27jun2023

I mentioned two-three intros ago that my favourite camera review site, DPreview, was being shut down, to my and many other photographers’ dismay.

Well, here's some good news to go along the plethora of not-so-good: DPreview has been sold, and looks to have a new home. I surely hope it works out for them. —We'll just have to see, I guess.

In the meantime, I continue my abstract blast from the past... with part II, an update on a necklace I made over two decades ago with the sort of abstracts I featured yesterday.

26jun2023

Hideho. I see my last entry was about two months ago, so I've missed, um, May Day, Juneteenth, and the Summer Solstice. Whoops. Hoping all of those, or any other holidays, or just life in general, has been delightful.

I kept thinking I really should post some beads, as opposed to mixed media, which is what I've evidently mostly been doing. Well! I have some. (That still mostly need to be photographed, but at least I made them...) For this, as I so often do, I have my friend Page to thank, as she's encouraged me to make beads:) It's nice to have friends to share activities & ask you to do things.

Anyway. This week's series is me easing back into it, with a reprise of some of the earliest versions from one of my longest running series, abstract frit and powder beads.

Enjoy.

22apr2023

O hai, today's Earth Day.

Well, at least it finally motivated me to post something. It seems entirely appropriate, at least in my part of the world, to celebrate the Earth in general (& spring in particular): all the trees have begun to bloom—lime green fuzzies for the wind-pollinated trees, and the fabulous flowers of bradford pear, sand cherry, and magnolia; the weeping cherries presage the crabapples and dogwoods, which will be putting on a show soon. Old brown leaves are rotting down to fresh new soil, an endlessly fascinating cycle of the seasons.

In the spirit of reuse/recycle, it seems only fitting to feature a mixed media collage of discarded scraps, old stamps and bookmarks, reused tissue paper (that went to Japan and then came back...) with the major focal points being advertising. Even the envelope was going to be tossed by the thrift shop (they've given me a lifetime supply of blank envelopes...)

So here's my take on something new from old detritus.

1apr2023

I've been helping my bestie sort, organize & tidy her attic storage, and we finished the task with a nostalgic trip down memory lane, looking at all the old xmas and other cards I (or my parents) had sent her over the years. My wedding invite. A sibling's birth announcement, that I'd calligraphed.

Lovely.

I'm not as organized as my friend, but I was recently spurred to think about the various (digital) cameras I've bought over the years: important tools for making an essential, external memory (cuz the one inside my head is pretty flakey.)

I believe my first digital camera was a kodak—mebbe 1 megapixel? It wasn't very good, because among other things it had a proprietary file system, which, once we quit windows, meant I lost all my images. Then there was something—possibly a panasonic, as the file system started with P (e.g. P0000001) and brief research suggests that back in 1999 and 2000 when I was taking pictures with whatever this mysterious camera was, panasonic dominated the market.

Thereafter, however, I discovered DPreview (which I mispronounced d-preview—for years). On their breathless recommendation of the nikon 990 I bought one:

Where should I start? Nikon have taken one of the most capable, reliable and popular digital cameras of 1999 and brought it up to the next level. They've avoided simply upgrading the imager and have updated the camera inside and out, lots of new features, fixes to old niggles and improvements on what was already a great digital camera. Probably the best 3 megapixel digital camera under $1000 ...

Besides the full manual modes absolutely critical for any kind of studio photography, the camera boasted an interesting split-twist body—sort of an early version of articulating viewscreens. I got that some time in early 2001, but it would take awhile longer before I developed a robust filing and indexing system—the earliest image I can find dates to April of 2001. (Thus, the header of this site, which was taken in 2004, would've been shot with this camera...)

That was followed by the nikon coolpix 8400; I took my first photo with that on 2May2005, of studio plants (still a favourite test subject;) AFICT, I got this model mostly for familiarity's sake, though the notes on DPreview do suggest it has “good macro coverage”, always a big factor for me. I took my last photo with it at a sculptural glass workshop the day before I got hit by a car, in February of 2010.

But once again by May I was taking flower pix (the ornamental crapapples were blooming in front of our house) with my first DSLR, an olympus (E620) I purchased solely for its fantastic zuiko 50mm macro lens, even though the 4/3 system was already on its way out. I took so many pictures with that camera the body died, and I had to buy another, used, on eBay, where I made the distressing discovery that they'd cheapened the product up by removing intermediate shutter speeds & f stops (e.g. 6.7, which I evidently used a good deal.) Though I meant to get some other lenses for it, besides the lensbaby sweet 35, I never really found any that seemed better than the all-around zuiko, which shone equally well taking pix of people, flowers or beads. Sure, I suppose a telephoto for birds would've been nice, or a wide angle for landscapes...but at that point photography was mostly a means to an end, making records of things—either art, reference for art, or mementos, i.e. people.

