Zoob's Dubilicious Groove

In search of a Keylogger

2011-03-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

I need a good analysis tool for my own keystrokes. I need to be able to see what I have typed. I need it visible on the screen. I want my strokes, also, to be saved to a text file. Unfortunately, tools that do this have been branded keyloggers, a vicious tool used by the unscrupulous, the obsessively stalkish, and the criminal.

Why do keyloggers remain in the murky, hacker-esque shadows of the internet? I am now on my third serious research attempt at finding a good program that can capture keystrokes, and it's the same scary landscape that I've run up against before. Once I had found an excellent tool only to have the idiotic Mccaffe antivirus program detect it as malicious and delete it without my permission. It was a work computer so I didn't have enough access. I could never get it back and now I've forgotten what it even was. :( Oye.

Configuring a System for the Transcription of Recorded Interviews

2011-02-06T11:19:00.001-08:00

J ust recently I set up a new computer for transcribing... again. I found myself scrambling all over the place to find the programs that I had put together years ago to make the job easier. This is a note for myself if I have to do it yet again, but it also might be useful for others who are looking to get set up for typing audio files. I mainly transcribe interviews for faculty at a University. They demand fairly accurate, word for word, sigh by sigh transcripts so they can analyze the data as objectively as they can.

Playing the Audio:

I use winamp for playing the audio files. Winamp has an incredible amount of customization options and also allows global hotkeys to be set. This means that I can stay in the typing program and use shortcuts to rewind, pause, or fast forward. Before I figured that out I had to do the very annoying alt+tab / left arrow to rewind in the program / alt+tab to get back to my typing program. I use the dvorak keyboard layout so I bind my rewind, fast forward, and pause to keys that are useful for me, but qwerty typists would probably want to put them in places handy for them. To set them, hit control + p in winamp and click the left menu item that says "global hotkeys." My particular bindings are:

alt + h -> rewind
alt + t -> fast-forward
alt + c -> pause/play

Of course, this can be found at:

http://www.winamp.com/

Preparing the Audio (optional) :

Sometimes, if the audio has quite a bit of noise I use Sony Vegas to process it. Their noise reduction plugin can take out low hums, high hissings, etc, and their 4-band EQ can allow you to put a spike in the 2300 kilohertz region where a lot of verbal information lays. This can really help reduce forehead wrinkles and wear on the rewind key. Obviously this program is expensive, but if you have an audio background, this little step can save a lot of time and effort later.

Customizing Winamp:

I add two plugins to winamp, the first is pacemaker, and the second is called repeater. The pacemaker plugin allows you to slow down the audio (or speed up if the speakers are quite slow.) Once it is installed, enable it by going to the winamp preferences (control + p) and under the plugins, click the area for dsp/effect and simply click it in the righthand box. The install download is here:

http://www.surina.net/pacemaker/download.html

The repeater plugin allows you to change the number of seconds that is rewound or fast-forwarded with each keypress. This plugin is only for the super anal-retentive, like myself! (Normal rewinding, at five seconds, is usually adequate, but if you find it rewinding too much, those wasted seconds add up.) Once it is installed, you change the seconds rewound by right clicking on the actual rewind button in winamp. More options can be found by configuring the plugin in the winamp preferences (control + p) and going to the "general purpose" area in the plugins category. Click the repeater plugin in the righthand box and click configure. The repeater can be found at the following url:

http://www.nunzioweb.com/daz/repeater.html

Typing:

I use TypeWell, an abbreviation system/program that is used at hundreds of schools for doing real-time transcription in classes for the deaf or hard of hearing. They require completion of a training ($400) before one is allowed to purchase their software. Prices for various licenses range from $100 to $600. I think it's quite a good program, using decades and decades of theory to build a strong abbreviation system. I was into Gregg shorthand as a kid and it was a delight to see that they use some of those old ideas. The TW system also derives from the competition between it and other transcription programs, but even neater: they use some of my own ideas for building a quicker system (I've been focusing on techniques to reduce use of the spacebar). You can customize and add your own abbreviations, too, naturally.

As far as speed, my coworkers and I average between 90 - 120 wpm although sometimes, when the groove is on, some of us can get to 140 wpm runs for a good 5-10 minutes. More information about TypeWell can be found on their site:

http://www.typewell.com/licenses.html

Of course, you don't NEED TypeWell to transcribe. You can use any program you want to tap into. You could even use notepad combined with a program like ShortKeys to build an abbreviation system from, or type without abbreviations at all. I would recommend MS Word over notepad due to its autosaving features and all its other jazz.

Sharing the Files:

I use dropbox for aligning a folder with a client. That way, they can simply drop an audio file in their folder and I can drop the transcripts in the same folder when I'm done. Easy as pie to pipe. If you use the following link to register, it'll reward both you and I with 250 extra megabytes.

http://db.tt/KaVHZd8

_____

I think that's all! If I think of anything else to add, I shall.

On HDR, Flatness, and Nostalgia

2010-08-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

HDR Efex Pro is a new HDR program being pumped and drooled over by the various hype sites I read and drool over. These sites are, of course, set up to whet the lust of people who want to make other people think the images they take are breathtaking, soulful, and moving. Aside from the Kwik-E-Mart name (brainstorming sessions must be grueling), the following line in their promo video annoyed me: "We've been taking pictures of interesting places and they just come out FLAT." What do these brave capitalists mean by the term? FLAT's technical relevance has been consumed by that ever pressing need to find a new synonym for "uncool." It's opposite is the antimonious expression that describes a photo that "pops." What I mean by saying it has no relevant technical associations is actually much worse. What HDR technologies actually do is flatten extreme exposures so that shadows no longer shade and highlights no longer flare and blind. They flatten images! They pop by flattening! Something like a LDR, a low dynamic range image, would be less flat (and possibly "pop" in its own way). The marketers simply know that flat = ugly/drab/boorish, and therefore would never try and argue that it's actually what they are selling. The viewer (you) is welcome to make a judgment before proceeding to the next paragraph.

What HDR technologies really show is that the culture I belong to is afraid of the world, the world in which reality "pops" our pixels out of rational bounds making everything look scary, the photographer untalented, or even a "negative" person! If you make an ugly picture, chances are that you have an ugly outlook on life. Either that or you're inept. When did we become so terrified of the battles within? Beauty for a while was the idea that images brought viewers to a point of understanding the overwhelming, overpowering nature of nature and the closeness of death - they called it sublime. It was, at least, an attempt at reconciling angst. There was an attempt to face the extremes.

Another thing the promo video explains is that you can blend your exposures together it makes them look "more like what you really saw when you took the photo," then proceeds to show cityscapes that look gleaming, vibrant, colorful, and plastic. Although your city may be fine the way it is, the images demonstrate a mild inferiority complex. They announce to the world that you don't live in a shithole. As if! The subtext reads, unfortunately, that you are mildly delusional and live in a world where memory is hijacked by nostalgia, or that your city isn't good enough without teams of programmers prettying it up and hiding any blemish. Beauty now means tamed, submissive and presentable to the parents. Beauty - Bah! I'm tempted to eat a couple boxes of raisins, bags of prunes, and cans of corn and use their software to really "pop" and "make exciting" an HDR mesh of my own diarrhea.

Winter Solstice Celebration and Goodbye to Denali

2010-01-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

I find myself scouring my photo archives for images I know I've gotten but have no clue what year, camera, or occasion they might be from. I spend hours flipping through folders, reminiscing and discovering goldie oldies that I can embarrass friends with by posting them on facebook pages. I'm currently in the middle of hunting for old photos of not a human but a dog, Denali, who recently passed away and was the main focus of a Winter Solstice celebration (photos below). I know I've seen this animal off and on for years, clicked at it here and there, but have pretty much no clue when and where.

Sometimes my long hours of photo searching jumps a level and turns into google research on different organization schemes or ideas to make the hunt simpler. For instance, life would be so much better if facial recognition software was available that could search through my image database, tag, and pull images back that belonged to whomever. It turns out that apple's iPhoto has already thought of this and integrated something like it into their services. I've looked and looked for the competitor's response but nothing yet (although someone on chimed in the comments for a youtube video that F-stop for the GNOME desktop might have it in the works.) However, however, the iPhoto Faces program has been out for about a year and there's not much talk about other programs bringing it in. I guess it's time to learn how to run mac programs on a PC. I never thought I'd say that! Anyway, enjoy a couple photos from our Winter Solstice celebration:

New Years Eve 2009 - Zeus's Chop Shop

2010-01-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

Photos can be boring and complex at the same time. The trick is figuring out how to affect others into thinking about certain ones as the latter. I might dismiss an image and skip through it for reasons that are completely unrelated to the reason it fascinated someone else. Different ideas are for different people novel or cliche. That's why it is scary to look into a photograph for too long. You begin to get a warped sense of its importance and relevance. For example, the first image in the set (about 400 photos that evening) was picked because it had a decently interesting subject, a pretty color palette, and some background figures that struck me as "interesting enough" as well. It made the cut, but my decision was split second and hopefully matches the mindset of the average information starved peruser. It's funny, though, how big of a story can be created with the long look applied.

If we elevate it from being more than just another random party moment caught digitally, the photo can be seen as a psychological triad. The dancer caught in a prayer is clearly the subject, with alternate selves that depict not devils and angels on either shoulder, but an angel in the center stuck between the devil and the apathetic hedonist. I like how the prayer posture is similar to the moment before a diver hits water, only the splash will happen in one of two heavens above. One is a void of exploration and cold science and the other is fluffy, pink, and filled with pleasure. But both are barred, caged, and restricted (or do the walls keep the heavenly in?). One of the symbols most visually packed with information is the eye simply based on its directionality. The triad is engulfed in an odd lover's triangle. The hedonist looks randomly about; the devout peers inward; the devil maintains a pretense of ignorance. They seem to be looking at no one in particular yet are all aware of each other. The symbolism with the wrist bands and admittance - about who has paid to be there - can bring about other complex themes.

Some photographs are easier to do this to than others. And most seem to be trying not hard enough at all. But I recommend a deep look at images every now and then because it is always surprising what tasty treats they can be, even the most banal. Here's fifty from my third involvement with Zeus's warehouse, on the New Years night of 2009.

X-Mas Disco

2009-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

The nightlife implies a shadow world, which is why artists like Frank Miller strike chords with the bleak contrast of black and white. What is hidden in the black - and burnt out in the white - reveals the key component of the night: ambiguity. Just as photography mimics the brain's system of memory, shadows and quick bits of detail hone in to represent memories of the night. Technically speaking, this is why most flash photography fails. It reveals too much and by doing so constructs a distorted image and warped perception of the experience. It would be like using an X-ray camera to photograph a football game (although other, deeper truths may be revealed in that project). Attention to all details might portray the world of the autistic whose tragedy lies in not being able to simplify the grass into the concept "lawn" and succumbs to the overwhelming visual onslaught of every blade. It does not connect with the more common mental habit of simplification, erasure, and categorization.

One of my struggles is to try and represent the little bit of detail that can turn a swirling scene into a slight articulation of the removal of ambiguity and to expose a few of the multiple readings possible in the instant that light flicks out and breathes meaning onto objects. The teeter-totter lies between the one side that looks like a beginning art student's third roll of film that elevates their psyche into a sad delusion of the artistic, hazy, dark, subdued and meaningless abstractionism, and the blown out crystal clarity and pock-marked boredom that happens once said person buys a flash. Sometimes I tip to one side and others to the other. The perfection in the middle is rare. This time I think I tipped to the side of the tipped to the side, hazy, out-of-focus, noisy, and artsy-freaking-fartsy.

White Party(ies)

2009-12-13T01:07:00.000-08:00

I'm back to the 40d since my 5dmarkii was yanked (maybe I'll post more about this if I can get out of my depressed funk) and therefore I am back to fighting an enemy I had pushed into the corner a bit: noise. Of course, even with superior sensors, noise is always an element when trying to get the most out of every photon. By bumping up the ISO, the sensor starts to get much less choosy about what counts as a triggering, data filled pulse. I really hate noise. I'm attempting to do some batch noise reduction on the photos from the white party. Getting the process down has thrown me into the funky world of learning the different kinds of noise. There is luminance noise as well as chroma noise. It makes sense that there could be two types of errors because we perceive light both in the type of color of light (chroma) as well as its brightness and intensity (luminance). Chroma noise doesn't seem to be much of a problem, but in the dark depths of the nightlife life, luminance is hell to counter. I didn't dare shoot over an iso of 500. High sensitivity and big sensors seems to be the best way to be able to achieve any kind of decent depth of field, but those toys are so many paychecks away. Anyway, I batched some noise ninjitsu into these files, so I hope and pray they don't look too processed. Here are photos of the 9th annual white party at the Depot:

And the party continued at Zeus's urban temple. I got my second wind at about 8:00 in the morning as I realized it was bright outside and danced myself sweaty silly! Such a good night/morning!

