You know how Ulysses, the doorstop/book by Joyce, not the poem, you know how it encompasses a single day, but several years worth of adventure were packed into it? I feel like that was my first day in New York City. So much happened, so many pictures.
I got to Manhattan a bit after midnight, a direct flight from SFO. Sidenote: jetblue has the best legroom. Got out of my terminal to see the old TWA terminal under construction/restoration. A little googling revealed it’s been under construction a while, and now the plan is to make it a hotel. At least it’s still there.
So, I get to my hotel, starving, and go down to the street to find some pizza. By some silly stroke of luck, there was a decent slice just around the corner from my hotel. I had quite a bit of pizza while I was there, but not every meal, Mom. This pizza though. All the good things people say about pizza in NYC: all true. I’ve seen the light, or, rather, the crust, the cheese, and to a lesser extent, the sauce and toppings. Pizza consumed, I passed the fuck out. It had already been a long day.
The next day, with nothing to do and free to roam, I decided the first place I should head was the International Center of Photography. Since I had the whole day, and google maps said it was a 45 minute walk, I figured why not walk and shoot. These photos are about half from the night before and half from the walk to ICP.
Posted on 2016-08-08T20:23:12Z GMT
These are the other photos from camping; at the last moment, packing, I decided to take my small boulder of a film camera, the Mamiya RB67. It’s older than I am and weighs 20 lbs with the mirror prism. It’s just on the edge of too heavy to handhold. It’s also all those trite things people say about shooting with larger cameras: slow, contemplative. I found myself seeing pictures, and then grabbing the camera and shooting them.
I originally got this camera because I thought it would be a good platform to build a small scanning back. Then I thought I might as well shoot some film with it, to make sure it worked. As it turns out, you cock the shutter and wind the film with different levers, a thing that I still sometimes forget (which works out for me sometimes, see frame 1). I didn’t even realize I missed the moment of looking at the exposed film, the magic of seeing all those pictures that I took, the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t.
Posted on 2016-07-12T03:14:05Z GMT
Strandbeest - n. Walking sculpture of the type invented by Theo Jansen.
I’ve been fascinated by these since I saw the first video of them, way back in 2007 or 2008. I think it was a Kottke link. But, only at a distance, in the way that you laugh at people that take the cinnamon challenge, not like it’s something you would ever see or do firsthand. Well, I finally got to see them firsthand, and I didn’t have to go to the beach.
The show was at the Exploratorium, which is the platonic ideal of a hands-on science museum. They create direct experiences that lead to an intuitive understanding of science. Do the experiment, know how it works. The strandbeest exhibit was no exception, with several hands-on beests to walk back and fourth, and models of the leg to play with and see how it works (stiff sections made of triangles, and moving sections made of odd quadrilaterals).
I went twice, once to see Savage’s work-in-progress beest, and at night, for the unveiling and adults-only evening. There were several other people showing off similar devices; a couple motorized horse-like builds, and a giant Burning Man build out of plate steel. I even got to ride the strandbeest bike, which was jerky and steered like a cow and I desperately want to buy a welder and build one now. It was delightful and weird those are maybe my two favorite qualities.
The highlight of the evening was the unveiling of Savage’s machine. “Like everything I do, it didn’t work until the last minute,” he said. Or something like that; I’m sure the whole thing will be up on tested.com eventually. First, he rode it on the milk crate seat, then, realizing it would hold his weight, he jumped on top and pedaled it from there. There was a nice Q&A period, and then everyone dispersed into the night.
Sidenote: every time I think the color balance is too hard, I should just put it away and look again after getting some sleep. It’s almost always exaustion, and not the color, that’s the problem.
Posted on 2016-07-11T15:58:18Z GMT
The campsite at Orland Buttes, on Black Butte Lake, is really something special. Bathrooms with showers, running water, flushing toilets, all the modern amenities you may not get at some lesser campsites. The lake itself is about 20 feet below where it historically was, from my super unscientific ‘look at the shoreline for a while’ method. The water is relatively clean, even on a holiday weekend, and all of the other people there were fairly chill.
Most of the weekend, I shot with the Mamiya RB67, a mammoth film camera that’s older than I am. I seem to have gotten the hang of shooting with it. We’ll see when I pick up the exposed film on Friday. But the last evening, after we’d gone back to camp and had a colossal dinner, we ran back over to the beach (really just a lot of clay, no sand) to watch the sunset. That’s when I took most of these photos, excepting the first and last. It was the first time in quite a long time that I’ve felt that good taking pictures.
The image of the buttes was from the road on the way to the beach at sunset, and the stars were a couple hours after, propping my camera up on the ground with my binoculars. The skies at night were just incredible. I woke up at 4am on the first night, and after my trip to the bushes was done, I’m pretty sure I could see Andromeda without binoculars. Might be worth a winter trip, when the haze will be lower and not as hot during the day.
Posted on 2016-07-07T04:45:56Z GMT
So, on the way to camping, Sophie and I came upon a large traffic snare. Instead of just sitting there in the jam, google maps directed us to take some side roads, a thing that it’s done in the past when I’ve hit this sort of traffic. The detours are usually interesting, at least, a break from the monotony of the interstate.
Anyway, we get off of I-5 and onto some side road, then the access road, then another side road, then through a neighborhood, in a shortcut that no sane person would ever attempt. After all that, we hit a two lane county road that was to take us back to the highway, where I tweeted: “In a traffic jam on a secondary road caused by Google maps. AMA” A bunch of other people, it seemed, had gmaps on in the car to get them north. At this one crossroads, we all hit the same stop sign. Even with that, we all saved 20 minutes over the traffic jam.
Which didn’t really mean anything, by the time we got to our campsite. We still had hours of daylight left. Easiest time setting up I’ve had in a while, since most of the time we leave after work, get stuck in traffic, and get to where we’re going sometime between 10pm and midnight. We even had time to cook a nice dinner.
Posted on 2016-07-06T02:05:44Z GMT
