Posts tagged ‘Blue’

5th & Alley

5th & alley - West 5th & Congress, Austin

By happy coincidence this week’s theme at VXFY Photos is “City” and I spent yesterday morning wandering the streets of downtown Austin collecting images that easily fit that topic. This is one of them.

My intension is to get out into the city at least a couple of times a month until it get’s too hot to walk the streets in June. If – and it is a big if – I stick to the plan I will post all of the pictures in either the “City & People, 2012” or the “Singles and Short Series, 2012” galleries as I go.

Flu Shots, Post Boxes and A GF1

Post Boxes - Regal Arbor 8, Great Hills Trails & Research Blvd, Austin

The family piled into the mini van and headed to the doctor’s office for our annual flu shots on Saturday morning. I used to figure that flu shots were a waste of time until ten years back when I spent Christmas week laid up in bed while the vaccinated remainder of the household happily traded presents by the tree; I have not been so foolish as to skip my appointment since.

I took the Panasonic GF1 just in case an opportunity arose for making a photograph; the girls wanted to pick up a take away lunch from Firebowl Cafe on the way home so I had ten minutes in the parking lot. Now parking lots are one of my favorite places to be with a camera – like I said in my last post, I’m strange that way.

I am still a little surprised and delighted by the quality of the images that this small machine produces; it does not look especially serious but it is. The low resolution viewfinder leaves much to be desired but the output, with the 20mm pancake mounted, is detailed and crisp. The grid of squares in the example above would betray any hint of distortion from the lens; there’s nothing significant to be found. The auto focus can hunt some on low contrast subjects, but that’s easy enough to work around. And I have grown to love the extra composition real estate of the 4/3 aspect ratio; I am starting to prefer the world in that frame over the classic SLR 2/3 ratio. It is perhaps ironic that I chose a sample image that virtually self crops itself to 2/3 format with its foreground tarmac.

With 11th hour timing, Panasonic has at last acknowledged the enthusiast market and unveiled the GX1 as the true air to the GF1 throne. The GX1 is not a revolution in design but is a significant incremental refresh, starting from a strong foundation. It looks to be just what the doctor ordered despite the still separate viewfinder. The Sony NEX-7 is seductive; its ‘Tri-Navi” controls and integrated high-res OLED viewfinder are ground breaking in a compact however, on paper (web page), the GX1 offers enough improvement to retain my loyalty. Final decisions won’t be made until I actually get to look through the finder and see for myself if the 6x increase in EVF detail and faster focusing is sufficient but I am hopeful. I foresee my SLR bag being left behind for our trip back to the UK next summer; replaced by an REI fanny pack with room for two 4/3 bodies and three or four lenses; that will save my back in the airport.

I must admit to still being tempted by the Leica M9. I made the mistake of taking my M6 out of its storage place to ponder the question; handling it again did not help. I might just be able to afford the body and one lens. I only have Voigtlander 35mm and 15mm for the M6 and there is no point in spending $7,000 or more for a body and not putting Leica glass on the front, that glass is the point after all. There, that’s all I needed to do, write the numbers down – there is no way I can justify $9,000 on one camera and one lens. I am not speaking for everyone else here, I do understand the Leica effect all too well, but I just won’t make enough use of any camera to support an expense of that scale. There’s a school I know of in Guatemala that can put that kind of money to much better use. I can add a GX1 body and two lenses for the price of a Leica 50mm Summicron.

The GF1 Shines, And Doesn’t

Behind us, Arboretum, Austin

If I can escape from the house early enough, my favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning is to get to the nearby Starbucks or La Madeleine, before the crowds, to drink coffee and read without the threat of interruption from high school math or physics homework questions. Usually, I throw the Panasonic GF1 into the book bag so that I won’t regret a missed opportunity for a photograph.

We come to greet you, Arboretum, Austin

The surreal and sometimes sinister quality of store windows around the Arboretum area of Austin has long been a draw to me and this morning’s high contrast morning sun brought out a new twist in their potential for interpretation. It seemed as though the aliens from some 1950’s fanzine cover had been caught hiding in plain sight, observing the humans passing by from behind the glass.

Reach, Arboretum, Austin

The GF1 is both perfect and frustrating in these circumstances. Perfect for being small and at hand, frustrating for the lack of detail in the viewfinder – “is the mannequin’s foot in the frame or not?” It was hard to be sure. I was happy enough with the view finder when I first obtained the camera but now, in the knowledge that the state of the art in EVFs has moved rapidly and far forward, I am less forgiving. On the other hand, the image quality produced by the GF1 and 20mm lens is most satisfactory.

