long overdue snow stories, part one

With the snow fast receding, I feel the urge to share two D.C. snow(insert-second-half-of-portmanteau-related-to-disaster) stories.

After the Saturday storm on Feb. 6th, she and I were suffering from a bit of cabin fever. I decided to take a walk to a park near Seven Corners. In the summertime, I spent a few afternoons at the park playing on the waterslides, reading in the sunshine and playing minigolf with various too much free time afflicted friends. After this storm, it was a considerably different landscape.



It doesn't look it, but the snow was nearly waist-deep in spots. It took quite a bit of effort to trudge through with my camera and tripod, but I did manage a few striking shots with the polarizing filter on my lens. This, however, is not my photo blog, and neither the point of this post.

As I was about to leave in a sweaty heap from the unfortunate lack of snowshoes, I saw two guys walking into the park with their snowboards. Curious, I tailed them to the lone hill in the park. These two clever guys had found a small, hidden gem to ride for distraction. I struck up a conversation with them. I quickly hurried home to get my board and join them.

My better half dropped me off on her way to the gym, and I got my first experience in riding fresh powder.

Not out west. In a county park. No lift ticket needed, but I had to earn every twenty second run with the hike back up.

Absolutely worth it, though.

amazing photography

A friend of mine from Gainesville is a professional photographer. Ever since she started posting photos online, I anxiously waited for the next installment. This is a multimedia project she worked on that's recently been posted on Vimeo and her company's website, Straw Hat Visuals. Go Gators!

Ok, so I thought I'd be able to embed the video to share. Guess not. The Vimeo link goes to the video. The company link goes to theirs.

saturday trip to the beauty shop

I haven't been posting here a whole lot lately. Most of what I've been doing has been behind the shutter. Not a whole lot more to report on that front besides share photos. Here's two of my grandma from this weekend. She hates the camera, but it's pretty easy to sneak a shot or two.

welsh food and weird art

Two summer traditions in D.C. were concurrently happening for the last two weeks or so. With the move, I didn't have much of a chance to get to either of them until this week. Well, I guess it was Friday. Hooray for federal holidays during the summer!

First off was the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Each year, the folks at the Smithsonian feature one foreign land and one American region. Last year, I took some pictures of the people and artists of Bhutan. This year featured Wales as the former and soul food as the latter. They highlight food, music, homes, clothing, and any other aspects of life that would be interesting enough to bring people from across the world to share with American tourists in tube socks and fanny packs. In any case, I was excited to try on my Welsh culture for a few hours.

Too bad. We got there a little bit late. Watching paint dry delayed our arrival and the only thing we got to do was try some world-famous Welsh cuisine. You've not heard of famous Welsh cuisine? You must be joking! I highly suggest getting out and finding some Welsh cheese. It's pretty tasty and all we've got to offer. It was a little warm to try the cawl, which is a tasty-looking stew with lamb and leeks and all manners of other vegetables. I think I'll find a recipe and make some in the winter, when it's rainy and more Wales-like around here.

Being disappointed by our late arrival, we headed off on the green line to Nationals Park for another summertime tradition: watching the Nats lose.

Who am I kidding? We can do that for the majority of their 81 home games. We were headed to Artomatic. In its ninth year, it is a random assortment of excellent or subpar art in all media. Nine floors of it in a recently constructed building. I found some inspiration in my photography, as in, I take better pictures than some of the "featured" artists. Maybe I'll try to get some work shown and sold sometime. That'd be pretty rad.

At least this year, I didn't see any naked men running around. That would've made our final stop a little harder to stomach. To round out the day/evening, we headed to a D.C. landmark called Ben's Chili Bowl. It's been an institution for over 50 years. You won't find health food here; but what you will find in abundance is a healthy dose of chili on burgers, fries, dogs, and half-smokes. Wash it all down with a thicker-than-concrete milkshake, and you're good to go. Expect a line, and bring cash. It's worth it.

what a week

Writing has trickled lately, huh? Cardboard haunted me for a good while before, during, and still after my simultaneous moves. I hate moving. Thankfully, next time around, it ought to be for a good long while. After that, it might pay to get movers to go from house to house whenever I get old.

