Possible location for the short film The Plan.

during

end

Interestingly, the exposure for the image on the left was an ordinary flash timing of 1/100 second @ f/14, whereas the image on the right was 13 seconds @ f/14. Because the light on the front of the mug was so insignificant in comparison to the flash, the subject is illuminated by the modelling lamps + the spot on the front of the mug.

before

after

Tellingly there are no Pop Psychology titles in the lot. DIY should not be confused with Self Help. I can't find a breakdown in the categories, but the Educational Book Publishing market in North America is worth something like $4-5 billion a year, most of that in secondary and university textbooks.

DIY is probably only a small fraction of that, but it seems I'm doing my part to keep publishers busy with new titles all the time. This work with "bright-field" strobe photography is from the inappropriately titled Light: Science & Magic - An Introduction to Photographic Lighting.

There's only so much abuse one can take. I gave it a chance, really. But she hung herself. Or me.

Who would have thought someone who could write seven Potter books, full of such imagination (and many explanations of what had happened) and whimsy, generating an immense fortune in the process, would compose such a leaden work as The Casual Vacancy? Rowling no doubt knows how to tell a story, but in it's telling here, it moves at an almost glacial pace, nearly in real time, amongst a large cast that it takes some time to sort out.

But once that's done, we're left to hear them drone on and on. They're a fairly boring lot for a 503 page novel, despite all the back stabbing and sneaking around in the bushes. With not a one of real interest, other than possibly 15 year old Krystal, a truant who lives with her heroine addicted mother in a trashed public housing apartment. Several of the male characters are such extreme examples of type -one a foul mouthed, abusive father; another a bleeding heart liberal despised by his own Raskolnikov like son - that they crash into absurdity, their puppet strings all too clearly visible. The women are small minded and always loyal to their men. The teens are grubby grifters who have nothing but sex on their minds.

After a while the pretty little borough of Pagford becomes a claustrophobic caldron. As it's meant to be. The residents may not have an option to leave. But I got the hell out, and bailed before the end of the line. Not a common experience, after investing 10+ hours. I've got to cut my losses though.

Alex Webb @ 2nd Street

Not sure that I will actually use this material if it becomes commercially available, but it's great to see that people are working on resurrecting - and improving - a film emulsion that's been gone for at least ten years. Best wishes to the New55 Film effort, who are developing an updated version of Polaroid 55 that fits in 4x5 film holders and can be used with view cameras. I shot a little of it when I first got my Sinar F2, but I know it was a favorite with many photographers because it would yield either an instant print or a wonderful b&w negative. The plan with the New55 is to have both.

Read more about it in a recent Washington Post article.

Canon 7D w/ Zeiss ZE 35mm; Red One w/ Red 35mm (no battery or viewfinder)

The Red One comes home for a visit.

A posthumously published (on April 14, 2011) collection of writing fragments that revolve around an assortment of characters who work at the Peoria, Illinois IRS Regional Examination Center, The Pale King is hardly a novel in any traditional sense. While there are recurring characters in multiple situations, D.F. Wallace was far from ready to release this material to the world. No doubt he would be aghast to find that we have it available in published form. Which is not to say that there is no enjoyment to be found in his writing. Far from it. Many of the pieces are astounding bits, hilarious, intense, descents into weird gibberish, maddeningly opaque, clever word pictures, but never boring. It is boredom in fact that the book is ostensibly about:

...I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy...

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and '85, two such men.

It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

 But don't be looking for a plot.

I haven't fallen, but I can get up.

Having too much fun with yet another Zeiss lens - the 35mm f/2 ZE - laying about in the sun after the bloody Briggs & Stratton 5 HP pull start engine wouldn't start.