Observations, experiments, and experience
No, seriously. Screw you. I admit that I haven’t put anything funny or interesting on this site in a long time. There are two main reasons for that:
That being said, I think I’ll post some sort of mish-mash of the various things going on just so you know I’m still breathing. Give me a few days!
This past week I finally put together a new PC out of some extra components I scraped together. The increased memory and DVD-R drive made working with and backing up my Europe pictures much more pleasant. So, I spent a little time getting another batch together for this site. You can see the new pictures here.
It’s been over a week since my first foray into the world of boxing photography and I’ve had this article stubbed-out since the morning after. Now that some time has passed I wanted to contribute a few thoughts on that great night.
Holy shit! I’m a professional photographer! Last night I completed my first gig photographing a light heavyweight elimination bout in San Jose. I made a lot of mistakes but was still able to get a few pictures of which I’m happy. I’m going to write a longer article on the experience so watch the journal entries in the coming days. In the mean time, check out the pictures I put online this morning.
For nearly half a year now I’ve been trying to put my expensive photographic equipment to some sort of semi-professional use. It took dozens of phone calls and half as many e-mails to make this thing happen. And as I sit here in my cube at work with my stomach rolling over on itself, I’m wondering exactly how deep the water I just dove into is.
Yeah, I know it took a very long time for me to get these pictures online. But no good things aren’t worth waiting for. And I’m fairly proud of this first batch. Be sure and read the textual descriptions I added to each image. I’ll probably get another batch of 10 or 20 images online in the next month.
One of the great things about travelling in Europe was that I was protected from the intellectually corrosive effect of the twenty-four hour news networks. The geographical distance protected me some as CNN seemed to be the only one that regularly made its cross-Atlantic presence felt. But my own attitude provided the less permeable sort of support as I simply ignored the news. But as I’ve settled back into the rut of my mechanical morning pre-work preparations, I’ve been exposed to a dose of the networks’ bullshit. Not a brain-swelling, fatality-inducing sort of dose, but one that is deleterious to my health, nonetheless.
I just put online the first (and easiest) batch of pictures from my sabbatical. These pictures aren’t linked from the main gallery, so you’ll need to follow this link to see them. Alternatively, I wrote a blog article with a few Oktoberfest stories that you can peruse. It also links to those images.
I expect some torso-convulsing laughter out of the four guys that are in these pictures when they are first seen. For the rest of you, I’ll try and explain at least some of the funny shit that is going on here. And at the least, you should check out some of the movies I mention below. All of the pictures are hyperlinked to the originals.
I got home on Sunday afternoon with urgent need for spaghetti, TV, and serious couch-time. At least one of these goals was subverted when my Tivo’s hard drive hit the under on its mean time to failure. But the rest went well, and I now am back into my usual schedule. But not without a few hiccups.