Bass on the Beach - Bass Camp

2009-07-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

The struggle to gain control over darkish environments is an obsession and a curse. Initially I thought that the most important aspect in order to push the edges of light was to get lenses with very wide maximum apertures. I ditched zooms because their limit (something to do with the space needed for zoom mechanisms) was f2.8. I transitioned to lenses which which could push 1.4 and above. This helped for two reasons. The first is the obvious: the bigger the aperture, the more light can hit the camera's sensor and thus, the brighter the possible exposure in a given lighting scenario. Secondly, the big hole aids in another perilous aspect of low light shooting: focusing. Getting a good focus in low lighting situations is what I spend most of my time gritting my teeth over. Having a wide aperture lens can help you achieve focuses easier(regardless of the F-stop you may happen to be shooting at,) because the aperture only tightens when the shutter is pressed. It's at its widest when focusing.

Now, there's a big downside to shooting wide open. The depth of field is hair-width thin at f1.4 or f1.2. So, while it's a bit easier to focus, shooting moving subjects can get incredibly frustrating because anything that takes a subject closer or further from the focal plane will ruin your conceptualized focus. This causes the amount of blurry, unusable photos to skyrocket.

The next solution is to bring your own lights. I, for a while, started collecting party lights and bringing them to locations simply for the fact that I could get more usable photos (while "elevating the party to another level," too). It's a gonzo journalistic approach and one that I don't mind, but requires a lot more energy investment, variety, and perhaps even permission. So, the next stage was to bring my own strobes and place them in strategic mounts to fill the scenes with drama. The advantages are that you can stop the aperture down to something more flexible like f4.0 or whatever and then use shutter dragging techniques to get a decent mix of ambient and sharp lighting. However, doing remote flashes (or even on-camera flashes) has the potential to completely change the way a scene is viewed, which destroys the images as seen in the natural setting - which might be what the photo hunt was all about. Flooding a dimly lit area with a flash of light will make everything bright. If you were impressed by the light wafting down to hit someone's cheekbone as they walk through a doorway, the results of using strobe will probably fail. One solution is to use lights on 90 degree angles in order to just catch the rims of faces, which should preserve a lot of a scene's original color and chiaroscuro but add that little hint of focus and sharpness. It's an alright technique but it means constant manipulation of the lighting direction and placement as photo goals are met (or fail).

Of course, these techniques only push the limits; they do not announce victory over them. Recently I realized that the true power lays not in the lens's aperture or personal light strobes, but in the sensor's sensitivity. ISO. With an ISO that was, say, ten times more sensitive without noise, most of the lighting limits would go away. Of course, physical limits (ie. the limits of the laws of physics) seem to be maxing out, although hopefully new technologies will continue to whittle away at the noise inherent in high-ISO captures. There is kind of a "high ISO war" going on between Nikon and Canon at the moment, and although it leads to huge increases, each technological revolution only helps gain a stop or two. Significant, but more is desired so quickly. The other way is via higher megapixels, because if you can keep noise ratios the same while the megapixel value increases, noise becomes smaller and less noticeable.

So those are some initial and general thoughts on pushing the darkness away from the successful images. I have more that I'd like to go into soon, but I'll leave it at that for now. If anyone has any low-lighting shooting tips, I would really appreciate them.

Tommy Atoll

2009-06-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

I did this audio project with a bizarre but amazing homeless guy, Tommy Atoll. This is the result of editing down from two separate interviews about an hour long apiece. Haha. It was fun to try and make his hilarious, wandering spiels into a narrative. He needs to be famous! Actually, I guess he is, as he says he's donated 550 million dollars to charity from his album sales.

Tommy's Not Crazy!

For those fascinated by this guy, I have some other unedited short clips. After he talks up his music make sure to listen to it to see if it meets your expectations. :)

Tommy Likes Mormons

Tommy On Abortion

Tommy's Not a Rapist

Surfing Like Making Love

Male Model

Tommy got shot!

Tommy's worth 550 Million!

Tommy Live on Guitar!!!

People need to use samples of this dood in their techno music!

Element 11: Transformation

2009-06-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

I was ready for it. I'll write up some narratives when I'm better rested. :) Ie, never.

Evolution at Wind Walker Ranch

2009-06-16T13:31:00.001-07:00

Ninety photos in the set above. I'm either getting lazier or giving into the demands of others. My editing has gone to shit. People want more, more more. The vote is in and the decree is quantity over quality, although I'm a firm believer in the power of cutting down. Eliminating the zillions of blurry photos, or uninspired ones, or dismal failures full of boredom, or disgustingly biased and unrepresentative photos (yes it's true!) allows me to look better than I am. It certainly allows me to look better than others who post every single one of their "artistic masterpieces" - blurries, blackies, whities and all. But I should probably cut down to 50 like I was before. Next time I'll bring you all LESS, LESS, LESS!!!

So, I missed out on all of the truly cool, excellent events and opted for sleep instead. The main DJ act was The Spacemen (were The Spacemen?), who are supposedly humans who dress like freakish alien gargoylic aliens and wave their tendrilled fingers around like mad, to the beat, and appear very "alien." You'll not see any photographs of them from me! I also missed the main fire event up at the Wanderlust area, opting for sleep instead, oh those lovely z's. There was, assuming I can trust those who made me jealous, fire jumproping... as well as spinning and burning and dancing and flailing about. Cowboys and Indians made an entrance. And there was talk of finding teeny-bopper raverlettes and combining them with an equestrian for fun and perhaps profit. My main contribution was waking up the next morning, wandering around with a bag filled with colorful and lacy fabric, and enlisting some help in order to throw the said fabric over Clayton's geodesic dome. It was pretty. And sweet. And bitter. Sweet.

It is now time for resolutions. I've committed to resting the entire week so that I can pound my body into the ground and never stop shooting and shouting this weekend for e11. I'm hot and bothered and hopping mad at my laziness (but also happy). In vengeance, I'm gonna go crazy psycho machine pumping greased up steamy mad!

Desert Rocks Festival

2009-06-04T00:23:00.001-07:00

You've heard of those fat shaking machines? They consist of a big rubber bands that are yanked left and right, jiggling the jiggly areas which vibrates the frustrating fat away. That way you can get fit while perusing TV, munching low-fat chocolate bars, and huffing down to the day job where you sweat behind screens for the remote controlled predator and kill Iraqis patriotically. We've all been there. But that lucky Goldilocks found the right temperature after only three tries. I can never find the comfy medium. Everything's either too much or too little. My own chocolate laxative relates to socializing. I want to be able to be social, but only when I want to be. And socialization, although I should know by now, leads to others reaching out to me rather than me reaching out to them. I mostly like the me reaching out. So, then, Goldilocks is either lonely - and calls everyone she knows in order to find something to do, or Goldilocks is swamped with the outgoing social searches of others. Last weekend I found myself swamped by the latter problem. So I ditched everyone and headed down in search of my own connections. It was a blast. I took a few pictures.

The Superhero Lounge - (e11 fundraiser)

2009-04-14T11:51:00.001-07:00

Superheroes - those masked and caped social outcasts who live in schizophrenic fantasy worlds of daisies, chainsaws, and narcissism are now mainstream. Batman: The Dark Knight represents a geek's wet dream: the object of their introverted/egocentric adolescent infatuation - the comic book - became animated, got a television series, began launching piss-poor action movies by real people - some of who were 'actually hot,' and became "good." For the first time ever, girls started appearing at comic book conventions. Even though the girls were paid to be there, the superhero has finally been deemed worthy as a worship object. To help people know how to behave, injected into the Dark Knight's plotline were obsessive fans who dressed like Batman, too. It was comic book culture's ploy to model a mainstream reality that worships them. Has it permeated to the inner bimbo? Has the superhero really a fashion icon that influences trends like Hollywood stars, Michelle Obama, and ANCO? If so, comic books have transcended the shunned corner of the nerd to the level of Greek mythology. They are the stories told over an over. Have they become our myths? Is youtube the new 'word of mouth'?

Peek inside the photos to the Hero Lounge. I first heard about this place through Joe Frank, who would watch, absentmindedly, as a McGuyveresque action star planned and executed dashing escapes on the television. He identified with the character on the screen. He wanted him. He looked for him. He found him, at the Hero Lounge. They, in the natural but exciting and brand-new way, became lovers. They honey-mooned, crooned and looked at each other in amazement and awe. But enchantment dissipates and soon indifference and boredom began to permeate. The aura of celebrity chain-whipped knuckles. There they are.

Cacophony at Seabase

2009-03-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

It was the castle to withstand wind we built in the desert to celebrate entry and exit into life. The wind roared endlessly all day, and I only felt peace for a few minutes as I woke up slowly. Then the eggy sun heated that air up again and the air whirred as it was beaten by the photon blender. You can only capture the visual aspects of wind when it hits things and makes them defy gravity. Photographs can't capture the sound or the motion. Last time I was in this desert, it did this:

and threatened to carry off stages. But the castle held. Only the flags on top and streamers behind revealed the torrential quantities of air tearing past.

For those confused by the photos, I'll give a more descriptive, informative summary. The event was instigated by the death of someone who has been actively involved in the burn community and who did not want the grimness of a funeral to see him go but rather a celebration. That's why the military made an appearance. The flag ceremony was actually quite moving - I was emotionally affected throughout but when Hope was given the flag, she let out a scream of joy and celebration, the crowd followed suit, and then: music began, thumping away into the desert air.

What struck me about this event was how metaphorical the castle became. It was a representation of the life of the individual. It was created out of donated wood, brought together with the energy of volunteers, yet was something no one could predict. There were no images or blueprints drawn. It was made from casual, natural inspiration. It became bigger than itself, was celebrated, and music played throughout it. But the most crucial and emotional aspect was that it was taken away from all the celebrators before we were ready for it. People wanted to continue playing on the castle, listening to music and bands playing from it, yet it was taken before its time. We watched it burn magnificently, felt its warmth, but there was something tragic. As the coals began to burn low, we were all aware not of the castle, but the lack of the castle. It allowed us to all feel a sense of group loss. We all experienced the vibrancy and then the void.

Provo for Palestine - 1st Event!

2009-02-12T22:44:00.000-08:00

I recently joined up with a little group in Provo that has sprang up as a response to the recent bombing in Gaza. What I think so so cool about the project is that they are not looking particularly to meet fourth order Maslow needs, the food/water/shelter stuff, but to hit at the first order. I don't know if that seems silly, but I like the idea of addressing needs (art IS a need) that go beyond day to day survival and allow for human expression that connects widely disparate times. No offense to Americans (well, maybe a little), but considering that art is usually at its best in the midst of turmoil, boiling violence, and fear, the spoiled, pale-green, super toddlers that we Americans are probably make some pathetic creations compared to what the Palestinians are capable of. The purpose so to open a communication conduit between artists there and artists here, and to raise money to donate for art supplies and that sort of thing.

We had our first event on Wednesday. Food was cooked (tabouli and this other "meat bread" thing) and we paired up with the Provo Cafe, Pennyroyal in order to show a documentary and hear an intro by the filmmakers. It was a success! 98 people responded on the facebook page Event page, and although not that many showed up, it still was a pretty decent crowd for a group that has just started making connections. I didn't have time to take many pictures, but there are a few.

Gravity's 8th Consecutive White Party

2008-11-28T17:25:00.001-08:00

A white party. It sounds almost racist. But wrongs become righted when you find out it's all done under a black light that actually makes everyone blue. Serves us right for being martians. It's a great theme party because everyone has at least a white t-shirt. It's pretty much a chance for all those guys who show up everywhere in blue jeans and a thin white t to be in the in instead of "too cool for all that fashion bull." Of course, what I love to see are the amazing ways that people creatively intertwine the theme's limitations with inventiveness. Blue hair or pink hair becomes all that much shocking.

On the lighting side, I really need to investigate the effects of blacklight on photography. Blue always seems to be a wavelength that interacts in strange ways. It's the most high energy frequency, of course, so that may have to do with the way it skews and burns out in places. Blue seems to rip less sophisticated sensors apart. Try looking at blue televisions or led's with a cellphone camera. Check out the photos above to see what I mean! Especially <this> one. Those are led's, and so perhaps it's just that they are so small and bright that they behave differently than anything else. If anyone has resources or knowledge I'd love to know more about the phenomenon.

