photos

le premier nuit

January 20, 2009 by krisis

Google informs me that the titular phrase with “soir,” as I originally phrased it, frequently refers to the question of having sex on the first date.

Funny how they don’t teach you these things in high school.

Here’s gare du nord, where we disembarked.

I took special delight in the fact that Dexter is being advertised as heavily here as it was in the states last fall, but I’m not sure what season they’re on.

I insisted we snap a photo to commemorate the end of our 18 hours of traveling before we went out for dinner.

We turned the wrong way up our street at first and discovered that it terminates in an absolutely breathtaking overview of the entire city, with the Eiffel directly in the center. We were at a loss for words.

(That is, until I remarked that the roving light from the top of the tower is not unlike the eye of Sauron. Because we are huge, married nerds.)

Photo forthcoming; at the time dinner was a higher priority.

Elise made me speak French to our waiter three times. He was extremely patient, and seemed to take delight in the fact that we were struggling not to use English or ask him how to say things.

When we left he said “Thank you, byebye!”

St. Pancras, foto

January 20, 2009 by krisis

Six Shots At Bob & Barbara’s

November 4, 2007 by krisis

Pack Ratting Red Red Sharpener

January 2, 2007 by krisis

To ring in 2007 I undertook some major home-office/recording-studio cleaning last night in the hopes of stemming the frequent avalanches of stuff that occur whenever I place anything on or walk past my desk. Because, gosh darn it, if my work desk can be organized, so can my home desk.

My desk cleaning reminded me of just how much of a pack rat I truly am. Behold: Tiny boxes that held small Christmas presents four years ago. The extra buttons to every Express shirt I’ve ever bought (and that’s a lot of buttons). Six year old pens.

Think about that. I had pens from 2000! Six year old pens that I refused to throw away because they’re from the time VW set up a tent on campus and they gave me a bag of shwag for standing on a table in the middle of the event and singing I’m a little teapot (as if that was a challenge for me; I probably would have done it naked).

My desk cleaning also lead me to a moment of reflection on my red Panasonic pencil sharpener.

You see, my red Panasonic pencil sharpener has been with me since third grade. It used to sit next to the dining room table in my childhood home. It came with me to college, and survived all three of my apartments.

It might not be very sexy, it might be as heavy as a brick, but after seventeen years of use the darn thing still works perfectly. By contrast, I’ve been through three separate sharpeners in the past year at the office.

I guess they don’t make them like they used to.

(Yes, you do see Rogue in the foreground of that shot. She’s not quite as old as the Panasonic, but she’s survived all the same locales – in fact, when I first got my webcam in 2001 I believe she spent a day on-camera perched outside of my window, searching for injustice to fight.)

five years stuck on my eyes

December 23, 2006 by krisis

You don’t date a photographer for nearly five years without picking up something – a certain vernacular – but that something is entirely different when you finally have a camera of your own, and nearly unlimited space to store hundreds of indiscriminately snapped digital shots over the course of a day.

Two days into my spree of snapshots and I can’t decide if digital cameras accelerate a photographer’s novice phase or distend it. Sure, it helps to be able to bracket the same shot at every possible exposure and film speed to see the difference in action. Yet, it’s easy to slip into the habit of continuous clicking – shoot now, sort it out later.

I don’t know why I feel I have to master each little thing I lay my hands upon. Just when I was getting decent at theatre I started playing guitar, and I interrupted that to be the best at blogging, and in the middle at being the best at blogging I decided I needed to make a sporting try at singing. I just can’t pick something up with the goal of being mediocre.

Will I ever be as good a photographer as Elise? Will I ever be as good a songwriter as David Bowie? Both aspirations are irrelevant to the reality – the tools of producing pictures and songs and web essays have been democratized, and each tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

I have a new weapon in my arsenal. While I’m futzing with my Flickr account, here’s my favorites from my first forty-eight hours as a photographer.