1. I was home sick yesterday and made the mistake of finishing The Time Traveller's Wife. I seriously cried for like the last 150 pages, which did not help my already full sinuses. I loved it though, even if it was devastating, and I am SO adding Henry DeTamble to my Top 10 Most Snoggable Literary Characters, which is still in development. Because I have such a lousy memory for a book's details, I'm only up to four. It could be a while...
2. After I finished, I discovered Love and Rockets's "Haunted when the minutes drag," on itunes and spent the rest of the day listening to it on repeat, tripping down memory lane, and mopping my drips.
3. My blog has been getting double and triple the usual number of hits since that hot young celebrity was found dead. For the longest time (like 18 hours?) I couldn't figure out why I was getting so much traffic to a crappy photo I stole from somewhere else to illustrate a silly meme. It was the next morning before some of my blogger peeps shared the news.
4. I'm scared because Sugar D has to go away on business for four days in the same week that my parents will be out of the country. And my best/only friend to call in crisis is on the other side of the world. I know I'll be ok if Swee'pea sleeps reasonably well and goes to bed in decent time. But if he doesn't? I don't cope very well in those instances even when Sugar D is around to take over. But if he's not here, and I have no-one to call for company or a friendly voice, things could very ugly indeed.
5. I really want to win Best Photo/Art Blog now that I'm in the finals. Only a week to go before I will shut up about it already... (and, um, vote for me if you haven't?)
6. Yesterday I was scoping out some of the other categories of the Canadian Blog Awards and came across this post in the Best Blog Post category. It's gotten my vote, and I seriously recommend you read it and make your vote too if you haven't already.
7. I'm feeling more than a little disillusioned. I've been reading a few books about digital photography and photoshop and checking out various photographers online. It turns out that those portraits that are just gorgeous? They aren't candid shots of a person as the photographer found them. Often times good photographers art direct their shots. I seriously did not know this. I thought they just waited and shot at just the right moment. On the one hand I feel a bit deceived, but on the other, the photographers have also talked about getting to the know their subjects a little bit. I think back to the man in May with the crutches and how those are my favourite street portraits I've taken, and it occurs to me that perhaps I've been missing something. I think the next time I go out shooting in the streets, my goal will be not the random street shots taken a little bit on the sly but part of an interaction that starts with hello.
Hello 2024
10 months ago
21 comments:
"Haunted when the minutes drag" i love that song and must find it now...
Hey call me in the 'shwa! I'll answer at pretty well any hour! (seriously, I don't mind)
This is for when you feel happy again...
must go find. now.
I have to read The Time Traveller's Wife... I actually picked it up about six weeks ago secondhand for £1 because everyone was raving about it... Just need time!
And my blog has been getting 2-3x the number of hits for the same reason, my Heath Ledger post. Strange.
Oh, and I voted for you... good luck!
You could call me if you need someone to talk to next week.
I read The Time Traveller's Wife when I was so sick in the hospital, just to make it SUPER emotional. I should read it again now that I'm calmer.
Call me, Sin, and I'll sing for you from the Love and Rockets songbook if it'll make you feel better (now I'm going to have to go dig out that CD ... and the other one and then that Daniel Ash one and then David J and then back through Bauhaus. Oh damn. Now I'm off ..)
And the art direction? I always used to think it was more honest if I printed everything 'full frame' with the border around it, you know? But what about what the camera leaves out? The whole 'reality' thing is fraught.
The thought of a little girl time jumping NAKED into unknown circumstances because of a genetic mutation passed on by her -- admittedly fictional -- father, neutralized any affection I had for the character. Or the book. I am -- it is becoming apparent -- alone in this opinion.
That meme you linked to, was one of the first times I read your blog. I just loved that one.
Good luck with the blog battle! Hope you win.
I am reading The Time Traveler's Wife right now. I started it on Tuesday night and I'm about halfway through it. I cannot put it down.
Babe. I hear you on feeling betrayed, but even back in the old days when we developed film BY HAND...we still worked the photo a bit BY HAND. Now we just have tools that make it easier. :) I was learning about editing photos by hand in the 80s and was digitally altering them by the mid-90s. If I didn't have ethics, oh the before and after shots I should have sold...
Love and Rockets. Oh yeah.
Can we vote more than once?
