Current State of My Brain

Thanks, med school!

Mooning

No, not like that!

Tilt-Shift

If only I had time and equipment to really research and get into tilt-shift photography. It can achieve quite a few things, but one of the more amazing results is that the resulting photograph looks like a miniature diorama. Here is the Flickr set of tilt-shift photos. Hard to believe they are photos of real scenes.

And, here is an amazing video by Keith Loutit putting tilt-shift in motion:

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Thanks to Sam Smith (Ben Folds' drummer and excellent graphics designer) for turning me on to this.

An Ode To Birthdays

The problem, of course, is that
The bleary excitement of the day ahead
Is no longer a frazzled nod to something special,
A small reprieve from Copernican doctrine.

The day ahead, of course, is that
Blindingly problematic emblem
Of a condition so universal,
A veritable canon incarnate.

Of course, but how can you miss
The ocean at your feet,
The clouds at your fingertips,
Hey! You should eat that cotton candy.


Dedicated to the wonderful man in this photo.
Happy birthday!

Rail

Flying over LA, so to speak.

Water

Feng shui, I guess.

Hexagons

An art gallery, Claremont, CA.

Shadow

Taken with my friend's Diana Mini, a film camera of glorious proportions, literally and figuratively. This was probably a 1-2 second manual exposure at the "sunny" setting (higher f-stop, I assume?), although I can't remember exactly what I did.

Bookstores

Gotta love 'em.

City Lights Book Store, San Francisco, CA.

Coming Home

An Ode to Eward Hopper

Hidden Gardens

Claremont, CA.

Bah Bye

I think I'll end the series thus.

Very Engaged

In conversation that is.

I interrupt the creeper series because I just have to post this - amazing photos from the Russian Empire circa 1910, in color! Apparently the photographer took several photos with different colored filters in quick succession, and they were recently combined to make very modern-day looking photos of 1910. It's like looking through a time portal - gives me shivers.

Check it out!

Date-a-far

Part 2 of the series.

Couple

Thus begins the slightly creeper series that was inspired by this shot that I fired off very quickly and without much thought (so as not to be detected, of course).

The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA.

Monsters

In downtown LA!

Medical School, Day 1

I started medical school today. Mostly the day consisted of administrative jumble, packed classrooms (for probably the last time), and not much in the way of new information. This means, of course, that I will start studying in earnest tomorrow, but for today, I am left only to reflect on my first encounter with the gross anatomy cadaver.

Although I am infinitely curious about the inner workings of the body, I am also similarly impressed by the human condition in general, and I was a little weary to beginning dissection; it’s quite easy to empathize oneself into a fainting spell, and in a room full of jagged metal tanks and linoleum floors. The tanks, by the way, are stainless steel and appear far too small to fit a human body, so it is that much more disturbing when the cadaver is finally lifted out of its resting place into the glaring fluorescent light.

But it wasn’t disturbing. With a mere six students per body, it is an intimate experience, and my first thoughts were not of bracing myself for the imminent swoon, but of thanks to the dear old man who had the foresight to donate his body for my education. All I know of him is what I can see, his bodily condition immediately before death, his numbered tag.

Thanks, #5----- of the UT Houston Medical School gross anatomy lab.

The subtitle to the title of this blog is a quote by Hippocrates, and if art is one path to immortality, then immortality consists at least in part in being remembered through one’s work; Antoine Roquentin of Sartre’s Nausea comes to approximately the same conclusion. #5-----, if not immortality, then you’ve earned at least a brief reprieve, a place in the life of someone you never knew.

-------

When we saw what may be as good a heaven as any:

San Francisco

Was most excellent.