9.29.2005

too much pop genius!

Nah, not really.
I was fooling around with the guitar thinking "hey! I will come up with come kickass riffs!". But instead all I really did was just hack out a lot of pop-rock junk that I'm not terribly interested in right now. Seems that's what my hands want to play, though. Maybe I'm nobody to argue but right now I'm just not feeling it.
Later on after dinner I'm going to take a crack and creating some INSANE FOR JUSTICE stuff so we'll see how that goes. I still haven't come up with a better phrase for that project yet. Even if I discard it this will allow me to fool around with incorporating text, and a QXZ tag and probably the "word" ISOTA into the thing one way or another. This is all assuming I don't get distracted by TV or a movie or video games or whatnot. You've really gotta watch out for the whatnot.
Flickr upload limit has thus far prevented me from posting kid-playing-in-fountain pix so I guess that'll have to wait 'til after the first of October.

9.27.2005

gotta get back in time

I wound up going with Manhattan Color Labs to do my processing and scanning 'cause I walked down the wrong street and wound up on their front doorstep rather than Adorama's. Their "high resolution" scan turned out to be only 400dpi, but that's okay for current purposes (i.e. none).
Some of the shots I got of kids playing in a fountain with late-afternoon backlight are pretty nice and can be nicer with some judicious cropping. Most of the shots from under the Hell Gate Bridge viaduct are crap; I think I was too distracted by my annoyance at finding kids playing there to frame anything interestingly. The quickie digital camera shot I grabbed and posted to flickr (and the first post in this BLOG) is actually better than any of the stuff I shot with the SLR. Hopefully I can get back there sometime soon before that tree loses its leaves and shoot it properly.
The Mystery Roll turned out to be photographs from my excursion into Manhattan on 9/12/01. The roll was pretty spoiled by heat after sitting around my house for four years but some of the images are salvageable. I'll put the good ones up on flickr tonight.
Work today was boring; put together a "tribute" video for the guy who used to run the Macy's Parade Studio for some award that Macy's is giving him. It was basically randomly chosen and placed still images and some video clips all set to "If I Had A Hammer" as sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. Not great. Also continued work on this graphic design project for Yves Saint Laurent that I somehow got assigned to do. It's basically layout stuff, putting together catalog-style pages with images and text. Not my usual thing, but for some reason the bossman wanted me to do it. Maybe I'll keep one or two of the images in case I want a design/layout portfolio. Not that my work on this is particularly impressive.
In other work-related activity the assistant producer on our Lead Paint Abatement video that we're doing for the city has been madly logging footage. The best characterization of the footage I've seen so far is "probably useable", though a lot of the sound is distorted and the producer is a pretty awkward interviewer.
Nothing will get done on personal projects tonight, but hopefully I can pick it up again on Thursday. I'm considering using the phrase "INSANE FOR JUSTICE" on the first wave of Black & Brown imagery, but that's just something that popped into my head the other day relevant to something I was watching on TV so it doesn't feel like a winner yet.

9.26.2005

moving right along

"London Rockumentary" start is delayed a bit while Katie moves from one apartment to another. Fine with me; I've got the Monday tireds and it's not like there's a deadline on this project.
I'll be taking some rolls of film (remember film?) to Adorama for processing and scanning. Prints can suck it. I still like shooting film. Although, if I could afford one of those sweet 12 megapixel (or whatever) digital SLRs I'd probably do it. It's not so much the film stock, really, as it is the vastly vastly superior lenses on SLRs and the fine exposure control. All my digital photography right now is with a mediocre little Nikon Coolpix 880, so it's more or less snapshots. I'm not even sure what's on at least half of one of these rolls so it'll be an adventure.
Today's jobs at work included putting together a reel of B-roll footage for National CineMedia and their recent Bon Jovi on the Big Screen simulcast, and removing a dude's ex-girlfriend from a video of him skydiving.

launch


I seem to be beginning a few projects now that autumn is coming upon us.
The Black and Brown Trading Stamps have arrived, so there should be James Brown-related goodness happening once I find someone to print four-color vinyl stickers for me at a price I can afford. I may start out with a simpler black and white image to keep costs down, but part of what I love about this imagery is the color palette.
Recently acquired iLife '05, so Garageband is now in my toolkit. This weekend I examined the possibility of taking Seize Them! rehearsal jam tapes and capturing the bits and riffs I like into Garageband and editing them that way to create songs the band can learn. I can also have some fun with my drum machine (an Alesis SR16 that hardly ever sees use) and some samples to create what the kids these days are calling "phat beats".
Re-started my photography by finally going and shooting underneath the Hell Gate Bridge in Astoria Park. A bunch of kids were out playing a baseball-derived game in the area I wanted to shoot, so I really only got one or two "stark" shots like I wanted.
Tomorrow I start viewing footage with my ex-Multivision coworker Katie for her London rock documentary. Finally I can get back into cutting something real.