OPP! (Other people's photos):
Jeffrey McGrath
Eric Hamilton

Halloween Weekend - Jackasses & China Blue

2008-11-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

I almost didn't make it for Halloween! Schoolwork has risen and I've been too bogged down with homework AND trying to sew a costume at the last minute. I failed, ran out of time, and decided to just go anyway. The night before I had dressed as a wrestler disguised as a car reflector - you know those ones that keep the heat out of parked cars? But for China Blue's party I was going to be Jolly Old St. Nick. It couldn't be done in time, so that look'll have to wait until Christmas or next week or sometime. Jen succeeded in becoming a peculiar puppet with a puffy head. Now, today, daylight savings has ended and time has shifted. If I try to forget, maybe tomorrow I can sleep in for an extra hour.

Oh, also - I tried doing my first photosynth, and it's of the China Blue house. Check it out by clicking photosynth. You have to install the plugin, but it's really cool once you do. It let's you explore through a point cloud of 2-D images in order to get something like a 3-D feeling. I added about 130 images but they are only 40% "synthy," so there are a lot of disconnects and many different sets. But that's ok! You can still explore the living room that goddess and mistress Charity destroyed! Wahooo!!

-= Yun Yun Fashion and Nate's Dirty Thirty =-

2008-10-21T20:00:00.001-07:00

Just like this country's banks, I am now in debt. But I have a camera again, which makes it worth it. I just hope I can get out again soon. So, Jen's fashion show was amazing! I was a model in it, so I didn't get many pictures, but Caitlin was amazing enough to shoot and she should have her stuff up later this week. I can't wait. Thanks to all the models! We had four boys and six girls, which I think is great because girls are so often overrepresented. I'd much rather have both sexes be put under whatever gaze it is that takes them in. Also, Breana was wonderful for doing make-up. As well, two people helped do hair styling - Alex did an amazing job coming at the last minute and doing hair with her friend Autom. It was a big production - and all for five minutes of us strutting our stuff inside of the much larger show, an October Evening. We were one of about 15 different groups lined up to entertain.

After the party I went to Nate's dirty thirty birthday with a few who still had energy. I actually should have gone to bed, but I stayed up all night anyway. Who can beat pudding wrestling in a dimly lit garage? The interactions were furious. And I got to take some photos again! Check em out.

I also used a slide show automation tool, animoto, to make the following:

My Backpack has Flown Away

2008-09-02T15:30:00.003-07:00

About two weeks ago, while sleeping under the full moon in a canyon, someone broke into my car and took a backpack which contained the cameras that pretty much motivate my life*. When things are stolen from me, as has happened before and will happen again, I always at first give myself a materialist reprimand. What business do I have in emotional attachments to objects? Tom Waits relates, "There's nothing wrong with her a hundred bucks won't fix," and it's essentially the same with me (although a bit more). I read about the depressing decline of marine life and know my problems are so superficial, selfish, and materialistic. So, I really don't want to worry about starting over or anything like that. The time away from a camera will give me some time to think about what I want to do once I rebuild a bit. One positive thing that the loss has showed me is that that people care! I've been astonished by the response from people who actually give a shit about my work. I really never expected anyone to care; perhaps even a few would be happy that I'd stop the ceaseless glassy interjections, tired of being hunted and snapped at. But Molly's response [link] showed me otherwise.

Soon after Molly's comment, others replied with their own concerns and outrage. Courtney replied with poetic, angry sentiments. [link]. Soon Lorraine [link] made her contempt known as well. And then, in a crazy bold move, Nate Hansen, [link] who has been throwing the Easy Street parties, chimed in - not just with outrage - but he set up a Paypal donation account for anyone who wanted to throw dollars at the problem. It's not as if I even REALLY care about the money (of course, money WOULD pretty much solve my situation but I know cash ain't free), the fact that people have taken time out of their lives to care about my own little misfortune has given me more than enough energy to simply say: Rebuild! Go a bit deeper in debt and get a new camera as quick as can be! I'll be back on my feet before I'm missed too much!

Thank you, everyone!

* Particularly, I lost 1 canon 20d, 1 canon 40d, 1 24 1.4l lens, 1 50 1.2 lens, a pocketwizard, two small softboxes, an 8gb compact flash and a couple of 2 gig cards, a bunch of eneloop batteries and bp511s, a brand new pair of prescription sunglasses, and a tan Jeep backpack. Keep your eyes out on the look out!

Uncle Uncanny's at Wind Walker Ranch

2008-08-13T20:43:00.001-07:00

Uncle Uncanny's music festival was small enough that you could get around to see everything, but big enough that doing so was more than likely to cause exhaustion, fatigue, and loss of sleep. With larger events you just have to give up and acknowledge that there are more experience available than obtainable, but with this you could perhaps get close. We arrived just after a torrential downpour had made mini-flash floods sweep across the place, but because of the dark and the absorbent desert sand we couldn't see a sign of it. So the earth felt alien and unexplainable to tip-toe across, non-solid and squishy under foot. Music, shadow dancing, and sleep commenced.

Inspired by the wondrous Circus Pandemonium, I set up a trapeze and then proceeded to just about break my neck. After blacking out, waking up, letting the blood dry, and then running into the sunset with my camera in hand, I ended up at a sweat lodge. And this is where my story really begins. I've been to quite a few lodges before and they have usually been free, creative places to express and explore and get to a point where you almost pass out. I love the sounds you can make inside them when you can get everything out of your nose and throat and just have these resonant open air canals. Sometimes there is a bit of mysticism and oddness, but I usually ignore that.

China Blue resident Starman was running the sweat, and to begin he asked if anyone had a song to share or something to say. I was there in part because I wanted to meditate on my neck injury, give it some rest, and "cleanse," so I said that. The person to my right, in a beautiful Irish accent, said that he wanted the lodge experience to help think about how to better know when to assist other people and when to keep silent and stay back, for their own spiritual or experiential growth. I agreed in my mind that this was a challenging boundary to figure out. It butts the ego itself against the instinct to baby others against letting them figure out everything on their own. I felt satisfied that I was in good company.

And then the weirdness began. I wanted to open the conversation up to allow for responses to people's statements. I did not want the dialogue to simply be people on their own soapboxes, so I began talking about how I hoped it would be an environment where people could respond to what others said. The Irishman's response was something like this: criticizing other people meant that you did not accept what they had to say, which meant that you had your own worldview you wanted to spread in the world; the critique of others was the reason why there was so much violence, bloodshed, and war in the world.

I was stunned. I'd always thought that wars are only fought because people do not ask enough questions. The leaders and those in power very love this mindset. People with weak foundations are afraid of being questioned. And then we heard about how the universe was split into two genders, male and female. And then we hear about how humans are beings of light, made of photons. It's ridiculous. You won't find a physicist alive that would agree with that. Regarding gender, it's more social than anything else - and a recent one. To be even looser and say that the universe is divided into sexes - male and female - is just as silly. These are categories based our own view and the fact that most can be easily put into on or another box. It's comes down to one having a large reproductive cell and the other having a smaller one. For much longer than sexual specialization has been going on, life has continued through asexual means. There are all sorts of sexes in the natural world. We shouldn't believe these silly sorts of analyses simply because they make us feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Never let the aura of a situation stop you from calling bullshit!

Amazing Jellyfish - Fundraiser

2008-07-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

The care and time that so many people put into costumes is a little bit overwhelming. I mean, you hear about a jellyfish themed party, but you don't expect to see people dressed up as them everywhere! I counted at least five people who had modified tentacles on decorated umbrellas. How compete? I, myself, stole Jen's newly-minted jellyish shirt and so I felt I'd approximated at least the texture and colors of the jellyfish. But it was so little compared! I think one of the best quotes I heard was from someone commenting on her friend's excuse for not coming: "I'll have to take forever to get ready!" The response was, "You don't even know what it means to get ready for a party. I've been working all week just to get ready!" Additionally, the place was adorned and decorated with jellyfish of all sizes. A geodome was jellyfish themed, the dj booth was a mobile jellyfish that could drive, they decorated the walls, and little blinking baby jellyfish were on fingers all around.

Oh the jellyfish! They are my second favorite marine invertebrate (next to the wondrous octopus, although the mantis shrimp and the sea cucumber are pretty captivating, too). I've always wanted one for a pet. Just look at these gorgeous things.

For more information about the mobile jellyfish from the year 12000, check the group's website.

The performers were Circus Pandemonium!

Water World @ Easy Street

2008-07-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a small set from the latest Easy Street fiasco. This one included water in liquid form, indoors, which seemed to quickly turn to steam. Still at 5:00 in the AM the place was sweltering. Humidity just makes raw heat feel oppressive. It's the inverse of sitting in the sun's chromosphere, over one million degrees centigrade, hotter than the surface, but not enough particles to pick up the heat and even feel. Yeah, so it was like the inverse of that.

I wasn't there for very long - I had a trip to the black hole (in white canyon, southern Utah) the next morning even though thunderstorms were making that trip dangerous and uncertain.

Desolation Canyon on the Green River

2008-07-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

This set has been like, published, and can be ordered as a cute little book from Blurb. Click!

From the photos it might not be apparent that this river trip was not just an everyday occasion. It wasn't like all the others! This one was unique! (Yes yes, I know that we are always heroes in the center of our own universe, and we feel that our own experiences are more fulfilling, rich, and poignant than others, but there's something almost Disneyland-like about the "river trip" that I don't love, they seem somewhat formulaic in spirit and the photographs almost always look the same).

But anyway, beneath our river uniforms - the anonymizing elements of life vests, helmets, and sharp sunlight on a one way track - it was a reunion of friends who had not seen each other for years. Some had not done the trip for ten years, others had done it every year for the past twelve. It was a group of 26 quite amazing people who met for relaxation, adventure, conversation, and a common enthrallment of and in powerful forces of nature. The smoothness and calm of the river can easily become a violent, life-sucking force. It's a metaphor for the fragility of our relatively calm planet hurtling through mostly empty space. One small thing goes wrong and it's all over. So, we slid through a groove in the rocks that had been set down from the Oligocene and popped out even longer ago, the late Cretaceous. It was relaxed yet rigorous, sacred and profane.

For further information, I'll refer to Jas's page on the trip.

Brandon, a rafter/photographer on the trip, also has pics: click!

Rainbow Gathering '08.

2008-07-09T22:39:00.001-07:00

I spent seven days at this year's rainbow gathering, which was in Wyoming this year.

The biggest question I have returning from the rainbow gathering is this: what was the impact on the mosquitoes!? I, myself, noticed a dramatic shift in the cleverness of the mosquitoes after about four days of battling. The early ones were lazy. I must have killed hundreds. Jen, sitting in one place while people were balancing rocks around her, killed one hundred and five, placing them in a morbid graveyard which was intended to warn the others. But after three days of massacre and blood exchange, they would not simply land. They would hover near, test their landing pad, and would require much attention.

Humans were driving evolution by killing the careless. The arms race had begun. If we had been able to stay I'm sure that we would be able to have conversations with them in 100 years.

The stories from spending a week with thousands of people are endless. I could write all night. There was death camp, the warriors of light, searches for people, rock balancing, wacky mysticism, my own secular preaching, nonchalant nudity, incredible and continual acts of altruism, and loud people.

Loud people. When you get so many people together you are quite certain to have a number of annoying ones. And the fact that they are prominent and vocal makes them seem to be more numerous than they are. I mean, some of the kids there were downright coarse. A 15 year old girl's voice could sound like a raspy 40 year old, screaming out constant obscenities. I couldn't believe it at first, but eventually I simply slept through the pre-dawn "good morning!'s, fighting dogs, and incoherent thundering.

It makes sense, though. I mean, what is the rainbow gathering but a collection of numerous regional outsider groups. Most of the people don't fit in, are socially awkward, and have antisocial tendencies. It's an odd mix, and some will always feel like outsiders even among a throng of thousands of others that feel the same way.

Bassnectar in Utah!

2008-06-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Bassnectar blew away all my expectations. Thank you: Chis Sick and all the others, for getting this organized and bringing an amazing party to the local area. Click the image above to get to the page of images. What follows is little more than my own thoughts on the photographic progress. It's probably boring to most and so it can certainly be ignored; writing is simply a way to articulate and reduce ambiguities in thought, and so I need it.

