What the Bleep Do We Know?

[ljplicease]

Tyler and I ended up seeing What the Bleep Do We Know on the last day of my LA visit. It was rainy in the morning and so we missed out on a trip to the beach. This is an acceptable loss as I will be doing a lot of beaching while in Sydney.

The movie was good. It was a sort of documentary/narrative hybrid about the nature of the universe, and the practical implications for all of us. It had us discussing its ramifications afterward. There is a definite anti-organized religion bias in the film, which I think is compatible with both Tyler and my world views. Tyler and I rarely discuss politics, and like everyone, we do have our differences, but it does appear that we are fairly close in our position on the political spectrum (after veering rather sharply in one direction, I have come closer to the center). The one word I would use to describe the film would be “unique”, so you should definitely see it for the originality if for nothing else, but I expect that it will get you to discussing the film with whomever you go with, and that is often a good thing.

I was a camera geek, spotting that the main character in the narrative was using a Hassleblad. I so want one of those.

We bookended my visit with another trip to Jack. I figured I will only be going to Jack twice in the entire year; they may as well both be in the same (long) weekend. Tyler ordered exactly one taco, which we expected to cause a segmentation fault in the universal operating system and cause existence to collapse in on itself (the menu only allows for even number of tacos). I intentionally ordered a spicy crispy chicken even though they are now called Jack’s spicy chicken. In doing this I also failed to null out the universe. Where is a history eraser button when you need one?

It was time to go to the airport. Tyler dropped me off at terminal six and said “next we meet in New York” or something to that affect. I value Tyler’s friendship. A lot of what we do is talk about and relive the past. Despite this, this weekend has exemplified to me the huge potential for growth in our friendship. I think that we have this odd conglomerate of interests where we are not experts in each others fields (by any stretch of the imagination), but we are interested in the sorts of things that the other works on. We also both have an appreciation for the quality of materials and equipment.

I watched the sunrise over the pacific. It was beautiful. The moon was a thin sliver of a crescent and the morning star was shining bright as the horizon turned ablaze with the coming sun. I took a few pictures, but beauty like that cannot be captured on film anymore than you can capture wind in a bottle.

I am on the flight to Sydney right now that is figuratively [1] going to take 12 hours. I am trying to fill in some time by writing up my thoughts here. I just finished watching the end of I Robot without sound. I don’t think that I missed much. Basically there are these bad robots that have a red light and these good robots that are just blue. Will Smith shoots many of the red robots with guns of varying sizes.

---

[1] I am now intentionally misusing the word figuratively in order to counteract the effect of all those people who misuse the word literally. Tyler says that I will have to do this a lot before I will catch up.

Comments

[princeofsocks.livejournal.com]

in retrospect, i should have said:

[Sparkplug voice] "When next we meet...we are in New York!"

[plicease]

When next we meet... we are enemies!

Oh wait.

[hijinks-ensue.livejournal.com]

i think that last paragraph pretty much summarizes any will smith movie!!
i am giggling.

i'm glad your trip is progressing so pleasantly :-)

good luck with "figuratively"
senior webster is on crack:
(but, literally or figuratively?!??!?!?)

Main Entry: lit·er·al·ly
Pronunciation: 'li-t&-r&-lE, 'li-tr&-lE, 'li-t&r-lE
Function: adverb
1 : in a literal sense or manner : ACTUALLY
2 : in effect : VIRTUALLY

usage: Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

[plicease]

Totally on crack. What is the point of having an alternate definition of a word meaning the opposite of the primary meaning?

[onehundredways.livejournal.com]

oh, i have a hasselblad. it's red. i highly recommend the experience.

[plicease]

I’m jealous. You have excellent taste in cameras. I bet the red one is especially stylish. I had the opportunity to use one (black) in my lighting class last year. I am definitely going to get one when I can afford it. Just today I was in a gallery looking at an exhibit of portraits, and intermingled with some pretty blah stuff were these stunning prints which had obviously been made from 6x6cm negs. In the right hands, magic can be done with those cameras.

[onehundredways.livejournal.com]

granted, it's pretty much the base model since it's all i could afford. but i scored a free prism viewfinder. 6x6 is my second favorite format - first being 4x5, contact printed. nice.

[plicease]

4x5 sounds real nice, I haven’t had that experience yet. I’ve seen photographers in NYC lugging around medium format cameras from time to time. I am always amazed by how quickly they move about and take pictures with the size and complexity of the things. I guess when you use it all the time it becomes easier.

I think what I want to do is shoot E-6 in 6x6 and get R-Prints of the good ones.

[onehundredways.livejournal.com]

i love 4x5, but not on location. i'm apparently not adept enough at it to move around quickly. plus i take forever to get my exposure right and burn through $100 worth of polaroids in the process. i think a 4x5 will be my next big purchase. i just do mostly black and white with it and then contact the negatives to print triptychs.

e-6 kind of bugs me out, no latitude with exposure. i've shot a lot of e-6 6x6 but have never done anything with them besides scan.

[plicease]

You probably already figured out I meant large format there where I said medium format.

E-6 is fiddly. I would probably be more interested in black and white if I hadn’t lost darkroom access last year when I stopped taking classes and the lab monitors at school that I knew graduated. Don’t get me wrong though, I love black and white, but somehow, letting someone else develop and print my black and whites is just unacceptable now that I know how to do it myself; whereas it is difficult for a pro-lab to mess up a roll of E-6.

It also depends on your subject. I am in Australia right now and everything is so colorful and so bright that E-6 is a dream. What subjects are you photographing?

[onehundredways.livejournal.com]

it seems like i haven't been in a darkroom in forever, i've been working so digital lately. bleh.

everything here is shades of grey, so black and white works nicely.

subjects - i like decay. also, nauseatingly obsessed with self portraits. and lately, pictures of my friends.

[plicease]

I love pictures of decay, it reminds me of the days in which I had my friend drive me around New Jersey so that I could photograph industrial wasteland. This is good fodder for black and white. Have you ever seen any of Bernd and Hille Becher work? They have a series of black and white photographs at the MoMA in NYC which was fun (lots of good photography stuff in the new MoMA). Do you have your decay somewhere where I can see them?

Self portraits are easy in that you don't have to harang people to model for you.

[onehundredways.livejournal.com]

actually lately i've been pretty closed-minded and haven't looked at anyone else's work. i've never seen bernd/hille becher. i used to live in poughkeepsie and i would go into the city and to MoMA often but i havent been in several years now.

i used to drive around rochester/western ny in general since it's all rustbelt and fading, but then i realized that everyone and their grandmother was taking nearly the exact same photographs so i sort of lost interest, even though the landscape still strikes me. i don't have much available to look at, no digital gallery or anything, but i just made a post that regurgitates some of the photos i've posted in the past year or so. this is where i'd make excuses for poor quality but uh, really that's about as good as it's gotten lately.

and self portraits are difficult in that i'm always a stranger in them.