autumn tactics

Today is the first day I have been able to rest in over two months. Last night we delivered another build; all the milestones have run together like watercolor, and then proceeded to pack the company for moving on Sunday. When I left at 11:30, everyone got together and went to eat yakiniku, but meals centered around meat have become like strolls down the cheap whiskey aisle the morning after an all-weekend bender… my mind and my stomach are in complete unison in their revulsion towards slabs of red animal protein. So I dropped back to the tail of the procession and politely excused myself.

I came home and had a glorious three-quarter pint of Kilkenny’s, and fell asleep in front of the TV with the screen door open to the chilling drizzle. Luckily, the bitter cold got me up on time for my lunch with Yamamoto-san. In the process I actually managed to look half respectable in a button down with my new haircut and a fresh shave. We talked about pedestrian things: friends and family, the yen’s legacy of being pegged to the dollar, and the price of butter. After waving goodbye I stood in front of the Tokyu Plaza and my mind drifted for a few minutes. The breeze carried the mist in waves through the canopy of umbrellas in Shibuya, but I decided to stop at Omotesando and walk home through the Meiji shrine inner gardens.

I am so taut and bristling with verve. Yet my body has learned not to fight my spirit in fatigue and instead simply acquiesce, being led along at the hand like a bemused parent to a child’s string of sensuous wonders on Saturday.

Recently, every time it’s been sunny outside I’ve had the almost overpowering urge to climb on the Enjoy, ride around with a couple of rolls of Super Gold, and get a crackle-cold bin beer at the peak of my adventure. This is most assuredly the natural romantic in me augmented by my swollen loathing of computers. However, as nice as it generating gigabytes of data to archive, it creates a disproportional amount of back stock which may never see the light of day.

You are probably thinking, “Rusty, I haven’t gotten any pings from your Gallery RSS in months. I see a fair number of shots in your blog, but it’s just a tiny sliver from what you’ve been up to with little frame of reference.”

Yes, yes, you’re right. If I don’t improve my skills on the post-shutter click side of things, I’ll never get anything better for the shows. The truth is, I have enough material to produce years’ worth of similarly-assembled appearances at Geisai and Design Festa. But, there are three major problems with it all:

1) it’s unprocessed
2) it’s all unrelated (aside from the relation of my mundane current style, which draws jaded criticism in its own right)
3) the presentation medium is sparse, fragmented, and high school level

So, today despite it being one of the last few hot glorious days of summer, I stayed in this morning and put together two new albums for Gallery. One is touristy (thusly in Travel), and another slightly more artistic (in Tokyo Bicycle Wanderings).

The former is my trip to Seoul which happened only three weeks ago! That’s a pretty good turnaround for me. The latter is a trip to the Arakawa in July. Of particular interest to shutterbugs is that this set is a mix of the A-1 and 5D, and some similar shots are set up around the river, so you can see the differences in the medium and my current mastery of the formats. It’s not very scientific, the comparison factor was probably just in the back of my mind. So keeping this in mind, Ken, have a look and let me know what you think (provided I ever get the damn comments working again.)

Je suis revenu de mes vacances à la Corée, toutefois je suis toujours en vacances à la maison parce que maintenant c’est obon. Je passe mes jours dans la ville prenant des photographies. Il fait chaud. Le ciel est bleu, et les pluies du soleil vers le bas sur mes épaules nues. J’erre, d’un air endormi observant le écoulement des touristes le long de l’avenue ombragée.

Pourquoi la vie me fascine-t-elle ainsi?

近年段々冷夏になってた感じがします。

でも相変わらず、夏です。ビーチへ行ったり、野球試合を見たり、都心にぶらぶら歩いて考えます。

何回もそのピリッとした気持ちを経験すると、活動は擦り切れたレーザーのような、柔軟になります。活動は古い友達で、哀れみ深い。一千回早稲田大学までのんびり乗る。青島ビンに結露が生じて、歩道のひびを見詰める。

ああ、夏…僕らは一生にお互いを飽きれない。

Recently I’ve been going over sites looking for for Photoshop コツ while playing with CS2, and it’s sobering at times to find photos that look a lot like mine in terms of processing. Though I’ve been getting decent mileage out of levels and unsharp mask, Eliot Shepard has it down to a science. The Slower atn he provides on his site boxes up the basic elements to fuss with into one cascade of dialogs.

Which shot do _you_ like better? Check out the incredible detail that emerges in the water droplets (enlargements here and here).

This sort of thing is gradually getting wired into the firmware for digital cameras (5D, cough) making it even more mainstream for people to have punchy contrast and crisp edges in their tailgate and dog show photos. Ultimately what this means is I need to start getting a lot more creative with composition, or give up enough of my life to be one of those full-time guys that has a digital SLR body grafted onto his hand to find offbeat subjects. Being an engineer with a hunk of debt I’ll go the former and ultimately have to lean more on artistry than technique.

