Philip Glass and Blurry Photos

For reasons unknown, the music of Philip Glass resonates with me, especially when I’m working on a new piece. Wish I could put my finger on it…something about how his themes repeat and fold back over themselves to produce something new, like a kaleidoscope. Here’s a short piano piece played by Branca Parlic. ...

Hanging

I got an email the other day from the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Looks like they had some space for their next show and in return for working one shift at the show, would you like to hang some art? To sweeten the deal, they’d waive the yearly membership dues. Sure, I said, when can I come down? So I spent a few hours on Sunday in Red Hook hanging a few photos of mine in their gigantic Civil War-era warehouse. I’ve never done that before. The closest I’ve come to this is sticking a few pictures on the walls for a photo class critique, and that was many moons...

Here’s the thing…

For whatever reason, this former English major totally chokes when it comes to writing blog posts. The internal editor goes haywire. We’ll see if I can finish this paragraph without having to back up and…nope, had to do a little revision up there. So I’m going to try this: a little forced march. I’m going to see if I can beat the editor out of me simply by drowning him with words, on schedule. (Am I going to Beat or Drown the editor? See, I’m going to leave that horrid mistake intact. Eat it, Mr. Ed.) And off we...

The Same Thing, Only Different

I was walking through the South Ferry/Whitehall Street station and realized that this artwork: http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/starn-south-ferry-2.jpg looks a lot like this: http://botanicaphotographic.us/?p=775 Small world. According to this article: (and my apologies for handing you all these links) http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20090115/see-it-split-see-it-change-and-see-it-all-for-the-price-of-a-subway-ticket It’s by Doug and Mike Starn, photographer/artists from way back. They were commissioned to spruce up the walls when the South Ferry station...

Well, I’ll Be!

Finally managed to nail down this theme, with the moving pictures and stuff. Took more than a few hours to get everything (almost) set, but I can live with the way it’s behaving for now. It does a few odd things  (like I have a category for Watercolor Series that I can’t seem to coax onto the main page). I look at this site the way I’ve had bosses look to me: do your job, have fun, whatever–just don’t embarrass me. Thus I now have a site that doesn’t embarrass me. Which is an improvement over how it looked a week...

And now, a conniption fit.

Trying to make this new theme work. And not having such a swell time of it. I know, it’s a learning curve. I never did this before, it’s to be expected. But still:...

This will hurt.

Installing a new picture gallery gizmo on the site. Looks like the only way to get rid of the Uncategorized button is to delete all of the posts that are in it. That’s no problem; all of the photos will be repliated in the new gallery. But I’ll have to delete all the nice comments I’ve gotten too! All those nice and encouraging words! Gone! And the new gallery isn’t so hot, either. Sure, it shows my pictures in a nice slideshow format. And it’s nice to actually see the pictures. (The thumbnails only came up intermittently before the new gallery’s...

Research? Probably not.

For me, research = a nice word for procrastinating. Example: I’ve been kicking around the subject of the last post (Zenfolio vs ImageKind) for over a week. I hem and haw, pondering which direction is best. I look at each site a lot, kicking the tires, taking test drives, sniffing the new-site smell. But, to continue the car-buying metaphor, I always find a reason to sidle off the lot without making a decision. Wasn’t there a sale on a 2-door coupe photo site just next door?And can I apply this discount code I found for a free oil change? OK, enough with the car stuff. I...

Slowly I Turned, or How to Find a Photo Fulfillment Site

I’m still (slowly) kicking around company to use for print fulfillment. Right now it’s down to either ImageKind or Zenfolio. I have a few pictures up on ImageKind right now. I must say I’m not thrilled by the user interface on the site. Unless I’m doing something wrong, it’s a tad clunky to upload a batch of pictures. And it takes a lot of effort to keyword and set up printing options for each image. The thing that I don’t like most is the overall look of the site. It has a little bit of a low-rent feel to it, like it’s best suited for amateurs. On...

What’s That? Less Flower Talk and More Cats, You Say? Well, Alright…

Let’s take a break from flowers for a little bit, shall we? I have an idea: want to see a photo of the mighty Harry? I caught him in a mellow mood the other morning while he was sniffing the air and making sure the fire escape was appropriately bird-free. Set the camera on macro and waited till he was satisfied the lens wasn’t trying to stare him down. As far as we can tell, Harry’s about six or seven years old; we got him from Robert Shapiro at http://animalrescuenyc.org/ . He takes in strays and picks up animals from kill shelters and does what he can to place them in...