Today I went out for a walk and stumbled upon this mural. I think it’s art, but it could be an advertisement. Is there really any difference? It’s in a strange place - an alley. You can’t really step back to regard it all at one time. I decided to try stitching together a panorama in Photoshop. It came out okay - well, you an judge the results for yourself.
To be more precise, this is the alley that goes behind the Whole Foods on P street. The wall belongs to a hardware store or something.
If this is a work of art, it is a parody of advertising, and I think that’s what attracted me the most. That, or the vivid colors. But, if this really is an advertisement, it engages in stealth - Guerrilla marketing at its most vivid. You should be able to see the logos if you look closely. I’ve seen that logo applied all over town, and I never bothered to figure out why. It could be an energy drink for all I know. The most cynical (yet creative) phase of advertising has bent over backwards to meet the most mocking parody.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:13:00 GMT
It’s more nostalgia, isn’t it?
Scanner Time
I looted a scanner from my old workplace when it closed. Let me explain how I rationalize that action.
The thing is a combination printer/scanner - At first it was thought that I would be scanning a lot of artwork for the website so I got one. But eventually, they started sprouting up around the office like toadstools - we had network gear, so it might have made more sense to have one really good printer and scanner networked, but that’s not what happened. Stuff got bought in dribs and drabs. The purchasing mavens waited until my department got a new PC (I think it may have been for my desk…) to get a new printer.
I never really used the scanner part that much for work - I wound up getting most of what I needed online. But, on the other hand, it was really annoying to have to go down the hall to use the vintage Mac in the advertising office every time I needed to scan something.
One day I had a serious paper jam. That was when I discovered how hermetic the printer mechanism was. With the exception of a couple flaps, there was no access. I believe that to access the printer mechanism would require dismantling the scanner part - removing it from above the printer. Or something like that. Nevertheless, I managed to pull the diagonal wad of copy paper out. But I caused some subtle damage with the shuttle - that carriage for the ink cartridges that rode back and forth on a rod. From then on, there was a point near one end of the rod where the cartridges would stutter, leaving a vertical line running down the left edge of the paper. It would leave a rainbow from the narrow gaps where C, M, and Y never printed from the stutter. Black, begin further to the left had its stutter outside of the printing range. I had all the clues I needed, but no reliable way to fix it. And it was bargain basement junk anyway.
It worked that way for months and months. Not exactly production quality, but I didn’t do production.
Then one day it died completely.
I drew that face on post-it note, stuck it to the printer and started sending my print jobs somewhere else.
Paul Crowley Youngstown Ohio
This photo is a remarkably good one considering. It belongs to a collection of very crappy photos from the 1980’s. When I lived in Gaithersburg, I used to ride my bike down to the railroad tracks. As a teenager, I wasn’t particularly sure what I wanted to take photos of. I was just scanning around for something interesting. And, what looks interesting to the eye is not necessarily interesting printed. Any marginally good photographer has learned to compensate for this. I’m tempted to call it “pre-emphasis”. All image creation has to be artificial. Viewers won’t see what is there if it is simply recorded - they have to be shown something emblematic to see truth, but they can just as easily be manipulated into seeing something false in the process. Photos are no substitute for ‘being there’, and to think that they can be is clearly naive. But it’s also possible that you haven’t discovered that for yourself yet.
So here we have the young, naive me, snapping away at railroad tracks, trains passing by, track-maintenance equipment, and the extremely nondescript track-side architecture… Then one day I take an actual portrait. Albeit a corporate logo, ‘signed’ by a bystander three states away. Was he even in Ohio when he made his mark? Or was he tramping the rails like some depression-era hobo? I have no doubt that the graffiti struck me that day as particularly literate and legible. It is indistinguishable in mode from an artist’s signature, as if Paul here was taking credit for the thing. Did they fabricate those rail cars in Youngstown somewhere? Did Paul do this at the factory. I doubt it, but it’s a poetic thought. The mark is fresher than the paint job, that much is easy to see.
Maybe this isn’t the first good photograph I ever took, but I think there is a good chance that it is. I recognize it as a photo I would take today, given the opportunity. It shows the industrial decay that I forget even interested me that long ago. If anything, I’m not so different now because I haven’t been paying close attention.
Posted in photos, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:59:00 GMT
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:47:00 GMT
Yesterday I got up early and took a morning walk. I set out for Columbia Heights, and possibly further up to Petworth - I made it the whole way: I got as far as Grant Circle before backtracking to 13th St., Park Road, 14th St., then back home on Columbia Road. I had a few conscious objectives, a few unconscious objectives, and the completely unexpected. There was a 70 bus turning from Sherman Ave onto Harvard - they don’t usually do that - and then I wondered about the police lights up the hill on Georgia. But that’s a story for later. I’m going to tell you about…
Forensic Analysis
I was walking down 13th Street when I noticed a mysterious skid mark on the sidewalk. Somebody had burned some serious rubber. Was the stone wall supposed to look like that? - The house was only partially painted, so maybe they hadn’t finished working on the front yard, either… I had my camera in my hand, and I wanted to understand what had happened, so there was no doubt that I would wind up taking some pictures.
