October 2011
2 posts
Ernst Haas
“Still, I don’t want to declare there are no highways of fruitful directions. In learning there are. Follow them, use them and forget them. Don’t park. Highways will get you there, but I tell you, don’t ever try to arrive. Arrival is the death of inspiration. Beware of direct inspiration. It leads too quickly to repetitions of what inspired you. Beware of too much taste as...
Marvin O'Clock
There should be a name for that time of the day when you find yourself trapped in a deep understanding of futility.
“Why does anyone do anything? What is the point?”
The late, great Douglas Adams really nailed it. Sometimes I feel like no one could possibly understand but Marvin. But what’s the point of understanding, anyway?
July 2011
1 post
Life in Digital Remains
Sometimes I think about our generation and the generations that follow us. Mostly I try not to, because - come on, who wants to think about that, right?
Back in the olden days, people learned who they were by doing things: having a profession, or a community, or a family. Now, we learn who we are by endlessly creating and recreating digital facsimiles of ourselves.
If we are the stories we tell...
June 2011
2 posts
I can’t get over how good this article is. “The Accidental Bricoleurs” by Rob Horning encapsulates everything I’ve ever said about my profound hatred/fear towards what fast fashion and social media are doing to us - to our personhood, and our selves. We’re so busy seeking praise for and constructing our identities that we’ve forgotten how to live.
“We...
WatchI blame Magnum photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson for the explosion of modern street photography, a genre I just don’t care for. Yet his work is gorgeous, and stands the test of time. In this interview, the charming Cartier-Bresson talks about his methods (and reveals he’s secretly a surrealist).
April 2011
2 posts
“Why is it often difficult to experience disagreement with another’s point of view without getting upset? Is it not possible to express that one would not have made the same choice, without tearing down what another has done?”
This perfect quote came from an unlikely online conversation about home decor (original post here).
My take: Our cultural need to - at all costs - be...
March 2011
4 posts
The Myth of the Muse
She doesn’t exist, folks.
You can be inspired by selective traits of another human being without reducing them to a high-functioning cardboard cutout. Remember how women are people too?
For those of you who were rubbed the wrong way by craptastic movies like 500 Days of Summer and Garden State: Tropes vs. Women: The “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”
The Simple Secret to Identifying Your Strengths
This article is a quick read, but it’s a good one. If you’re like me, constantly slapped with the “jack of all trades” label, you know it’s hard to identify your true strengths. The trick: becoming aware of those activities so intrinsic to you, you don’t even notice that you do them.
So what are my strengths? Learning, and Organizing. I can slay almost anyone...
1 tag
The Domino Effect of Simple Living
Cleaning out your closets leads to utilizing a smaller wardrobe more effectively.
Using a smaller wardrobe more effectively leads to making fewer purchases.
Making fewer purchases leads to saving more of your money.
Saving more of your money leads to getting out of debt.
Getting out of debt leads to less financial stress.
Less financial stress leads to greater personal freedom.
Greater...
“The more advanced science gets, the closer it is to art. The more advanced art...”
– Buckminster Fuller, inventor / futurehead / interesting weirdo. The intersection of art and science has always enticed me, despite the many times and many ways in which it can go just horribly wrong.
February 2011
6 posts
What is Success?
I celebrated a semi-milestone birthday this past weekend, so I hate to preface this with “older and wiser” but I guess I have to. I used to define success in terms of money. Acclaim. Web traffic. Name recognition. Sales. Career. Success was all about attention and validation.
Now, I define success much more simply: it’s the ability to continue doing what I love. It sounds...
Fashion vs Fashion People
“Those people, they talk to you as if you’ve known them for 40 years, but you don’t know them at all.”
Sometimes I wonder how I can continue to love fashion when the fashion world is so fake, hysterical, and petty. A.P.C.’s Jean Touitou has it right. Jean Touitou Speaks His Mind… from Hint Mag
“If the logic of internet chatter is to equate quality and success, this actually...”
– Art criticism is alive and well, from Jonathan Jones.
A picture is worth a thousand questions.
A lot of photographers are eager to share what they already know about a place — pints of Guinness in a pub! an antique bookstore! — but fewer photographers ask questions with the visual material that they’re given. It can be a subtle difference, but it’s what keeps us coming back to a certain photographer over time.
I love this quote. From Look Here Blog, via A Photo Editor.
1 tag
Why are high ISO images more noisy?
Why does high ISO produce noise? This is a question that came up today over lunch, during a technical discussion of digital photography. It stumped me, so I did some research…
For digital cameras, ISO is the speed at which sensors absorb light. This is why images captured with higher ISO, but the same shutter speed and aperture, will always be brighter than images captured at lower ISO.
...
January 2011
2 posts
“Communicating an attitude of complete indifference to one’s personal appearance...”
– How Artists Must Dress. (The truth I care about is always both sad and funny)
December 2010
2 posts
1 tag
New Year's Not-Resolution
I’m the kind of person who works, and works, and works. I’m constantly learning, achieving goals, creating new goals, and learning from mistakes. The thing is, I never seem to get anywhere. My big life goals are exactly what they’ve always been, but I’m no closer to achieving them!
Author Jim Collins wrote an article back in 2003, and I was lucky enough to find it - in the...
2 tags
New start
I started blogging in the early 2000s. Well, arguably in the 90s, but I didn’t know the term blog then. I still remember righteously correcting my savvy little sister, “Um, it’s B-Log. You’re saying it wrong.”
The problem with being an early adopter, other than the occasional pronunciation error, is that you can get stuck where you started. Some new developments are...