Bias is a complex issue in photography due to contradictions in the way people ingest and understand photographs. On one hand, the objective factuality behind a given image has been popularly dethroned; most people take for granted that photographs are only small slices in time aimed at a narrow field from a single perspective and mind frame. Although internalized, it seems that even deeper within the collective gut still lives the weird little feeling that - still - there is an objective truth being represented in an image. People don't seem to mind if a photograph makes them more beautiful than they really might be, but cringe when faced with the opposite. People don't tend to object if a photograph skews a memory into one that is preferred. And as we know, photos can become stronger than memories, coloring and shaping them. The picture becomes an unchanging reference point as our recollections slowly dim. If we gain much of our own identity through our own memories, that means that photographs - to at least some degree - have the power to alter who we think we are and were.

I am often amazed at how easy it is for a bias, a world view, to be spread by the process of selection. For example, although just about every club has a vastly disproportionate male/female ratio, photographs produced from these events would lead one to believe otherwise. It's the "chicks equal rockin' party" bias. Look at any photo set and count how many times a female is the focalpoint. These sets distort reality in a way that is obvious, but what about the biases that aren't so?

I don't post every photo I take. (Some people do, but I mostly put that down to laziness rather than a desire to be more objective.) It's been a matter of personal discipline to pay a lot of attention to editing down, especially to ease the suffering of viewers who might otherwise be met with blurry swarms of photographs and hordes of repetitions. However, as a goal, I attempt to represent - through 50-odd photographic perspectives - a kind of summary or approximation for what I felt encompassed the "vibe" of the night. By doing so, I may be removing images that actually did represent the night but did not represent what I wanted the night to have meant. Take the following two pixel puddles:

The first images was selected for the set. The other was eliminated and would never have made it to the glow of lcd screens if not for this particular digression. The photos are similar in composition and only a split-second apart, but the meanings are radically different. In the selected image, the focus is on camaraderie; the other takes on a sexual tinge (by freezing time, there is no way to know how long this hug lasted; it may have only been a moment, but the impression is that it could be lasting forever). If I was a club owner who wanted to portray a place as sexual dynamite or a pheremonal paradise (as many do), my selection would probably have been inverted. By examining both, the case could probably be made easily for my selection being the "truer" in representing the actual relationship of the two females, that they are indeed good friends and not overtly into one another. But does the trueness of their relationship reflect the truness of the party?

The image was selected because it captures a rare, semi-intimate moment of joy between two people. Was the night completely filled with these kinds of moments as a viewer might be led to believe? I've heard people say that my photo sets made a dismal party appear "off the hook". So where is the truth? My desire to make impressive looking photo might bias the actuality of the party. If photographs aim to be some sort of documentary record (or even anthropological), these questions must constantly be asked. My set could have easily been shaped to give another impression. Any photo set anywhere is produced from the biases of the photographer and a reality - or a desire for a reality - that existed in their head.

Utah Burn - The Worship of Ganesh

2008-06-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

Combustion needs only oxygen and triple digit degrees. I've never seen a fire as big as the effigy of Ganesh, and yet, I ended up running straight for it. Those flames had to hit over one hundred feet in the air. I mean, look at those little people. Now, look deeper. I had some of my flash equipment clamped onto that little pile of palettes which were perhaps some 35 feet away from that mighty proboscid.

Now, look deeper into that mesmerism. I had flash equipment clamped onto that little pile of palettes. They were perhaps some 35 feet away from that mighty, wooden proboscid. The flames spread exponentially with my worry, the crowd backed up further and further, and then someone exclaimed, "Oh my! The palettes are starting to smoke!" If wood was smoldering, what would it be doing to beloved plastic? I darted desperately to the safety team, who said no way they were going in there but I could certainly run for it if I wanted to. And that's why I ended up tearing straight towards the blazing, face-searing, air-blasting inferno. I tugged the palette, trying to dislodge it. I slipped in the mud, feeling the fool in front of hundreds of onlookees. With the heat overwhelming me, I attempted a few seconds of relief by ducking low behind the small wooden barrier. The realization sunk in as to why the choice to jump from burning skyscrapers was so preferable. With morbid, frantic thoughts licking my brain, eadrenaline kicked in and all my body focused on ripping that little wooden square out from amongst its smoldering friends and across the soggy dirt back to where the fire controllers awaited me with Mai Tai's. I was slightly in shock after that experience and put the dripping plastic that used to be my pocketwizard in my car. All desire to shoot photographs dropped away. That may explain the lack thereof.

Bleached Beach

2008-05-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do sets of my non-journalistic hobby - posed photo shoots. My goal with them is usually only one or two well-worked photos for my portfolio and to slap up on deviantart. But yesterday was interesting because I was with a group of friends and we ended up doing photos of each person in the same place, but with different ideas behind them all. So, there is more diversity and it seems to make up enough for a fun little page of pics. That and that those involved will not accept less.

Thanks Charity, Micah, Molly, and Jen!

Apocalypse - @ Easy Street

2008-04-28T12:17:00.001-07:00

I thought it was the end of the world, or at least the end of the day. Calvin and Hobbes made an interesting impression on me: I wanted to doze away in a soft bed. That's no party attitude! Buuut, my bed has been underwater for the last two weeks, only saturday was it laid horizontal again, and I've missed it. So, my exhausted body thought the world was going to be over and I was almost glad it would be, until I stepped into the reality of the Apocalypse! It awoke me. There was so much energy that I didn't even think of hitting the sleeping bag until 7:00. What amazing installations, lighting, music, and people. And oh Stosh, thank you for light-proofing your little dungeony room. I had no idea it was 2 in the PM until I opened my eyes and yawned.

Blasphemy - Dress to Confess

2008-04-02T20:14:00.001-07:00

It's a great place to be, or a great life to live, where the combustions of many materials illuminate the shadows of the earth . We'd call that nighttime, but laser beams, burning ethanol, and the LEDs of St. Nick find it a time to compete with the sun whose back is turned. We have become connoisseur's of the commodification of light. It is delicious and we would pay and give and pray and sacrifice and war for it. The laser beam, especially, is an intense, vibrant, interactive lover. I have always loved it adored it worshiped it but it needs atmosphere to really rouse its romance. It ripens under cigarette smoke and synthetic fog. It bounces off your sweat. It rewards and allows the eyes to feast on the sensuousness of photon fillet. I wish to write to orchestrate an ode, but that would foretell an end. Ew. There is no end to that perfect laser beam. It goes on forever. It is starlight under a perfect snoot, an emerald or ruby roscolor strip between. And to frame this paradise in the oscillating, mortal night - hydro carbons burn like sugar, dancing among undulating flesh.

Oh! And happy birthday Nina!

Havasupai!

2008-03-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an amazing trip to Havasupai. Does it get annoying, dear reader that everything is so goopy and "amazing" all the time? I mean, I guess that since the gothic online journals of depression and tears have gone out of style there isn't as much moping. Ya gotta contribute positively to the global conversation now-a-days. But still, things shouldn't be all popcorn pink glee-fests. So hmm. What was awful? I get cold too easily. I was a wuss and didn't jump off the waterfalls. We had to wait a whole day to go to the sweat lodge. I got in some fights, verbal ones. I wish I was better at card games. But wow. Those were hard to think of. I made lots of friends and had fun conversations and the car ride rocked! AugH! I'm getting caught in the positive frame of mind again! Goodbye. I'm going off to mope!

Mindhum Corporation presents - Field of Dreams

2008-03-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is insane, inane. I really have absolutely no time to write a writeup, or hiccup. Maybe I'll do one long after the fact. Maybe now! But not now. Now I'm getting caught in the endless eternal rhythm of writing exactly what my mind wishes my fingers to say. It's not anything but. And I think that perhaps I will never graduate past it. It's a gradation, the graduation.

And on another note, I hate how some people want to extricate deliciousness from pathetic phonemic similarities. A professor asked today, in his mindless mundane way, what were the differences between individuality and individualism. I was working, so I couldn't snap off his nose, ears, and lips, but I wanted to say that the only real similarity was the coincidence of being spelled with many of the same letters. He went on to spread lies and total confusions. But that's what he's paid for. I get paid to observe politely as propagandists sink their claws into the stupid.

Mindhum Corporation Presents - The Dionysius Festival at Eeeasy Street

2008-02-25T18:51:00.001-08:00

There are photos of me! I really haven't had any new photos of myself for ever, but luckily a few commandeered the camera from my hands and went shooting mad: John-John, Penelope, and Molly. Thanks to Jen for fixing me up with some rocking hair, and Savers for the raw materials. I was slightly sick at the outset of this party, but I decided that I would try to beat it with my own energy. So I partied it up, passed out a little after 7:00, and really felt my mind was stronger than the little bacterial colony that is my body. It turns out that the brain is only good at tricking itself from the pains of reality for so long. I slept all day yesterday and today I've slept more. So that's why I am done typing. What I've got so far was hard enough. The end.

Luv2k+8 - Raytraced Prod. - Saltair

2008-02-17T20:54:00.000-08:00

Photographs tame the memory. They solidify a space which was much more vibrant. First of all, they are such scattered instants, selected for compositional clarity, color aesthetics, and pyrotechnical wow. On one level, the photographs are so far removed from the experience that they lose any connection with what they might mean to be "documentary." Sometimes the camera clicker wants to represent that moment that happens so often when glancing around, things fall into place, and some image just gets burned into the brain. Most aren't frantically searching to encapsulate the eyelash flash, and so the scattered assortment of accidents and unintention that are produced feature a drive alien to the motivations of others.

But maybe that's good. There is no unified objective, after all. The removal from that sort of intent could perhaps do something else. If it is not possible to catch what is in the internal subjectivity, then some sort of real truth might arise, might bubble up from the void. Intent does, in a way, destroy the documentary function of photography. But then it comes down to selection, searching for secrets in the faces of all these strangers - and friends; looking for disparities and contrast; finding stories that might never have been; selecting for what was mentioned above, composition, color, and light; all of which bringing personal opinion, a personal aesthetic, back to mix. Some avoid this problem and post every photograph taken during the night. It doesn't eradicate the problem, though. Every time you snap you select. Videographers only have to deal with the subjectivity of aim. They don't have to worry, until editing at least, about preferences of time.

Back to School Prom - Rave - Mindhum Corporation

2008-02-03T15:43:00.000-08:00

One of the more vital elements of rave culture lies in the way it transforms space. The most hotly sought areas have always been warehouses, shopping malls, old churches, and other arenas that, and here is the important word, obviously serve other masters in the light of day. These are the parties that are remembered. And it distinguishes raves from clubs. Ravers feel a bit dismal at clubs because, come on, they were built for the purpose of dancing. There's nothing revolutionary there. The quality of a party can be in some sense determined by how far from the original use of space a production company can go. Obtaining and transforming space is the essence of the scene.

The first photograph in the series necessitates close examination. It begins the metamorphosis of what could be passed by easily as a place other than a greasy patch for parking cars. As the series progresses, the garage converts more thoroughly into something else, is pushed further and further from its original state. Flags become anti-props. Brooms are still-reeling implements of transition. An illusion of sophistication sets in - which illustrates the plasticity of the term. The costumes contrast with and create a new reality. Energy rises. And, eventually the original scene is forgotten entirely; some never knew it. And thus, the butterfly emerges.

But that is not all. Every rave is refreshed by exit. Cinderella is seen for her cinders again. After it is all over, people leave through garage doors and glance back on that which holds back the paradox inside: black, corroded steel, bruised brick, and a faded sign that reads a yellow page appeal. The secret is safe.

Part II of Molly's Walls

2008-01-16T19:10:00.001-08:00

Changes have overtaken our beloved culture. The interaction between the individual and the immediate area around him or her - the living space - has been partitioned to specific focal points of connection, as civilization has crescendoed: the sink, toilet, doorknob, toothbrush, television, toaster and dresser drawer are the touchable tips that remain. Beneath which are the areas of atrophy. Much of our living space is interacted with in the most minimal manner: expanses of walls, the sea of ceiling, behind desks, of decorations. The keyboard interface collects our dripping dead cells but the dust from the air around simply falls untouched, like the moon's surface, on the rest.

These pictures presented mark a precise pressure aimed directly at reuniting with the seldom scratched surfaces. We worship the walls in which we live by celebrating upon them. The square dimensions that regularize our lives become bent and top merges with side, front, and behind through color, texture, and abberation.