Hang in there solo parenting. I'm in that boat right now. I know what you mean.
sometimes things can be art directed to death.
I still love spontaneous candid shots.
My husband is a professional photographer & I'm not. yet I take all the "photos" at home.
i love to just point & shoot-well....and let him do any photoshop that might make things looks just a little bit better.
good luck with the solo parenting...sure I'm you will be fine.
sometimes things can be art directed to death.
I still love spontaneous candid shots.
My husband is a professional photographer & I'm not. yet I take all the "photos" at home.
i love to just point & shoot-well....and let him do any photoshop that might make things looks just a little bit better.
good luck with the solo parenting...I'm sure you will be fine.
It's funny how you can completely forget about a band you used to dig. You just reminded me of my great affection for Love and Rockets, when I was a teenager.
I only live twenty minutes away from you. So, at the risk of sounding like a stalker, if you're having a rough time when your husband goes away, feel free to contact me. You could come over for coffee and advise me on which grouping of your photographs I should buy for above my fireplace! (Did I just make that all about me? Sorry.)
Thank you for the kind offers of sympathy... I may well take you up on them.
Mimi, I have totally accepted that photography is not reality and I'm fine with that... I also generally try to compose a good shot through the viewfinder and rarely crop - only if I was physically unable to get the shot I wanted.
I just never realized that many portraits, portraits that look candid and like the photographer just captured this amazing moment have often been staged with the photographer adding a veil specifically or moving the person away from where they first found them to a place with better light or more interesting background or whatever... I can't get past the feeling that it's cheating just a bit.
Julie, I've worked in the darkroom too, so I know how much manipulation goes on in the darkroom and I LOVE being able to do it with fewer waste prints in photoshop... I have absolutely no qualms about editing the shit out of a photo.
And you can only vote once in each category, but if you have access to more than one computer, I think you can vote on each one?
I hope that your solo parenting time goes well. I can commiserate, last time Josh was out of town, KayTar was up until a bit past midnight with me. Of course, I get incredibly freaked out at night when Josh is gone, so a little company isn't too bad. But by the time he gets back I am exhausted through and through.
I love, love, love Time Traveller's Wife.
I voted! I'm so rooting for you, friend...
I haven't read TTW yet but I have it on my list of reads for when I get a chance--maybe this summer?
Hope things are okay when you're going solo--you can always e-mail me with sleep woes if you need to!
Thanks so much for bringing my Best Blog Post entry to the attention of your readers! I appreciate that.
I liked the TTW up to a point, but never finished reading it. There were some things that were disturbing to me and to which the book seemed oblivious. One of them was what alpha dogma said, about the naked child leaping into the unknown. The other was the variable and occasionally creepy age gaps between the two married characters.
Everybody else I know loved the book though. Maybe I should try again.
Zoom, no thanks necessary... I thought it was the most deserving post.
And yes, I did struggle with some of that stuff in TTW but for me it was interestingly challenging; it made me question my moral assumptions... what would I do if I met my spouse as a child, and I was an adult and in love with him as an adult? I have no idea. He behaved perfectly properly with her as far as I could tell...
i like that idea -- to start with hello.
Oh, Time Traveler's Wife is one of my all-time favourite books! I read it in 2005 (it was the inspiration for my series of 10-pages-in book reviews) when I got it from the library, and recently bought myself a paperback copy just so I could re-read it again and again. Coincidentally, not that long ago I also bought from Amazon a copy of the She's Having a Baby soundtrack, on which the Love and Rockets song is featured. (My personal fave on that one is the Kate Bush song.)
Hang in there while your peeps are away, and you can always come online for support and to kvetch!
#7 seems so obvious after you read it but I had always thought that too.
I've voted as often as I could! I would have my fingers crossed for you if I weren't typing. You do top notch work.
On the subject of 'art directing' -- I've always though that this is legitimate. If you, the cameraman, move to better frame a shot, that's fine. So why is moving the subject any different? Do you know the story of how Karsh got that wonderful shot of Churchill glaring into the camera? Karsh snatched his cigar out of his hand, that's how.
I'm off to read Knitnut. Thanks for the tip. You are a talented person and also a generous one!
ps re: how to shower. My daughter showers in the morning by taking Little Stuff into the bathroom with her and giving her a snack and some toys. She has a glass door, so she can keep a soapy eye on the baby.
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