Eye Dominance

Are you left eye or right eye dominant? Here’s a helpful link to an archery site that contains a very simple “do it right-now test” that will help you determine, or reinforce what you know about, your eye dominance.

Determining Eye Dominance

Have fun and good shooting.

The Commute (1)

The Commute (1)
Originally uploaded by ferider.

Here's a shot I love. It's by Roland, or ferider on flickr. In typical perplexing online fashion, this stirred-up a little controversey on a certain "forum." Anyway, it's a cool shot, and part of a daily commute that I'm not unfamiliar with.

Link to a Diane Arbus Audio File

Here's a link to a lecture by Diane Arbus. It's a great listen, and gives you a chance to hear one of the great ones.

Diane Arbus Almanac Magazine

Supposedly recorded about a year before her death.

Blogging my Friends—Honus

door stop
Originally uploaded by _Honus_.

This is the first in a series of Flickr-based posts, highlighting some of the folks in my Contact list. Go see!


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Winograd at Work

Downtown Noon

Downtown Noon
Originally uploaded by quinine03.

I met up with several RFFers last night. We drank a few beers, knoshed, and showed off some gear. It was great to meet Honus and see Kaiyen, Vrgard, and FeRider again. I got a chance to check out Fe's Canon 50/1.2, which along with Honus' Leica 50/1.4 Asph., was the highlight of the night for me. What an incredible light-sucker that thing is. Like a black hole.

We talked a bit about everything, including why we as a group seem to be moving away from RFF, and more toward photo-related sites like Flickr. We pretty much all agreed that Flickr is an excellent forum for looking at photos, much better than the RFF gallery. I made a mental note to try to participate more in the Flickr M-mount group. How could I not with 2/3 of the Adminstrators for the group sitting at the table?

Take note all. Honus and the gang have added LTM screw mount tags.

Anyway, starting off with an image from last summer, when I was working in downtown San Francisco and shooting five days a week. Sadly, those day are gone, because I got a new job well south of San Francisco, in Silicon Valley.

DST

So I picked this up on Amazon the other day. Actually I bought this book and another Mitch Epstein book, but , as Amazon loves to do on occassion, I received ONE book a day sooner than the scheduled delivery date, while the other is winging its way to me and living it up in airplane cargo holds and mid-west transfer stations.


The real shame here is that I discovered the books from PhotoEye's monthly e-mail mailing list/junk mail, which is my all time favorite "do not delete" junk mail, but I bought the books on Amazon.com. That's screwed-up, I know; but for the price of one of these two books, I got both. I even opted out of the chance to buy an autograph copy at PhotoEye. Autographed copies are the really cool part of PhotoEye. Amazon can't compete on that front, but then again, Ican't afford photoeye's pricing, especially when the deals are so irresitably a no-brainer.

Common Places, Common Things

George Carlin, the gnarly American comedian most famous for his bit on the seven words you can't say on radio and television, used to do a routine back in the late 70's during which he reflected on the idea that urinals are 50% universal. It is true, because there are only two types of people in this world, those who would/could use a urinal, and those who wouldn't. Hearing that routine back in those days was both funny and enlightening. Here was this thing that was so common to 50% of the population, and yet to the other 50% it was an unknown, a mystery. I used to have this impulse to photograph a urinal (which I did) and frame it and hang it on the wall (which I didn't)--solely for the purpose of enlightening the other 50% of the population.


Photographers know all about the common and the uncommon, making the common seem fresh and different, and bringing the uncommon home, so the viewer can identify with it. Whether it be the 30th pepper, a Sambos Restaurant parking lot, or the atrocities of war.

This is a Song About a Superhero Named Tony...

...it’s called Tony’s song. Well, not really (my apologies to the Pixies). It’s called Xtoid, and I just added a link to it on the sidebar. Xtoid is Tony Remington’s blog. I’ve only known Tony from his photography on Flickr (see The Photo Essay post) and never knew he was an artist (of the sketch and watercolor variety). It’s a cool blog, very entertaining. Go see!

Single Coated: Published (*): Congrats to Oscar!

If you get a chance visit Single Coated, specifically the post linked below, and give Oscar a big CONGRATS on getting published. Oh and while you're there look around a bit. It's a really good blog.

Single Coated: Published (*)

Never Say Never Part II (or Why Retailers Shouldn't Own Forums)

Ouch! The new owner of Rangefinderforum.com, the retailer Stephen Gandy (a.k.a., CameraQuest) showed his colors yesterday when he deleted an entire forum dedicated to discussing ebay transactions. The common line of reasoning by supporting members suggests that he did this for fear of being sued by eBay. If he's using that as a reasoning for deleting an entire forum and hundreds of member posts, then he shouldn't own the forum or he should train his moderators to distinguish and ferret-out any bit of potentially litigious comments. Better yet, maybe he should hire lawyers to moderate his forum. Online forums like this are built upon opinion and "rumor-mongering,“ and besides what was the litigious content within that forum that justified deleting ALL of it?

Never Say Never

Arrgh! When will I learn? Yes, I wandered naively onto eBay and won an auction for a Hexar RF with a 50/2 lens and a flash in the original Konica display box. Even though the equipment was spotless, despite stinking of cigarette smoke, sadly it didn’t work, and I tried to make it work. I wasted four rolls of color film and a fresh set of batteries and three days of trying before I gave up. I was heartbroken. I wanted so badly for that camera to work.




The Hexar RF is probably the only analog/film camera that I was willing to lay down some cash for. I’ve been wanting to use that camera for quite a while now, and this experience has left an awful taste in my mouth.

I said “Never” once before when I purchased a Canon P and a chrome 50/1.8, and the camera arrived with a lens that looked like it had been cleaned internally with steel wool. I’m saying “Never” again to buying cameras on eBay. The Canon P ordeal took several weeks to rectify. This one is taking equally as long to resolve, and of course the buyer is always at the mercy of the seller. I’m hoping this seller is on the level.

Take care on eBay. If you haven’t had a bad experience buying cameras, you probably will.