The art of fame:
Paris Hilton as the Mona Lisa? Eugene Robinson thinks so. I thought that smirk looked a little familiar.
Photos are from my brush with greatness earlier this year.
June 08, 2007
April 16, 2007
Marathon 07
Last year I played the crowds along the sidewalk on Boylston Street. The year before that I looked down on the finish line. This year I went to Cleveland Circle and concentrated on the runners and wheelchair racers.
Although it was cold and wet, the sun was out for one runner, thanks to a friend.
March 17, 2007
Car window shot:
One more from the ride home yesterday.
Near the Vietnam War Memorial on Morrissey Blvd.
Snowstorms are not that unusual this late in the season. But there's something about post-daylight savings time snow that just seems wrong. Oh well, we have things like this to look forward to.
March 16, 2007
Daylight saving storm:
Friday night was the worst commute ever. Two and a half hours from Roxbury to Quincy. I took some photos I took on the way.
Outbound, nothing's moving.
Making snowballs on the windowsill in South Boston.
The wind was whipping the snow at Wollaston Beach.
Visibility was poor along the beach.
It was also pretty blustery by the water at Malibu Beach along Morrisey Boulevard.
February 10, 2007
Frozen dunes:
This one's from this afternoon, taken at a favorite spot.
Snow fence winding around the dunes in Rexham.
(Ha. I just noticed the shadow from my elbow on the bottom right. So much for attention to detail.)
From the files:
A fall photo from along the North River.
November 25, 2006
An hour in Times Square:
Here are a few high-grain, contrasty images taken a couple of years ago in one of my favorite photography places in the world.
There's a few more after the jump...
November 23, 2006
Random photo:
A snow fence weaves through the dunes at Rexham beach on a foggy afternoon.
November 18, 2006
More photos:
Outside the Zoo on International Children's Day, Chonching, China 2005
Brant Point lighthouse on Nantucket, February 2006
Book store window, Barcelona Spain, 2003
Thumbnails:
For several months I've been playing around with Adobe's Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, both powerful Mac photo management applications. (I believe that free trials are available. Lightroom also does Windows.) Since the learning curve for each is steep, I had, at some point, to decide which way to go and then devote the time to learning one program.
Lightroom's strong point is it's outstanding image processing ability and it's weak point is its very confusing (but presumably capable) cataloging. Aperture on the other hand does cataloging and organizing simply and powerfully. Its image processing, although not as good as Lightroom, is still very good. With over 40,000 images spread across multiple computers, I need more than anything --organization. So Aperture is was.
The first step then was to soup up my system to handle the requirements with room to spare. That included an added 400 gigs of storage, another gig of RAM and a video card update to my old G5 dual 2.0.
Then I spent a week consolidating and importing images into Aperture. Even with the hardware upgrades, managing that many images and sorting/displaying thousands of thumbnails at a time strains the system. But now I can sort my original un-edited digital negatives from the many second, third and fourth generation edits. That's huge for me.
Image processing in Aperture is non-destructive. The original image remains untouched even if you crop, remove red-eye, or change the tone. The program records and stores a log of the steps you took, and at any time you can go back to the original or to any point in the process, picking and choosing which changes you want to keep. This is important in that you always have the digital negative to go back to and because you don't have to store multiple versions of the same photo on the hard drive for every change you make (which is how I came to have over 40,000 images.)
And if you need to do some destructive editing, the program is well integrated with Photoshop (strangely better than Lightroom from my experience) sending an image off for editing and then bringing it back in with the changes.
So, here are a few images I found this morning while browsing. I'll be learning more about the program as I go. I don't think it will make me a better photographer but at least I'll be an organized one.
Christian Science Center, Spring 06
Sari shop in Singapore, Spring 06
Antique Savannah GA police car, Spring 06
October 13, 2006
Tropical holiday:
I understand that there's a frost warning for the Boston area. Not so much here, although I'll be back in time for that cold blast.