By then phone cameras and shirt pocket travel cameras had continued to improve, and so I got a little sony RX100 in spring of 2014 for a trip to Japan—a truly wonderful compact, except for crapping out and dying after 3 years or so, which I replaced in 2017 with a slightly larger, fully (mechanically) manual (but not as convenient, size-wise) panasonic LX100 (still in use) though honestly, my phone is nearly as good and far more convenient.

I'd wanted a better studio camera for years, but it proved surprisingly difficult to match that zuiko lens. For awhile I was very excited about Nikon's new Z mount, but they were being painfully slow about rolling out good macro lenses. When Sony came out with a nice, affordable full-frame prosumer body, that, coupled with their 90mm macro lens finally meant a significant improvement on the old equipment (at roughly the same size!) so I got it. (Plus a new flash, and a new tripod, and new release...wow, has that technology all improved out of recognition since the oly...)

And took my first photos with it on April 10, 2021, almost exactly two years ago. DPreview also recommended the Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 Di III VXD so I dipped a toe into the wonderful world of telephoto. Both the sony 90mm macro and the tamron 70-180 take great pictures, but I now understand why people serious photographers don't worry so much about their camera bodies being small—even though these are both “small” “light” lenses, they're absolute beasts compared to the zuiko 50mm, let alone the shirt pocket (or nearly) compact cameras I've been carrying. They both dwarf the A7c body. But it just seems so pointless to get mediocre pancake lenses, might as well just use my phone, hmmm?}

I got a refurbished lensbaby sweet 35 with a FE mont, and that currently rounds out my glass, which all fits into one camera bag. Yippee. I still want to get a wide angle for architecture or astrophotography, but yanno DPreview will be there for me when I get around to it, just as they have been a major resource for the last two decades. Right? I mean, that site is almost as old as mine, it goes all the way back to 1998, which is, if I recall correctly, when I got my domain.

Ha ha. April Fools.

Their “parent company” (aka the evil Amazon) is closing the site down on April 10. Because it's not making enough money.

So. You have 9 more days to read up on your favourite equipment (I at least find the thorough reviews more helpful, in most cases, than the manual, in figuring out how to get my stuff to do something), pick out any new glass, and mourn the thousands of hours of effort and over two decades of info that's going away two years to the day I started using my latest camera.

Damn.

Oh,and here's a picture taken with that camera...

31mar2023

Heh, didn't so much on the posting front this week—I was pretty busy.

But as today is Trans Day of Visibility, I figured I'd better put something up, given the way absolutely appalling political attacks on trans people have been heating up. Because we're such a tiny minority, it's all too easy for us to be misrepresented as some sort of monsters, instead of really quite ordinary folks who are mostly interested in living their lives and being left alone—just like everyone else. As you may have noticed, I spend far more time focused on art than I do my gender.

I mean, I finally have a framework to understand why everyone else is so fixed on ‘being a woman’ or ‘being a man’, which I admit doesn't make a whole heckuva lotta sense to me (or many other nonbinary people) but hey, whatevs.

You do you.

And please, let us do do us. Cuz it's really disheartening to see the current crop of TV talking heads and pols demonizing trans people (especially kids!) the way they did gays back in the 80s. And, I suppose, for much the same reason—fear amps up ratings & voters. Le sigh. I'm old enough to remember those panics, and see the parallels now. Trans people are no more sexual predators than gays were—just people, with the usual mix of kindness, cruelty, weirdness and mundaneity, like everyone else.

Thank you.

I have a snowdrop picture from the garden, too.

22mar2023

O hai, I saw somewhere that Ramadan starts at sundown today, so, Happy Ramadan if you celebrate it (& a lovely Wednesday if not.)

I unfortunately don't have any Ramadan themed links, but I rather like this catchy pop song I found via bb, which notes:

The music video for genre-bending pop singer Ashnikko's song Worms contains some pretty badass animation. Each shot is rich in detail, and the creativity that went into the character design is off the charts. The animation, although digitally rendered, looks like a stop motion film. I love the hand-made look to the spunky monsters in the video as well as the gloomy, post-apocalyptic setting that Ashnikko is driving through. The song itself is awesome, too!

A sentiment with which I agree:) Though I'd add there's also very much an homage to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (which is not exactly how I think about gardens, but that's the theme this week, so...here we are with another garden themed collage.)

Enjoy.