We stand ready, Arboretum, Austin

Blue Skirt and Quotations

Blue skirt in the rain

Those who cannot write quote someone who can say it better:

Paradoxically, photographers must also face the threat that their vision may one day be denied them. Their capacity to find their way to art, which is their consoloation – to see things whole – may fail for an hour or a month or forever because of fatigue or misjudgement or some shift in spirit that cannot be predicted or understood or even recognized until it has happened past correction.

Robert Adams, “Why People  Photograph”

Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?

John Gray,  “Straw Dogs”

Photography is not brain surgery, it’s fairly simple.

Elliott Erwitt, “Personal Best” (video)

Old Pecan Street Festival and Norah Jones

Tattoo In Blue Jeans

Sorry to disappoint, there’s no pictures of Norah Jones here but we did see her at Stubbs’ last night and a great show it was too. The photograph, taken this afternoon, is from this weekend’s Old Pecan Street Festival. Austinites have invented many justifications for a party and this twice a year, spring and fall, street art market is one of them.

I had only acquired Norah Jones latest album, “The Fall”, a few weeks ago in order to be up to date with her latest material before the gig on Saturday. From the album I knew that this was not to be the butter melting voice and lounge jazz pianist Norah Jones of “Come Away With Me” and “Feels Like Home”; sure the voice is still velvet smoke and the piano is still a major component but the new recordings are as much about guitar as piano and the keyboards are as likely to be electric as acoustic. Even with this preparation the live act was still a surprise; I did not expect a Norah Jones band to rattle my lungs against my ribs with drums and bass. And Ms Jones did not touch a key, ivory or plastic, until the fourth or fifth number. For those first tracks, four of the six piece band, including Jones, were on electric guitars (no bass) laid over drums and a Hammond style organ tone reminiscent of 70’s rock. On a couple of numbers, Sasha Dobson, whose vocals are too rich to be called “backup”, swapped her guitar for drum sticks to double up the percussion.

It was all still unmistakably Norah Jones, even when the band enthusiastically covered a Neil Young song, but she certainly doesn’t fit in the jazz lounge pigeon hole that some wanted to consign her to anymore. It’s hard to say what her sound is, but that is fitting for someone whose father sat cross legged on stage and introduced America to the sitar at the ’67 Monterey Pop Festival. Why would anyone expect Norah Jones to fit in a pigeon sized box.

A handful left during the announced final song to avoid the crush at the gates, a larger number left when the encore did not instantly materialize after a few seconds of clapping and yelling; and they all lost out big time. Taking advantage of the outdoor setting behind the southern two story porch restaurant building, the two final numbers were delivered as an unplugged quartet gathered around a single microphone on the cast iron staircase landing; forty feet deeper into and six feet above the heads of the audience. Now thats a memorable way to end a memorable evening.

The Fotomoto Experiment – Part 2

Happy Dog!

The results are in and they are good, very good; I am as happy as a dog on the beach! Three days after I placed my test order for a 12×18 print of “Edge of the Unconscious,” a gorgeous, high gloss, print arrived. The 5×7 card ordered at the same time, printed separately, is still in transit but it was always the 12×18 that mattered. [edit: the card arrived the next day, equally good but next time I will select a a white fill border.]

In my earlier Fotomoto Experiment – Part 1 post I incorrectly stated that delivery would be via UPS; my brain had dropped a letter somewhere between reading and writing as it was in fact shipped through USPS – the US Postal Service. Realizing my mistake, I had a brief but horrible vision of my local postal service worker bending the package into a U to fit the parcel box of our communal mailbox!

My fears were unwarrented; even Samson in a full head of hair would have had trouble bending this 18x24x1.5 reinforced cardboard box to fit in a mailbox! The packaging was very impressive and earned Fotomoto high marks before it was even opened. And anyway, the USPS delivers packages to the door in exactly the same way that UPS or Fed-Ex would.

I chose the Fotomoto’s “metallic” paper option since I had no idea what it was; I haven’t followed chemical printing technology in over 10 years. The dynamic range of the print is wonderful with rich blacks, subtle shadows and glistening highlights. Kodak claims 100 year plus stability for its Professional Endura Metallic paper which is as good as I can hope for from my aging Epson 2200 inkjet with archival papers.

My only dissapointment, and a small one at that, is that the print is borderless which is going to make matting a touch more awkward; I’ll have to mount it on paper first. Fotomoto staff have commented in their member support forums that they hope to offer an option for print borders down the line but it is not high on their immediate to do list.

The bottom line is the Fotomoto shopping cart is enabled on both this blog and the large web site that contains it. You can buy a 12×18 of the happy dog above for $45 plus shipping and the $26.75 profit will go to Save the Children or a related charity. I may be changing the charities around a little as this enterprise gets underway but Save the Children is a good choice to start off.