Lens cap

Here is another reason to use an SLR. When the lens cap is on, you can't see anything in the viewfinder.

Poor Posh. I like her. I've only seen her in the interview with Ali-G, and she was very fetching and she held her own against him, which can't be said for many of his victims.

Leica Summarit-M lenses

Leica Summarit-M lenses. It's a new series of lenses from Leica, with limited biggest-aperture (meaning less low-light capabilities), but not so eye-wateringly expensive. Good decision by Leica. I can afford good stuff these days, but I'm frigged if I'll pay $1500 for a 50mm 2.0 lens. (Not that I'm about to buy a Leica, but just in principle.)

... And the present CEO of Leica is Asian! I bet the Germans did not see this coming thirty years ago.

Real photographers don't...

Real photographers don't...
And real painters don't buy pre-mixed paint or pre-stretched canvases... *
And real men don't drive auto-gear cars... (or use automatic weapons, I guess.)

Coincidentally (or not), yesterday I got this mail from my friend Dave:

... But about "art." I'd like to share an aphorism that I heard many years ago:

The most important part of a real work of art is real work.

I suggest that to use a computer tool and randomly run fractals or generates patterns is not really art. Yes the patterns are pretty, but there is no real work involved in making them.

Clouds are pretty, but there is no real work in making them. Taking a picture of a cloud is much closer to art, if there was real thought put into it, with framing, contrast, whatever (I'm obviously not a photographer).

When you (and I mean you, Eolake himself) paint a picture, regardless of the quality of the output, there is real work involved. Some appeal to you, some to others, and some just don't. But there is real work.

I have a Dale Chihuly painting on my wall, 3'x4'. (In a weak moment, I gave in to a Public Broadcasting System pledge drive and bought it because it had my wife's birthday as its 1-of-200 serial numbers). It has some nice colors in it, but frankly, there was not much real work put into it. His technique is to grab ketchup (catsup, if that is the right spelling over there) bottles filled with paint and squirt them onto paper lying on the ground. He squirts until he is done. Hardly 4 minutes of work. Contrast that with any of the glass art his studio (which is about 10 miles away from my home) makes, and anyone can see the difference.

How do you personally define art? I really am curious.

---
Well, I am not sure I agree. While I appreciate the good feeling one gets from seeing something that a lot of work has been poured into, I am not sure it's connected with whether it is "art" or not. Building a house is a lot of work, but that does not make the house art. On the other hand, a very perceptive and trained photographer can make a world class photograph in a split second... Of course he probably used years to get to that level, but still, the actual photograph was over near-instantly.

---
* PS: haha, the thing about pre-stretched canvasses was just a guess on my part based on human nature. But lo this comment from Mike's site:
"I have an art degree from Indiana University and the painters I met there, both professors and students, were very passionate about materials and tools. Many of them wouldn't use anything but linen canvas, which they insisted that they had to stretch themselves instead of buying the pre-made canvases."

Weekend

I'm gonna take a long weekend. A pleasant, relaxed one.
(Yes, all my weekends are pleasant and relaxed. So?)

I'm pretty much done with the work, sales are good due to a price reduction, I just had a groceries delivery, including some prawn cocktails, and I have a bunch of good DVDs, including the rest of Dead Like Me season two. So, feet up.

(This is not meant to indicate any influence on the quantity or quality of the posts here, I never know about that.)

Final Identity said...
"I can't imagine eating one of those --in fact, anything from the sea -- frozen and then delivered in a little bag. For goodness sakes, you live on an island smack between the Atlantic and the North Sea!"

Pascal:
Actually, Final, sea products today are deep-frozen almost the moment they are taken out of the sea. So it is a great way to keep them as fresh as can be, and with no added chemical preservers. A frozen product has more freshness than something that you buy immediately but keep in your refrigerator for even one day.
Similarly, I saw a news report on canned vegetables in France. They are steam-cooked in a very short time, briefly after being picked, and canned immediately. So they retain more vitamins than a fresh produce that you wouldn't eat right away.
Basically, if you're not the fisherman or the gardener, bringing the food straight to the kitchen for cooking, some aspects of modern life ARE very positive, and have made much impact on our health and life expectancy.

K.I.S.S.

How come no technology company can manage product naming which is easily understandable? Lookkit:

Leica camera M series naming:
M3 (1954 - 1966)
MP (1956 - 1957)
M2 (1958 - 1967)
M1 (1959 - 1964)
M4 (1967 - 1975)
M5 (1971 - 1975)
CL (1973 - 1976)
M4-2 (1977 - 1980)
M4-P (1980 - 1986)
M6 (1984 - 1998)
M6J (1994)
M6 TTL (1998 - 2002)
M7 (2002 - )
M8 (2006 - )

The M2 came after the M3, then the M1, and then the M4...

And how about Apple's software? Quick, what's the sequence between OS's named Panther, Tiger, Leopard, and Jaguar? Dear Apple, wasn't one or two big cats enough?

But then that's the whole world. My local pizzaria has a zillion different prices for their pizzas. And if you want an extra topping, the price for that is different according to the size of the pizza. :)

Message to the world: Simplicity, folks. It's a good thing. Try it.

Nippon geeks

You gotta love the Nipponese. When they do something, they go all out, including their geeks. I was looking for a reference about whether "The Churchyard" mentioned in Dead Like Me was an actual sixties band, because they showed an old LP cover which was just so convincing. So I googled some dialogue and found this page. Not only has somebody typed in all of the dialogue, but they have entered the exact miliseconds each line of dialogue is placed at! Oh, and a Japanese translation of each line. And the whole site is about Dead Like Me. Totally amazing.

Yellow Car

I am so bored with blue and grey cars that I was delighted to see this wonderful golden one.
(I also like the greenish car in the background, though I suspect the owner is not as enthusiastic about it.)

This is Jade cleaning my TV. I just found it funny, the ridiculous discrepancy in size.

Should you buy a DSLR or a Compact?

"Should you buy a DSLR or a Compact?", a guide at CameraLabs.com.

What, me, artist?

I forget if I ever mentioned my old WhatMeArtist course.

Russian Leica

I just bought this hand-customized Russian Leica copy on eBay. (For 30 Euros!)
Isn't it way cool?

Tension

I am realizing more and more than my arch-nemisis may be tension.
I have a strong tendency to get over-excited about all kinds of things, good and bad, particularly good. And if I forget to relax, in the end my stomach hurts, my back hurts, or my head hurts. And my sleep suffers.
Any good tips for releasing tension?

It would never work...

"You cannot go out with this Brennan guy, it would never work: you're a taurus, he's a gemini. He's lutheran, you're dead."
- Dead Like Me

That show is really great. Some of the perifiral characters are more real and nuanced than the main characters of most shows.

For example Gorgia's mother, Joy Lass ("joyless"): on the surface she's a bee-ai-tee-see-eitch, but she is much more than that. She is a loving person, but she has profound anger issues, and she is written and played wonderfully well.

And then there's everybody's favorite: Dolores (Georgia's senior in the office). On the surface she seems like an awful phony, always putting a big pretty bow on everything. Again, much more complex. Sure, she pretends, but mostly to herself, and only because she wants so badly that things are nice, not because she wants to fool anybody. And her life and her past is much different than one might imagine. And she is so wonderfully played too.