that's right, i'm dating a cosmo girl. you can find her at http://www.cosmogirl.com/guys/love-stories/love-stories-wet-kiss.
the photo was taken as part of an extensive photo shoot. cosmo paid me somewhere between $0.17 and $1.56 for this image.
in october of 2006 i announced my attempts at an amateur career in photography. well, it's taken me half a year, but i finally made $100!
in december of 2005 i deemed death cab for cutie's "what sarah said" my favorite sad song. in that month, "what sarah said" also happened to top my charts in the death related rock genre. now, unfortunately for death cab, their piano-based elegy has been supplanted by a.j. roach's "grandaddy" (this link passes directly through the artist's site; no pesky video). incidentally, "what sarah said" is still my favorite sad song about death that can be twisted into an interesting metaphor for baptism.
also, i'm really proud of the internet tonight. i'm not a fan of the official "what sarah said" video, so i was searching for something a bit more palpable. i wasn't too successful, but i did find about a dozen how-to videos related to the piano score. generally speaking, i tend to consider the internet a vast impersonal resource for information and time-wasting. if i were to personify the internet, i might describe ms. web as a nasty vindictive nerd, but tonight she was something of a musical saint, generously spreading the gift of music-making throughout the four corners of the globe. way to go!
andrew david. "the look of an istock photographer" somewhere in guatemala.
my camera is broken. apparently, the d70 is a fragile creature. during a recent trip to portland, it was stuffed in its protective case and stored in a clothes hamper with my laptop and some clean laundry. as i was loading my parents car, i perched the hamper on the hood of my ford ranger so that i could open their trunk, and the hamper crashed to the ground. my laptop frame was bruised but the operating system appears functional. the camera, however, is dead.
the folks at photo-tronics were kind enough to give me a free estimate: $79 for new parts, $325 for labor. blast! now i must decide how to proceed:
1. spend $400 to repair my d70 (two years ago i paid $1200 for this camera and its kit lens; critics now refer to it as ancient)
2. spend $600 on the new d40 (released in november, this camera is 6 oz lighter than the d70)
3. spend $1000 to buy a d80 (released last summer, this camera is already being described as old, but it has 4 more mp than the d40 and d70)
4. spend $2200 on the d200 (way too much money for all the camera i would ever need...until it breaks too)
5. buy a used d70 body and use my old kit lens (this probably costs about the same as a repair)
i'm leaning toward options 1 and 2. hmmm...if i just sell 10-15 times as many pictures on istock, i won't have to fork out a penny of real money.
i'm proud to say that i have some fine photographs of mountains, lakes, sign posts, and grass. however, i'm not too handy with low light environments, sports events, or family portraits. i have a knack for seeing the world, but only if it's sitting silently in front of me. if a picture requires a flash or thoughtful consideration of f-stops and white balance, i'm screwed. and so, as you can see below, i don't make much of a wedding photographer (thus i'll try to hurry through these pics of danny's wedding), but i might make a great PI. that is, while i can't make people look good, i'm awfully talented at making them look goofy. in the end, that's fine though; even if my people pictures stink, they amuse me. take this series, for instance. it was supposed to be a romantic picture of danny and alison, but somehow that chap in the vest and violet ensemble steals the show. for some reason i just love how he progresses from thoughtful boredom to smiley, laughey, and, finally, clappy (sorry for the small thumbnails, you can either trust me on this one or open 'em up and check out zany violet man for yourself).
andrew david. "kissey, smiley, laughey, and clappy" shekinah ("the presence of God"--i just discovered this when i was googling to verify the town name; isn't that cool? danny and alison were married in the presence of God, saskatchewan.), saskatchewan.
(1) i've made $11 on istockphoto.com! only $89 more and i'll actually be able to cash out.
(2) i've evaluated 4,182 mp3s. only 75 more and i'll have rated my entire itunes library.
(3) i've exchanged 4+ emails about editing a client's novel. only 1+ more and i might have a deal.