July 25, 2006
No vacancy:
The former, famous, Ritz Motel in Quincy.
June 04, 2006
From the files:
Hills in Spain, along the road between Madrid and Burgos. Taken in 2003.
May 29, 2006
Memorial Day:
First the parade down Main Street.
Then the names of the town's war dead are recited in Marshfield's Veterans' Memorial park, in a ceremony that Jules Crittenden wrote about yesterday.
Originally the site of a 17th century grist mill, the park is maintained by volunteers and it was in great shape today despite being flooded out just a few weeks ago.
The waterwheel still turns.
May 12, 2006
Boston fog:
A man panhandles at a red light in Roxbury on a foggy Friday afternoon.
April 23, 2006
Overcast:
It's a black and white afternoon at Brant Rock in Marshfield.
April 22, 2006
Looking up:
There's a nice little park in the Prudential Center, hidden away behind the upscale shops and restaurants. And if you look up, this is what you'll see.
April 19, 2006
Afternoon walk:
A couple doing the rounds in the park on Mission Hill this afternoon.
April 17, 2006
Marathon Monday:
Last year I grabbed a bird's eye view. This year I stayed at ground level.
Everyone was jostling for a view.
I missed the leads but here's the third woman runner to come down Boylston.
And there was no shortage of strange sights in the crowd.
March 26, 2006
More from Savannah:
Traveling:
This is the First African Baptist Church just next to the City Market in downtown Savannah. It's chilly here, everyone is bundled up. The temp is only in the lower 60s!
March 23, 2006
Work hard, don't be lazy:
With rapid commercialization and huge cultural shifts, China is struggling to find its moral compass. Pointing the way are President Hu Jintao's new eight golden rules, which include,"Be disciplined and law-abiding, not chaotic and lawless" and the old favorite, "Do good and avoid evil."
It's interesting to think about how something like this would go over here, among we cynical, morally relativistic Americans.
And speaking of cynical, what do we think Bush's eight golden rules would be?
March 15, 2006
From the archives:
An old street portrait.
February 25, 2006
Act of faith:
Man begging at night on a Madrid street-corner.
February 20, 2006
Nantucket in February:
February 15, 2006
Waterline:
A winter storm gathering at Rexham beach.
February 07, 2006
More old photos:
A couple of guys in the Villa Victoria in the South End, and a smoke break in an ally off of Harrison Ave. Both from the mid 1980s.
February 05, 2006
Ground Zero:
A few weeks after September 11th, I went down to the the World Trade Center area and took these shots. Others seemed drawn to the site as well.
Crowds looking down Church Street towards the rubble.
A Hallmark store on Broadway, closed down for the insurance adjuster after being damaged in the collapse a half block away.
Part of the complex scorched by fire.
Sunrise:
Brant Point, Nantucket, taken sometime in the eighties.
February 04, 2006
Walk in the park:
Barbara Dixon, aka Candy Johnson. Taken in Blackstone Park in the South End, late ninteen eighties.
Dead of winter:
A Nantucket cemetery and the view from the watchtower on Great Blue Hill.
January 25, 2006
Animated conversation:
A serious discussion, Barcelona, 2003
January 17, 2006
Herd mentality II:
Southern Spain, 2003
January 16, 2006
Water everywhere:
Brant Rock flood, Winter of 2003
January 14, 2006
Dead end street:
January 13, 2006
Street portraits:
January 12, 2006
Regardless of History:
Sculpture, Trafalgar Square, 2000
Even more old photos:
Memorial to Trina Persad, Quincy St. Roxbury (2002)
Rock outcrop, Maine coast.
January 11, 2006
More black and white:
Treeline at sunset.
January 10, 2006
More old photos:
Kids playing in the South End
January 09, 2006
Old Photos:
Great Point, Nantucket
Charles River sunrise - from the Mass Ave Bridge
January 03, 2006
Aqualung:
Taken on Kensington High Street, London 2000.