Hmm. Something big to write about? My photos will be gracing the walls of our new apartment. I can't wait to get out and shoot some new stuff when my summer finally begins in stride. I'm not real sure when that will be. This picture of mine won a contest in one of the photo groups I've joined to challenge my creative eye. I've entered a few more shots for this month's contests. Post processing of photos is something new I'm trying. It fights with my purist spirit, but I'd rather take an average photo and turn it into something great than toss it and have wasted an opportunity. Shots like that one that are nearly perfect are hard to come by. I know Ansel Adams played with exposure in the darkroom when he developed his prints; digitally, this is my darkroom so to speak.

That's all. I'll try to be more exciting soon. Sorry, readers.

a night of amazing

I must expand upon what last night became. The weather up here has been less than perfect. As Tim put it, "We plan to climb or do other things when the weather's supposed to be good, and it's not. When we think the weather's going to be bad, we don't plan anything, and it turns out marvelous."

Or something like that. Anyhow, yesterday was one of those days. Forecasted rain all day long. Ruined my plans to ride my bike around the city and photosafari. Spent the day on a long overdue cleaning of the apartment. I must say, it looks pretty good. By the time I finished, the rain started. Go figure.

I'd wanted to go play with my new(ish) tripod and take some night shots of the monuments. With the rain, I didn't think that was going to be much fun. Turns out, the weather gods allowed me a little more freedom than originally expected.

First off, decided to go to Old Town. For you non-local readers, Old Town is a neighborhood in Alexandria. There's shops and food and bars and lots of people. If you make it as far as the waterfront, there's street performers and sidewalk musicians and boats and sketch artists of all stripes. It's generally a pretty good time in good weather.

So, the camera didn't mount right to the tripod shoe, so I left it in the car. Left me with a little more room for creativity on how to steady the camera for my pictures. I'm going to sort through them shortly. Look for them over on the photo blog this week. Successful shooting evening. I hope.

Amazing number one. I got to tour a pirate ship. Ok, so there wasn't a Jolly Roger flying on it's yard arms, nor was there an eye patch in sight, but I got to talk like a pirate for the rest of the evening. It wasn't even Talk Like a Pirate Day. Good times.

Amazing number two. It started pouring. Not so much fun, but we had to run for cover. A lot more fun in warm weather rain than cold. In the sheltered cove we found, there was a quartet called King Street Bluegrass playing, you guessed it, bluegrass music. Second song in, a little ditty by Old Crow Medicine Show. I take a few pictures of the crowd and the band. The fiddler asked me to email them to him whenever I get through them. Alright then!

Amazing number three & four. There's a little joint at the corner of King St. and Washington called Eamonn's Dublin Chipper. 'Twas a lovely night for a Guinness.

And a deep-fried Milky Way bar rolled in cinnamon sugar. It's a good thing that I don't live close to that place. I'd probably eat those far more often than the Surgeon General would advise. Which is to say more often than once. It was incredible. Kinda like the rest of the night.

Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show

la nostra famiglia

Trying to learn how to get good shots of people. Here's a few from my NYC weekend earlier this month. Whatcha think?

old film from an old camera

prior to my recent purchase of a dSLR, i'd dug out my Canon AE-1 35mm SLR. lo and behold, there was a half-shot roll of film waiting for me in the camera. curious, i went out to finish the roll so i could see when i started it. turns out it was six years ago, on a field trip, with my first class. the film had aged, but the prints look kind of cool. here's a few of the shots. enjoy!

a.k.a. i'm a nerd

museums are fun. there's a ton of them up here. she and i went museum hopping yesterday. we were on a mission to see two new exhibits. i guess that's what happens when you actually take in culture. you can pick and choose what you want to see. only want to see one exhibit at a museum? have at it. you ain't missing nothing.

