemania. If Andre was game, Vince Jr. agreed to pay for the entire cost of the surgery.

The time arrived, and the anesthesiologist was frantic. He had never put a person of Andre’s size under the gas before and had no idea how much to use. Various experts were brought in but no solution presented itself until one of the doctors asked Andre if he was a drinker. Andre responded that, yes, he’d been known to tip a glass from time to time. The doctor then wanted to know how much Andre drank and how much it took to get him drunk.

“Well,” rumbled the Giant, “It usually takes two liters of vodka just to make me feel warm inside.”

And thus was a solution found. The gas-passer was able to extrapolate a correct mixture for Andre by analyzing his alcohol intake. It was a medical breakthrough, and the system is still used to this day.

Five months later, Andre the Giant wrestled a “body-slam” match against Hulk Hogan and brought down the house.

Photo thoughts

So I have been held to the grind stone here for a full summer. House, wedding and work, where did the summer go? With Fall finally coming around, hiding behind this summer heat, I am starting to think about shooting again. I am being drawn toward black and white work for the first time in 15 years and it's refreshing. Looking around and imagining how something would look is making me want to reach for the camera again.Something about black and white is timeless as opposed to color where your color palette very much defines a time period. It is also more meditative and "still" to me. The simplicity of a range of tones, the cleanness. Yeah, I need to explore a bit there.

Don't think about it too hard.

Think Progress » Tea Baggers Who Feel They’re ‘Taxed Enough Already’ Gripe About Inadequate Service In…Public Transit

A large number of the tea party protesters relied on DC’s transit system to get around the city. The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) reported that on Sept. 12, metrorail ridership was double compared to an average Saturday. The Washington metro, of course, is public transit — in other words, it’s run by big government. Nevertheless, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) has written a letter to WMATA complaining that the service wasn’t good enough for the tea baggers:

On Seeing

Photography is about the art of seeing the everyday as the new. Everyone can see and more and more with today's technology anyone can take a picture. But the best photographs make you think, "I have never looked at that like this before." So keep looking.

Thoughts on a young girl's Birthday.

There are those who are needlessly open and forever wonder why bad things happen to good people. There are those who the world has hammered shut and wonder what it is like to not be lonely and afraid.

Be neither when you set out.

Be wise.

I will not read your fucking script.

Why He Will Not Read Your Fucking Script – Deadline.com

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.

There's a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he'd pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, "One million dollars, please."

"A million dollars?" the guy exclaimed. "That only took you thirty seconds!"

"Yes," said Picasso. "But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds."

yes, oh yes.

a reputation for morality is a gateway into vice.

The nature of temptation - The Boston Globe

Indeed, recent work has suggested that the very act of seeing oneself as a good person can make it harder to avoid doing immoral things. In part it’s a matter of rationalization, and the better a person we think we are, the better we are at rationalizing. In part it stems from the oddly perishable nature of human self-control, and the way that, like a muscle, it tires after extended use. But also in operation, the researchers suggest, is a sort of moral “set point”: an innate human sense that there is such a thing as too much moral behavior. And when we stray too far from the mean in either direction - even if it’s toward saintliness - we revert, sometimes spectacularly.

Snow Leopard, The Ars Review.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review - Ars Technica

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the "150+ new features" in Tiger and the "300 new features" in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

It probably helps to know that the "0 New Features" slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ("well, there is one new feature...") slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, "no new features" may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.

If you have the time this will sum up a lot of what is going on with the new OS X update, Snow Leopard. It's all about the back end and making things more stable. My take on the new upgrade?

Don't.

As always, wait till the first patch a month or two down the road before installing this on any workplace based machine. So far I have seem reports of it not working well with Xrite color monitors (Eye One Match), Wacom preferences, Quicken and others. Any Pref Pane app that is 32 bit will cause some problems as well.

Sadly, the pissing match with Adobe continues as Apple blames Adobe and Adobe blames Apple for the problems. People are reporting CS4 is unusable with Snow Leopard which I find amusing as CS4 is unusable in 10.5.8 anyways. The Open GL GPU bugs really rear their heads in Snow Leopard and I imagine the old Carbon Photoshop just hates everything about 64 bit and Cocoa (Yes, I just simplified the hell out of this fight. Not dipping my toes into that flame war thankyouverymuch.)

So this update is all about the back end and unseen revisions to how the OS actually works. It makes the programming for the Mac all the easier and programs work faster, provided they are programmed to take advantage of these new changes. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) is the key to this if you want to read up. So the real benefits to Snow Leopard will start to show when programs start updating to take advantage of the changes (Possibly with "Snow Leopard Only" programs coming down the pipe feeding into the Mac "upgrade every two years or die" product cycle they are so fond of now a days).

Snide aside, could be a interesting update down the road especially if Adobe plays nice for once. But as I said before, wait on any updates to your work stations.

Maybe if I get some free time later in the week I'll do a post on how Adobe is the new Quark itching for some company to make a functioning Photoshop clone and clean their clock with it. Does anyone under 25 even know what Quark is? Under 30?

MIA

I am currently neck deep in many work projects and hoping to surface for air in a week or two. Lot's of stuff coming in back to back that are all complicated to say the least. I am ambitiously planing to have some sanity left as well.

A guy can hope can't he?

I

crash OK, I am so sick of this I am going to start posting these for the hell of it. Photoshop hangs for about 4 minutes after each crash anyways so I have to find something to do.

The zips come to an end.

click opera - Mister narrative of the decade

Design Just as hemlines follow the economy, so design follows geopolitics. If the confident 90s could give us a computer that "comes in colours" (the iMac, which echoed the optimism of the 60s and was sold with a 60s soundtrack), the 00s returned us to self-effacing "I'm not really here" products embarrassed by their environmental footprint, getting the job done and playing it safe.

I agree with most of the points in here. There "end of decade' lists and articles are starting already and it's just Aug. What will be happening in the fall?In my opinion the past ten years have been one long political nightmare with a economic cold sweat wake up in the middle of the night as someone rattles the door knob. I wonder how this has effected the kids growing up in this time..... hmm...