Where We're From, The Birds Sing A Pretty Song

Subtitled: Emo Bird Is Emo



Today, sharing images with you brings me no joy, and I think my dead-bird friend here kind of says it all.

I'm getting audited and as much as I'd like to play it off as another life experience, it's a very lonely feeling right now, especially since they're asking for info from 2005 which I don't really have in any sort of complete form, and there's a big chunk of change that they're curious about that I have no documentation on AT ALL. I certainly won't have it by Monday (which is Opening Day, the first day of Spring). The numbers that we're talking about in terms of money are sort of nebulous to me and I have no cotton-pickin' idea why they'd want to audit me to begin with, short of 2005 being the first year I actually rose above the poverty line.

I've been asked by my friends, who are fearful of the same thing happening to them, to take good notes ... So in short terms, let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: keep EVERYTHING. One of my head-slapping moments was realizing that I had shredded 2005's phone bills literally 12 hours before the audit summons arrived in the mail. That said, they say to keep this sort of shit for 7 years. There isn't that much space in my universe.

Unhappiness Is An Invented Thing

Dominique



Dear Dom,

So sorry. You've become one of my favorite people to photograph. I should have warned you that this might happen.

--RG

Far Away, Where We Might Laugh Again

I'm going to experiment again with product distribution and limit posting more of these until the one before reaches 50 Flickr hits. In previous instances I had spammed the sweetholyfuck out of some of the groups (10-15 at a time, or as many as they would allow) and it seems to have limited exposure -- once they drop off the facing page, the less likely they are to be viewed, etc.. The next experiment will involve dropping one onto Flickr with a route back to this site where I host the rest of the group exclusively.

VOTING CLOSED, VICTORY DECLARED

For those of you who would claim to have lost faith in the democratic system, please hold the results of Richard's First Vote close to heart as an example of the virgin-pure system this country holds dear. As I collect a steady trickle of images to shower upon you as one collects rain in a cistern to drink in the summer, please take the time to consider this token of my appreciation,



A new car!

I Made You A Diptych In Exchange For Your Wisdom

I made you a diptych to match your other diptych and your triptych. it is entitled, "Been Too Long Since I Seen Your Shadow." It echoes the timelessness of loss.



In exchange, I ask you to leave a comment below voting with a number "1" or a number "2." Number "1" says that you would like to see me drop a bomb of new Polaroids on your ass. A number "2" says that I shouldn't bother. A majority of 11 votes will determine the outcome of this experiment. This is a very serious vote. The vote may be called off before the maximum of 11 should a majority be reached.

I've Been Holding Out On You

So the gallery that was my one best (easiest) shot at a show was passively interested, so for the time being the fate of the Museum Project (lame working title) is in my hands... and I don't know what that means. I have a good 40 or 50 photos laying around that I was withholding for exclusivity's sake, holding off Flickr and the Daddy Site until I got word back and now that I have the word I have, I'm sort of torn as to whether I should unleash them all or not. An alternative to a show involves self-publishing, which is something I have a similar level of advising-access, but also a similar limit to help that that implies.

There is no conclusion to this thought at present.

Bringing a Camera to Knife Fight, 3/17/07

I finally got around to seeing Knife Fight live after many years of broken promises and late-night cancellations due to late night calls for work the next day. They played Union Hall (no link, see previous entry) which I had been to in a drunk capacity, but not in a music show capacity and I can't say that I enjoyed it (the venue; Knife Fight is AWESOME) -- too-low lights caked in red and blue gells making white-balancing a motherfucker to figure out. I did get to fiddle around with remote flash placement, an example seen here,



The flash was propped up haphazardly on the stacks, and I might try it again with two next time, but it'll depend on the venue. There were also low-hanging speedrails that I could have mounted a unit on if I had packed a maffer or similar. Something to think about carrying around in the future. More on Flickr

My life is about to get heavier. As per multiple friends, I'm going for the 5D. As per examples of the quality of the ASA at 3200 posted on Flickr, it's really a no-brainer.

Flickr, Judgement, and Taste

So I currently have three pictures kicking around the Flickr "Judge Me" groups, trying to glean some sort of information about taste and what is and isn't visually interesting to people, and maybe find something broader about the level of Flickr in general. I am also fishing for compliments. This is also bad science of small sample size. I chose images that I was not particularly fond of, but some people seemed to enjoy; They had a goodly number of views to start.

This is the first one I entered in the Score Me! group, and you can see from the comments and grades that there's a sharp curve between initial thoughts and those that come after (scores run 8, 7.5, 6 and 5 in that order). There was then a comment suggesting that I post this image on the Ultimate Score Me group, which I did. Aside from the clunky posting code that requires multiple cuts and pastes, the "Of 5" scoring scale means the difference between an American School "B" grade and "D" grade photo is one point. Scores for this group run 3 (D), 3 (D), 3 (D), 4 (B), 5 (A) in order. Wither the outliers?



I entered this in because it was old, and was obviously black and white and obviously off-centered and inelegant... I thought it was graphically interesting more than anything. Two of the comments mentioned the framing being off-putting (4/10 and 6/10), one claimed it 'doesn't do anything for' him (3/10), one didn't know what to think of it at all (5.5/10). There was one additional vote with no comment of 3/10. So my initial thoughts are numerically confirmed by outsiders.



My polaroids are popular. I know this, thank you. Mr. Sea Lion was in the 8's all the way down (8.5, 8, 8, 8, 8) and is probably the most pretty of the three, and the most obvious at the same time. Some of the limits of this series are:

1) The fixed minimum distance from the subject (there's a glass window, obviously).

