I think it was while I was still in college when my grandfather gave me his Zeiss Icon. I didn’t use it much while in school (I tested a roll or 2) because I was too busy in the studios. When I graduated, and became too busy shooting satellites, I was looking for something to spark the creative side. I broke out the Zeiss with a plan: keep it with me till I shoot an entire roll (12 shots on a roll of 120 Ilford Delta) then come home, process it in my basement darkroom, dry it, sleeve it, contact print it, develop it, dry it, scan it, crop it, and load it into a flash site I built – visualencounter.com.

I’m reminded of a lecture I heard where Ken White (I believe) was talking about the “disposable image” philosophy. As photographers (prior to digital becoming the standard) we shoot countless rolls of film. Thousands of frames. I know personally I’m happy when I could get 1 decent shot off a 36 exposure roll. I was going to school during the digital revolution. Now, as opposed to rolls and rolls of film, we had Megabites and Gigabytes full of images. Digital representations of film – to which we held sacred. Now, with the push of a button, we could shoot, check, keep or delete. Gone. Not a drop of chemicals used. Not a series of steps to preview a negative/positive, simply a click of a button. As photographers we had to come to grips with the concept of disposable images.

I came across visualencounter when I implemented recent tracking analytics to a number of my sites. It hit me that what took me hours to accomplish 6 years ago takes me 3 minutes now. I shoot a low resolution image on my Canon 20D, connect via USB to my wife’s MacBook, make minor adjustments in iPhoto (sorry, i don’t have PSCS2 on her Mac), and upload to my Blogger page. Instant “digital”darkroom. Instant gratification, not unlike Polaroid used to be for those that could afford it (I’m talking SX-70 days).

I collect these cameras to remind me of where photo has come from and where it’s headed. I also just like old cameras. The simple truth that I can pick up any of these cameras today and find film for them, process them using chemicals I can get via mail order, and print them on silver based paper is amazing. The way things are headed, that simple truth will be a story I tell my kids when they ask “so, you used to soak paper in chemicals to get pictures??”

I need to do this. I started the process last time and let it fade. I need to do this. Do this. DO IT TONIGHT FOOL!!

From CBS News:

Touching off the demonstration were new restrictions that limit households to one dog and ban larger breeds. Police in recent days have gone through city neighborhoods, seizing unregistered dogs and beating some of them to death, witnesses said.

I heard about this on the drive into work on NPR. My favorite was the claim that the Chinese Government had gone and erased online positing, bloggings, and any references they could find.

I’m going to get Sammy a nice treat on the way home tonight. Talk about f’ed up.

Seems when you turn a camera on my wife, she gets all “provocative” and stuff. It could just be me. Or, it could just be the camera. Or, it could just be the smell of sick kid and husband to drive that animal hunger alive. Or she could just be drunk (as she usually is by 10:30am).

Seems like we did a lot of stuff for a family of 2 sick kids (me being the other kid). The game was on, we actually ventured out for a walk, and at one point during the game C, K and T started building towers to see just how high they could build them. Kind of a cool shot here with the tower just starting to fall.

So my son has taken to practicing shooting darts. We have a board in the basement. He can’t shoot from the line yet (well, he can, but he hits my wall), so we have him at half distance. Last night, while I was zoning out feeling sorry for myself (still sick), he proclaims:

I hit a bulls eye! My first BULLS EYE!!

Needless to say, the pride I feel pales the endless knowledge he seems to absorb, the countless kind acts he performs, or the respect he has for both K and I – no, the proudest moment I can recall is that my son has hit his first bulls eye!

Back to sleep.

This is what the moles have done to my front yard. I mean, come-on. I’m used to the tunnels, but a huge mound of dirt? Little f’ers!
And let’s not forget the two huge mounds in my backyard! Man, it’s all because of the freaking new development behind my house. Why the hell do I have the problem and not my neighbors!?
So I bought three. One for the front (shown) and 2 for the back. These better work or I’m pulling a Bill Murray from Caddyshack.
Seriously, it’s not that I’m trying to be “safe” or I don’t want them to die, I’ve been told this is THE way to get rid of them. We’ll see. They cost $30 a pop!

I’m sitting here, on the couch in the basement half watching The Thing, half running reports, half answering work e-mails, half trying to get back to sleep, while hoping the rumbling in my stomach settles down from the chicken and rice soup I’m trying to keep down. I lied by the way; leaving all the sites alone to get a baseline – I couldn’t help myself. I needed to add new content. It was driving me crazy.

I’m waiting on a package that should be here today – an electronic solution to move all the god-damn moles out of my yard into my neighbors. They’ve been destroying both the front and back. Little bastards.

I actually wrote out an XMAS list for my parents. As my wife puts it “what the hell are you, 5??”

Random stuff here people. My head is pounding, I have limited attention right now, and I think I finally have become tired enough to get some rest.

I’ve just recently tagged all my relevant sites to begin testing varying seo initiatives. I’m going to leave all sites alone and get a base line for the second half of November (kind of a crappy month thanks to the potential 4 day weekend for Thanksgiving). I have additional content for 89c4.com, 66912.com, slant32.com, flawlessphoto.com that will need to wait to be updated first part of December. And I need to get off my ass and get southwestproject.com up and running. Lets not forget about the actual relevent client websites that will benefit from the research and testing – cause they will. You’ll see…