Friday, February 26, 2010

snow

exacting

Digital color management, the path from camera to print (or monitor), is a winding road. Adrian Buckmaster, who specializes in polished and perfect fetish photography, so he should know, says:

"John Napolitano, an old friend and very talented art director, once likened colour management as something akin to driving a car with four steering columns, each driving its own wheel. When he said that, I fell about laughing as it is so true. In the intervening years, that characterization has not changed at all; in fact I would add that the four steering-wheels are now being run by four diabolical bipolar clowns, sometimes in harmony, but more often not."

Buckmaster's full blogpost, a review of the Epson R2880 printer, is here. I use a 2880, too, but since Buckmaster's work is necessarily more exacting than mine, he's more specific than I could be about the virtues and frustrations involved.

You can enter his work here. Leave the kids at home.

02/21/10 cont.

The version posted earlier seemed to get a little darker in transmission to Blogger. This is more like what I see straight from my hard drive.

02/21/10 cont.




From last weekend.








Thursday, February 25, 2010

health

Something's happening today that's supposed to mean something. This health care summit between Obama and the Republicans. I just can't get interested. The only thing that interests me is what's in the bill that will eventually pass - or fail to pass - Congress. And I have no reason to think that this bill will fix anything in any meaningful way.
I believe the only change that will improve access to health care is a public option or the opening up of Medicare. Anything less is just more blah di blah.
This whole process has been so comprehensively disheartening that I have to remind myself that even if the politicos defy their corporate masters and come up with something that will actually make health care affordable and accessible, the anti-choice folks are just salivating to put the kibosh on it.
If whatever wretched compromise that limps to O's desk includes a mandate that will punish people who refuse to give money to the insulting, inhumane, dishonest health insurance industry - people who would rather risk sickness or death than to pay for the privilege of being abused - even people who can't afford to pay for the privilege of being abused - then I think the result will be to set fires on the right and on the left in this country that will be catastrophic if they burn and calamitous if they are extinguished.
My personal inclinations have become apocalyptic. Rayne over at Firedoglake has a good post urging progressives to increase efforts to steer and take over the Democratic Party. I don't think that's possible any more. The government is sick.

added later: What this country needs is a more fearful ruling class.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

pix 02/21/10, cont.

Short post on what's wrong with those pix.
Workflow now is shoot RAW > edit RAW > convert to Photoshop > convert to jpg.
In real terms, that means shoot, download to computer, edit to look good on monitor, edit to look good on a print, edit to look good on the 'net.
I'm not bad at any of these stages now, and I'm pretty reliable going from shoot to print, but posting to the 'net magnifies my errors along the line. Even worse, Google Sites wasn't cooperating when I first tried to post it, and I made the jpg smaller and smaller to see if that was a problem. Fooey on Google Sites.
The big problem is noise. Look at the blue banner in the primarily yellow pic. Total confusion, smeary dotty color, when back in the RAW it was smooth and deep. The furling at the edges didn't look like dark trim.
The pic with the colored coats and the painted slats was shot on the fly. The kid turning around was a synchronicity - that pale round face nails it all together. It's substantially blown up, tho, and the focus is too soft to make a real picture out of it. Check out the noisy shadow on the legs of the pink tights as well. Something pleasant for a post, but not something that will improve with labor.
Some of the things I post here will be about process - probably not interesting unless you're trying the same kinds of things I'm trying. But the pix and writing about pix are for anybody with eyes to see.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Vernon Hunter, RIP

OK, before I turn to the important task of telling you what's wrong with the two photographs I posted below, here's some words about Vernon Hunter, who was killed when Joseph Andrew Stack completed his suicide mission.

Community mourns loss of victim in plane crash
By Bobby Longoria

Staff, Daily Texan Online (University of Texas at Austin daily newspaper)
Published: Monday, February 22, 2010

It was dark inside the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Members of the congregation locked hands and bowed their heads to pray for their friend, Vernon Hunter, who died Thursday when preliminary suspect Joseph Andrew Stack flew his plane into the federal building where Hunter worked.
Hunter was 68 years old, but friends and family say his vitality and happiness suggested a much younger man. Hunter, an Internal Revenue Services employee for more than 20 years, and his wife Valerie worked at the building located near the intersection of Research and MoPac boulevards. During Sunday’s services, members of Hunter’s East Austin church remembered him as a loving husband, father of three, stepfather of three and grandfather of seven.
“He was a gracious man, just an outstanding soul,” said Gaylon Clark, lead pastor of the church.
Hunter volunteered at the church’s food and clothing pantry and assisted church members with preparing their income taxes. He served two tours in Vietnam and was described as the life of his community.
[break]
Hunter’s family and members of the church said they harbor no ill will toward Stack or his family[....] church deacon Larry McDonald said. “We know Vernon would want us to move on and go on with our lives and be kind to people and giving to people. That’s the way he was.”
[break]
Funeral services for Hunter will be held Friday at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, and he will be buried with full military honors at the National Cemetery at Fort Hood. As the service ended, church members walked out into the sun bearing Hunter’s philosophy of kindness and love — for which he will always be remembered.
[full article]

