Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Break Emptiness

It is important to break up emptiness, to disrupt vacant spaces to, to give our visual foothold something solid to stand on.

As I studied this George Tice image today it was the broad and solid wood detailing on the wall that made this image work for me. Dad, what is this feature referred to as?



Also when I was in Telluride with Glenn Oakley I noticed a lot of the hotels and "cabins" utilize "stepped" mini roof lines that parallel the main roof line. Seems like they were used to break up the empty expanse of multi story exterior walls. Often times these min roof lines originated from a window on the side of the building. What are those features know as?

I've always appreciated wanes coating in a room, dormers in a roof, solid crown molding and blocky base board in rooms with elevated ceilings. Think about Susan Susanka's concept of dilineating different living spaces with something as simple as an exposed header or a change in the finish floor elevation. Emptiness and empty expanses must be broken. As visual creatures, as fragile humans we need something solid on which to ground ourselves. Other than the fact that they can't risk someone hurting themselves, I've never understood what good it does to put a lunatic in small, featureless, flat, white rooms. Seems like it would me more harmful than beneficial, creating a sense of panic, a sense of lost orientation and direction.

The empty canvas, the blinking cursor, an empty wall or ceiling, are all terrifying. We need visual, metaphorical, physical, ideological anchors from which we can send out skiffs, explore, create, then return to and lean on for support.


More after the jump...

Bugger

I miss my Kiwi friends and need to go back as soon as I can.
More after the jump...

Monday, September 28, 2009

Get people to bug out, you know

More after the jump...

Remember what pays off:

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.– Calvin Coolidge

seen on aphotoeditor.com More after the jump...
I've been keen on Dan Winter's portrait and photo illustrations for a while. It is clean and simple, tight, yet full of depth. Follow the jump for an interview with Dan.





"People aren't going to remember the things you do. They are going to remember how you made people feel. And uh, I've always tried to really adhere to that, try to be you know kind and gracious and appreciative."

More after the jump...

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Saturday, September 26, 2009

The New Economy

Chad Case and I just read WWGD by Jeff Jarvis so I found this Charlie Rose interview with Chris Anderson about his new book Free: the Future of a Radical Price interesting.




The Big Question: What is the pet for our penguin? More after the jump...

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Upcoming Shoulder surgery

My CT showed that I have a Hill-Sachs lesion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill-Sachs_lesion) as well as a Bankart lesion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankart_lesion). Basically I have a divot in the ball of my shoulder and have fractured the anterior portion of my shoulder socket which hasn't healed on it's own. Dr. Michael Curtin (http://www.intermountainortho.com/physicians.php) will perform a Bristow-Latarjet procedure (http://www.shoulderdoc.co.uk/article.asp?article=912) on the 30th of Sept.




And here is the rest of it.
More after the jump...

Monday, September 14, 2009

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The Unexpected Image

In an effort to push myself this winter I want to start making images less of people doing things like paragliding or skiing and more in the direction of conveying ideas.

I'm probably the sort of person that would benefit from direction and structure so I'm going to try and give myself guidelines to follow. If you have ideas that you think would be interesting guide lines, send them along as well. There might be a series of different guidelines separate, distinct ideas/projects or all the guidelines might meld into a long string of guidelines that end in a single series of images with a single cohesive idea. I'm not sure yet.

To kick things off here are the first three guidelines for the first image we make together:

The image must:
1) Identify a simple and central message to communicate.
2) illustrate what is counterintuitive and unexpected about that message
3) have a sense of mystery in the sense that it provides a question without an obvious answer

So here is my first image idea, following these guide lines: A homeless bum opening and peering into a BFI dumpster in a grimy dirty back ally only to find a white linen table and an elaborate Chef Mortimer style meal laid out before him.

The image of a fancy smancy meal all in a garbage can jumped into my head during a brainstorming session about things that seemed counterintuitive, it further developed into the image of a bum looking into a trash heap and finding a full meal. In my head the image fills requirements 2 and 3, but I don't yet know what the central message is that I'm trying to communicate. Leave a comment and help me figure that out.

I hadn't thought much about the Chef Mortimer name I used until now that I'm going back and reading this post. Hmm... it was a complete accident that I offered up that image alongside his name. Maybe somewhere in the intersection of that image and his name is the answer to guideline #1.

Let me know what you think. Leave a comment, write me an email, FB me. Do you have a set of guidelines to follow when trying to come up with a new image? Do you have an image idea that would fill the three guidelines above? Do you have the answer to how my image idea and guideline #1 work together?

A
More after the jump...