Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Dreamers


I hate when I don't have new (as in from a new shoot) photos to share. Yes, there are tons of photos you guys haven't seen. Matter of fact, I might just track down some older (~2008) photos and start posting them, just for something "new." There's a bunch that I had up on my Uber gallery when Uber died and I lost my pretty gallery and site. (Uber was a really slick build-your-own website geared towards artists of any kind. I gathered quite a few artist friends on Uber, some of whom I still see on Facebook (where we fled after our online palaces were destroyed, mostly because nearly everyone already had a Facebook profile.) Anyway, my point is, after I lost that online gallery, there were a bunch of photos I just never dug out to put back online. We'll see. I have a bunch of reading to catch up on today, and a horse to run around. (I'm going to be evil and make him work his "mooscles" today.) Just one more photo for you before I go:


And they say horses don't smile. =) (Now, really. What did you think it was? Mwahahaa.)

Monday, January 25, 2010

Needle Nocturne


I really encourage you to click on this one for the full-view. Color treated in Lightroom to bring out the marbled texture and colors brought on by the lensbaby +4 macro effect on the background. I have several versions of this photo, each with a different color treatment (plus the original version), and I still haven't decided which I like best. For instance, I like the color best in this one. The original does have it's charms, but I love the light and dark patterns of the selenium toned version, the "twinkle" effect of the aged version, and the mood in the sepia version.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Frost


The days have really been blending together on me this past week or so, but today felt like a surge forward. Last night I got a solid few pages churned out on my novel, I'm two days ahead on my daily reading (library book), and I also actually rode my horse for the first time in practically three weeks. Long story short, Toler had a bizarre, very delayed reaction to a vaccine he got in NOVEMBER. He's finally back to normal, albeit with a bit less muscle and a lot more belly. I feel like I'm finally on the right track--mentally, creatively, and spiritually. And that, my dear readers, is a wonderful feeling.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Looking back


The past few days I've been going through some very old photos of horses at the barn over the years. Some of them have grown, some of them have passed, and some seem to hardly have changed.

This photo was taken in 2001, of Porthos, who has been featured throughout the blog: here, here, here, and here, for instance. Porthos is extremely photogenic. Has been his whole life, obviously. He is also probably one of the oddest horses at the barn. For one, he is probably the only horse I know that would prefer to be inside all day. If he is enjoying his paddock-time, it is only because he's running around like a madman (madgelding?) trying to rile everyone up. He's the trickster, the pest, the goof. He also snores in his sleep and has very active dreams. When he was a foal, it was commonplace to see him "cantering" in his bed of straw.

Blustery

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sometimes Voices Lie


Sometimes Voices Lie was my first real photo series. I'd had big plans for the series (done for a photography final in college), but I was lucky enough to come down with pneumonia the month I had for working on it. I fluctuated between being healthy enough that I only coughed quite a lot to not being able to walk down the hall. So. Instead of finding subject matter outside, I found everyday objects to transform through my Lensbaby (2.0) with my +4 or +10 macro lens-attachments. I then decided that I would pair every image with a line from my novel in progress. The idea was to push the boundaries between what you saw and what you wanted to see after reading the quote.

This image, called Vardøger, had the following quote paired with it: "Naessa followed the whim of a laugh through the dream-forest, the laugh weaving between the trees like a whir of light."

Saturday, January 16, 2010

A fire was in my head

I had some excitement last night: perhaps you remember that Lensbaby call for submissions I answered in December? Well, my image Give, Take is an Honorable Mention!! There were so many gorgeous photos submitted that I can't believe my good fortune. I encourage you to go check out the images selected for publication as well as the images in the Honorable Mention gallery. =)

I am working on making digital copies of some Lensbaby b/w macro abstraction prints I did as a series last year. Hopefully I can get one up sometime today.

Other, unrelated news: I may be good with software, but I'm an idiot with hardware. What I mean to say is that the hard drive replacement didn't happen. Yours truly ordered one with the wrong kind of drive-to-motherboard connections. I didn't even know there were other types, but that's what happens when you're keeping an "older" machine alive.

To reward you for reading my newsy-post, here's the sister image to Give, Take, which I don't have a title for yet:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Whorls


Some more equine macro for you, taken the same time as the previously posted ones.

These are images of whorls (not sure if there is a technical term for them)--spots on a horse's coat where the direction of hair changes. Not all horsemen(/horsewomen) realize, but whorls are like equine fingerprints. There are general locations for them, but every horse's whorls are unique. In exact location, in shape, in size. I had thought it would be fun to go through the horses at the barn (some of them, at least) and do a macro series on their individual whorls. I still might do that; just have to work out a notation method and get around to it. We'll see.


