Enjoyed lunch with Kristin and Joy. Had dining common coffee.
Walked down Wade Hampton into Greenville. Flagrant copyright infringement!
The beauties of nature.
The beauties of gas station pump caps.
Walking past the cemetary. I need to smile more.
The King of the Hotdogians!
The Reedy River was a raging rapid!
I found out my camera only takes 24 pics before it runs out of space. Next time I’ll wipe it before I go on an adventure so I’ll have more room.
So, my nice Kodak Easy Share digital camera was broken in a freak body-surfing accident two weeks ago. I really didn’t have the money to replace it, and I thought I was going to be camera-less for a few months, until I remembered a little digital camera I bought at target a few years back. It cost me twenty dollars and was about the size of a matchbox. A really fun little toy. I had had a blast with it before I bought my now defunct Kodak. Here’s a pic I took with it back in the day:
So, I went to Wal-Mart this week and bought a similar little camera for only ten dollars that actually produces a better quality image, and has an LCD screen to boot! It’s basically a camera phone without the phone.
One of the things I love about lo-fi cameras is the character they add to a captured image. When people shot on Super8 film and later Beta and VHS, they created images that weren’t necessarily as true to life as the high-end digital mediums we have now, but the images they created have such “character” that their looks have become iconic and timeless. Lo-fi digital cameras have a similar effect. They place an image in an unmistakable time and place, but they also simplify the subject matter of the image to a pixelated point that turns that subject into something universal and timeless. In a sense, snapping a little 3 megapixel image on my new “Suprema” can be more artistic than a high-def SLR shot. Obviously, it all depends on what you want, but right now, I’m cool with my little lo-fi pictures. Like this new self-portrait. Oh yeah! : )
Life’s been pretty hectic lately. My college professors seem to like cramming a lot of assignments into the last few weeks of a semester. I’ve been getting up extra early in the mornings to try to knock everything out. I find that the hardest assignments aren’t as hard as they seem once I plunge headlong into them, especially when it’s early in the morning and I’m motivated by the fear of failure.
I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately. Fragments pop up in my class notes like this one:
They tasted the morning:
Cold shuddering air,
Delicious womb-warm sleep.
They scalded it with coffee,
Scolded it with self-important words,
But they crawled back to it at midnight.
Pretty much how I feel when people I know try to undervalue sleep. You just can’t disregard sleep. It will come for you eventually and show you who’s master.
Trying to figure out my summer. Intern in my school’s film production or home to work? Both options have their pluses and minuses. I need to get things squared away soon though.
Working on few video projects, none of which are anywhere near completion. I also have a new idea for a film. It’s crazy but it might work. We’ll see . . .
Probably Okay has two new videos! They can be viewed in HD, which takes longer to load, but looks a lot better. Enjoy!
Strange bearded men lure them all away
Sophomoric juniors from their destined loves
Wondered brothers beg them still to stay
The shot rings true, scattering the doves
The glorious assassin taps the joy
So that he can no longer feel the pain
The bloodthirsty passion of a boy
He loves her so she cannot love again
The shot rings true, scattering the crowds
Shattering the dreams, the ill-spent days
Splattering the blood upon his shroud
The death-shroud of his love for JFK
Michael Golus and I just started a comedy channel on YouTube called “Probably Okay.” Our goal is to create short video skits with a unique brand of extremely dry and bizarre humor. Our first video, entitled “Fish” is up now. Check it out by clicking here.
I was so inspired by reading the Rice Boy graphic novel a few weeks ago that decided to try my hand at the same process Rice Boy’s creator uses. This is what I came up with. I drew it out in pen, scanned it into my computer and colored it in Photoshop. Pretty cool! Can’t wait to try some more pictures! Maybe a short story? Stay tuned!
Click here for a larger version.
Phillip Bloom is one of my heroes. He’s a digital cinematographer who uses high-end HD camcorders with 35mm lens adapters to decrease the depth of field, achieving a more selective focus, film look. I really like his work, not only his image quality but his editing and use of music to evoke mood. His favorite subject is everyday people, whom he shoots going about their everyday lives in slow motion, showing us their true humanity and character. His website is packed with great videos, but he’s just done it again with Bexhill-On-Sea, a moody picture of a beach side resort, it’s landscapes and inhabitants. Click here to watch it.
I purchased all these books over the last two semesters for only $10.50. Thrift Stores are awesome!