so, museum number one. natural history. last year, checked out some of the permanent exhibits and a kids' photo competition. it was a lot of fun. probably more for the company than the rocks and minerals. this year, there was a new oceans exhibit that just opened. it. was. rad. there's a right whale hanging from the ceiling. there's a giant squid and a coelacanth. a reef tank with a skittles bag full of nemo's friends. excited kids running amok. on a whim, checked out the butterflies exhibit too. not nearly as big as the exhibits i've seen in chattanooga or in south florida, but it's small size meant that the hundreds of papillons were right in your face.

museum number two. american art. it's paired up with the portrait gallery, where we've previously seen the hip hop portraiture exhibit. there was a new ansel adams and georgia o'keefe exhibit. this makes two adams exhibits we've seen in the district. this one was really cool because of its juxtaposition with o'keefe's southwestern paintings. it was really awesome to see the pieces that clearly shared a subject. ansel's photography was less impressionistic that georgia's, but it was fairly obvious that the subjects were the same. as usual, i was fascinated by his work and fairly amazed that there were more shots of his that i'd not seen before.

it was nice not being harassed as locals in our day of touristing. perhaps it was the backpack and sneakers. perhaps it was the baguettes and cheese for a picnic lunch. perhaps it was asking real tourists to take goofy pictures of us on the mall. most of all, it may have been the only-a-tourist-will-wear-this t-shirts we bought at a kiosk in the ballston mall. i should do that more often!

fauxtography? oops!

yesterday, whilst i was trying to get my room situated and squared away, i was wasting time on the class computers, trying to differentiate them for the kids. what should i use for computer wallpaper? why, my photos, of course!

rather than have the URL in the address bar for them to see whenever they use the computer, i googled "fauxtography" to see if it would appear. (if you've been hiding under a rock lately, check out my pictures. the link is at right, "my foray into photography".) first result that came back was a definition from the urban slang dictionary. being inquisitive by nature, i checked it out to see what they had to say.

first definition of fauxtography:

Fraudulent photography. News images that have been faked by various means, generally to promote an ideological agenda or to manipulate the emotions of the viewer...The word was first used to describe the doctoring of photographs by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj during the Lebanon War of 2006, and has since been generalized to mean any dishonest or faked news photo.

Methods for creating “fauxtographs” include: using Photoshop (or similar software) to digitally alter the photo; photographing staged scenes or simulated news events and presenting them as real; interfering with or manipulating photo subjects to creat a “more effective” picture; adding inaccurate and/or misleading captions.

well, that certainly doesn't apply to mine, though the etymology is certainly where i came up with the idea, albeit two years after the word was coined. my photos are all natural, no doctoring necessary. the second definition was more concise, but pretty much the same idea of propaganda. let's see that final one:

the crappy pictures of the sky or dead plants that scene kids take with their digital cameras and call it a hobby. They say photography is their passion, but we all know it's really fauxtography.

ah, we're getting closer to the point. one, i'm not a scene kid, so that doesn't work. two, no pictures of the sky or dead plants. three, i know that my crappy digital camera doesn't produce amazing art. does being self aware of this make this definition fit more or less? too late to change the name of the phlog now. oh well. time to go find some dead plants or rainy skies or crying puppies or something else emo...

unexpected beauty

springtime around here has a wholly different aesthetic vibe than that down south. i don't know if i didn't notice them in florida or what, but it seems to me there are far more flowers in bloom up here in the springtime. the only way i noticed springtime in florida was the need to use air conditioning to avoid sweltering. i enjoyed the return of beach weather, for sure, but being so far from one here, i can't say i miss that. summertime comes, i'll be outside in the sunshine regardless, and it may even be more tolerable.

the flowers are eye-poppingly beautiful. tulips in vivid reds, pinks and oranges. daffodils in sunshine yellows. cherry blossoms in pure white. even the dandelions look amazing. coreopsis in florida, while varied in color and pretty hardy condidering what it puts up with can't quite compete with the flowers growing alongside the railroad tracks and in median strips. there's a few places i want to shutterbug, but for fear of bodily harm and mutilation by train or speeding commuter, i'll refrain.

