lo-fi 'til i die

our house wine is jagermeister

2012-02-29T11:49:00.002-05:00

Our house wine is jagermeister 1, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Sign on the wall at a local bar and grille in my hometown. I took this photo through a window around the holiday season, hence the weird light reflections on the glass.

someone else likes the new tablet...

2012-02-27T09:43:00.002-05:00

Someone else likes the new tablet..., a photo by the_vampire_hanna on Flickr.

Photo taken by a friend of mine. I'm a sucker for cats doing cute things.

craisins: soft and moist

2012-02-24T10:27:00.002-05:00

Craisins: soft and moist, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Taken at a local coffee shop. I thought it was an...interesting way to describe the dried fruit.

newspaper rack theft

2012-02-22T11:47:00.002-05:00

Newspaper rack theft, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Found outside a Mexican restaurant in my hometown. I may or may not have done something like this when I was much younger. The newspaper part, not stealing coins.

i'm back (sort of!)

2012-02-21T14:33:00.002-05:00

smiley face on white board, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

I'm down to a junky old feature phone now, but I'm going to do my level best to try to resurrect this blog from the living dead. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull in some of the other things I'd been doing (film photography, Holga photography, etc.) sooner rather than later, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For now, it'll be a mix of old photos I didn't find time to upload until now and new pictures taken relatively infrequently. All mostly cameraphone-based, unfortunately.

For now, have a brand spanking new picture of a whiteboard sketch on my new office door.

Switching to Tumblr?

2012-01-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to decide what the next best step is to do with this blog. I want to crank it back up again, in hopes that it will get me out and about and taking more pictures, but I also want to maximize exposure as much as possible. Given that word of mouth via Facebook seemed the most popular way people found entries when this was active last time, and given the fact I have since deactivated my Facebook account, I can use all the help I can get to get the word out. Twitter and Google+ should help some, but all that wonderful search engine stuff I used to rail about in school is probably the real solution.

TL; DR: I want to be a bit more of a consumer whore , and I'm wondering if a switch to, say, Tumblr or Wordpress will make it easier to get things out there, as well as whether I can keep a similar look and feel there.

Yeah,I know. Still TL; DR.

hiatus

2011-07-27T15:49:00.000-04:00

Due to an upcoming move and likely spotty Internet access for the indeterminate future, this blog is going on hiatus indefinitely. Hopefully things will get going sooner rather than later, but I'm guessing it'll be a month at a minimum before I'm back.

<3,

Ben

slightly absurd, but funny nonetheless

2011-07-25T14:08:00.000-04:00

Leisure diving: taking pictures of people pretending to engage in leisurely activities whilst diving into a pool. I found it mildly amusing.

face on a paper plate

2011-07-20T13:16:00.002-04:00

Face on a Paper Plate, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Drew this during minicomics day. Scanning slightly messed up the "color", but you get the picture.

this painting is not available in your country

2011-07-18T10:56:00.002-04:00

"This Painting is Not Available in Your Country", a photo by Paul Mutant on Flickr.

how utterly appropriate...

2011-07-15T23:32:00.000-04:00

...that a van promoting Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop Japan release got spray-painted. I think he'd approve. Probably.

photo of father and son at first and last space shuttle launches

2011-07-13T11:29:00.002-04:00

Father and Son: STS-1 and STS-135, a photo by arockalypse on Flickr.

How time flies...

run away, rabbit!

2011-07-11T23:41:00.002-04:00

Run Away, Rabbit!, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Taken outside my friend's apartment complex this weekend while we were hanging out. This bunny had almost no fear of people.

the droids we're googling for

2011-07-09T15:08:00.002-04:00

The droids we're googling for, a photo by Stéfan on Flickr.

7-6-11 random face sketches

2011-07-07T16:04:00.002-04:00

7-6-11 Random Face Sketches, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

yeah, and your point is?

2011-07-02T21:26:00.002-04:00

Sink cat 2, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

I'm cat-sitting this holiday weekend for a couple of friends who are out of town. One of the cats, Marla, likes to sit (and sleep!) in the sink apparently. She was nice enough to stay still long enough for me to shoot a couple of photos.

put on a happy face

2011-06-30T12:37:00.002-04:00

Put on a happy face, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does pushpin art. Seen on one of the bulletin boards in the hallway in Kellogg Drama Center.

like the back of my head

2011-06-27T18:41:00.002-04:00

The Back of my Head, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

I took a lot of weird pictures of myself when I was younger. This one's probably weirder than most.

the internet at its best

2011-06-24T18:54:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, the New York Times photography blog, Lens, wrote about a photo album owned by a 72-year-old fashion industry executive in New York City that appeared to be the work of someone who worked as a propagandist of some sort in Nazi Germany. However, details about the album were sparse, with not even the photographer's name being known. The executive lent the album to the New York Times and allowed scans of the images to be made, so that the photographer and subjects of the photographs might be discovered - and so that he might increase the album's value for sale to pay for medical expenses. These scans were then posted online, and the newspaper asked its readers for help identifying the photographer, among other unknown bits of information.

