Here’s the rest of the images I liked from my weekend photo excursion. More than anything I am filled with ideas from the 200+ images I didn’t post. A tree here, a blown highlight there kept me from showing them, but this city has potential for sure. It’s a new kind of photography for me. Usually, I take my camera out to document adventure, but now I am trying to tweak my shooting to capture the essence of a place. It was hard for me to try to adapt–it’s a completely different ball game, but I can’t wait to try out a few ideas I developed this weekend.
Well, I finally was able to hit the streets and do some shooting. And I did this all on foot–from the Seattle Public Library to Pike’s Place to Kerry park to the Olympic Sculpture Park and the water front–thank god my knee is feeling better. I haven’t finished editing all my shots, but here are the ones I like from the first round of post.
Firefox rocks. Version 3 is outstanding. It’s great, really. But, if you haven’t downloaded any extensions you are missing out on at least 50% of the benefits of the browser. Here are my top five extension that make the internet bearable, and sometimes enjoyable.
1. Cooliris
This extension is truly revolutionary. The web is so heavily visually these days that organizing it textually doesn’t always make sense. Cooliris immerses you in the multimedia component that defines the web. You’ll never look at Facebook, Flickr, the news, or any other visually heavy site the same again.
2. Forecastfox
Sometimes its the little things that help the most. Forecastfox won’t replace you need for weather.com but it will at least make you aware of what the weather has in store for you, even if it is just in the back of your mind. If it gets me to take my rain jacket to work in morning so I don’t get wet walking home then I’ll take it.
3. Adblock Plus
Geez, I didn’t realize how many ads were on the net until I installed this. Its great, it cuts down on 90% of internet advertising.
4. Scribefire
Okay if you don’t blog you can skip it, but if you have a blog do yourself a favor and get it now. Since I downloaded it, I post at least twice as much just because its so easy. On a cool site? Bring up Scribefire, write a paragraph, and post it to your blog. Do it all without ever having to log in, create a post, cut and paste in the link, yada yada yada. It makes blogging quick and painless. (In fact, this whole post was written in Scribefire).
5. Noia Extreme
Yeah, I know not an extension. It is actually a theme. But, whatever. Noia skins Firefox into a slick interface that is infinitely more pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate.
The last few weeks have been nuts. I have been working a lot- I think I put in around 135 hours in the last fourteen days. On top of that I had been studying for my Series 66 (which I passed-YES!). This schedule has left little time for anything else.
It’s not that I don’t like what I have been doing–on the contrary, my job has been fascinating through all the financial turbulence–but, I like to have a balanced life. I love to get outside, shoot photos, and explore. I really haven’t had time to do anything but eat, work, and sleep. I feel lucky if I can blow off some stress with a 30 minute run.
Personally, my current schedule is unsustainable. It’s not the amount of work, but the lack of balance that is the problem. To solve it, I think I am going to force myself to simply not collapse and watch a couple episodes of House at the end of the day. Instead, I’m going to try to force myself to get out and shoot at least three times a week.
To help me achieve this (and to provide some necessary accountability) I will try to post up the best image from each session. No promised on text accompaniment and the post-processing might have to wait until the weekend, but we’ll see what happens.
Sometimes it seems that like all my favorite bands are between albums. In these times I swear I can’t dig up any new music that that is worth listening to more than the one time it takes to determine it’s terrible. However, this is not one of those times. An enormous number of albums worth their scratch have come out in the last few months. I’ll do my best to limit it to five songs off these albums, but it’s going to be difficult.
The List:
1. Stereophonics – Stone
I finally saw the Stereophonics in concert two weeks ago at the Showbox in Seattle and they blew me away. I had been waiting to see them for years and hearing Dakota live sort of marked the end of an era for me. In any case, Stone stood out as a quintessential Stereophonics song–hauntingly melodic and more often then not building into a giant climax. Near perfection.
2. People in Planes – Last Man Standing These guys opened for the Stereophonics and are good enough to be the main act on any stage once their name gets out there. Last Man Standing is fresh off their new CD and is really raw and driven. Its reminds me of 30 seconds to Mars with a splash of Incubus, but less angry and less produced-basically remove the shit from these bands and you have People in Planes.
3. Santogold – LES Artistes Santogold is true to her name and delivers a shining entry into the electro-pop arena; the genre hasn’t sounded this good since the Swedish first got their hands on it. This song in particular has all the needed fixings of an electro-pop hit- catchy vocals, a nice little treble arpeggio traversing the length of the tune and a driving bass line.
4. Counting Crows – 1492 The Counting Crows are back! Really a timeless band that had such a strong freshman album they were doomed to continually disappoint. The pop sellout in release of Hard Candy didn’t help matters. But, they have apparently come to their senses and put out an album on par with August and Everything after. 1492 is the very first track off the album and hits hard. It’s like Mr. Jones telling you about his bender last night- crazy as hell but sure to be on continual repeat in your mind for the next week.
5. MGMT – Electric Feel So I have known about MGMT ever since I went on a ski trip with a bunch of crazy kids from Wesleyan. We had these epic dance parties that centered around the song Kids. I was told that MGMT was like the unofficial theme music to the Wesleyan experience. Well the finally got an album out and not just a bootleg. It’s called Oracular Spectacular. Kids is there along with this song, Electric Feel. Unadulterated, catchy, and you can’t help but dance to it. Think electro-rock, this band blends the genres seamlessly and doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.
Honorable Mentions:
Estelle – American Boy; Seriously catchy, seriously getting the play time it deserves Gnarles Barkley – Run; Yeah it’s not that new, who cares it’s still great Mudcrutch – Scare Easy; Did the Traveling Wilburies release a new album? Yeah, it’s that kind of Petty good