(4) i've posted 192 blog entries. only 8 more and i'll have exhausted all of my ideas for the 17 point scale. okay that's probably not true, but at the moment it certainly feels that way. and since it's always best to be prepared, i've found you a replacement site; it's a blog about reading, writing, and annie dillard. in the most recent post, the blogger (beth) talks of church, polar bears (well, they're actually dillard's polar bears, not beth's), and the beautiful agony that is writing (or more particularly, the troubling realization that visits nearly every young writer, the sad epiphany that some greater, more renowned author has somehow stolen your paper mache idea and given it wings, the elegant, nuanced wings of a monarch butterfly or a hoatzin). just imagine the coolness of my parenthetical thought multiplied by some really big number (maybe a number like 70. isn't that the really huge, seemingly infinite number that Christ offered the apostles when they asked how many times they should forgive their brother? i may be recalling this wrong, but if not, does that mean that jews and romans were really bad at math? or should i stop forgiving him later this year?), and you'll have a rough sense of how great this blog is. but there is one problem. you'll have to pay spu a few thousand dollars before you can read it. yep, it's that good. officially, the money that you'd spend to read the blog is considered tuition for spu's mfa in creative writing, but we all know that that's just lawyer talk, cause i'm telling you, it's a darn good blog.
andrew david. "yes this is a rather plain wedding picture and yes i wore those sandals during the wedding and yes thats danny and alison at the bottom of the page and yes you can tell becky that ive finally read some wendell berry" saskatchewan, canada.
errrrr...i have a new addiction. it's called istockphoto.com. i upload pictures to this website and then wait for their band of experts to examine my photographs for technical skill and marketability. if they approve the photos, the pictures are posted online. then i wait for business folk and wealthy web surfers to purchase my wares. for each download i receive a 20% cut. so far i've made forty cents! check me out--buy some photos!
i'm still on a writing haitus, so this will be brief.
today, as i was carving words from a 34 page grant proposal on TOMM40 (that's a gene, you can tell because it's written in uppercase italics) and alzheimer's disease, i happened to get pizza grease in my ear. i was so busy learning about mitochondria, haplotype expression, and mRNA splice variants that i neglected to watch my fingers as they moved from the keyboard to the digiorno and back again. then i had a sudden ear itch. and, well, you get the picture. there's some kind of a moral here, but what it is, i can't say...
andrew david. "fun on the subway" nyc.
ps. don't hire me to do your portrait. i took 5 shots of matt and jacinda during this sub ride, and every single one of them is unintentionally kooky. for instance, in this photo jacinda is a bit googly-eyed, which, on second thought, is probably more matt's fault than this here camera man. in any case, the 5 subway shots were the ONLY shots i got of the basingers during the entire weekend. argh.
good news, i found some corroborative evidence for yesterday's post. the bentleys are indeed making a cross-country trek (there are some cool pictures too). and, from the looks of things, paul seems lucid. mark (my roommate, friend of jed), had me thinking that paul's 'west nile virus' had progressed to the more advanced stages, including severe inflammation of the brain and a resulting semi-stupor.
now, speaking of brain inflammation, check out this "cold telephone" poetry--the first one's a mind-bender, but the cartoon haikus are a bit clearer (and funnier, and darker). just in case you're lazy and don't like clicking links, here's a sample (and please excuse the objectionable content, it's not mine...):
mickey mouse
my face is frozen.
i look excited when i
piss myself. i hurt.
ummm...so why the sudden interest in strange poetry from other blogs? well, if my google sleuthing is still spot-on, then i suspect that "mickey mouse" and cold telephones is the resting place of my childhood friend pj's 2003 poetry. and, in case you failed to commit sentence four of yesterday's post to memory, pj happens to be the son of the crazy (yet not entirely taken over by the mind plague of the west nile) wandering bentleys.
here's some more wanderers:
andrew david, andrew david, and beth the s.o. "romeo and juliet" central park, ny.
is it bad taste to speak lightly of an illness like the west nile virus? especially if paul actually had the virus? and what about 'haikus'? isn't that an odd plural word. it doesn't really work. you lose the ooh. i'm tempted to say "hi, cuz, long time no see." and, speaking of japanese poetry, i continue to despise photoshop (but not enough to convert to gimp--sorry, mark). it took hours and hours of wasted time to isolate the statue in that center picture. so the least that you could do to make my time seem a bit more valuable is to check out his left hand. is romeo being a bit naughty? actually, now that i look at it again...i think that's juliet's hand....okay, enough rambling....
i recently received some blunt criticism regarding the 17 point scale. a loyal reader frowned and said "your blog hasn't been very good lately." and that's it. no request for expanded seahawks coverage or spicier cooking tips. no call to cut out the photography. not a mention of how i might ammend my errant ways. well, what the crap do you want me to write about?
and speaking of crap, why would someone steal a tent pole from my backyard? thanks for leaving the tent, but what are you going to do with a single tent pole?
oh, and has anyone seen my headlamp? in any case, i'm leaving for saskatchewan on thursday--with or without my tent pole (and head lamp). thus, i won't be posting until i return next week.
andrew david. "the rejects 2: hand jive; our casa complex; a fence; the way; untitled #43" yelapa, mexico.
the colors in 'our casa complex' are not digitally altered. i don't know where the greenness came from...
