shuttering

oh, and another thing ...

almost forgot ... BIG NEWS! my friend lindsay here at the j-school is a goddess. last thursday, she dragged me out of bed at 5 o'clock in the morning (after i had been at the kaimin until 2), stuffed me in her malibu (so tiny after herri!), and made me drive most of the way to vancouver (who am i kidding? i love to drive) where we attended a SNOW PATROL CONCERT.
i admit wholeheartedly to being only a casual fan of theirs prior to seeing them live. but after their song "run" made me actually weep in public, i must call myself obsessed everafter. have been listening to nothing but them and their opening act, augustana (also so very very good!) since we got back from vancouver friday evening.
gah. great show, great music, great trip. had an absolute ball with lindsay -- and i hope she can say the same about me. :) you learn so much about people when you travel with them. i was originally drawn to lindsay because she's from minnesota and sounds just like all my cousins, even shares their sense of humor. but the more we hang out, the cooler she gets. and she got some brilliant shots of the show (she won a press pass, the lucky duck), which can be seen on her flickr site ... hopefully she won't mind me pimping her shots ... :)
aaaannndd ... that photo blog i've been threatening to launch is gathering itself for flight ... pun intended, since it will be called "Bird by Bird." it will be linked from this page, and i'll do a post once it's all ready to go. there will be quite a bit of backposted images, if i can figure all that out, so be sure to explore ...

CPOY time again ...

this time last year, i was paging through my portfolio (read: entire body of work, which at last count filled ten 2" three ring binders with negatives and slides and about fifty cds), desperately wondering what would qualify me to enter the college photographer of the year contest. what had i shot in the first seven years of being a photographer that would distinguish me from the hordes of photo students at the big east schools and the well endowed shooters at the brooks institute?
it's crazy how different this year feels. i like the process that this contest forces me to undertake -- a thorough perusal of all the images i've captured in the last year of shooting. i like seeing how i've changed as a photographer, the broadening range of subject matter that has accumulated in my portfolio. i like being able to look back at what i considered my best image when i graduated from high school ...

... and compare it to my best image from four years ago ...

... to my best image from last year ...

... to a shot i took last weekend that is a pretty good summation of what i like best about my style ...

it's so weird, looking at those images and remembering the first two and how they swam up out of the developer, stop bath and fix, and then to look at the last, which just popped up on the file browser of photoshop cs. this last year of work has changed me from an alchemist, surrounded by the stinking fumes of fixer, into a god -- able to change a stormy sky to blue with a few simple clicks of the mouse (not that i would ever do that. EVER. heh).
sorry to seem if i'm tooting my own horn. i just really like where i am right now, how my shooting has changed and developed. i think i'm a very confident photographer, a very resourceful one. if you look back through the four pics posted above, i think there is a common feel to them. but whereas the early shots are very calm, almost staid and unobtrusive, unimposing, the latter are much more kinetic. i think this past year and a half, which has seen me finally get my head screwed on straight and seen me become more comfortable in my own skin, in my place in this school among these other shooters, in my adult life, has expressed itself in my photography.
bah. enough procrastinating. wish me luck in cpoy.

indulging my inner slacker ...

*blows dust off blog* whew. where have i been? where has this bloody summer gone? we're already a month into it and i. have. done. nothing.
that isn't entirely true. i survived girls state, though that was a close call, saw my baby sister all graduated from college and moved up to her first real job in whitefish, went home to see the folks for a few days ... and mark and i spent half a week up in augusta with tk and mhca shooting and writing a story ... keep an eye out for it over on new west ... should be up by the end of next week. that story is something i am immensely proud of, and i hope mark will be too once he gets back from alaska and sees what i did with it.
so yeah. will post something more coherent at a later date. will probably also be looking at doing a redesign shortly, and maybe even getting around to building that damn photoblog i've wanted to get up here too ... am just too tired tonight and need to go put something other than sugar in my stomach.