It's curious, isn't it? A news search on Vernon Hunter turns up thousands of articles that are mainly about Stack. The article excerpted is the closest I could find to an obituary today. (I set up a news alert - I'll mention it if any/many others turn up.)
It makes me think of Crispus Attucks, generally considered the first victim of the British during the American Revolution, and, as Stevie Wonder reminds us, a black man, as was Mr. Hunter. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. made the bitter joke that students at a high school named after Attucks wore jackets that read "Innocent Bystander High." Will there be a high school named after Vernon Hunter? And what bitter joke might that inspire?
What will the monuments be for Joseph Stack?

pix 02/21/10

Two pix I took this weekend. Click on them to enlarge. Don't miss my next post, when I tell you what's wrong with them!










Saturday, February 20, 2010

Roll

I've been on a roll lately.

I made an adjustment to my antidepressant regimen (if I keep up this blog and you keep reading it, you will be hearing more about chronic depression) and it seems to be working. The cycle of depression every three or four weeks has abated, for about three months now.

What a relief this is. It's like having the boot lifted from the back of your neck. It was such a slog working up momentum and enthusiasm again after every crushing, knowing that no matter what the boot would inevitably come down again.

It's disorienting. I have had to convince myself that what I was experiencing was real. Nah, that's a weak way of putting it. I was scared as hell that I'd be happy and creative for a while and then even more unbearably miserable when, if, when I got crushed again.

About six weeks ago I began to act as if I believed I would be able to maintain. I put together a second book of photographs, I wrote an afterword for it, I had more ideas for writing and pix, I started working on the websites I'd claimed during good times and then not had the ability to keep at.

Blah blah blah, me me me. The end of this post will not be all about me. Trust me.

I had plans the Friday before last to have dinner (dumplings) with my friend Karen, who I have not seen in a very long time. I was glad to be seeing her and in a groove where a night off would be lovely and not disruptive. Unfortunately, she was needed late at her job and we had to postpone. We resched'ed for Wednesday.

The weekend was a productive one for me. The momentum continued into the week - when I wasn't at my job, I spent a lot of time working for myself.

I felt torn between having dinner with Karen or feeding this streak. It was much on my mind Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I decided I had to give myself the chance to maintain, not fall into an "if only I had" situation.

I also had a stubborn realization: Goddamit, it's OK for Karen, me, everybody I know who has to work for a living (everybody I know) to have to postpone the social for the sake of moneywork. We all understand. Am I really going to rank the work I do that makes living worthwhile lower than the work I do to make a living? Goddamit, no.

And it was a good choice. Karen understood, thank you, Karen. And I'm still on the roll. Did lots of writing and planning the rest of the workweek. Today I took the camera out for a walk. My eye was feeling fired up for the first time in a long time.

So, very nice for me, but here's the part that's not about me, me, me.

I (excuse the pronoun) read somewhere recently that a creative life is like a range with four burners: Money, Art, Family, Friends. And there's only enough gas for three of the burners to keep lit.

Money and Art are cooking along very nicely for me now. F and F, tho? The remaining gas I divvy up to keep those two flickering, at best warm.

In the last couple of weeks I haven't set eyes on a single one of my friends. I've had one phone conversation with my friend Patricia and spent some time mourning our mutual friend, Mary. I've had one email exchange with my brother and one phone conversation with my mother. That's it. Every face I faced was to earn money or spend some.

I can't believe I've written a "life is like a box of..." post. But there's a lot of truth in the Parable of the Four Burners.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Stack's tax beef "was legit"

That crazy libertarian communist teabagging anarchist site, Salon, opines "Stack's beef was legit."

more Stack

Glenn Greenwald at Salon also argues that Joseph Andrew Stack can't be slotted into left or right, and that the note/manifesto he left behind is in no way crazy.

Greenwald goes on to make very strongly the point that Stack was a terrorist, in any objective, unpoliticized sense of the word. Government and mainstream media are currently invested in not recognizing Stack's as a terrorist act, because "terrorist acts" can only be performed by a THEM, not an US.