'untitled #43' was a picture that i really liked. i played with it for awhile, but i couldn't find a good crop. another interesting idea that just didn't work...
tonight i skimmed part of practical photography while strolling through barnes and noble. reading that magazine kind of erodes my sense of the spontaneity of photography. the editors strongly encourage photographers to plan their photo sessions or, worse yet, to stage their photographs. this makes pratical sense, but somehow i'm afraid that it dulls the creative juices and cheapens the magic of a good photograph. oh, well.
i also saw les miserables. if you ask me about it, i might tell you some things. otherwise, i'm going to bed.
andrew david 'quintessential picture of a donkey and a palm tree' yelapa, mexico.
here is the seventh poem from my unpublished anthology Poems Written in Brady's UCORE Notes at 3AMish ca 2001:
Theater of Hate
Thumb.
I bite it
At you.
beth and i are considering a cross-country road trip to attend danny warren's wedding. hoping to secure lodgings in spokane, i contacted the original inspiration for these poems, brady hatfield. brady seemed optimistic, but spokane is just the first pit stop; danny's wedding is in saskatoon, which means, according to brady, they might as well get married on the moon. that's a lot of driving. unfortunately, today's poem is not about weddings or driving. i'm afraid that might be a bit too sentimental. therefore, i have selected a poem that is perhaps the most raw of the anthology. it is a poem with teeth. it bristles in a way that the reader can't quite explain. with its economical style, the poem bypasses the analytical matter of the brain and races straight for that ancient primordial throne of anger. Theater of Hate is certainly not my favorite poem in the anthology, but it is the most dangerous. For more information concerning this poetry, please refer to my post entitled 'the first essence [1]' or other poems from this anthology (simply search 'first essence' in my blog).
beth the s.o. 'showering in the jungle.' yelapa, mexico.
i wish i had taken this picture. i really like the contrast of light colors on the left and the dark, almost silhouttey, figure on the right. and i love the two characters of water: the spray and the cascading drip from my face. and she captured a great facial expression; i'm not sure what it means, but it's certainly interesting. still, in this case i think i'd prefer to take a shower than take a picture of someone taking a shower, because it was sooooooooo cooooool to shower out in the open jungle!
he is risen.
andrew david 'hallelujah! allelulia! amen.' puerto vallarta, mexico.
what's the message in this photo? and who is responsible for conveying that message? is it the sculptor or the photographer?
the sculptor is mute. he lost his voice the moment that someone took the photo. for better or for worse, with the touch of a button, his art became my art. the statue appears smack-dab in the middle of the picture; it's a rather ordinary composition. still, despite the boring arrangement, it was the photographer, not the sculptor, who determined this perspective. it was the photographer who recontextualized the picture by situating it in a blog entry about the resurrection. it was the photographer who redirected your attention from the odd triangle-shaped head to the outstretched, exalting arms.
so, what is this all about? I will tell you what it's about. it's about transformation. there's a miracle here. check out my image(s) from maundy thursday / good friday (april 13). and now jump back to today's image--that's the same statue. maybe i'm overstating the contrast here, but these are two very different images. horror and adoration. pain and praise. it's as if they're three days apart.
i'm the photographer, and i say that triangle man is me. triangle man is us. triangle man is all of humanity. we are triangle man, and we are watching jesus. we are watching crucifixion and resurrection. we are watching shawshank redemption. we are watching our lord 'crawl through a river of sh*t and come out clean on the other side.'
he is risen indeed.
nothing of substance in this post. instead, i responded to comments from beth, whoopee, becky, mari, and chadius (3/9, 3/23, 4/12, 4/13, and 4/18).
here's a little something from my blog cemetery. a few weeks ago, i was going to write a satirical gothic post about dreams, gothic novels, and the gre. i never got around to it. here's my rough, rough, rough draft in poetic form and embedded in a photograph:
GOTHIC by andrew
a dark, cavernous
parking garage
a gre, a feast
i come home
as imaginary spiders
crawl all over me
a bed, and i
drift off to sleep
later i see a spider
andrew david 'not quite a spider but two times as poisonous' yelapa, mexico.