In other, completely unrelated news: I might be a little scarce for the next few days. The replacement hard drive for this machine will (hopefully) be arriving. So, I'll have that to install and an entire system to rebuild. I've been going through all the files on here, so that should be taken care of. Still, it's a lot of work getting a system back up and running, as I'm sure at least a few of you are aware of. I do have a laptop I could post from, but something tells me I'll be too busy to think about it. (Well, to think about anything other than checking email, which I'm compulsive about...) I'll see you soon, beloved readers! Until then, fare thee well. =)

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Invisible Cities

Ooh, aah! Two posts for one Saturday! I bring you another feature, this time of my all-time favorite author, Italo Calvino.

Calvino is often exalted by the postmodern literary crowd for his novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Indeed, that was my first experience with him, and at first I wasn't all that thrilled by him. I had to read the postmodern gem during the summer preceding my freshman year at college, for an experience known only by other Lawrence University survivors: Freshman Studies. But, I shall not regale you with the stories from my Alma mater. (Nourishing, indeed.) "If on a winter's night...," or "That book," as most of us now refer to it, wasn't really as bad as we all make it out to be. But really, what else did they expect us, freshly graduated high school students eager to "shake loose" during our last summer as adolescents, to make of it? (The blurb on the back of the book reads: "If on a winter's night a traveler turns out not to be one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another. They are the true heroes of the novel, for what would writing be without readers?" I think you see my point.)

To be honest, I don't remember why I thought to pick up another of his books. Or even why I decided to discover that he had written other books. But I did. And that book was Difficult Loves. And I was hooked.

My love for Calvino is nearly indescribable. I love him for the way he makes me feel when I read, the experience I have absorbing every line. He is not really a postmodern literary author. I mean, he is. (Was.) But he is far more than that: he is magic realism. He is Borges unrestricted. He explores the magic of childhood, stretching reality only the way children can. Or love can by lovers. He explores the endless stream of the universe and time through a character that defies our definitions of life and form. He maps every city imaginable. It is from his novel Invisible Cities, a stream of meditations and dialogues on cities, memories, inhabitants, form, and absence, from which I have selected my passage for you:

Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not know. The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a forest of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overflows. Against the sky a lavabo's white stands out, or a bathtub, or some other porcelain, like late fruit still hanging from the boughs. You would think the plumbers had finished their job and gone away before the bricklayers arrived: or else their hydraulic systems, indestructible, had survived a catastrophe, an earthquake, or the corrosion of termites.

Abandoned before or after it was inhabited, Armilla cannot be called deserted. At any hour, raising your eyes among the pipes, you are likely to glimpse a young woman, or many young women, slender, not tall of stature, luxuriating in the bathtubs or arching their backs under the showers suspended in the void, washing or drying or perfuming themselves, or combing their long hair at a mirror. In the sun, the threads of water fanning from the showers glisten, the jets of the taps, the spurts, the splashes, the sponges' suds.

I have come to this explanation: the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in the possession of nymphs and naiads. Accustomed to traveling along underground veins, they found it easy to enter into the new aquatic realm, to burst from multiple fountains, to find new mirrors, new games, new ways of enjoying the water. Their invasion may have driven out the human beings, or Armilla may have been built by humans as a votive offering to win the favor of the nymphs, offended at the misuse of the waters. In any case, now they seem content, these maidens: in the morning you hear them singing. (Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities, 49-50.)

And to answer your unspoken question, no, I have not yet reread That book. (Yet.)

Cities within eyes


Okay, so you have Judy to blame for more horse-eye shots. Just teasing. I love'em, and realized I hadn't posted these two yet. Note to self: add labels "equine eye" and "macro" to appropriate posts.


I would really like to do more with horses and macro. Not necessarily with eyes (I was informed that some people, not necessarily my beloved readers, but some people find eyes creepy?) but there are lots of possibilities. And to my knowledge, not many equine photographers have thought to add macro to the list. I also want to do more with natural filters, because I was reading DIY Photography post on the subject and was totally inspired.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Inflection


I missed yesterday. Whoops. Well, folks. It looks like the hard drive on my desktop is dying. It's got some bad sectors that will spread. So, now to decide on what to do about it. I have one final ray of hope this morning, a diagnostic checker from the hard drive's manufacturer that *could* repair the sectors. We'll see.