Our collective clawing and stroking attempts to make sacred the mundane. We offer sacrifices of virgin drywall, untouched. We are baptized in an inversion of ritual, the walls the riverbed and the paint the plunge. We know that we are manifested with spirit because it takes days to rip out and takes our hair with it. We are no longer the same nor similar nor sane.

Demolish wha 'tis to be Devestated - Part I

2008-01-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

Molly's Mad House of Decadence

2007-12-14T16:47:00.000-08:00

by Lindsey Nelson

It could have been a tranquil holiday tea party, but as all signs of decency and decorum decayed, the night was sucked into a turbulent downward spiral of depravity and debauchery. What manner of shamelessness could account for such licentious derangement and disturbing mania? What barbaric madness could have possibly disabled the frontal lobes of these poor fanatics’ brains, leaving them drooling, corrupted, and degraded? An examination of the abundance of rich detail offered in these photos leads me to this irrefutable hypothesis: these people are in the lewd and spastic throes of helpless devotion to Dionysus himself! {Dionysus is the Thracian god of wine and revelry, madness and ecstasy.}

They say that the divine mission of Dionysus was to bring an end to care and worry. What a smashing success, in one house at least, for one night. Look at the pictures; you can almost see the divine satisfaction of the god, smiling down upon the insolent drowning of inhibition, the orgiastic frenzy, and the unabashed disorder. And although it’s never specifically mentioned by any scholar of theology, I am nonetheless convinced that eggnog baptisms were among the standard tenets of Dionysian worship.

Trey & Joules' (sp) birthday bash (w/ strippers!)

2007-12-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

I was (and perhaps still am) a naive simpleton, virtuously virginal: I'd never yet been to a party with strippers. This changed last weekend. I feel a little bit silly even mentioning their presence or state of dress because I actually don't really like to make a big deal about nudity. But I guess that sometimes it does elevate things to a certain level of comic hilarity, vibrant sexuality, or at least passing interest. It's sad that the word, "stripper" even has a "sleazy" connotation, but it does and that's why I find myself trying to defend my interaction with it with the staunch morality of my very being (ha). I actually felt that the taste was positive, there were no issues such as degradation or masculine dominance involved: it was joyous celebration. And anyway, the crowd was anything but lecherous, they were a creative, bubbling mass of beautiful, humanistic love.

But still it (the event) operates in the conceptual realm. The women who stripped removed themselves from personhood for a short while and they became images, objects, ideas. Their humanity was stripped away until all that remained was the stripteaser, the birthday suits for the birthday boy. I guess what it comes down to is that we humans really are not so much living beings but concepts that play out against each other. Sometimes they bump, sometimes they explode, but mostly they remind us of other images so we can know what our roles are and perhaps play within them, all the while tantalized by projections into the flowing symbology around us. What we saw and participated in was the idea of people who take off their clothes and smile and frolic while other smiling, laughing people watch while still others cringe in embarrassment as soft, naked body parts are squished into their faces. It is all a scripted play in the exchanges of attention that is our currency. We watch, we listen, we perform all at once.

It's only later that we contemplate. If you find it difficult to make sense of your senses then perhaps the images below can help put a fix on those shifting, intangible thoughts. But probably they can't. :)

The Porn Star Ball

2007-11-21T20:15:00.001-08:00

I've been going to pumped-up amplified and filled to the point of bursting parties lately, and so the rave last night was a nice break. There was room to dance, room to move, room to get around. Big parties are intense but I would say that the Porn Star Ball was perfect if you wanted to dance and have fun without exploding your 5-senses. I took a bunch of pictures but, sadly, feel I was left with mediocrity. But please, judge for yourself:

Tiny, Melissa, and Kyla

2007-11-01T18:45:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of the selected images from a recent shoot.

And then here are all of em.

Get Freaky - V2 Productions

2007-10-30T15:23:00.003-07:00

It's supposedly "suicide tuesday" but I finally have the energy to lift photos to online status. How's that for ironic. How's that for throwing off the statistics. No suicide for me! Oh wait, that's drug related, not simply exhaustion related.

The party really was good enough to almost erase all memory of the god awful line. I got there at 9:00 and waited patiently in line with everybody else. Except it seems that not everybody else was waiting as patiently as I and the group I was with. Two hours later the line behind was shorter and the line in front simply got more and more dense. We decided we had to be assholes ourselves and push and shove, using force to get what we wanted. I hate doing that but anger motivates in interesting ways. I hate the sexism that was shown by allowing women to get in first. I don't care about any justifications due to exposure from skimpiness or whatever: people are people. I also hated the way we were treated as subhuman herd animals by the video crew who thought that they could make the line look like they were having a blast and get a few seconds of video by yelling "Geeeet Freeaaaky!" The line WAS responsive but I have one thing to say: video people, you are not getting objective video if you are manipulating your subjects. It means your results have only dishonest, inflated representations of what the experience was really all about. Think about it. What are you really trying to create?

But once inside, the party met every expectation. I love the intensity, the noise, the over-stimulation. There's never a dull moment if you keep your eyes open and your brain ready. I could not have done the photos without the lighting assistance of a very psycho cowboy named Justin. Here you go:

Other people's photos (OPP!)
Brit Ellsbery
Feff
Eric Hamilton

An October Evening

2007-10-20T12:21:00.001-07:00

Imagine a for-real fashion show in Salt Lake City! Furthermore, in the super secret Masonic temple. I didn't think they happened (although I'm probably just clueless) but one DID occur. Blue Medusa clothing has been working for the past half year to bring together a diorama of fashion designers, models, cinemetographers, photographers, and more in order to make the night what it was. I was fortunate to be able to do some of the promotional photos, so people may have seen the image below on some SLC papers that cover local events.

The shooting was tough at the show. I am incredibly indebted to Madelyn Boudreaux for letting me borrow one of her lenses. I normally shoot quite wide but the place was huge and I needed to be able to get closer without BEING close. I thought I was completely SOL but she saved me. So, check to see what I managed to get:

One more thing that I must get out: I've seen fashion shows on TV before, but never in real life. The difference of experience is greater than, say, music on CD compared to live. They really had some professional runway models there, and I experienced something I never had before. I came to the profound realization that they REALLY know how to walk. There was one in particular that completely blew my mind; something about the energy and intensity that can be exuded, the complete captivation by a huge audience, that turns the vulnerability of being in front of that audience into an incredible source of power. It's breathtaking to watch. It's not all about sexuality either, it's just raw charisma.

Kandy Land - Vandal Productions

2007-09-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

Attending raves is a bit like russian roulette: never dull and every now and then it blows your brains out. My consciousness exploded and I was transmitted to a time when raves were bad-ass, underground, dirty warehouse affairs. We all joined together in a place that must have previously housed artillery shells, large stacks of tires, or paperclips. Now, I tend to crawl around on the walls regularly at these parties, so I can tell you that I met veritable dust waterfalls--a rave grime necessity--every time I clamped on a light. I was shooting with two broken lenses and by the end of the night one had whithered dramatically; the front element was dancing precariously and springs were shooting out of it. I guess the party was that intense. Anyhow, I really don't know what thrills me so much about a warehouse (in this case, a art installation of a crashed UFO helped enhance the mood). I think I like the idea that people are dancing in a bombed out post-apocalyptic country, invisible to political elements, police squadrons, and mormons (now now - the mormons are cute and adorable, but, they say it's chic to plunge in a good-natured knife every now and then). So, I've got to summarize my thoughts into a sentence: It was a combination-ak47-uzi-laser-radar-triple-barreled-heat-seeking shotgun of a party (that aliens had crashed into).

I don't even care if it's an illusion and we didn't REALLY zoom to another country, I just like to be able to make believe. It's proof of extraterrestials regardless! If you don't believe me, look at what the camera captured (and bear in mind that I had two broken lenses that could not change their focus):

Mom's 50th!

2007-09-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a wonderful Portland visit in the honor of seeing my mother-dearest celebrate surviving for a fourth of a fifth of a millenium. It was boppin', tumultuous, and zesty. Four brands of foaming, mouth-tingling homebrew were served. My lens broke on the airport. Everyone was dancing! I found out that my mother actually had friends. But my camera lens had suffered more years than it wished in age and refused to focus. I had one distance which was focused that I could not change no matter how I tried. But everyone was tipsy. My mother, aka one beer Betsy, said the night before that she was going to be drinking the entire night. The next day she mentioned rejoicefully that she hadn't had a drop. If all these explanations feel like they are leaving you swirling, you might want to hold onto something more corporeal like the images below. Tug that mouse and pounce on that image of the page hidden beneath this one.

God's Heavy Boredom

2007-08-31T19:36:00.001-07:00

I like to relate my understanding of god with the concept of technological progression, which came to me just today when lying on my rug. When I first got into computers, I remember having to leave on my PC day and night in order to get whatever mp3 album it was that I lusted to sink my ears into. Much of my time, as the download ticked along, was spent anticipating the music to come. But the internet speeds of today let me listen to albums faster than I can click. I can get more music than what I can listen to, and it has actually led to me not using up as much time finding new music. The anticipation was such a part of the excitement and when the anticipation could not build I decided to spend my time on things that would take longer periods of time until the reward set in. It could be why people love downloading movies. You still have to wait for them. It is certainly true that the intensity of the seretonin reward is somewhat proportional to the period of time spent getting from the idea to the result; or the wish to the reality; or the desire to the fulfillment.

I do believe that gods were created out of a projection of the impossible wishes and goals that we can never attain; in our image instead of vice versa. Wherever we find limit we cast out the limitation and attach that attribute to some kind of entity that is greater. We live our fantasies vicariously through, respectively, other fantasies. But the assemblage of adjectives never makes sense. Let's rehash the familiar critiques. We have omnipresence: the idea that god is everywhere. It doesn't exactly make sense in the same way that the clouds of nothingness which line the universe do not make sense. If god can be and is everywhere, what is its size? Omnipotence means that, simply, anything can be done and that by thinking alone anything can be changed, created, or destroyed. Omniscience is the removal of any limitation on intelligence. But there not a certain enlightenment in ignorance? How can something know and not know all at once?

People are always dingbatting around with the paradoxes inherent in the removal of limitation, but the computer age really lets us see what happens when limitations start getting removed from our own lives. The needs and desires of past days—obtainable only through time and sweat—have become ready to activate and enjoy at a finger tap. This is great from one perspective but what happens, really, to those old desires? They change. They aren't so rewarding. It is not hard to see the ever-growing ease and efficiency in our age expand to the point of god's omnipotence and omniscience and then… wonder what we would do with that kind of ability.

Would this be a fun thing to imagine? While I moved from downloading music albums and watching youtube to creating photographs and music, what of god? The rewards were greater when I made it harder . The time between the desire and the payoff amp up the anticipation so that seeing the finished works are much more gratifying. A god, or me as god, would want to paint a picture and it would be painted, mounted and dried. A god would want music and be listening to divinity before the thought had completed (in the temporal stasis where god languishes). I, with the cursed luxury of limitation, struggle happily to overcome them. Gods do not have that luxury. Sadly, any god that existed in this sense would envy the human condition and wish it could break the prison of omnipotence—in order to sip from the stream of limitation and drown blissfully in a sea of stupidity.

My birthday!

2007-08-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

I had a great birthday party. I was too busy running around getting things ready but in the end I managed to snap some photos. The landlord couldn't stop it, neither could the cops. The most amazing thing for me from the night was checking out the ceiling under where music was playing and people were stomping. You would have thought you were seeing things because that ceiling was moving! Up and down about a half an inch. It took many of us to hold it up so that all those banging out to the music wouldn't fall through. Actually, I'm sure it would have held but it still felt very odd with my arms up and my hands on the ceiling feeling the plywood and drywall ripple above my fingertips.

Didn't get many photos, but here's a few:

Sequence Seven

2007-07-08T16:11:00.001-07:00

I guess it's only human to love the trivialities of number worship. I really can't get over the fact that I love the extra oomph that underlies a party that occurs on July seventh, 2007. There won't be another 07-07-07 for one hundred years, minus a day, and so this is the only one I'll ever see. And that makes it all the more poignant. However, on this day, the rather dull 07-08-2007, I have a deadening wine headache, so I'll leave you with a simple batch of photos from the party, Sequence Seven.

Other people's pictures (OPP, yea you know...):

.nicole, Yenn, psychoanalyst, ambeestar, kenny.

These photos are off-site so if they go down it's not my fault. Today they may be cheap reflections of yesterday but soon enough they will be inaccesable nostalgia. Lemme know if I've missed anybody's.