I recently stumbled upon a web graphic novel called Rice Boy, and was pleasantly surprised by a beautiful and exciting read. Evan Dahm, the comic’s creator, is a solid artist with a strong sense of narrative and a crazy imagination.
The comic is about the troubled land of Overside, a land filled with a multitude of strange races and wonderful locations, and a little bulbous-headed, armless being named Rice Boy who may just be the prophesied one. This little guy goes on a long and arduous journey in an attempt to save his world and bring peace to warring factions.
All the characters are unique and wonderfully drawn. I particular like T.O.E. (The One Electronic), an ancient robot-man who has been seeking the prophesied one for thousands of years. He’s a lot like a Gandalf. only weaker and with a more contemporary voice.
On his website, Dahm has this to say about his creation:
The kind of narrative feeling I’m trying to stick to for this comic is most of what I’m trying to get down properly in the thumbnails: storytelling that seems leisurely even though it reads very quickly; brief animatic sequences and big, self-indulgent scenic panels that don’t do much but let me develop settings and moods. All in all, a ridiculously inefficient way to tell a story.
And yet a very good story! The leisurely pacing reads well and gives the novel its epic and exhaustive world-building quality. I highly recommend this comic to anyone who enjoys comics or is wondering why others do.
You can read the entirety of Rice Boy on www.rice-boy.com, as well as the beginning of it’s prequel, The Order of Tales.
I love this Coldplay song! I often find myself singing it under my breath. Really a sweet love song with just the right amount of ambiguity. Grade A Chris Martin wordsmithing.
“You cut me down a tree and brought it back to me
And that’s what made me see where I was going wrong
You put me on a shelf and kept me for yourself
I can only blame myself, you can only blame me
And I could write a song a hundred miles long
Well that’s where I belong and you belong with me
And I could write it down or spread it all around
Get lost and then get found or swallowed in the sea
You put me on a line and hung me out to dry
Darling, that’s when I decide to go to sea
You cut me down to size and opened up my eyes
Made me realize what I could not see
And I could write a book, the one they’ll say that shook the world
And then it took, it took it back from me
And I could write it down or spread it all around
Get lost and then get found and you’ll come back to me
Not swallowed in the sea
And I could write a song a hundred miles long
Well, that’s where I belong and you belong with me
The streets you’re walking on, a thousand houses long
Well, that’s where I belong and you belong with me
Oh, what good is it to live with nothing left to give
Forget but not forgive, not loving all you see
Oh, the streets you’re walking on a thousand houses long
Well, that’s where I belong and you belong with me
Not swallowed in the sea
You belong with me, not swallowed in the sea
Yeah, you belong with me
Not swallowed in the sea”
Just made this little guy for a digital imaging class I’m taking. He’s made out of pieces of a digital photo of a pile of old cameras.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the much beloved sci-fi comedy series by the late Douglas Adams, is apparently getting a sixth book this Fall. It’s entitled “And Another Thing”, and is being penned by Irish Children’s novelist Eoin Colfer. Many fans, including myself, are understandably upset, considering the fact that Adam’s very specific voice was key to what made the series so enjoyable to begin with. Colfer, famous for his Artemis Fowl series, certainly has a comic sensibility, even at times a sharp wit, but he just isn’t as philosophical or as intelligent as Adams. I predict lots of action and color and little meat.
Simon Jones, the voice of Aurthur Dent on the HHGTG radio series, has this to say.
I’ve been working on a sci-fi story concept. It’s called Yesteryear and is set in the late 1920s. I’m trying to give it a 1930s Saturday morning serial feel, including the both the design and the film quality. Here are some test shots I’ve animated.
In Dr. Bob’s chapel message today he used a really good C. S. Lewis quote:
“I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.”
C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (1940)
I really like what Lewis says here, and I can really identify with it. So often I let the “toys” in my life, the gifts that God has given me, replace the real reason I live, to enjoy the gift giver himself. He is a treasure so much better than these finite things, things that can be lost and destroyed so easily.
I’m really blessed to live on a very spirit-filled hall here at school. Last semester my hall leader Mark would lead worship in the hall almost every night at around 10:45. Anyone on the hall with an instrument was welcome to join in. We had some great times worshiping the Lord and I hope we continue the tradition this semester. Here’s an example of some of the spontaneous worship that broke out last year.
Click here to listen.
