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Sunday, June 10, 2007

In Case You Didn't Notice

I know it's been almost two months since my last official post, but it's not like I haven't been updating stuff on this site. Take a look over on the right there. It's a little messier than it was before, but now you can get to my (our) crap with fewer clicks.

The photo thumbnails show the most recent two additions to our flickr photostream. Chris and I share a flickr account, so if there's ever any question about whose photos you're looking at, ask yourself, please, does Kirsten care that much about the secret codes stamped on the bottoms of plastic Japanese toys? (Break here for five minutes as Chris explains to me the meaning of the secret etchings.) Chris also takes a lot of pictures around the neighborhood, especially the construction site across the street. My photo sessions are more sporadic but often much longer. I'm ususally not that inspired to take photos unless I'm in a new place, which does't happen as often as I'd like.

I also have 9 silent super8 reels posted to my veoh profile, now easily accessible through the embedded player over to the right. Just hit the big play button in the middle there. Again, there's no sound so don't freak out. Over the next couple months, I'll probably update some of the reels with sound. I made a half-hearted plea for music and sound from some of my musician friends and managed to get one disk, after several reminders, from my friend, Ryan, who is now hiking the Appalachian Trail. If any of the rest of you are reading this, I could still use some material. Bill? You're usually good for some weird noises. Light on the Indonesian pop samples please. They hurt my ears.

I've also added some links to photos and blogs. In the photo section, I've decided to branch away from flickr a little. I love flickr. Don't get me wrong. Flickr is part of the reason I've taken a more focused interest in other people's photography. I've probably spent more money on photo books and subscriptions in the past 6-8 months than I ever have, thanks to flickr. It's counterintuitive in this age of free sharing of content on the internet, yes? I require a lot of visual stimulation. I also need not look at a computer screen for hours on end every single damn day. Books and magazines are a good solution for this.

That said, I DO spend hours in front of a computer every single damn day, so I have a couple non-flickr spots I go to. I love the photos on Brooklyn Vegan. I don't usually read the posts unless the photo grabs me (or there's free music linked for download). I also check Nick Zinner's photo blog, Eye Against Eye regularly. He's always travelled and always taken pictures, so I'm sure he's got a great archive stored up to choose from. Hard to say when or what he'll post next.

Thanks to my recent Aperture subscription, I keep up with the Exposures blog, mostly because I really love Bert Teunissen's photos of people in their own houses. It's refreshing to read about a more academic perspective on the creative process of photography when faced with the flood of photoshop trash and personal work (to put it nicely) on the web. We'll see how long it holds my interest. If I have no personal connection with a thing, it's unlikely it will keep my attention.

With that in mind, the site I check almost daily is Swampfoot, Ryan's Appalachian Trail blog. He's hiking the full 2100+ miles and managing to keep his family and friends all entertained at the same time. This is a total vicarious pleasure for me. I'm actually pretty good at using my imagination to put myself in different places, but it's different when I have a focused target. It's also fun to see all the people encouraging him and actually participating in the comments.

From a more theoretical perspective (sorry, this is what I do for a living), it's interesting to see how well used and read (I assume) his blog is since he had a ready-made, enthusiastic, and supportive community anxiously awaiting his first posts. Some people use the internet because they don't have much in the way of real world personal connections, but some use it to maintain relationships when they're physically disconnected. (Of course, Ryan would be a better case for this if he knew how to return an email once in a while.) I also often argue that people blog and participate on particular sites and forums due to their own narcisism - their need to be published and heard. I'm not sure that this was Ryan's motivation (but I may be giving him too much credit). Seems to me he did it because he knew everyone would want to follow along with him, and he also wanted to keep a personal record of his adventure. Me? I'd be keeping a written journal full of self-indulgent whining about how much my legs hurt or how much I missed the people I'd left behind. Perhaps in this case, a blog helps mitigate the amount of random rambling one might otherwise record, but it might not be quite as personal as one would like. I don't know how honest I'd be able to be about particularly euphoric or depressing experiences I might have. Maybe that's why I don't update my own blog very often...nor do I publicize it. What's up with that?

Labels: other people's blogs, photography