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recent
Today has been a sit inside day. With the exception of my usual breakfast in the garden (big bowl of muesli filled with fruits, nuts, and fresh strawberries), I have been resisting the urge to go play in the sun. I am a little dismayed to find that all of my creative outlets require a computer, and since the display on my crappy iBook just fell apart a while ago, I can't use it as a lap-top as it was intended. Instead, If I want to write or edit photos, I am confined to a desk with an external monitor.
In my efforts to find creative outlets that do not require the computer, I have been trying to write in a regular old notebook, but that doesn't work so well. I have grown too accustomed to editing and deleting and being able to read what I have written -all the things that aren't so easy to do with paper and pencil.
I have tried drawing, but I have no patience for it anymore. Not after having the instantaneous capture ability of the camera.
My paints are still in my backpack where I put them a month ago in anticipation of whipping them out as I sit on a rock overlooking the archipelago.
Another problem is that the unedited, unsorted photos have really been piling up. When I can't edit my photos, I find myself taking more... and the more I take, the more I have to edit. My hard-drive is just about filled up now with images waiting to be sorted through, and some of them are photos I have promised to other people, so I had no choice but to spend the day inside today.
The benefits of having spent the day indoors however (besides less risk of developing skin cancer) is that I can catch up on my NPR. I just got done listening to a great show about the history of marriage on Diane Rehm. It's always fascinating to hear the true story behind the myths we tell ourselves about our culture. It's scary too. So many of our decisions are based on so little reality. Although I assume that -even though people like to pretend that it is a tradition that has not changed for thousands of years since biblical times- it is common knowledge that what we currently see as marriage is a very recent invention. What I had never stopped to think about, and I would guess is not common knowledge, is how much it has changed in just the past century.
I can't wait until the book (Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage) comes to the library in Tokyo.
The photos are from an art class for kids held a few weekends ago. I was glad that the teacher asked me to take photos for her, as it might look a little strange for someone like me, with not kids of my own there, running around taking hundreds of photos of children. When I edit them I am taking a guess I have been de-saturating them, just because that is a new "phase" I am going through. I am finding I can raise the contrast higher and keep more detail without all that dang color to get in the way, but I am not yet to the black and white phase. Some of the over-working is due to the fuzziness of my favorite broken lens. Another big problem is that even when I calibrate the monitor I am using, the photos look different than what I am used to. I have no idea how they look on other people's screens usually, but now I don't even have any idea how they look on my screen. When I work on them, I am really only guessing what might look good (because it doesn't look that great to me on this monitor... not bad, but not great).
Hey did you get the Bell's t-shirt that I sent over a month ago?
My laptop has no contrast at all. I find myself having to guess when editing photos on it, because my tendency is to correct it by adding contrast and removing some of the lightness. But then when I see the photo on my desktop monitor they are far to dark and the contrast is overkill. Over time I've improved on the guesswork, but it's still guesswork. Glad the summer has been so enjoyable, but I have to admit I was looking forward to all those kayaking photos!
kev, the kid photos are beautiful, but why are swedish kids so serious?...especially at what i imagine was a pretty fun and carefree art class.
recent galleries
