We had an hour or so to hang out in this little french coastal town. We come down the hill that you see in the first shot and we’re standing at this wall overlooking the harbor. I already had my camera out but Nathan looks at me and says, “seriously, just take a lot of pictures here, don’t give all that BS about composition and framing and light and shit. Just get a lot of this, ok?”

Telling me to not compose the shot is like asking a sleepy drunk to drink his beer, and then NOT fall asleep in awkward and some times dangerous places.

Am I right?

I am, take my word for it. Now, The photos from Carbere, France. The hippie looking jerk w/ the backpack and official “I Hate Razors” t-shirt is Nathan.

NOTES: Photos number 4 and 5 (top row, last two on the right) really show off the ND Gradient filter. Photo 5 especially. I had to pull the blue saturation down in post so as to make this shot work/look real. My favorite photo in this set is is the cyan-heavy railroad crossing signal that I shot from the hip as we were walking back to the train station.

Side note on the town, 8+ euro for a coke and a coffee. French bastards.

I’ve been back in the states a week now, and people (kirby, josh, mom, etc) are starting to get on me about posting pics. Perhaps starting is the wrong word. Some of these people were on me about it before I even left Spain.

Well the images are finally sorted into their proper categories, and even though I haven’t had time to do the post production on the raw files that I really like, I have managed to do a ray JPEG conversion of the images as they were shot. So, here’s the first set. I shot these in Arles, France. The reason I’m putting these up first is because Arles comes before Barcelona alphabetically. Enjoy, and I promise to put more up soon. Really.

NOTES: Shot number 9 (row 2, pos 4) was done almost entirely in camera by setting the white balance to incandescent and lowering the ISO. I had to bring the exposure back up a bit in post, but not much. Favorites here are numbers 6, 9, 10, 13 and 24.

Arles was a great town, but paying 24 euro for a bowl of (quite delicious) soup was not cool at all. french bastards.  Love the city, but next time, I’ll go a la carte.

In preparation for my trip to Spain, I’ve been getting things ready. Files are prepped at work, I’ve given the girl at the desk a number to call in the likely event that things break, and my blog is getting some much needed attention.

Part of that attention is getting my twitter and flickr feeds set up to post here. I plan on posting some shots at the end of the day. Not all of them mind you. I’ll shoot around 5+ gigs a day (I’m taking 18 GB of memory, and a 40 gig HDD for storage. I believe that’s called being loaded for bear), and I want to post at least 10 to 15 shots once i get back in the evenings. This assumes that the following flow chart:

Assuming all goes well, the posts will look something like this:

Isn’t that nice? I think so. I’d like some feed back though.

I’ve been getting things prepped for my trip to Spain for a the past few weeks, and while doing some reading on Rick Steves’s site, I began to let my mind wander over past travels. I spent most of the first part of 2007 traveling around with a rag tag band of miscreants on a seemingly endless quest to find a decent place to eat after shows.

From the depressing and devoid of life streets in Branson, MO, to the cool beauty of Flagstaff, AZ, I was able (forced, actually) to interact with a lot of people on a throwaway basis. I was stuck in the back of loading docks and auditoriums having to hold my tongue as the myriad of comments and jabs build up inside of me.

I loathe inefficiency, and I spent a lot of time dealing with it. It came to a head in Orlando. Seven people in the whole airport, and a que line 6 layers deep with only 1 person in it. I couldn’t deal with it. So, I made the process more efficient. I edited the que.

And pissed off one very organized ticket agent. I was unaware of the amount of power these persons had over my life.

We stared at one another for a long second. Me behind the Wait Here line. He behind his desk. As the moment ticked by, I began to think, maybe something was amiss. I smiled.

He just glared.

Finally, he gave a tight-lipped ‘next’ signal for me to approach the counter. The ticketing and baggage process went quickly, and as he started to hand me my ticket, he froze. And smiled. The ticket withdrew a moment, and smug satisfaction crossed his face.

k-chink k-chink k-chink

Three bright red SCREENING REQUIRED stamps were emblazoned on my boarding pass. The sound of a snapping latex glove and booming voice ordering me to spread ‘em. filled my ears. Approaching the security check in, I was only moments away from a violating, de-humanizing experience with TSA Bob.

I took two important pieces of information away from this small airport north of Orlando. !) Ticket agents can be sadistic bastards when you mess with the que. 2) While awkward at first, cavity searches are a great way to meet new people. Sure you feel dirty and used when it’s over, but so does the other guy, and you don’t have to reciprocate.

WARNING - I’m about to spoil the hell out of this movie. Indie meets the aliens from Roswell.

Pissed? Good. So was I. Granted, you might be pissed at me, but that’s fine. Go see the movie. and you’ll hate yourself for not taking my advice of NOT seeing it.

Were to begin this sordid tale… Read the rest of this entry »