The Agrinautica

   So I've been trawling through my pictures on flickr (there's 70 pages of them!), to try to find some to print out and put on my walls. I do already have an album of about a hundred of what I've considered "the best" I'm finding when I look at them with an eye to "would I like to hang this on my wall" a lot of pictures I otherwise feel are good pictures don't measure up, and pictures I wouldn't have previously thought of as among the very best I suddenly feel are.

   For example I've decided the one at the top of the entry is one of my very favorites, even though I think just looking at it on a computer screen without thinking about putting things on my walls I'd be like eh its just a mundane scene. But I like the colors and everyone in it seems so composed, and it reminds me of peaceful evenings sitting on that porch in Guinea. That fellow pouring the tea would pour it back and forth for what seemed like hours every day to make it just right. The other guy is the head beekeeping trainer there and I really quite like him. And the girl shyly peering around the side is Fatimatah, a sweet and shy girl.




   This is another kind of unexpected favorite, but again I like the color balance and moreover Aissatou and Kamera laughingly trying to pull eachother out of (and/or into??) the puddles I feel is evocative of their cheerful laughing demeaner and makes me happy when I look at it.




   Again I feel it seems kind of random that this of all pictures would come to be one of my favorite of all my photos but it is, and I actually already HAVE a large print out of this on my wall.



   This one I had printed out a few years ago but it came out with a green spot in the middle and I've been afraid to have it printed out again in case that's some sort of inevitable result of the way the colors are coded in the jpeg or something, but I quite like it and think I'll give it another go.



   This one I already ordered printed the other day as kind of a test to see how the k-mart photo printing comes out and how I feel about the size (8" x 12" / 20cm x 30cm). These are the two boats I sailed around on for seven months, up at peaceful Sucia Island (entire island is a national park and does not, I believe, had any regular public boat service so people can only get there by boating in themselves), with Mt Baker in the background, somewhere near Bellingham. I wish that modern boat wasn't in the picture, but its not even easy to photoshop out since its in front of a varied background with the shore and all (but if anyone wants to have a go at it I'd be extremely obliged!!)


   I also want to aim to get a variety of different places I've been represented. Anyway, the 8" x 12" photos are only like $3.95 while those nice printed-on-canvas things are around $50 so I think I'll print out a bunch on the cheap and one by one replace the ones I really like with nice canvas ones.



And probably this picture I took of ANZAC cove because, Australia.


   If you're interested I'm posting a few more photos I'm heavily considering as comments.

   Another round of thanks to everyone who recommended music in comments after my music post last week. In fact I still haven't gotten around to looking up everything suggested, but intend to.


Song of the Week: The Avett Brothers - Murder in the City -- It's sweet and sad and so damn good that I can't find a song that doesn't sound like shit when it's the next song you play after it. Seriously it's kind of a problem. Thanks whoshottheshot for the recommendation!


Circular Arguments about Photography
   It was recently pointed out to me that camera lenses take circular pictures. Obviously. But pictures are square (obviously).
   It makes sense that film was square since it would be a hassle to deal with circular film. But with digital pictures it would be extremely easy to get the circular raw image and crop the portion you want into a square.
   With the current pre-cut square you lose a lot of data in the "corners" of the circle that aren't within the square. Esp since most (all?) cameras don't make a square but a rectangle of a 4:3 ratio.
   The sensor in the cameras is presently that rectangle shape I would imagine, but can't they make it circular? I think the only reason we're getting served up square pictures from the cameras is because that's what we are expecting!


Picture of the Day

Meet Dan, a drone (male) honeybee

Also, new pictures posted yesterday and day before! Including one of fan favourite Melissa, on livejournal!!

   Caroline and I snuck off during work today. We went around the side of the store to the fountain. It was my first time doing such things, and it only lasted a few minutes, but we tried several positions. Two hours later we tried again and I think it was better.

   That is.. we took pictures. We didn't sneak out though, that was a bold-faced lie -- the boss told us to. Caroline modelled a pink poncho and we took pictures. When we first went out the lighting was extremely spotty because it was shining through a tree so there were only a few places we could stand where my shadow wasn't in the picture and the light wasn't spotty on her. Later on around 7:30 the lighting was a lot better.
   Shutter delay with the digital camera was particularly aggrevating. Apparently technology thus far has been completely unable to make an electronic camera without shutter delay (this from discussion with dad). One several things I miss about my SLR camera (which I didn't even bring down here), but the ease of proliferating pictures from digital cameras here makes all the difference.
   But yea, today was my first photo shoot of someone intentionally modelling for me, usually I take exclusively pictures of people caught off-guard (or pictures of say.. yarn).

the photo shoot

   Livejournalists prepare yourselves, for I have been unleashed upon the world with a digital camera!! Yes, thats right, its been three years since I last scanned a photograph of mine but the photographic winter is finally over!

   Today I took 63 photographs, completed three photo-essays, worked on part of another, and took several brilliant pictures which will change your life.
   The camera is not mine however, but the family digital camera, but hopefully by the end of this summer I'll have one of my own and never again shall the photographic winter set in.

   You see, my paternal grandfather has been a career photographer for Kodak, my dad collects cameras, my maternal grandfather builds lenses for NASA, my older brother even sometimes thinks he might be a decent photographer, photography runs in my veins.


Picture of the Day - A Preview of Coming Attractions

Viejo Liquor
Mission Viejo, CA
© Kris Fricke 2004

Shid
   Also to tide you over until I get the pictures posted, we've got some polls for you, but to save time we've brilliantly combined them in a way which we've determined will in no way bias the results, and so we give you a single highly objective poll of ultimate truthfulness:

[Poll #313742]
   If you selected the first option, arrangements can be made at shid and should be made as soon as possible.


Related
   Year Ago Today: The Life of Kris - some general notes