Visuals

Went last night to the final viewing of the Art of Photography show in downtown SD. It was at that mega-shopping paradise, Horton Plaza; i was one of literally three people who made their way downstairs to the Lyceum Theatre to check out the photos. It was pretty rad. Here are my favorites.


"Back to nature 1" - Patricia Van De Camp
(Superb colors in this one. The actual print looked a bit darker. Gorgeous!)


"Arcimboldo W6I0970" - Klaus Enrique
(um, YES. This one was gigantic, and incredibly shot. Also, what an effing brilliant idea.)


"Long Winding Road" - Dejon Walker
(stared at this one for a long time. it was huge and beautiful.)


"Dad's Things Aren't Dad" - Russ Rowland
(since i'm obsessed with collections, and items as evidence of our 'self'.)


"Dissolve" - Alison Turner
(one of the first ones i saw that stopped me in my tracks. Weird, but excellent.)


"Covered in White Powder" - Larry Louie
(so, this is a balloon factory. gave me the shivers. i sell those fucking things every day.)


"Three in the Lake" - Carl Tremblay
(perfect.)


"Litter" - Linda Kuo
(this was way better in person. water glistened on every surface. although i still can't figure out what that white thing is.)


"Louise" - Tom M. Johnson
(Louise = obviously amazing.)


"Girl, Ballinasloe Horse fair, Ireland" - Kenneth O Halloran
[this one got 'Honorable Mention']
(another large, stunning portrait. i was transfixed by those freckles.)


"B 1004 (Window)" - Noritaka Minami
(is it weird that i want to sleep in here? this was related to this other photo.)


"Hot Rod Dream Girl Priscilla" - Jennifer Greenburg
(check out her shift knob! Also, the light was fantastic in this one.)


"Day 47" - Jennifer Wilkey
[also received 'Honorable Mention']
(creeptastic.)


"Place 1861" - Jose A. Gallego
(this was possibly my favorite. can't really explain why. i just wanted to be there, badly.)


"Feet Over Coconut Shell" - Andre Cypriano
(visceral. i want to do this!)


"Red China" - Li Jiangsong
(slightly ominous, obviously accidental.)


"Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" - Brian Almaraz
(surreal! kind of reminded me of a scene from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These 2 were the first-place winners:

"Flesh Love Chihiro & Takeshi" & "Flesh Love Michico & Yuhei" - Photographer Hal

...and this one was also pretty great:

"An Ordinary Day" - Bev Short


Well, that's all folks. Off to make shrunken apple heads.

journeys.

If you have a few moments (okay, more like half an hour), sit with a cup of coffee and listen to some music while you watch the slideshow of winners' shots from the 2009 New York Photo Festival.

Just to give you fair warning, there is some unpleasantry. Birth defects, homelessness, stark death. But you will find joy, along with the pain.

My favorites were Elliot Ross's Animals series (those eyes!), Tyler Brown's single shot "Filamentis" (if anyone can tell me what this is a photo of i will love you dearly), Ernesto Bazan's photo book Cuba (multi-faceted wowness), and another photo book called Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and other Traveling Troupes.

i was also quite struck by student Ed Ou's honorable mention piece for the "Social Documentary Essay" category, Under a Nuclear Cloud. As i mentioned above, these are a bit hard to look at, but i have always been intensely drawn to the ramifications of the human race's development (and eventual use and misuse) of nuclear energy. Lastly, student Patrik Budenz's photo book Post Mortem knocked my socks off. At first i could barely look at these clear, intimate portraits of bodily death, but then i realized that this is a basic truth, pure and simple. So i began to see them through another lens, a photographer's lens. They are great shots, no doubt about it. The subject matter is (for me, at least) hard to grapple with, but i was able to set it aside, for the most part. There is still mystery in the simplicity of it all.