Anyway. That's a photo of Porthos, who's appeared a few times on this blog. He's the bonefied nuissance in Toler's paddock. Likes to try and rile everyone up. He's also the only horse I have ever known who does not like to be outside. Yep. Exactly.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Flock


A lensbaby pinhole optic shot. I have to do more experimenting. I'm not actually sure what controlling the "lensbaby" effect changes. Maybe it doesn't affect anything. Like I said, I need to do more experimenting with it. I have noticed that doing pinhole with an slr-shaped camera is much more difficult than with a box pinhole camera. Seems counter-intuitive.

And because I can't simply leave you with that, unimpressive image, I will leave you with this (hopefully at least slightly less) unimpressive image:

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Phalaenopsis


My mother's orchid, of the phalaenopsis genus, has been particularly prosperous, giving us all seven blooms--the most she's ever had. So, I was "encouraged" to photograph it. Not that I needed much "encouragement" to get out my camera, but there you have it nonetheless. I did the whole shebang--used a curtain as a backdrop and got out two big lights. Yes, it would have been better with a darker backdrop, but I didn't think to pin a black cloak to the curtain until the end of the shoot, when I set up my tripod and did some pinhole and zone plate lensbaby optic photos (which I'll probably post examples of tomorrow).


I'm not the biggest flower and potted plant person. I appreciate them, and enjoy them in houses--even kept two plants in my dorm room, though that was short lived because one died and the other was infested with fruit flies, which drove me completely homicidal. Er--planticidal?

Anyway, I do like orchids. Granted I don't know many people who dislike orchids, but, that's beside my point. Mostly I like the cultural and anthropological connections with them, which is also what I enjoy about other plants, flowering or otherwise. (Though good "stories behind the name" aren't always easy to come by.)

For instance, the name "phalaenopsis" means "phalaena-like" referring to the genus phalaena, or a group of large moths. (Note the phalaena genus of moth is an outdated name classification.) This is due to the apparent resemblance between a phalaenopsis orchid and a moth in flight.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

We Who Enter Here


Another one I'd sworn I'd posted here. This is a photo taken of the homestead of what is now my grandparents' cottage. They've pulled numerous relics from it, including a Norwegian bible and newspaper clippings. The little "cabin" is genuinely tiny. Most houses these days have bigger bathrooms. It is hard to imagine a family living in such a small space, let alone a single farmer. The structure isn't sound anymore (naturally), so it clings to its spot in the backyard in near silence.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Brand New


It's totally going to take me at least a month to adjust to writing "2010" or even ".../10" on things. Haha.

Anyway. Not much new here. Gearing up to watch the latest Doctor Who installment tonight. I'll have a box of Kleenex at the ready. It's the last episode with David Tennant, so I will likely bawl my eyes out. *le sigh*

Friday, January 1, 2010

Earth Angel


So. There are a whole bunch of photos I'd sworn I'd posted on my photoblog, but if I did there appears to be no record of them. I put them on my DA account, so maybe I'm just thinking of that. Anyway. I might be posting some of them here for the next few days, mostly because I really like them, but my apologies to those who have already seen them.

Also, for this post: my goals for 2010! I don't really do resolutions. I find them generally rather pointless. But I decided that, this year, I would outline things I hope to do. I'm not necessarily resolving to do them (all). I'm not posting them all here, mostly because this is my photoblog rather than my personal journal (I have an LJ for that), so I'm just posting a few writing, art, and riding related goals here.

  1. Complete the overhaul of my fantasy novel, preferably by the end of March.
  2. Start working again (finally) on my Norse literary/magic realism novel. It is *long* overdue.
  3. Perhaps start working on a sci-fi novel. The ideas are there, and the MC is getting very persistent. Poor guy has a rough road destined for him.
  4. Design and start to shoot a non-equine photo series. There are a few things I'd like to do. Some technical problems will have to be resolved.
  5. Work out the technical kinks involved with my pinhole/zone plate optic, such as a good light metering system, lighting concept for indoor and outdoor work, shutter (I have to learn how to use the bulb setting, really, as there isn't a setting for long-enough exposure times I need).
  6. Find space to paint. I miss it.
  7. Ideally, I'd love to start saving to buy a used Hasselblad. I really miss working with it. My old photo profs claim you could find them on ebay for between 50-100 bucks. Perhaps they have super powers for finding such deals...I have had no such luck. Unless I'm remembering it wrong, which seems more likely.
  8. Retrain The Moose. Again. Ideally for the last time. Or else I shall bubble-wrap him.
  9. Finish teaching him the half-step so I can start training the piaffe. Might be a long-shot, considering the causes leading to the need for goal #8.
  10. Start jumping again. Some of my readers know about the jumping accident my moose and I had two summers ago--while we're jumping small stuff, we're not even back to jumping 2'3" yet, and I see no reason for this. It will even help with goal #8.
Well, I figure I've blabbed on long enough. ;)