Recently I put in a lot of work rebuilding my website for photos. If you haven’t visited the site, take a look now and tell me what you think about it. http://www.webbsstudio.com
I have to make myself keep these sites fresh and in good working order. They have a habit of falling apart when I’m not looking. I have thousands of photographs and I need to load the site with my best ones and keep moving in new ones.
I had one of those “ah-ha” moments recently. I was thinking about the artwork and photography I have done over the last few years.
Early on, I became enamored with the possibilities for digital printmaking and the computer as an art making tool. I also knew that inkjet prints would face stiff opposition from galleries and buyers. The process needed to be elevated and legitimized I thought, so I invented a new term for it. I called it “digitography“.
I pat myself on the back for seeing need, and kick myself for not being outrageously inventive.
For my intended purpose, any word that too easily revealed its derivation like digitography did was destined for the scrape heap, where it soon found itself. The word that emerged and quickly claimed proper respect among the art community was “gicleé”. Its introduction was a flash of brilliance.
It didn’t matter that the true definition could be easily discovered, which is “to spit” or “to sputter”. What mattered was that it had a nice ring to it. The beauty of the choice was that it is a French word, always nice sounding; and it helped that France was the birthplace of modern, avant guard art. Also, it helped that the definition of gicleé, even when discovered, did not immediately reveal its connection to the mechanical and digital aspects of computers.
That leads me to the “ah-ha” about what I have been doing.
I have been doggedly creating “paintings” on the computer that looked as though they were created with traditional media. Again, I wanted to legitimize the computer as an art tool, and I have been trying to do it by demonstrating that worked as well as other tools by inviting comparisons.
The epiphany was the realization that every new medium first gained legitimacy in this way. For instance, early films and radio productions “translated” books and theater before it found firm artistic footing of its own.
Even though I am someone who adopted the computer early on as an art tool, others have moved beyond “translations”. It’s time that I did, too.
Woodturning is fun for me. Unfortunately, I don’t get to do it often enough. Recently I’ve put in some extra time in learning how to use the skew chisel. For those who have no idea what a skew chisel is, let me explain. It has a straight edge on one axis and a bevel on two sides. It is used primarily to turn spindles. Many turners avoid using it because it is difficult to manage. Its one great advantage is that it cuts cleaner than any other chisel, and it cuts fast.
I bought a how-to video hosted by the well-known turner, Alan Lacer, who demonstrates its use in detail. Alan is a great teacher. I’ve finished watching it for the second time. I tested my knowledge with some 2″ x 4″ scraps and then decided to try my hand at a small, finished project. My choice was to make a handle for my small camera.
Cameras have gotten so small that they are difficult to hold without getting a finger in front of the shutter, or blocking the flash, or covering a microphone.
My new found ability with the skew chisel was so successful that I turned several handles, experimenting with the look and feel of them. I made them out of purple heart wood, an exotic wood found in Central and South America. My brother-in-law gave me a goodly sized piece of the wood for Christmas last year. The wood is especially dense and heavy and makes for a nice feeling handle. I also turned one in walnut. Here are some photos of my handles.
What do ropes, cords, and strings have to do with books and publications? It is a mystery to me, too, but I think they are distant cousins.
Have you ever put a length of string in a drawer, or neatly rolled an extension cord or piece of rope and put it away only to discover it had ensnarled itself when you next needed it.
I believe that cords, ropes, strings and the like are close cousins. But I also have come to believe that books and publications are distant cousins to them.
I have been doing layouts for them off and on for most of my life and I have discovered that no matter how well proof-read or how many people have reviewed a layout before it goes to the printer, it invariably comes back with a glaring error.
Along with this I have become convinced that inanimate objects are neither inanimate or lifeless. I don’t tell many people that because they think I’m nuts.
I did not fully realize the extent of these unexpected life sources until a couple of summers ago when I built a couple of rock retaining walls. I decided to dry stack the rock which meant that I would use no mortar. I had never built a rock wall before but I knew the walls needed to be laid well.
I wasn’t far into the project when I discovered that the rocks were talking to me. Most of them gave me very helpful suggestions, but some could be quite peevish. Interestingly, the medium and large sized rocks as well as the very small gravels knew their merits and told me where they would fit best for both beauty and structure. It was the smaller rocks - those not quite medium in size - that were often a notable pain in the butt. They usually insisted that their place was on the front face, often arguing with me and sometimes doing it so vociferously that it turned larger rocks silent and recalcitrant. To the larger rocks’ credit, however, they usually got over it quickly and joined with me again in the building effort.
Expression Media used to be called iViewMedial Pro until Microsoft bought it. Iview was a good, solid photo cataloging program. I was never ecstatic about the tech support, but then I was never very unhappy with the program and when upgrades came they were good ones and significant.
When Microsoft bought the program I cried. I’ve spent the last few years becoming MS free…free of all MS products. My take on MS is that it is not overly interested in improving its software. Its chief interest is selling software. If it meant taking software like Word (that basically did all that it needed to do fifteen years or more ago and needed no changes except for some cosmetic ones and those needed for new OS systems, and perhaps add some new file formats for compatibility purposes) and rearranging the menu items and touting “new” features, that’s what it did. That sort of “upgrade” made my head spin and caused me many hours of distress trying to figure out the “new” way to perform “old” functions.