If and when (I suspect it's when) gov and media start using the phrases "American terrorists" or "domestic terrorists," or some euphemism for such, that's the tipping point. That's when the arsenal of unconstitutional, unAmerican, extra-legal acts promoted by Bush/Cheney and excused or embraced by the Obama/Democratic administration will come to bear on the formerly US.

Don't dismiss Stack as insane, either, unless you're willing to posit that if he had survived his attack he would be unprosecuted or found not guilty by reason of insanity.

To see what your fellow citizens are saying about Stack, I recommend avoiding the politically identified websites, right or left, and reading the comments posted at ostensibly neutral sites, like CNN.com or USA Today. Lots of people identifying with Stark or defending the points made in his suicide manifesto.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Joseph Andrew Stack, Not Crazy

I've boiled down the suicide note left online by Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin today. How many of the first six paragraphs seem reasonable? How much of the eighth paragraph forward seems crazy?

1. Why did I do this? 


2. I was brought up to think that the government is on our side.


3. The actions of politicians show that they do not care for the public good.
4. The rich gamble and steal and the government bails them out. Drug and insurance companies prey on vulnerable citizens, but the politicians only serve wealthy corporations. 


5. I’m fed up. Justice? You’ve got to be kidding!
6. The tax system is too complicated for even experts to understand, but if an individual makes a mistake the system is merciless.
7. How did I get here?
8. I tried to be a good citizen. The government didn’t care. I met other honest people who tried to live by the rules and were ripped off by corporations, unions, cheating financiers. A powerful, corrupt religion got preferred treatment.
Finally, after a lot of time and expense, I thought everything was OK, but the government betrayed me. No matter what happened, they were determined to bleed me dry.
I tried even harder. I couldn’t get a break anywhere. It was like the whole world turned against me. I might have made some mistakes, but my family and I suffered while the fat cats thrived. When the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes. Even the president is just a puppet of the powerful.
....[V]iolence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing at, and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
I have just had enough.


Methodology: The first seven paras correspond to the first seven paras in the suicide note. The long section eight severely abbreviates Stack's grievances with the IRS and streamlines the rest of his general and personal complaints. The italic type is taken straight from the note (with one comma moved for sense).

I don't know if the wiring in his brain was the real villain (altho burning down the house that sheltered his wife and daughter indicates less than perfect equanimity). I don't know how if he was a Teabagger or a Trotskyist.

It doesn't matter.

Any given American plucked off the web or out of a crowd, any crowd, is likely to be in agreement with the assertions in the first seven paras or the sentiments in the eighth. I am. The most common exception would be about the uses of violence... and I think that Stack's conclusion is going to become more common, not less.

More angry people feeling that they have no recourse and nothing left to lose? Joseph Andrew Stack, American.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Snow, Mary

I was puttering around the apartment this morning before work, paying attention only to plans and intentions, when I happened to turn toward the window. "Oh, it's snowing!" I said, in a tone of voice that wouldn't have been inappropriate for a five-year-old.
I've been at work in the grimmest and least spontaneous of offices and heard other grown-ups pipe up at the sight of snowflakes as they never had at any other occurrence. The word "pretty" is as likely to be uttered by taciturn machos as dedicated femmes.
Why this pure, this unadulterated, reaction to snow?
It certainly is a childhood thing. The parent's conveyance of excitement before a snow is a lesson in how to welcome something good from the world. The child has likely heard the word "pretty" applied to a birdy or a flower, but never before to anything as kinetic, as sensory, as enfolding as a snowfall.
A snowfall shows the air. Instead of an imperceptible something, the air is fluttering, depthy, stinging. Instead of the nothing of still air or the constancy of wind it invites the eye to move, here and near and far and near again. How bad can a falling be if it seems endlessly renewed?
In the vertical city, what your eye sees is flattened by habit and facade. You lose the opportunity to focus far. If there's not much in the way of trees around, you don't have the chance to follow motion, to look into depth.
A snowfall plumps the atmosphere, flirts with the eye, capers between you and the usual. It inverts the world, turning the ground brighter than the sky. It can't be bought or financed, canceled or rescheduled. Yay!
As long as you don't have to shovel it, snow is a pure pleasure for the city dweller. For a day or two if you're lucky. If any remains after that, the filth that accumulates on it is made even more vile by the reminding shine beneath. It's enough to make you growl and grow older.

[Note: The "Yay!" above is dedicated to Mary Susan Herczog.]