I don’t how or where it’ll lead exactly, but I’ve got to start climbing up. I’ve overstayed my welcome on this plateau.

何これ、この超現実的な平穏感じ？落ち着いたじゃなくて、沸騰。揺れる。アンティシペーション。真っ直ぐ進んで、一歩一歩元気な足取り。狂気ですか。いや、その軽い白昼夢。若者同類ででもそんなに狙いがないさ。なんか愛したいと思えるけど今だけ愛は中じゃなくて、愛は外。

We took a walk that night, but it wasn’t the same
We had a fight on the promenade out in the rain
She said she loved me, but she had somewhere to go
She couldn’t scream while I held I close
I swore I’d never let her go
Tell me what you wanna know
Oh come on, oh come on, oh come on
There ain’t no motive for this crime
Jenny was a friend of mine
So come on, oh come on, oh come on

Tell me what you wanna know
Oh come on, oh come on, oh come on
And then you whisper in my ear
I know what you’re doing here
So come on, oh come on, oh come on
There ain’t no motive for this crime
Jenny was a friend of mine
Oh come on, oh come on, oh come on

– The Killers

cold heart piston beat hot blood stupid youth beautiful dying skin and so many times swearing I would never act that way again

lost remember burning broken want to break to shatter to crawl to slide, to hide to suffocate myself and then emerge the me that I love a twisted reality something charming at first but tiring with time to loathe to cut out, ostracize left unrequited.

passion swelter love that talented hopeless a loss underachieving overstressed street-fused contrary self-defeating illicit wrecked bottled bleeded gummed sex

Design Festaから二週間が過ごしました。ちょっと落ち着いたけど、頭の中で通常よりも雑念を払われません。ボケーッと出来ないから、ずっと忙しく暮らすしかない。

先週末では以前に書いたと思いますけど（英語を頑張って読んでいる？）、新規な撮影器具を購入しまして、それと遊んでいました。土曜日泉岳寺に行って赤穂浪士について勉強する予定でしたが、土砂降りだったから、諦めて猫袋に訪問しました。東京にもう四年間に住んでいましたから、幾つかの鎮静効果な場所が見つかりました。緊張している時か、落ち込んでいる時に、その大切な場所に行けば、トラブルを忘れて、安心できます。サンシャインシティー東急ハンズの猫袋は一つです。

実は元々に猫が嫌いだった。ある程度アレルギーがありますから、猫は僕のライバルを想像しました。でも、年月が経つにつれてアレルギーの影響が減少されて、猫の可愛さを好き出来るようになりました。恐らく、性格的に猫と私は多くの共通点がある理由です。僕らは衛生状態を気になったり、たまに気まぐれだったり、孤独感を好きです。それ以上、勿論静かで柔らかい物を触りたいでしょう。

猫袋の猫たちは毎日幅広い種類の客さんと会いますから、非常に大変な仕事と思います。皆は触りたい。皆は抱こうしたい。猫は性格的に独立心ですので、抱こう出来たら、猫が抱こうして欲しいですからさ。今回もよくそう言う感じでした。でも、5Dを持っていたから、1～2個の面白い写真を取れました。

こんな話しってるか？

とら猫は百万回泣いてそして死んだ。もう2度と生きかえらなかった。

–COWBOY BEBOP　Session#26　ザ・リアル・フォークブルース

Last weekend, on the way home from the Ueno Zoo.

Above. It’s quite common to see colorful crates of red, yellow, green, and blue in front of wooden and stuccoed bars all over Tokyo holding the previous night’s glossy brown sake bottles. I’ve lived here for five years and I’m still struck, pausing every time that I pass them.

Below. These papers are the Japanese equivalent of parking ticket warnings. Cars are not left without drivers very long, but bicycles, on the other hand, are as numerous as the scattered autumn leaves and senior citizens pass the time with civil service reminding everyone of the farce of municipal traffic regulation. The fact that these warnings are bound with wire and not self-adhesive tape speaks to the timeless and unchanging ways of shitamachi (old town) Bunkyo Ward, and furthermore that there are three tags indicates this bicycle hasn’t been moved for at least a week. The writing when translated is laden with the austere courtesy of Japan, where even if you are a public nuisance, you are informed of it through a veneer of specious eloquence.

Warning. This is not a bicycle parking area. Your one bicycle causes trouble for the elderly and disabled, a large number of people. If you leave it here, it will be considered unneeded and disposed of as such. Please exercise self-discipline when using bicycles in the neighborhood. -Bunkyo Ward