Jon-Jon's Celebration of a Nation - 4th of July

2007-07-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

I must not succomb to a refrigerator full of liquor store beers in the future. I got to this party early, downed a few, and - being the wuss I am - nearly passed out in grogginess DESPITE the audial horror coming from announcers and musicians practicing their wails for the Stadium of Fire (tm). But then the dunk-tank came (not the, although it would have been just as appropriate, drunk tank) and we carpeted the roof. Then people came and I became more drunken and disorderly with them. A few blurry remnants were captured, I guess, adequately. The camera has a strange internal connection with the psyche of its user, apparently.

Language lovers, I have sinned greatly in this post with my adverbial excessivity; please accept wy words though, because I write them apologetically.

It's a "Been A While" party

2007-06-13T18:53:00.001-07:00

The yearly Been A While party was portly people grabber; a ZILLION attended. Well, at least more than 100. Me and Jen decorated an area with glowy orbs (we actually poured glowstick juice inside bottles and hung them from the trees) and brought a huge chill blanket thing for people to hang out on (only 2/3rds of the way done which means it is 15 feet x 10 feet so far). There was a large bonfire the whole night, cops came and didn't do much (I think they were more scared of us than we were of them) AND I got punched twice! Yee-haw. I was too drunk to take many decent pics, but nevertheless, a few may be worthwhile for memory-obelia, below:

Rave photos from Evolution

2007-05-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Photographicas from the silt saturated saltair on saturday (which also happens to be yesterday) can enable viewers to kill five minutes of their sunday (or monday, or the other five days of the week if they happen to be viewing this message non-punctually). Some of the photos contain meaning; others are completely vapid. It is up to you to decide, you splendid sado-optimists. Here is the alphasymbolinumeric codephrase:

http://john-riley.net/sets/'07.05.13-evolution_saltair/index.html

Or, if that seems ungainly, you can use any of the following tinyurls to get you to the EXACT SAME PAGE. How freaking dumbly redundant.

http://tinyurl.com/38s8kp
http://tinyurl.com/36qauh
http://tinyurl.com/3cp9bw

The party was actually quite an amazing collaboration of many different production companies. Reading the flyer, we have V2 Events, Exile Events, Knukledeep Studios, Zu Audio, Nightdroppin, Vandal Productions, the Pink House (yay!), Fevah Records, Street Def Entertainment, Aural Fixations, DJ Support Group of Utah, and ATTATUDE TATTOO. So, the main room was in Saltair's huge inside arena, and each of the production companies had their own tent with their own decorations, dj lineups, and sound systems.

I think there were at least eight booths outside. They were all competing like mad to get as many people packed in their booths as possible. Hint: Next time one production company should go for a slightly different genre, like say, ambient. You would have gotten an incredible crowd because there was no place to chill out and have a conversation. Every room was trying to out-do every other room. It was madness. Fun madness, but come on, a chill room is a good idea if there's even more than 2 rooms.

Other's Evolution photos: Taylor's and Yenn's.

Queer Prom '07

2007-04-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

The queer prom switched locations this year to the Salt Palace. The old place was so beautiful. The Salt Palace presented challenges as any location does, but I was nerded out with a wireless softbox on a lightstand which gave me a light source in the wide open areas. Also, the new location allowed a normal STRAIGHT prom to view the queer one, which is always good. Anyway, I had a fun time.

The organizers wished to protect the identities of people under 18, so I tried to make sure that I didn't post pics of them. If there are any that slipped by and people have a problem with, please let me know. Onto the photos:

Get Lucky : V2 Productions

2007-03-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Within the above link are 95 moments of history FROZEN in time, in jpg format. Those within will not age nor whither with time. Quite the opposite: as new monitors are developed, they may look even BETTER in the future. Your soul may be stole, but YOUR BODY is immortalized.

Great party. I had a blast. I shot more than I usually do. I couldn't stop taking pictures of Jazzy (the dancer with the hula hoop). Pardon my repetitousness. She was smokin'!

Lists of other things of interest:

crowd-surfing djs (I missed the photo, though)
a 6-fingered man
very furry furrys

Um.. I started this list thinking a list would be easy to think of, but I guess that raves are raves (even while in a club!). You go to a few and stuff like puking girls, humping mounds of people, dazzling light, very close to naked very young-looking girls, and pounding sound are pretty much the norm. Hmm.

Asylum: Exile and Knuckledeep productions

2007-03-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Whoa, a weird dialogue box came up when my thumbnail automator came up... but chance is the dance you use to your own advantage. I like it. If only I could program my computer to add random weirdnesses to pictures that would be aesthetically pleasing.

Anyway, these are photos from the party Asylum. I didn't get many. 20 piddly pics. A piece of equipment was stolen in the first 10 minutes I was there. I frantically searched for the first hour, and then resigned myself to shooting with one flash. The party was rockin', though. They had the oddest looking speaker system in the main room. Odd-o-gog.

Luv2K+7 at Saltair

2007-02-11T12:29:00.002-08:00

Well, the Salt Lake rave scene showed it's strength last night. Two Valentine's Day parties were thrown in one night and were both successful (although the drama that surrounds such actions is not something I like to see or I'd like to go into). I attended Raytraced Production's LUV2K+7 party, and Saltair was bursting with more people than I've ever seen. The second outside stage, within a geodesic dome, was warm and energetic despite the elements drizzling continually down and turning any outside travel a mud sloshing adventure. Great show!

Regarding the photos: Despite some intense technical difficulties and inexpressable frustration at my equipment (isn't it always the case), I got a few images that weren't simply motion blurs and glow trails. I bring you, LUV2K pics:

Using Artificial Lighting in SMALL Spaces

2007-01-31T20:29:00.000-08:00

For the last three months or so I have been experimenting with continuous lighting setups. Previously I did everything with off-camera flash and ambient, so it's really been enlightening to work with a very different style. What I mean by continuous lighting is non-strobe light sources such as desk laps, tungsten, fluorescent, and halogen bulbs. What I think is so fun about this type of work is that you can find interesting lighting anywhere. Just look around your house and you'll find plenty. Or run to the hardware store. I'm using two fluorescent desklamps that I found at secondhand stores (go savers!), a halogen, a fluorescent, and a few tungsten work lamps from the hardware store. With this tutorial, I want to show that you can get really cool lighting setups from just what you have around the house, and make them work in cramped quarters!

After a shoot last weekend, I laid everything I used out on the floor with this article in mind. Here are the lights I used:

There you see four lights, a few with pieces of cardboard ripped and duct taped to make some quick, crude, McGuiver barndoors. In the center you can see that there are actually three fluorescent bulbs that are held together, so there's actually five fluorescents.

THE LIGHTS

When you find a light, turn it on and really try to see the color it is giving off. I actually replaced the existing fluerescents with two $7 'grow-bulbs' from Lowes. These give off a very white full spectrum light. The triple fluorescent has a slight yellowish cast. We think that most fluorescents are green, but there has been an industry change which has really started transitioning towards yellow, people like yellow lights better. The one other light in the picture, the 500 watt halogen, puts out extremely bright yellow-orange light.

The reason why these lights are so nice in small spaces is because they give out constant light. When you are working very close with strobes, it is hard to test and visualize how the lighting will work. With continuous lighting, you know exactly where the shadows are falling. The advantages of this are indispensible when leaning backwards, on your tiptoes, neck craneing, one hand balancing and the other trying to hold the weight of the camera, and telling the subject where to be. Try it and you'll love it.

HACKING THE COLOR BALANCE

Now that you understand what color of light you are putting out, you can use that to your own creative advantage. The white balance function on your camera can be set to register pretty much any color as white, with colors to the sides registering as more green, blue, or red. What I did was set my white balance in between white and yellow, which makes the white light appear slightly bluish and the yellow light not as saturated. Where the two lights meet they should give a more true white. Pushing towards the blue will also reduce some of the color intensity of the halogen, which is a color that can become dominant easily. This means that your compositions will already have some color contrast abstract ideas going on just in the way the lights blend together in different areas of the frame.

OTHER EQUIPMENT

The rest of my equipment I used were tripods, tape and bungees to hold the lights to the tripods, and cords - to get elecericity to the lights. I actually rigged a $90 dollar background stand to hold a light as a kind of boom arm. I basically used one of the bars that would normally connect with a middle piece and connect with the other tripod body as a device to hang the lights from. I also have one real boom arm, so one stand for each fluorescent (the halogen would sit on the floor). I attached them to the stands with ball bungees (which, if you don't have any, you NEED to look into).

THE SMALL SPACE

The space to shoot was incredibly small. We are talking about a studio apartment that was filled to the brim with trash. (No offense to the inhabitants, I love ya!) The first hour and a half was spent just clearing a space to shoot in. You see the final result above. We had a space about 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep with a white wall behind. Wow. I hope that you feel cramped! How, oh how, to get a photo in there?

I truly believe that creativity thrives off of being boxed in. You need to work within limits, paramaters that you understand, to see how you can break out. Small areas really force you to think. My friend Daniel was there taking some pictures of the shoot.

Oh, one more thing... please don't think this is biased towards just taking pictures of girls. These techniques can be used for ALL subjects. I just happen to have been doing a shoot with.. you know.. scantily clad females. Try to ignore that and just see the LIGHTING!

Other than noticing that Daniel's camera's white balance was set to something that really brought out the green, you can see that the flourescents are all on tripods, and the 500 watt halogen is on the floor throwing a nice warm light towards the bottom of the frame. (You can also simply turn it off if it seems excessive.) If you are interested, here are some of the final images from this location (images link to deviantart fulls):

So, now that you have the lighting, you can work on bringing your ideas into it. Bring it all together! You can also move it into another location, although that does require some work in the movement of the lights. We also did another shoot where we moved into the bathroom. What is beautiful though, is once you get the lights set up wherever, you can really move them wherever you want.

In that shoot, we eventually filled the toilet with spagetti and did some reverse bulimia themes. Here are some of the results:

I hope this gives you ideas! I am always curious about other people's creative processes. Please, try to map em out and post 'em up.

Spagetti Nights

2007-01-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted for a while, but I just wanted to post a set from a photoshoot last weeknd.

UVSC Photo Club - Havasupai Pics

2006-11-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

These shots are actually from a little over a month ago. I went on a trip with my school's photography department to Havasupai. I am not a LOVER of outdoor photography (too much light! I can't handle it), so I wasn't all that happy with them. But, some people have been bugging me, so here they are. The trip was a blast, and Havasupi is gorgeoes, naturally (ooh, a double meaning :).

One of the most fascinating things to observe were how quickly the colors shifted. When we arrived, the water and the waterfalls were the color that Havasupai is famous for - milky aqua. It stayed that color for most of the trip. However, there was a lot of rain on the 3rd day and the water turned a deep green. We then watched the water rise and turn thick, dark, and brown, and hiked out with muddy waterfalls and foamy water.

Infected Mushroom in SLC

2006-11-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Click the image above for Infected Mushroom show photos in SLC. The show was off the hook: my arms are sore from relentlessly, joyously trying to punch the air above my head, I can barely walk, and going down stairs hurts. Unfortunately, their contract stated that photos weren't allowed during the set, so the shots above represent build and anticipation.

For people who read this site for information on how to light and photograph raves, shows, and clubs, I've had a few thought that I wanted to share. Photographing this show was unusually challenging, and so I've been thinking about how to get better results in similar situations.

The problem with the Infected Show was that the fog machines were just pump-pump-pumping non stop. When there is that much fog, it interferes with light from any direction and destroys contrast. Usually there are down-time moments when the fog lifts and good, clear shots can be made. Fog itself generally is both a bane and a boon because, although it makes the lighting look great, it's hard to see people. If anyone has come back from a party with a roll full of white clouds, you know what I mean.

A decent way to reduce the effects of smoke or fog is to light subjects from the side. Using an on-camera flash shows every foggy particle and is why most rave and club photos are simply ruined by its blatant visibility. Light bounces off fog microdust and straight back into the camera, so you SEE every particle. From the side, only a sliver of the surface area is reflected back into the lens. You wouldn't want to backlight, either, as that would create a halo around each fog particle, creating contrast destruction much like a frontally lit image.

An interesting photo usually provides many different details about an environment: texture, atmosphere, lighting, detail, and contrast, as well as emotion and subject matter. What fog can do is give the idea of a thick atmosphere as well as bring out vibrancy in the lights. So, it would be very useful to be able to compose an image so that fog is located in less interesting areas but is out of the way of any photographic subjects that you want. If you look at the following picture, you can see that the haze is there but subjects still are visible.