I got tired of the stress and cash outlays to Bill the robber baron. I fled to Mac. For awhile I had both MAC and MS operating systems running and I worked hard at finding replacement software for my MS programs and other programs that operated only on MS Windows. The most difficult one to replace was QuickBooks which I used for invoicing and tracking sales and customers. The company had quit making Quickbooks for the Mac. I was overjoyed when I at last found a solution and I could dump Windows from my Mac.
And then MS bought my workhorse, iViewMedia Pro. Gahhrrrrr!!!
Microsoft immediately increased the price, changed the name, and put their logo on it. They did offer the “upgrade” to most users for free. Months later, the second upgrade came. I don’t remember that there were any improvements. If there were, they were fairly minor. But now there was a new bug. The imput windows in the batch renaming menu were now black! which made it almost impossible to see anything in those windows.
The third and current “upgrade” fixed that problem but introduced a new, a truly disastrous problem. Now the “Comments” fields cannot be opened in the “Organization” tab which basically destroys the function the Organization tab is intended to provide.
Another new “feature” can be found in the View menu item, however. Now users can access “Virtual Earth” directly. Now that is a feature every photographer has been waiting for in their photo cataloging program.
I declined this upgrade. I am hoping that MS will tire of this program and sell it to a small, energetic company that will treat it well. This program is far better than iPhoto. Neither Apeture nor Lightroom tend to the problems of cataloging as straight forwardly as it does.
Are there other alternatives I am missing? PLEASE tell me there is.
I am one of the very lucky people. Back in the days when I earned a regular salary, I worked for Len Press, a man whom I have always admired and respected. That admiration has grown over the years. He and his wife Lil came here from Boston in the 1950s, planning to stay a year, and never left. That was very fortunate for Kentucky. It was only because of Len that Kentucky has an extensive, statewide, public television network (KET) that is unmatched in the nation. It celebrated its 40th year in September (2008).
Lil’s achievements have been more wide ranging. She helped establish a large mental health network of facilities and treatment in Kentucky. She organized a Governor’s Scholars program. For a time, she was the assistant director of the Appalachain Regional Commission in Washington, DC; and, more recently, she established The Womens Network for Democratic Principles.
Both Len and Lil are tireless and enthusiastic people who see the worst and imagine the best.
Recently, Len finished a history of KET. I did the cover design and book layout. I am proud of the design and happy to see this work published. It is a bit of Kentucky history that needed the details recorded. And Len did it so very well. He is a great writer.
But most of all, I am proud to say that Len and Lil are my friends.
What a major pain in the butt air travel miles have become. The idea of getting points for miles traveled was once a treat and a real PR gambit for airlines. It now leaves many holders feeling cheated and disappointed, and that can’t be good PR.
Airlines keep making it more and more difficult to exchange points for tickets and have found endless ways to change the rules and provide offers that are designed to steal points from your account at 10 cents on the dollar. Now airlines like Delta have quit fooling around at these cheesey ways to relieve you of points and simply began “expiring” them.
As yet, as far as I know, no one has fired a class action suit at them for this underhanded behavior. But I’m still hoping. From their point of view they can taketh away what they giveth. From my point of view, it was a contract. They gave me something of value and it is mine. Taking my property is simply theft.
I bought a new computer recently, a FAST Mac, dual core, with Intel processors along with Apple’s latest OS, Leopard. It shines and it makes programs I’ve used for years walk and talk.
For instance, I’ve used Corel’s Painter program through four generations of owners and I have always thought highly of the program. In some respects it was a program before it’s time. The first developers used fractal math to make it work. It couldn’t have otherwise. Computers were still relatively slow and underpowered when the program was first introduced. Even so, it demanded more of computers than computers had. I was always frustrated when I had to weight for a brush stroke to catch up with my hand movement.
The latest generation of computers makes this program sing. It’s almost a new program and nothing has changed but the computer and the operating system.
Speaking of operating systems, Leopard is brand new from the top down. All the dusty corners and cluttered code has been cleaned away. It attends to graphics like no other operating system has.
I bought a new program that exists because of the OS called ScreenFlow that shoots two movies simultaneously. One is of the monitor and everything that happens on it, and the other is of the person sitting at the computer in front of the built-in camera. It also records audio. After the shooting stops, ScreenFlow offers both videos up in an editor that lets you integrate the two and to move around the screen and zoom in an out, as well as other features.
It only works with Leopard. The beauty is that while ScreenFlow is shooting two movies, other programs aren’t noticably affected. I decided to create some tutorials with ScreenFlow. Why not? It’s easy.
Here is my first effort. It demonstrates the underpainting feature of Corel Painter 10.
I also have this video on Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/UnderpaintingFeatureOfCorelsPainter). If you want to see it in an even larger version than the ARCHIVE default view, then click on the play/download QuickTime option in the ARCHIVE menu on the left side of the screen.
I’m not as excited about ImageKind as I once was. I haven’t sold anything there, but that doesn’t surprise me. My site gets lost there. ImageKind is still focused on selling frames and hasn’t done much to make it a special place for the creators of art and photography.
I spent the month of February in Mexico at the adjoining towns of Itapa and Zihuatanejo. At one corner of the bay at Zihua there was some great surfing, great for me at least. The surf ran almost parallel to the shore and surfers were close os that I didn’t have to have a super telephoto lens. I took a couple hundred images and just for fun morphed a few of them together in a short video.
Here it is,