ongoing obsession: photoblogs

so not very many days go by for me without clocking in at bloglines to check on noah or durham township or daily dose of imagery ... yesterday and the posted finalists of the 2006 photobloggies awards have served up several new sites full of yummy photography:

no traces
travis ruse
joe's nyc
mylalaland
julian roumagnac
the narrative
making happy
jinky art
never happen
shutterbug
spudooli
the boudist
cloudy bright (some parts require quicktime)
boogie
martin fuchs
beat experience
istoica
outafocus

most of these are on my feedreader (in the lefthand column of this site) ... those that bloglines could find, anyways .... i only explored the english speaking ones because i am a chickenshit. if you are feeling braver than me, go check out all the nominees at the photobloggies 2006 homepage.

now i'm really going to go do homework. i promise.

PowWow pitchas

So i'm on a pitcha kick ...
Some of my favorites from this weekend's Kyi-Yo PowWow...

Ultimate Frisbee Pitchas

Dear Club Ultimate team:
Here's the best of what I got this afternoon. Thanks for letting me get some shots! :)

the return of noah

so the writer of one of the most beautiful blogs i've ever seen has finally returned from his moving-to-dublin-induced hiatus! breaking out the happy dance ... :)
he had some gorgeous photographs here (click back three times, s'il te plait), and a link to possibly the funniest thing i've ever seen.
and this is lovely and makes me wish for a rainy day and hours to spend with my new zealand journals ...

You may have to look a little deeper for it these days, though, but I think the “real Dublin” is still very much there — aside from all the sights and monuments that every non-Irish person associates with Ireland (many of which, I suspect, exist more nowadays for other imports like me, than for anyone born and raised here) — but here, in the old alleys between the busy main streets, in the cracks between the cobblestones, in the twisting trees of St Stephen’s Green, in the soft salty roar of the “cold mad feary father,” in the freckled milk faces of the old and young, in the smells and the weary winks of Moore Street, in the bitter sinking heft of a pint of Guinness, in the way of both welcoming and questioning someone at the same time, in the sarcasm and in the quality of its silences, in every curse and shout as much as in every cloud parting over the perfect green hillsides of the Wicklow Mountains — I think the true stubborn and sublime spirit of Ireland endures, too deeply for any amount of American “cleansing” to scrub out so easily.

snooping through photoblogs all afternoon has me itching to start one of my own. i've set up a domain name and everything already, i just don't have any of the design work or the flag made yet. and i don't know how likely i am to take a shot every single day worth posting, either. maybe this summer that will change ...

heh, especially since I WILL BE INTERNING at new west with mark this summer.

ETA: they are playing baseball in the basement of the journalism building with a yardstick(the bat), the top of a desk that was stolen from the media law classroom (home plate), and a roll of toilet paper that keeps coming unravelled (the ball). have i mentioned lately that i love my life?

Attn Morgan:

Morgan --

Ok, to make your life a little easier, I'm going to put up a temporary home for all of my miscellaneous evidence of forestry and woodsman related insanity. Give me a week or two to get everything up, I think I've got a bit of neg scanning to do. But I figured this way would be easiest for you -- that way, you don't have to dig through my portfolio pictures. The pics in here are kind of just the creme de la creme, not EVERYTHING I have, so if there's somebody you want a picture of and don't see here, just email me or post a comment on this blog.

Please note: The more organized albums (like Winter Olympics 2006, Forester's Ball 2006, Forester's Ball 2005) will still be up independently and the images inside them WILL NOT be transferred to the new Forestry album.

heh. funny.

found this site while trolling through montana blogs the other day ... made me crack up in the lab and get weird looks. but i'm always doing that. i think my classmates are used to it by now. :)

After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form, called a "gripe sheet," which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The Mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then Pilots review the "gripe sheets" before the next flight.

Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' Pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute
descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

And the best one for last..................

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget
pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

california pics

a few "mistakes" from the california trip ... i like them (don't mock) because they're very viggo-esque. in other viggo-related news, watched "a history of violence" this past week. twice. wow. that man is just ... an artist.