One of the truly amazing things about photography is the ability for those images to grab more than one individual and join them together somehow, even though geographically (and spiritually, socially) they may be thousands of miles apart. i don't doubt that there were others around the globe watching these same images along with me, and feeling their minds open up as their thoughts began to travel..... to travel..........

Anyway, here is a nice image of some daffodils (narcissus?) to make everything better. Toodles.


(via)

Do good things come in threes, like bad ones?

Received two very exciting emails tonight!

Cool Thing #1: i won a free book on Goodreads!

Yesterday, for no reason except that i love books and often have a hard time deciding on a new one to read, i threw my name into the hat along with hundreds of other voracious readers in the hopes of winning an advance copy of a book (or two?). There were thirty or forty entries to choose from, and i found five that looked interesting. Tonight, i received word that i will be the proud new owner (and a "first reader"! strangely thrilling...) of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. i am so excited! i can hardly believe it. Not only do i never win anything, but a (presumably) lovely book? Wonderful! The pressure to review it is a little needling, especially since i have fallen out of my reviewing for the most part, but i suppose i should do my civic duty. Can't wait to get it in the mail!

cool thing #2: my photo was chosen to be in Schmap!

Okay, this is much much sillier, because it's only one photo of many, but it felt good all the same. (The fact that Nat was more excited about it than i was, i found extremely endearing.) Basically, Schmap is an online database of travel destinations in the U.S., with a sort of Yelp-like aesthetic. An editor of theirs found one of the photos i took of the Flower Fields in Carlsbad last year and sent me a message on Flickr. i said sure, go ahead: use it! And today i received word that it's officially in there :) It's extremely gratifying, because i was never the person who was chosen for anything, or whose stuff was ever chosen for anything. That probably sounds really sappy, but it's simply the truth. The funniest part (to me) is that it's not even the best photo i took that day. But hey– to each his own.

::jumps up and clicks heels together::

Saturday used to mean cartoons and tree sap

Huh. For some reason, i really hate the people on Flickr whose profile photos are of themselves holding a camera up to a mirror, taking a picture of their own face. UGH! Why do you do this, people?!

(although, is that any less irritating than using a photo of a seahorse that you found somewhere on the internet? not sure.)

For some reason i'm in a mood today, no big surprise though. Gaining weight from not smoking; it's been just over three weeks now. i need to get out of the damn house and ride my bike, is what i need to do. Took home some flowers from work yesterday- seems like my whole (measly!) paycheck goes towards flowers sometimes... i guess it all balances out in the end? I'll take a picture and then someday far far away i will get the film developed and you can see the black beauties, freesias, tuberoses, belles of ireland, and the silver vase. It will be fan-fucking-tastic.

Got lost on this Flickr photostream today... do you ever just want to be someone else for awhile? Of course you do.

Hafta buy Nat a new chair today. Someone put a sign up in the lobby for a pretty blue stuffed office-type chair for only ten bucks! There's gotta be something wrong with it, but i don't have a car and i need a chair, so i takes my chances.

Well, the birds are chirping outside, like, "get a f*!%@in' move on!" So move i do.

p.s.) Saw a good movie last night, The Lives of Others. Made me crave more info on the fall of the Berlin Wall, or rather life in East/West Berlin beforehand... what a fucked up world we live in! Why are things so split off like that? And who the fuck do people think they are? Honestly. But yeah, it is a pretty engrossing film, i highly recommend it.
Although the main actor looked a lot like Kevin Spacey, which was fucking me up for some reason.
Toodles!

p.p.s.) Yesterday there were some damn fools in front of the grocery store selling cosmetics, of all things (to sell on a folding table in front of a health food store on a Friday afternoon). They saw me coming out and must have had collective heart-attacks to see who could savage me first... i told them no thank you, and then good luck!, but with a rude face, after they continued to hound me. Can you just please take a hint? Beyond that, can you just please fuck off and die? And as i walked away, i heard the strains of a Genesis song on their little portable boombox. hahahahaha, wow! It's like they knew exactly what would hurt me the most.