My second thought relates to the strobe setup I'm using. An 'advantageous' side-effect of using the very piss-poor st-e2 wireless transmitter is that one is constantly flirting with “the happy accident.” What I'm saying is that quite often what is in my head and what would make a perfect photograph is ruined by one of the external strobes failing to trigger. But take this image:
In a perfect world I would have wanted the foreground lit. But, the strobe didn't fire, so I got, accidentally, some interesting silhouettes. I know that this image isn't by any stretch perfect, but it's given me some ideas on how to bring the ideas of silhouette and form into the photographic piece. It seems that interesting hairstyles and shapes could be used to frame a lit subject area, and also create a kind of interaction.

So anyway, silhouette framing seems like it might have some potential. I'd encourage anyone to give it a shot.

German Innovations

2006-11-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

Photojojo, a site which scoures the net to give give photo enthusiasts neat little tips and tricks, posted a solution for an inexpensive photo stand today. Basically, the idea is to go buy a bag of 100 teacup candles for $8, throw away the wax, cut the metal holder in half, fold along the cut, turn it upside down, and you have a sleek little photo stand. The way I presented it, the job sounds a little involved, but it does look simple. Here, a photo is a much better explanation:

But I'm not here to do what the jojo has already. I've got to say that the German site they linked to was filled with neat ideas. The point of the projects seems to be, since I don't know German, to find innovative ways to use household appliances in new ways. They range from the functional to the absurd, and of course the absurd AND functional. I mean, I have on more than one occassion wished for something like this to have existed, but never thought it possible.

But to carry it around on a regular basis would be a joke. And the people who actually do bring those things are the same type of people that already carry pillows around with them. But not all is in jest. The site exhibits an upgrade to the chopstick which is nothing short of marvelous. Couldn't you see this as starting a utensil revolution?

But, there was nothing that would prepare me mentally for their last creation. I might be more responsive to it than most, because I have an irrational fear of sharp needly things. I can't even look at rose bushes without wincing, and actually, while I'm typing this I'm trying to avert my eyes (rolling them back in my head, yes) because I'm thinking of the thing on that site. I'd describe it more but I'd have to learn to type backwards and in the fetal position. You'll just have to click this link because there's no way I'm having it on my homepage.

I love it and I fear it.

Get Freaky - Halloween

2006-10-29T05:59:00.001-08:00

Last night was incredibly difficult to get photographs. Getting from one room to another took 20 minutes and when you got there, you still couldn't move. So this set of images may bore the hell out of you, but let's not be so reactionary! All the images have secrets inside. There are interactions, stories, relations, and emotions inside each one. Just look!

I'm especially interested in a few images that I felt might be a little 'deeper.' I would love to know what you can interpret out of these two:
Oh, and I apologize that I got so many of the same group of people at the end. I try to get many different people and areas so that the images don't start to repeat ideas, but they seriously had some style and costuming and dancing abilities!

So dance dance dance everyone! Dance like mad!

Language links and a Netvibes.com tab

2006-10-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

If anyone is as addicted to language as I am, I just put together a netvibes.com tab, which is a page of 6 rss feeds that you can add automatically to your netvibes.com aggrigator. I also have the individual links here if you want to check out the sites individually.

LanguageLog: The hub of linguistic discussion on the web.
Bagnewsnotes: Daily analysis of current media images.
Rhetorica: A blog which studies rhetoric of recent political speeches, etc.
Literal-Minded: Observerations about speech which would lead to much different interpretations if taken literally.
Wordlustitude: This site moniters unusuall and interesting newly created english.. Also hillarious made-up citations.
The Eggcorn Database: Eggcorns are expressions by which people understand a specific word but insert it incorrectly into an expression, thus, an eggcorn.

Freak Show Pics from LAST year.

2006-09-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

I was reading Byrdee's blog and saw that the Freak Show had played last night at the Painted Temple. I was obviously aghast and outraged. But when I had come up from my sorrow, I remembered that I still had never put up any pictures from last years Freak Show at Steamers. I went through them and, as a sign of my mourning, put up this set. I know I'm a little over a year late, but it's never really too late, is it? There aren't enough, of course, but what's there sure brings the memories back.

Addendum: After the bb gun battle, I got a shot of them falling, but my flash hadn't refreshed fast enough. So here's the photo extra brightened in photoshop. It's low quality, but you can see that one BB did lodge in the forehead of the guy on the left.

The Schwas, + bonus busted afterparty pics

2006-09-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

Please, ignore the fact that I can't spell The Schwas (I have also used shwaz, schwaz, scwoz, schwoz, and I could use many more). The fact is I LOVE them, despite the ability to configure and choose a few letters that were probably pretty much chosen randomly in the first place. Actually, this struggle has led me to wonder about the word itself. Have I been missing the idea that the name is a plural of the ambiguous sound which can be seen in dictionaries as an upside down lowercase "e". Now it makes sense! It's just a plural of that damned English phenomenon in which each and every vowel (aeiouy) can make the same sound. . I, forever, thought it was a nonesense word. It's the sound that makes up the capital in Adept, synthEsis, decImal, harmOny, mediUm, and even sYringe!

Portraits and Fire-Dancing

2006-09-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some portraits and fire dancing images from a party for all those unable to be at burning man this weekend!

The Art of Sam

2006-08-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

Sam came over with some of his art to photograph so he could make dupes. I thought they were so amazing that EVERYONE must see them. He does not have an email address, so if anyone would like to give him props, compliments, or criticisms, that will have to go through me. The other person is his sister, Kendrah, who I have some photosets of elsewhere.

My Cousin Anne's Wedding

2006-08-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'm definitely not a pro at the wedding photo, but they are for memories! I had a blast at this function.

Damian up Rock Canyon

2006-08-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here's sexy Damian. He's the greatest person you will ever meet. His penis is 47 inches long. He likes pie, and very attractive gerbils.

Today marks a very sad day.

2006-08-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Galen Lawrence Anderson's funeral was today. I always thought Lawrence was a great example of someone who could really defend quite unpopular belief systems and still be interesting and approachable. Namely, being a mysogonyst. Haha. Today is also the one year anniversery of the what-still-seems-like-yesterday caving tragedy. All this happening at once makes for a pretty strange day.

Why is the philosophy department losing so many good people? I really doubt that the accounting department has many tragedies like this. They all die in their sleep at 88. However, I have got to say.. I would much rather live a 25-30 year old life as a philosopher than a 100 year life as an accountant.

If anyone wants more information on this stuff, there are some photos of Ariel, Jen, Blake, and Scott and a myspace group page dedicated to them. I'm not sure, but you may need to add the group before you can view what's inside.

(some examples)

Face Transformation

2006-08-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Playing around with the face transformer, and I guess that as a baby I was... more of an alien:
Here is me as a "manga cartoon." I'm not sure what THIS is, but they say it's me in "modigliani" mode.
Thanks to Byrdee for the link :)

By the way, that was all from this litle image here:

Goddess de la Gato

2006-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Mackenzie, the Egyptian Goddess de la Gato (which would be spanish for cat). This is a challenge to that whole 9 lives thing. As you see there are 10 images here. Cat's are.... immortal, and the 10 you see are but slivers of the whole. Cat's paws are lucky, cat-o-9-tails hurt, but what you get is catnip for the cathode screen. NO LCD's!

Peter up Battle Creek

2006-08-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here's some sexy pictures of the sexy male model, Peter. Oh baby!

Winning the Special Olympics..

2006-08-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

I remember a time when it seemed everyone's signature had a picture of a small retarded boy with a face full of glee breaking through the finish line. The text underneath said, "Arguing on the internet is like winning the special Olympics, even if you win, you're still retarded." Many people have thought this has been one of the more brilliant pieces that the internet has produced. Ironically, the statement is both an argument in itself, and one that has spread prevalently on the internet.

But when I got to thinking about it, I wondered what it would be like to switch the image's argument to something like: "Arguing on the internet is like winning the world Olympics, even if you win, you're still human." The point, of course, is that there isn't that much difference between being limited by a mental retardation and being limitation by our own bodies and minds. Joe Frank once said, "Your cat will never be able to read Plato, your dog will never understand mathematics; why do we think that we would be any less limited?" It's a sad but important perspective.

So, we may be able to make small intellectual developments, but because our mental fluttering can only bring us slightly closer to a limit, what's important in life is not elevation, it's distinction. This is why the hierarchical social world is so important while human evolution is not. We strive for recognition about being a very tiny amount better in a tiny area than someone else. In this sense, there is no real difference in winning the special Olympics, an argument on the internet, or the world Olympics-- only the number people who take note of your superiority to other retards.

Sophie on the Johnson's Bowl Trail

2006-08-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice small set from a shoot with Sophie from a few days back :)

More Versus 2.5 pics

2006-08-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some more images from the party on saturday from comablue.

Versus 2.5

2006-08-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me say that these pictures do not show this party justice whatsoever. Versus 2.5 was probably the most phenomenal collaboration between mother nature and human being in the production of memory. This party was held outdoors during the biggest lightning storm that I've seen in my life, and probably the closest I've been to one as well. When I looked up, and saw a flash that was only a dot, that means that the lightning bolt was traveling straight at me. And then there was the spider web lighting that seemed to shoot at the party in a myriad of light.

Sadly, I'm not very good at capturing lightning, although I did try. But just think, an amazing light show compounded with a sky constantly glowing with all colors of lighting. The most common variant I saw was actually purple! You would see a huge purple glow and flash. And then it became orange. Don't forget the torrential downpour that soaked everyone in about two minutes, elictrified the mixers, whirled tarps off and away, and had the whole rave crowd pounding on doors to get into what had just previously been a UFC fight at saltair (the location was double-booked). Luckily we were able to find refuge for a few minutes, and then out into the night again. The lights went on, and the pounding of the rain switched to the pounding of bodies and feet--and a night to remember.

Area 51 - Carl's Birthday.

2006-07-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple photos from Area 51 last night. It was Carl's birthday! Which means I really feel like an ass for not getting any pictures of him. Carl, get down on the dance floor more baby! I'll get you next time. If anybody has any pictures of me from yesterday (I doubt it because I didn't see any other cameras there) send them to me. I was in a short short skirt and I want to see if my ass was falling out.

Gpa's 80th in LA

2006-07-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos from my grandpa's 80th birthday. I drove to Cali with my mom, who actually just moved to Portland today. It's very sad. But the trip was great! We ended up getting lost nine or ten times during our travels. The reason was that we were pretty much in constant conversation in the car and we were hardly paying any attention to the road at all. So, we may have gotten lost, but only because we were having so much fun doing it!

Marianna in the Gas Chamber

2006-07-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

This place is psycho. It is a shower that really makes one think that they are being led to the gas chambers. And what IS this creature wandering about? It terrifies me, certainly.

Caitlin at Diamond Fork

2006-07-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos of Caitlin romping around at Diamond Fork. This is the area right above the waterfall. Hair and costuming by the wonderous Marcia.

Sequence VI

2006-07-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here we have photos from the latest chapter in Utah Rave history. The only catch is that this one was secretly in Nevada. I guess that we were not welcome, because it seems that Wendover pooled its resources together and carved in the sand where we exited to the rave location, "Go Home, Ravers."

Anyway, another night of what the excesses of America can produce. We screw over other countries for the ability to be slovenly and narcissistic in the night. Thank you George W., thank you casinos. We are all human beings ruining the planet earth in our own ways! Really though, it was a little discraceful, as it always is, when large amounts of human beings congregate onto virgin earth. However, those hoity-toities in their cities (like myself) have got to realize that the landfill is essentially the same thing. The only problem people have with trash (or bloody, shitty toilet paper) is if they have to look at it. We sure do hate to see how disgusting we are, and so we've invented some pretty complicated systems for removing the post-packaged excrements and pre-packaged wrappings.

News articles:
Elkodaily
Deseret News

Catlin, Turquoise and Rust

2006-07-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to pay more attention to tying color schemes together, and this is an attempt. Caitlin, you were amazing! Marcia, thanks for all the hair and the adventures.

Ion in Zion

2006-06-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

I know that I'm usually a complete sexist in my photographic subjects, and here is an attempt at evening the playing field. We have the marvelous and infamous Ion: actor, mystic, thinker, business man, father, musician... and perhaps even... the charged particle. He can really get into character(s). Would you believe that he actually has short hair and the beard and dreadlocks are extensions were put in? No? Well good, because that would be a lie.