2) The nature of the film (which sometimes forces me to work at the fixed minimum distance to get acceptable results).

3) The fixed focal length of the lens (Holga, yo).

4) The staging of the subject (the Museum is designed to provide maximum viewage of a static object).

These all add up to images that are essentially portraits and a portrait is classically considered to be an image representative of the subject, and the result can be a little didactic. Understanding the American School scale of A through F, we can say that 5/5 people found this picture a "B", and in my logic, effectively representative of the thing that it is.



My next thoughts lie with the viewers themselves, and this is where things get tricky in a Glass House + Stones way. Some pissy comments on the group pages point out the people who seem to cut 'n' paste their scores straight across, the people who seem to score out of perceived meanness or revenge, and the people who are angry that they got an honest score and thought more highly of themselves than they should have.

The first two sets of comments are correct in their anger, the last is not, obviously -- you don't just throw pictures out there figuring that everyone to love them. But what can be determined is your audience. The people that offer the highest scores to a given picture tent to have favorited similar styles of picture and the converse is true as well.

Apropos of nothing, and certainly not a conclusion:

Some observations include the caste system within Flickr itself: the most popular kids are traditionally pretty (landscapes, well-timed portraits, people who post their model tests and etc), the arty kids have their own little group (the people doing stuff with polaroids or x-processing tend to have the same postings to the same groups and the same taste in subject mater) and there's a whole bunch of people who just want to see pictures of babies and their friends (or their dogs).

These Are (Still) Powers

So got the film back after switching labs, and I'm disappointed with the results. Poor scan quality (looking at the negatives there's clearly more information there), and some of them had hypo-stains drooled all over them. To be fair, the little man behind the counter said they would be low res scans... but still a capital "M," Major, captial "B," Bummer. So the side-by-side comparisons might not be too worthwhile. Project abandoned.

I wonder though, what they process B&W with because I remember getting very nice, soft results with Ye Old Art School Standby D-76.



We'll try again this week with some Ilford ASA 3200 when Knife Fight plays Union Hall on Saturday night. No hyperlink to Union Hall. If you don't know where it is then...

Archiving

A couple of oldies while I wait for the Powers film to come back:





I was scanning some negatives and trolling through my archives (which is no small task considering how poorly organized they are) and happened across these two. I have the second one framed in my apartment, and the other I always meant to, but never got around to it.

I took these in 2002, I think, and never printed them myself in any form, so any sort of work I did with them at the time was limited to the quick prints from the lab. These are about as sentimental as I get when it comes to photography (see previous discussion here) and about as sentimental as I get about California and Santa Barbara in general. My pithy comment is always that Santa Barbara and I have "...reconciled [our] relationship" and I guess that's more true than not.

A side note: For whatever reason I didn't notice the biker riding away in the 'Jesus y Selena' picture until 2005 -- or three years after I took it. Sometimes you can see, but you may not observe.

Those Are Not Powers; These Are Powers

More from your new favorite band: These Are Powers at Tonic on 3/8/07. I should be able to do some nice side-by-sides once the film portion comes back from Duggal (I switched labs after Baboo fucked up again).



Most exciting was a successful Gordon Parks moment:



I was looking for an example of the zoom 'n' shoot that he did to link to, but I couldn't find one. Oh well. More of these on Flickr.

Ironic Photos of Monticello New York Kennel Club Dog Show, Secaucus, NJ, 2007

This is another series that came about from a work situation, and the pictures I took might hint at my frame of mind more so than I'd like to make public. I speak of course about my great dislike of most people and fondness for animals, who are of course innocents in all of the nonsense of this world. And at the dog show, both my likes and dislikes collided in spectacular fashion.

There's a Bresson quote about a connection that needs to be made between "...the eye and the heart" and while it may be true, the question is what I see in my heart when I take something like this:



Bresson and Avedon and Penn and Edward Steichen and all the other great photographers had and have a great fondness for the people of this world and the connection to their place in it is what made and makes them great. My distrust and distaste for people shows through, I think, and I wonder if it holds me back creatively. Suze (see previous entry here), in one of her finer moments said that I can't take pretty pictures of people, that I took 'warts 'n' all' pictures and that my inability to do an unselfconciously flattering portrait was a great talent that I should embrace. It's all well and good, I suppouse, to be gifted (if true) with a predisposition to recognizing ugliness or some God-awful truth about humanity, but it doesn't really sell. Even Natchwey sees something beautiful in the struggle. I don't know if I do.

And back to my previous thoughts about the Flickr web-hit flow of traffic. Assume for a minute that I take unflattering pictures as a rule and that someday I am great at it -- I wonder if someone will see these pictures, and know a person in them and understand that I take unflattering pictures. Or if they'll see them, and ask they be taken down because of it.

Obsession Leads to Compulsion

WHO



ARE



YOU?



Thoughts on marketing:

There's more of those on Flickr, of course. I had originally thought that the Flickr site would draw more hits to the Official Richard Gin Site and the Official Richard Gin Blog (I Fall To Pieces) and it has, to a point, but not in any sort of impressive way. I think it takes a certain kind of person/Flickrwonk to bother to check in the profile page to find the link here and I may have to re-think my posting strategy. In a way, I'm more interested to see who finds this site directly, rather than those who make the trip over from the Flickr halfway house.

All the same, I would like to extend a warm hello to visitors from the UAE and United Kingdom who have come here.

"Another Act of Cosmic Chance"

I made you a diptych. It hints at questions waiting to be answered.