My newest inspiration

I am very far from avant garde when it comes to music preferences.  I don't go seeking for the latest anyone and I still listen to my favorite tracks from the 90's on my current playlist. Unless I hear it perchance and fall in LOVE with it I don't really go looking for it. Don't get me wrong- there are new songs that come into my life on the daily but they've usually been known and loved and used up and tossed like a condom by other music enthusiasts by the time I get around to hearing it for the first time.

It's not that I don't care for music. I absolutely need to have music in my life. Constantly. I just don't need constant musical revelations in my life. I never really felt like my music library was lacking some one ridiculous band that is a must have on any and every playlist. Again, don't get me wrong- my library is extremely limited. I have friends who have several separate hardrives full of just music and I can barely fill up my 8 gig ipod. I've just never felt that musical drive to collect more, have more, experience more.

Until now.

Chris Owyoung is amazing. Amazing. He's not even a musician. He's a photographer. And he makes me want to know more about every band and musician he has ever done a portrait of.

His photos are amazing. I can't think of another word right now that's all I've got.

Just go look.

Be sure to look at the galleries page too. Maybe you're thinking yeah well lots of photographers take great portrait shots in studios with ridiculous equipment. But check out his concert photos.



photo by Chris Owyoung

I swear if i couldn't see the screaming fans I'd have thought those were done in studio too. They are SO sharp!! Holy crap. Seriously If I could practice and practice and somehow eventually, maybe, by some stroke of fortune, with a minor revelation of hidden talent, take photos like any one of his. That's just where my sentence ends.



photo by Chris Owyoung

He is definitely my newest inspiration. Now if you will excuse me. I will be poring over everything and anything his name is attached to so I can maybe absorb some of his skill through my eyeholes.

Winter is here!

With only four days of fall in between Summer and Winter. My fingers are freezing off at a speed of really really fast. :/ My NaNoWriMo assignment is... failing to say the least though i DID start. i did i did. But why? Because my mommy bought me a christmas present early and tis is... tis is.... YES!! IT'S A CAMERA!! remember?

And my god I can say that though i've always said it i've proven myself right in that when I know myself, sheesh I know myself. Despite completely forgetting about my "Camera Wish List" post, I ended up getting pretty much exactly what I wanted. Seriously-

Introducing: My first DSLR

Like my car it is dependable, beat up, used, completely endearing, stock, and RIDICULOUSLY functional. Exactly like I wished for. Only difference is I didn't get the Canon T3, I got a Nikon D70s. Uh-mazing.

For $250 I got this lovely used camera body with the kit 18-70mm lens just like everybody else. Though because I bought it from a very good friend of mine, Kellen, I got a great deal to include a few CF cards, an extra battery, the pretty little manual, and just the happy feeling of not having to worry if i'm being ripped off with a shit product.

that's meeeeee! taken at Frenchman Coulee where i climb the day I got my D70s. photo by Kellen Harrel

Then, as a treat to me-self, I got a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G prime to go with my pretty little camera!! Though not the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM (for obvious reasons) I will say that I pretty much got everything I said I'd get. And for a grand total of $410.

Learning so much already- I'll post a photo of my little dear as well as a photo of my OTHER little dear (Mori) so you can see how much he's GROWWWWN!! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

One thing I regret is that I did not have this camera sooner so that I could have taken some very pretty pictures of Bungae for us to remember him. As it is, there are no frameable photos of Bungae to hang in our house in his memory :'(

The Maltese Falcon

So I finally finished reading Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh) that I'd been reading for an inordinate amount of time and then.... well basically I was in shock for a while. Yes. The book was horrifying in the most ordinary way and so i followed it up by watching the film. While the film was jarring and visually assaults the audience attempting to do justice to the novel, the monstrous images that grow in your mind from the words you are forced to read cannot be visually portrayed because everyone knows somebody like what is described, or has heard of someone like whose story you're witnessing, in real life. But everyone knows Begbie to look differently. Everyone has heard of a Mark but he doesn't necessarily look like Ewan McGregor....

Next adventure: The Maltese Falcon. The path I took to discover this mystery novel was a little odd and took many months to get there though i didn't know i was going there at the time. I re-purposed my super movie watching mission and added several more films to the list- one of which was the movie Brick (2005). I loved the style of the film so much that i went to the director's site to learn more about his inspiration and reason for stylizing it the way he chose. Then through a forum, I was led to more reviews and more discussions of this film. Which led me to the vocabulary words "film noir," "hammett," "chandler," and a few others that I have chosen to study a bit of. Researching "hammett" in conjunction with "film noir" led me to "Sam Spade" which led me to "The Maltese Falcon" which happens to be on my Ultimate Reading List as WELL as one of the additional lists of films to be watched and categorized. Bam and bam, wheeeee!!

As you can imagine, i've been knocking several things off of many lists and that makes me abundantly happy (see "wheeeee" above).

What does not make me happy is that The Maltese Falcon story was very much less exciting than I had hoped it would be based on my exciting and fruitful journey that led me to that end. Perhaps it is that being written in 1930, and I being of very late 1980's, I just expect a different kind of mystery novel. However I will say this I have never read a mystery novel that has so much mystery and such precise development and plot revelation as this novel.  There were so many details that just never led anywhere and i guess having details like "i'll ring the bell four times long short long short" and then not ever having it occur or come to light is what confuses me. I've read most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries and I've been spoiled by the champ at tying up every loose end and seemingly detached detail. This novel seemed a little loosely created and very quickly twisted to come to a clean ending where Sam Spade is bad ass private detective of the century.

And boy is he!

When I finished reading The Maltese Falcon the next logical step was obviously to track down the original film rendition of the novel and hellooooooooooooooo Humphrey Bogart :)


Well. The film was no different. Which speaks volume of the film for being so true to novel without making a mockery of film or novel. But the sense of unfinishedness and "wtf" was also still there from the novel. And Humphrey Bogart was very bad ass as Sam Spade although.... kind of short? Strange. Either way watching this film some deem the first of the film noir era and watching the novel come to life in a time that I have never seen for myself was definitely something for a Sunday afternoon.