a nasty night for blogging. that is, i have some tales to tell, but mark kept me up till midnight. then, by the time that i decided on the next picture to upload, it was 12:15am. so, you'll have to be satisfied with a list:
THINGS I'LL DO THIS WEEK:
monday - listen to anne lamott (a renown mother, author, and bush-berater) and pleasantly discuss milosevic's eternal destiny as we (beth and i) dine at the blue bistro (home of adequate food and blessedly intimate ambience)
tuesday - watch 'american dreamz' with beth, nathan, and julie
wednesday - attend a free ts eliot class (message me for more details!)
thursday - run with mark, go to 'church' (sean's pub)
friday -
saturday - work, go to ikea, go see a baby, dine with (a temporarily babyless) jonathan and kim, and watch an improv performance
sunday - keel over in exhaustion as i watch the final 4 episodes of 24's second season
INSIDE THE HEAD OF A FLUNKING FOTOGRAPHER:
below is an ugly picture of a sunset. the first picture is the original shot. the second picture is the product of several minutes of fruitless photoshopping. here's the deal: when i initially saw this photo, i suddenly thought of a scene from spy games. the film-maker takes libya, a bullet-ridden scene of poverty and chaos, and occasionally interrupts the narrative to give us glimpses of adulterated beauty -- laundry flapping in the wind, a child on a bicycle, a tea house. in the picture below, i was hoping to simulate a similar contrast. somehow i thought that the fiery reflection might serve to accentuate the dull night sky and peeling paint of an otherwise ordinary, not-so-good life.oh, well.
okay, back to that sunset. believe it or not, we recently received an email from a reader with a bit of expertise in this field:
"i really like your sunset picture. did you shoot that on automatic (exposure)? Was that on your hike with Steve? Hope you feel better!"
okay, anyone with commen sense will wonder, 'how does a low budget blog like the 17 point scale have access to anyone with photography clout?' therefore, after making a thorough search of our archives, we uncovered the following information to support his credibilty (please pardon the picture; there is something shameful in using such a poor picture in a series of posts regarding photography. however, after clicking on the photo, you will note our informant's camera laying dormant beside him on the table. this is somehow relevant):
Name: confidential
Past Experience: Falcon Photographer http://thefalcononline.com/story/1684
Past Experience Caveat: the pictures on that link fail to illustrate the actual level of his work. they're just the best i could google in five minutes.
Training: star-pupil of the Director of Photography at World Vision
Training Caveat: photography aside, they deserve your money: http://www.worldvision.org/
In any case, the 17 point scale would like to issue the following statement in response to his query:
"I feel quite a bit better, maybe 91%. The photograph was indeed shot using automatic (exposure). It was shot in July of 2005 on the Kenai Peninsula. But there's something you should know about that photo..."
(if these cliffhangers are vexing, i'm sorry -- more on apologies later -- it just takes too long to write anything substantial. perhaps i should save info up and post in big fat bursts)
darrrr. the rain has arrived.
if i were writing a poem, i think i'd use the title 'yet another sunset in golgotha' as my inspiration. however, the cluster of trees on the hill is much too busy for a literal golgotha and this literal incongruity might dissuade viewers from pursuing the picture any further. my only hope would be if they happened to be sitting in my living room at this very instant. in that case, they'd be privy to an unusual experience; that of my flatmate (we'll call him Mark) crooning gabriel faure's libera me (take a browse at http://www.emusic.com/album/10827/10827503.html). yep, i think a requiem (and a dark title) might be just the thing to spark interest in my nearly ordinary photo.
in the meantime, here's a pic of the mug behind the voice:
hey, instead of using a really clever segue to the second installment of secrets, i am posting this picture. i bet you already dismissed it as yet another picture of a sunset. after all, its simple and a bit lacking in photographic prowess. yet after a moments reflection, i find something striking in the silhouettes, some pictoral essence that demands a defense. but how would i begin such a defense? 'you should like this picture because...' hardly.
once a picture has survived the purifying flames of photoshop, it is in the public domain and my powers of influence are nil. still, i may have one last resort: the title. But where do you stand - could an engaging title impact viewer perceptions? better yet, should an engaging title influence critism or should the art speak for itself? as an english major rather than a photography buff, i'm all for titles. so here are my initial title ideas: 'yet another sunset,' 'yet another sunset in mordor,' 'golgotha,' or 'roman polanski.'
more later; the wind is blowing and i should go to bed...