That Mystical Kendra

2006-06-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Kendra up Rock Canyon - although I betcha can't tell :) Most people look up at the amazing cliffs, not down into the little stream by the side. Well, time was clenched, but we managed to get a few good shots.

Sand Tunez III

2006-06-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

You are what you see? No, I don't believe that. Because that would mean that everyone ELSE was drunk. I think that the majority of the alcohol was injested by MYSELF. Which is why we have such an abundance of blurrinesses in the photos below.

Click the following link to try and investigate a [MYSTERY].

Concrete Marisa

2006-06-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics from an amazing sunset yesterday, shining down with angelic kisses upon.. Marisa. Kenny's photo, here we come! I seriously go to that place to print just because they give me booster statements while talking trash on all the crappy photos that come in.

Die Panda Die and The Gentry at Muse Music

2006-06-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

I only wish I could have gotten more. Lighting was difficult; those high black ceilings make ugly direct flash the only option. So, what's your favorite photo? Which one is the WORST and should never have made it to the internet?

Luv2k+6.5 Summer of Love Pictures

2006-06-04T21:37:00.000-07:00

Hot, sexy, sassy, beautiful women on esctacy are found within the photographs below.

I could not have gotten these stunning photographs without the help of my accomplice, Molly, who helped with the lighting. :) She's my little professional flasher!

Provo Battle Guard!!

2006-05-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Battleguard is going to be my next photo-challenge. It's actually a lot more difficult than club photography because there are only fast bursts of action, constantly unpredictable swinging objects, and it is extremely difficult to light. I went down to just feel it out and the pictures show promise--but I got a lot of work to do. It always comes down to lighting lighting lighting. I need more flashes :(

Ashley & Heather Rurbanized

2006-05-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

I have a few nice selections from a shoot yesterday. We have
Ashley: and Heather: (images go to myspace pages).

Click on the image below to view more!

Found! Paraplegic Dumpster Diver(s)

2006-05-11T13:50:00.001-07:00

I hate when I read about those disabled drug addicts who have sworn to resuscitate their souls by going on the school circuit to preach the virtues of staying on the straight and narrow. We have cancer survivors, burn victims, drug dealers, and destitutes from all walks of life addressing students all over the country. (There’s a cause, save our youth from administrative boredom). They say that they can overcome any obstacle and be productive, happy people. Often they reach ultimate pretention with phrases like, "Maybe talking to these kids is the reason God left me here." But what if, instead of teaching obedience, a disabled person wants to teach kids to be unproductive citizens just like them?

We have disabled people who use their disabilities to do what they normally would have and subvert the system. We have paraplegic dumpster divers and train hoppers. We have “disabled” anarchists, porn stars, prostitutes and shop-lifters. To get a peek, I went on a dumpster diving run with a friend to get a real glimpse into the excess of western culture; what we throw away tells far more than what we publicly display.

The study of disabled rebellion leads to an interesting conclusion: it's a lot easier to break the law and go against the system when you are not disabled. For example, the ADA (American Disabilities Act) fights to give people with disabilities equal access to education, jobs, and entertaintment. However, I went boxcar jumping with a paraplegic yesterday and NONE of the boxcars had wheelchair ramps. He complained about it, and is going to write a letter to the ADA, but we both don't expect much. How can disabled people expect to be treated equally when they can't break the law as easily as others?

Molly's Wall, 2nd Layer

2006-05-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

In search of the subversive, and failing to find followers to urinate on police cars, I proceeded to help add another layer of oil pastels to Molly's wall. For some reason I felt combative and defiant all yesterday. I wanted to get hassled by the police. It's depressing that they don't even make eye contact anymore; I stare down every cop car I pass, but they always are busy staring at their computer screens, probably myspacing it up. (Has myspace really gotten verb status so soon?)

I am in search of a paraplegic paralegal; if not that... one that dumpster dives. Do you know any? Aggressive graffiti needs to be the next big movement. Banksy seems to be the only one that’s pulled it off, at least that I’ve seen. If they are going to call it vandalism, you might as well dump buckets of paint onto their statues, lawns, cars, and lawnmowers instead of the benign expressions on the empty canvasses of trains and concrete walls. Take to the billboards with your oil pastels! How is it possible to purchase my view of the mountains, the lakes, and the trees?

AMO in Grey Canyon

2006-05-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a very relaxing weekend near (and on) the Green River in southern Utah. It's definitely hard to think the experience could be surpassed. I only wish my photographs could give it any justice. A big thank you to SLC's AMO tribe.

Myspace could make the gas companies lose 2 billion?

2006-05-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've recently seen many myspace bulletins which declare:

On May 15th all myspace members are to not go to the gas station in protest high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places. There are 72,110,073 members currently on the network, and the average car takes about 20 to 30 dollars to fill up. If all myspace members did not go to the pump on the 15th it would take $2,163,302,190.00 out of the oil companys pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the oil industry for at least one day.

If you agree (which i cant see why you wouldnt) repost this bulletin repost it with 'Don't pump gas on May 15th!!!!

Those numbers make so many assumptions! First of all, they assume that the 72 million members are all active users and therefore are able to be influenced by the bulletin. However, despite the impressive amount of total members, it seems that there are only around 25 million unique users who hit the site each month. Still sizable, but it's only about 1/3rd of the number quoted.

Next, how many of those 25 million have a vehicle? About 1/3rd of households in the US have one vehicle, and another 1/3rd have two or more(offset by the 10% without a vehicle at all). The average household size is five, so that means that there are about three vehicles for every ten people. This knocks the 25 million down to about 8 million. Next, how many of those users were going to fill up their car on the 15th anyway? The average car owner fills up their car every 8-9 days. This means that only about 1/8th of the eligible people would be filling it up on the 15th anyway. So we have one million people that could make an impact.

Lastly, if we apply Pareto's law, which states that 20% of a given population will do 80% of the work in any given movement, we see that around 200,000 people may be affected by this myspace bulletin. Multiply that by a $20 dollar average fill amount (not the $30 that they used in their calculation, and we get about 4 million dollars that will not be spent. This is a much more realistic number.

It's a sizable amount, but won't all those people just buy their gas on the 16th?

Queer Prom Pictures

2006-04-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Pics of Queer Prom! That place is a major challenge to shoot.

Quick Public Screen Grabs

2006-04-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Overview:

Today's chat programs, although they have done wonders to improve the speed of interchange, lack an essential ability. Communication occurs visually as well as through writing. I've often thought that chat programs need a simple way to send images of what you are looking at on the screen to your chat partner. One of the most frustrating things is trying to get someone else able to see EXACTLY what you are looking at. Say you want to show someone an article, but they needed to register and go through steps to see it. Or what if what you wanted to show required them to download software, install plugins, etc. I find this problem annoying when trying to communicate to less computer savvy people, but it can also make error-reporting much easier (show us exactly the error message you saw!). But the thing most everyone CAN do is click on links. I found my solution in the software utility, Macro Express.

What my script does is save a screen grab to a file, upload that file to an ftp server, and copy the url of the image to the clipboard. Then you can simply paste away, and the person on the other end of the communication line will be able to see exactly what it is you are talking about. The script may be extremely simple, mundane, and obvious for many of you, but I think it's a good example of how macro-express can be used fill software gaps.

What you need:

Screen-grabbing software - Everyone knows about print screen, but it seems overkill if you only want to show something specific. I use the built in screen grabber in Microsoft onenote, which allows a screen crop of whatever size and dimensions I wish. Pretty much any screen grab software will do.

An FTP server - Hopefully self-explanatory. Usually your web-hosting service allows for FTP uploads.

Macro Express - Self-exp as well.

What you do:

Create a new macro in macro express, copy the following code linked in the image below, then paste it into the scripting editor.

The scripting editor should appear like such. Boxes that you will need to customize are highlighted (customize your local folder, ftp server, username, password, etc.). Once that is done, you are good to go!

Usage:

First you'll make a screen capture. Next, you'll hit the macro activation button. A prompt will ask you for a name. Then a status box will appear and let you know that the file is uploading. It will finish by telling you the url of the image which is copied to your clipboard, and then you can hit ok (you could always automate it to disappear, too, if you don't want this step). Now you can paste the image address wherever you wish.

Quirks:

The status box thing flickers because there doesn't seem to be a way to have it remain constant in macro express. If there's any way to make this look nicer, please let me know. And of course, if there are ways to make this script more streamlined or clean, I'd appreciate feedback.

Konstruction Kelly

2006-04-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to throw up some images from a photo set from a few days ago, quick.

Musefest

2006-04-16T15:54:00.000-07:00

I have no idea how I got ANY pictures last night at all, because I was hammered. The funny thing is, I don't even remember being drunk, but I sure woke up feeling like the sledgehammer midgets had been frolicking. But really, the truly amazing thing is that after loading up my car with equipment, flashes, and reflectors, driving up to the party, getting lost, missing exits, and then parking... I looked in the passenger's seat and my passenger was not there. My camera was at home on the couch.

Pretty amazing that I got pictures then, isn't it?

Phlurry of Photos.

2006-04-09T20:41:00.000-07:00

Friday was the opening of the UVSC student art show, which took place at the Woodbury Gallery. The gallery is essentially UVSC property in the University Mall, and it really is a pretty impressive place. I guess that some pictures of my naked ass that Janae took and chromed were supposed to be on the walls, but it was censored at the last minute. Now it's personal! :(

I attended the largest protest I've ever been to in my life, the huge immigration protest against a bill that wants tighter immigration controls. I usually am protesting the war, laws against homosexuals, the president, etc., but finally I was part of a popular movement! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are more concerned about the day to day than the fact that we are killing poor people in other countries. There were also the protester protesters, who I ended up getting into some brutal verbal confrontations with. I was actually separated from the guy because we had entered into an angry dual flood of obscenities. Fun stuff.

And then I ended up at the drum circles, my first this year. It is definitely more spiritual than any church I've seen. Laena and myself set up some photo equipment, reflectors, flashes, etc., and experimented mixing strong outdoor light with studio light to get decent portraits. It was such a bright day, and everyone was wearing sunglasses, so it's pretty easy to demystify the lighting. I definitely need more practice with mixing outdoor light, though; figuring out the angles of reflectors is still something of a bumble.

Kermit on the streets of Provo

2006-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

His clothes were black and faded and his face wore a tattered beard. White stains were the only that shone through. His green tweet hat had sleepy 5 o'clock shadow, which contrasted his clear, eggwhite, rhinestone eyes. I could see how the clothing was an old friend, like the relic in his hands: a dancing violin. Just twenty feet away, a group of musicians bounced melodies against each other. He, though, was a lonely figure in a wheelchair bathed in red light against an old concrete wall. And he ranted, yelling at some owner of some venue somewhere who had refused him access to the stage. So, tonight his audience was solely I, my camera lens, and the alley which periodically flashed with light from headlights of cars looking for parking.. so they could pay $3 dollars and see those on the stage behind Kermit's wall.

I'm reading "Language in Thought and Action," by S.I. Hayakawa, and it inspired me to write a description with an awareness of bias. He says that the good writers develop complexity in a character by trying to describe them from more than one point of view. This gives a solidity and realness to the image being created.

Manufactured Fear

2006-04-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of researching a paper that is, as of now, generally about how "fear of terrorism" is a force used to maitain a complacent population. My research has focused on arguments that help support my case, and now I'm more interested in fleshing out context. By providing the context I hope to show what has led the media and terrorism to be so mutually beneficial to one another. I have already found that there is a large body of work which supports the idea that a fear is a commodity manufactured by the media in order to influence populations. I think going into that argument would be too easy.

To problematize my prior topic, I've decided to look at the ongoing debate over the magnitude of media influence. It's generally understood that the mass media is an extremely pervasive force in giving the public a picture of the world. However, there are those who feel that thinking the public is some sort of unaware recepticle of media transmissions is elitist and does not reflect the ability for people to take information and process it in innovative, creative, and unpredictable ways. I think these debates need to be considered when talking about how much effect the media has on generating fear and having a captive (captivated) audience.

I am still processing information and doing, what I consider, to be first stage analysis. That consists of around two-three of my own responses per page of text that I'm reading. Once they are read that way, I am typing them up and going into more detail with a three column analysis of all the highlighting and commentary. The first column contains the quote that interested me; the second, my response; and the third, a rhetorical analysis of the language and tone of the original author. I'm at this stage with two of the journals, so I've much work to do. I'm working on a schedule to try and do one or two of the stages per source per day. I hope to then write 1-2 page summaries on each article so I can get all the data organized in my head and create the final paper from there.

So that's where I'm at. :)