30 June 2009

Pecker

I still don't fully understand the movie Pecker. I assume that a lot of the humor is reserved for those inside the NYC gallery scene and the very, extremely gay. But there is a growing list of indicators that it is a much more serious movie than it first appears.

First of all, there are serious people featured in the film. Cindy Sherman is hilarious as some version of herself - as a casual fan of her pictures I prefer to not know too much about her personal life - in Pecker she comes to the rescue of the manic, sugar-addicted character Little Chrissy, who is in the throes of a terrible jones, "Do you want a valium, honey?" The film also features Christina Ricci, who is probably the closest female professional-acting-career analog to Johnny Depp, so that bodes well. Lily Tayler is in it, too.

But I was most surprised by this movie, which I viewed for the first time last week, when this morning I caught up with the New York Times' Lens Blog, which ran a story on a blind photographer. This very improbability is presented as satire in Pecker.


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29 June 2009

New photos


ride
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical
Took my wife to Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, MO) for her birthday. Took a few decent pics there. Camera still works, despite getting soaked.

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28 June 2009

Takin a dump...



Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical
Dumped a few miscellaneous pics from an SD card that has been floating between compact Canon cameras for a while. Click on the pic to see the set on Flickr.

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25 June 2009

Longview Lake


bike rack
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical
I'm trying to achieve a critical mass of blog posts, so I posted these pics from a couple weeks ago. I walked around Longview Lake with my wife and a G9. Great wife, crap camera.

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24 June 2009

Nikon F35 AF



Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical
Sunday I went to a nearby thrift store, Maj-R-Thrift to mull over some new ideas on an old photo project, the nominal subject of which is thrift stores. I found what I think is the silver bullet for this project [an idea], PLUS I found another interesting vintage camera. Behold the Nikon F35 AF (click on pic to see the set).

This is a competent little shooter - and the interface is appealing and easy - but I think I should do my part to prevent the spread of Internet Overhype as regards this camera. It's not great. Not even good by my standards. The tone, color, and contrast were unpleasantly characteristic on the one roll of Fuji Reala I spent on this camera. It wasn't so far off that I couldn't bend the scanned, digital negatives back to reality, but it is not a good place to start from. Every bit of information I found about this camera online said that it was great. It's not. If it were as great as they say, you find some variation of this camera - Nikon One Touch, Sears knockoffs, etc. - in so many thrift stores. Since discovering this camera I briefly considered collecting all the fascinating variations on its design; it is like its own phylum in the taxonomy of film cameras. But the general crappiness of even the original made me think better of it.

Looking at this camera from my perspective - relatively ignorant, absolutely remote in time - it makes me wonder what made it so appealing. Actually it looked appealing to me after I read about the camera - I thought I had a great find. Even when I first got the CD of digital negatives from the lab, it took me a while to admit that they were junk. Sometimes when I am convinced of a camera's/lens' quality before actual use, it is very difficult to see what I am actually looking at.

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23 June 2009

test posting from blogger.com

looks like you have to do this...


Discarded-154

to embed a flickr photo. no slick interface.

had to paste code from the flickr page for that photo. how do you do page breaks for headlines?

And here is the rest of it.

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Curabitur commodo sem egestas tortor pulvinar id congue tellus tempus. Etiam vitae eros turpis. Sed urna nunc, condimentum eu tempor eu, mollis quis purus. Etiam adipiscing tempus eros, eu commodo nisi placerat elementum. Mauris imperdiet laoreet quam quis tempor. Maecenas ultricies egestas quam, ut ultricies diam sollicitudin a. Nunc sed neque diam. Suspendisse volutpat, dui nec convallis mollis, dui urna rhoncus erat, cursus mollis nisl ligula in metus. Nulla non augue purus, sed aliquet lorem. Nullam sodales nibh in ipsum facilisis tempus. Praesent ut lorem eget arcu porttitor dictum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos.

Vivamus eget nibh lacus, a accumsan eros. Praesent consectetur lacinia urna lobortis volutpat. Maecenas interdum magna a ante posuere posuere. Aenean porta est sit amet tortor suscipit aliquet. Vivamus quis metus ante. Cras in velit vitae lorem sollicitudin tempor. Vivamus elit arcu, egestas a ultricies accumsan, placerat nec tellus. Sed dignissim luctus aliquam. Nullam sed ipsum mauris, quis porta turpis. Donec ultrices magna sed turpis luctus vitae sagittis neque feugiat. Cras sollicitudin euismod leo. Nulla vitae justo non tellus iaculis tempus non ut nisl. Praesent ut vestibulum tortor. Nam aliquet viverra ligula ut scelerisque. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Ut tincidunt luctus nunc a auctor.

Suspendisse nec sem nibh, ac eleifend leo. Vivamus interdum sagittis rutrum. Nullam massa eros, feugiat at scelerisque ut, facilisis ut diam. Sed tortor metus, malesuada non pulvinar et, blandit a arcu. Morbi vulputate metus eget urna tincidunt iaculis. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nam sit amet orci quis orci eleifend semper vitae eu nisl. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Maecenas eget euismod dolor. Etiam congue justo eget ante facilisis viverra mattis mauris interdum. Etiam aliquam, massa id gravida tempus, enim metus vestibulum nulla, a semper tellus risus eget purus. Duis tortor turpis, porttitor sit amet rhoncus sit amet, dignissim sit amet est. Quisque imperdiet consectetur magna, eu suscipit neque dictum eget. Phasellus aliquet nisi in enim viverra molestie. Sed a consequat sem. Phasellus enim eros, dapibus in pretium sit amet, convallis ut eros. Ut facilisis dictum dui, non tempus nisl aliquam ac. Integer tincidunt dignissim consectetur. Aenean sit amet ipsum magna. Aliquam a tellus velit, id faucibus urna.

Maecenas id magna lorem, a dignissim velit. Aliquam vel mauris felis, in tristique quam. Nunc orci magna, semper et elementum ac, vehicula id ligula. Duis sed fringilla dolor. Nullam non lobortis libero. Suspendisse sem sapien, commodo vel rhoncus vitae, adipiscing ut odio. Duis pretium lobortis elit, a lacinia leo pharetra vitae. Nunc elementum lorem leo, eu vulputate nunc. Quisque a arcu a nisl dictum hendrerit eget vel tellus. Nunc eget sem eget libero dignissim euismod. Suspendisse potenti. Pellentesque id nunc ut erat lacinia venenatis ac id nisl. Duis pretium laoreet est, sit amet auctor elit sodales vel. Sed vel imperdiet erat. Curabitur mollis tortor nec justo pretium laoreet. Fusce a lectus tortor. Mauris sagittis, augue quis venenatis tempor, mi urna viverra lacus, et aliquam est augue sed velit.


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Test


Discarded-154
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical
testing blogger/flickr combo. this is posted directly from flickr.com

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