wake up and smell the roses has a more visual aspect to it than i knew. sure, the fragrant blooms make themselves known as well, but their overpowering colors take the cake. keep an eye out for new photos when i figure out how to capture what i've composed in my head. those diamonds in the rough. the beautiful things i'm beginning to see in not-so-beautiful places. i kinda feel like ricky fitts from american beauty,

It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

tourist times in the new town

it's hard for me to believe sometimes that people actually want to come to the district on their vacations. i'm so far removed from the tourist culture of south florida that i forget people go on vacations and might randomly choose where i live. someday, i'll figure out how to avoid the maddening crowds when they do come. as yet, i'm not that lucky. a lot of my exploring, adventurous nature manifests in the very things that tourists want to see.

case in point numero uno. two and half years ago, a friend had an internship at a vet clinic in the district. i'm doing the legit tourist thing with his girlfriend while he's working. it's triple digits outside, even our floridian bodies were screaming for a/c. smithsonian museums are free, let's go there! air and space: comfortable, but crazily crowded. sidenote, woman wearing all black from head-to-toe passes out on steps in front of us. bad omen.

case in point numero dos through cien. weekend. nice weather. national mall. memorials. smithsonians. fuhgettaboutit!

today. previous cases in point. add cherry blossoms to the mix and ninety-nine out of a hundred of these tourists is ansel adams in disguise. [full disclosure: yes, i'm in that 99, but i was trying to avoid the cliche shots of out-of-focus monuments in the background with blossoms in the foreground and 27 unrecognizable people screwing up the shot.] makes me want to play hooky from work this week to go take picures. perhaps some day after work to try to get cool pictures with a sunset in the mix. i'm mildly disappointed with my addition the the glut of cherry blossom pictures that will soon be flooding the web. you'll see mine, but my camera's eye and mine don't often agree. an upgrade is needed.

faux-tography

realizing this weekend that i still like to take pictures, i decided to share more with people. i won't be cluttering my thoughts with pictures unless they help tell the story. i noticed i try to take artistic photos more and more these days, though it's a little harder to make my simple digital do what i want. less prolific in nature, more aesthetic as well. see the sidebar for the link for my foray into photography.

it's hard to spell i know, but sometimes a play on words takes a little work to do right.

i love a parade

reason number 482 i love this new city. people young and old turn out for cultural events. all races and creeds. i heard at least four different languages today, not counting english. i'm only counting chinese once, though i'm sure several dialects fell on my ears as well. beautiful kids being kids, throwing snap pops, playing tag...



gung hay fat choy, or xin nian yu kuai. peace, love, and prosperity in the new year.

100!

'twas a busy weekend. tour of the capitol, swing dancing, and tour of gunston hall. here's some pics from the whirlwind. enjoy!

photographology

she and i went to the corcoran gallery tonight. second attempt after sunday, rainy sunday. we'd only have had an hour on sunday because of the weather and such, and boy am i glad we decided to come back! one hour would not have been enough.

first on the palate: an exhibition on annie liebovitz. most know her for her celebrity portraits, but her career was much more prolific. she had more of a photojournalist tilt in some of her career, photographing sarajevo in the early 90s. she also had several projects involving dancers. i really enjoyed her shots of vegas showgirls in street clothes juxtaposed with them in their costumes for shows. some of the women, gorgeous anyways. some of the women, not so much! by far, the bulk of the prints on display were simple, everyday shots of the people close to her. the happy times spent with her parents and her niece at the beach. the wretchedly heartbreaking times in her partner's final days, fighting a losing battle to leukemia.

the last of the liebovitz shots that we saw were her landscapes of monument valley. they were markedly different in both size, clarity, and composure than anything that ansel adams produced. she noted the influence that adams had on her in that commissioned project, yet i saw very little similarity in the finished product.

two hours down, one hour 'til the gallery closed, we more or less raced through ansel adams prints. his early career and its soft focus shots had a more amateur quality to them. it was only when he got into his f/64 club era that his shots hit their prime, at least in my opinion. sweeping landscapes, microcosmic focus, architecture, trees. all in breathtaking detail as a result of the small aperture. it seems that my point-and-shoot digital style was influenced by adams more than i realize.

i can't wait to get a digital SLR someday and go nuts.