But the car that did this must be long gone… I traced the markings back to the pavement to find a blue car parked just so. My memory brought up a similar instance where there were skid marks and the car was displaced - a possible hit and run - The pavement also had tell-tale street cleaner brush marks - Case closed - So, I took a walk around the car to check for more evidence. Was this the car that skidded on the sidewalk, then backed out, perhaps in haste? Did she jump, or was she pushed?…
In this case, there was no major damage around the other side, but on closer inspection, the front corner there was dinged up a bit. I started to imagine a bit of a smack when that front bumper hid the stone wall - and new evidence started fitting in - practically flatten that stairway railing. Should the airbag have deployed, I wondered? Well, I was too shy to record the interior of the car, since I was already acting suspicious enough, but I can say for certain that said airbag did deploy, only to be stuffed carefully back into the steering wheel, plastic breakaway panels clearly not fitting together like new.
What can the story be here? Everything was so carefully placed back into plausible position. Stones were piled sweetly back onto the wall and debris was cleanly swept away. The car was impeccably parallel parked at the curbside… And, that funky looking steering wheel. Why did people go to so much trouble to straighten up when they could have simply parked the car somewhere else? Does airbag deployment disable the car, making it impossible to drive it around the block in search of a ‘better’ parking spot? In any case, if you left your car there, why go to too much trouble to make things look placid on the surface?
It would be ironic if the person who crashed their car into the wall lived right there in that house. Maybe that is what happened.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:55:00 GMT
The day I went to Arlington to fix the DSL, I stopped off at the Iwo Jima memorial. Marina was talking about how she needed good photos of the monuments for her elementary school. I rarely make it over to Arlington these days, and I wanted a good photo of the Iwo Jima to send her. I don’t know if I got it. I blame the wind. The flag was really limp - I’ll have to go back on a windy day if I want the flag to cooperate. Maybe that will also fix the problem of people standing around in front of the monument.
If you know the geometry of DC, the Iwo Jima monument falls close to the east-west axis of the National Mall. I’m sure that there is a place to see all four at once: The Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Iwo Jima. But standing there in the park, it was clear that I would have to stand somewhere else.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:25:00 GMT
Two of these photos are doctored. One of them is a tiki mug from the bookstore. It was probably used in a display at 7th Street. I was laughing at the large variety of cups left behind at my office. I know why some of them were left unclaimed - nobody felt that this tiki mug belonged to them - but with others, I have taken ransom photos. I have your mug. Maybe.
Now, this is why I got that drawing tablet: To zip through a quick “extract” filter in Photoshop, then save copies as I rotated the hue values on that new extracted layer.
Posted in photos, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:07:00 GMT
There is a time of year and a particular time on those days when direct sunlight shines into my basement-level office at work. Like Stonehenge or something, the angle is just right on a few mornings. My desk is situated so that this light strikes my face for ten or fifteen minutes if I’m sitting at my desk. It can be very annoying when I am trying to get work done.
Today when I found it annoying, I got up to go to the kitchen or something, and I noticed that the window grate had a lot of spiderwebs, and this nearly perfect specimen was strung up in the middle, catching the light just so…
I took it as a challenge for the Nikon. If I got the angles just right and the macro setting to focus close, I could pick out the spider silk reflecting all that sunlight without too much fog from the dirty window glass doing the same thing.
Just a little exposure adjustment in Photoshop and They were looking spectacularly specular.
I’ve only got about a month left working in this place. We’re moving the main computer downtown, and I’m going with it. I’ll be closer to home. I didn’t much care for being out here in Maryland. It’s like a ghost town most days. It was so rare to have human contact. Some of my coworkers refer to it as ‘the Bunker’ - and with good reason. But for all that, I understand it as a unique experience. I certainly won’t have many more chances to see the view in these photos. I’ll miss it a little bit.
Now that I think about it, they remind me of these pictures of the library. I mean the last five at the bottom.
Posted in photos, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:25:00 GMT
A couple weeks ago, I was out on 18th Street late one night, fumbling for my camera to get a picture of a cool convertible driving past, but by the time I started shooting, the camera was in the wrong mode, and I shot a short video… Remarkably, the video was pretty good - but I need to edit out the sound or something because I was upset. And you could tell. Alcohol may have been a factor… At least nobody got hurt. You gotta watch out for fussy drunks who don’t like their pictures taken… On the other hand, they’re not always so aware of what’s happening.
As a special treat, along came this guy with his blue-tinted headlamps a few seconds later. I knew they looked blue to me, but well… just see for yourself: I didn’t even have to boost the saturation. All I did was clip the black point on the master levels so the three shots would have the same overall tone. Mmmm… bread and butter Photoshoppin’.
I take a lot of these night shots along the main drag in my neighborhood. Frankly, the light sucks… but I suppose it could be worse. It’s probably more ambient light than some daytime shadows. I turn the flash off and the red hand blinks to warn me about holding steady. I do what I can…
Posted in bar-scene, photos, photography | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:12:00 GMT
I feel like these images would be good inspiration for a cubist painter. But, where are the bowls of fruit or the newspaper front pages? If those painters worked from the mundane objects around them, then potentially, so can I. And this is the dull stuff I stare at for a large portion of a typical day. These are the pedestrian scenes that often capture my attention.
Consider the evidence: Both of these images show pen and paper - still one of my preferred tools - and both show the corner of a piece of PC hardware. Telephones are a constant companion. Coffee is more of a work thing - at home I tend to consume my drinks in the kitchen.
Home is more about art than work is - thus the music keyboard - but for some reason, it also means fewer flat work surfaces. I can’t explain it.
Posted in photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:48:00 GMT