This is what the Internet does best: harnesses millions, if not billions, of people and their expertise. When aimed at a specific goal, such as identifying this photographer, the results are awesome to behold. Before the day the blog post was published had ended, a Ph.D student at a German University studying Nazi propaganda photography, and another scholar of this sort of photography had identified the man who took the pictures as Franz Krieger. The Ph.D student had done research in a concentration camp memorial's archive and at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. During the course of her research, she came across a book about Krieger written by Dr. Peter F. Kramml. Reading the book cinched the possibility in her head that Krieger and the unnamed photographer of the album were one and the same, as did a message from Dr. Kramml himself, who submitted a known self-portrait of Krieger from another photo archive that matched some of the suspected self-portraits in the album the Times had.

For me, this hits the sweet spot between photography, archives, and journalism. It also amazes me and gives me warm feelings that this sort of research could be done so quickly, thanks in large part to the Internet.

at the corner of photoshop and painting

2011-06-22T21:40:00.000-04:00

Read an interesting entry on Boing Boing about a mixed-media/digital artist doing something I found incredibly creative. He took photographs of concert-goers in mosh pits, worked with them in Photoshop, and then transferred the results to canvases, which he painted on further. The end results have an interesting uncanny valley feel. They're not realistic enough to be photographs, but too realistic to be paintings, and they capture the contradictory emotions and drives that fuel moshing: aggression and camaraderie, dancing and damaging. Even better, he's including images of fighting dogs, rats, and businessmen in suits (not moshing, but milling about) in this project. The full list of images related to this can be found on Dan Witz's web site.

one reason I hate college kids...

2011-06-21T23:39:00.002-04:00

Sign at Kroger, 6-19-11, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

...is they steal shopping carts from my local grocery store. Really, you could change "in recent weeks" on this note to "the last two years, at least" and you'd be correct. I guess it finally came to a head. On more than one occasion, I've come to the store while it's busy and not had a shopping cart, and pretty much once a week when I ride the bus past Kroger or am driving back from my own shopping trip, I see people pushing a cart back to their apartment complex. Here's a hint: don't buy more groceries than you can carry if you don't have a car. Prioritize. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.

/rant.

passive-aggressive note on a pizza box

2011-06-17T14:12:00.004-04:00

Found on a pizza box near the Liberty Plaza in downtown Ann Arbor (across the street from the restaurant this box came from). This was too amusing for me to pass up.

(possibly NSFW) World Naked Bike Ride in Columbus, 6.11.2011

2011-06-15T12:45:00.000-04:00

Wanted to link to a interesting post my friend did with pictures he took during the World Naked Bike Ride in Columbus. Well worth a visit, especially for his brief but valuable words on activism and photojournalism.

you make the joke...

2011-06-13T17:59:00.002-04:00

DP, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

the inspiration for glitch week...

2011-06-12T23:36:00.000-04:00

...was this web site, which I believe I stumbled upon while reading Boing Boing or some other such blog. Basically, some person invented an algorithm of some sort that trawls through Flickr for photographs and images licensed with Creative Commons licenses that allow for remixing and re-posting of altered images, then runs them through some kind of program that screws them up. Rainbow horizontal colorbars, blue screens of death with unexpected faces inside them, and occasionally, some images with just some minor digital artifacts where you can tell by looking at it what the picture was suppose to be, are just some of the things present. All the pictures are visible in the slideshow on the GlitchBot web site, and there's a Flickr page that includes each of the images with links to the original. It's probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I find it fascinating. The Flickr page for GlitchBot can be found here.

the ur-glitch photo (glitch week)

2011-06-10T12:39:00.002-04:00

Glitch, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

This photo was taken, I believe, in the aftermath of one our college newspaper's infamous end of semester parties. For some reason, when I uploaded it to Flickr, Flickr ate it and spat this back out. I've kept it around because it's just a sublimely weird thing to have happened, and because it kinda looks cool.

In case you are wondering...it's a picture of my friend, sitting on my front porch, wearing a traffic cone on his head (don't ask), and flipping the bird. There is an un-glitched version of this photo available, but because I value my friend's privacy and friendship and job prospects, I'm not posting it. If you're Flickr friends with me, though, you can see it.

cat corona (glitch week)

2011-06-08T10:41:00.002-04:00

Cat Corona, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Taken at the same time as this photograph of my cat's whiskers. I can't even begin to guess what setting I used on Vignette to get this.

loveless? (glitch week)

2011-06-06T13:46:00.003-04:00

Glitch, camera illusion, comic setting, a photo by kerouacat_pics on Flickr.

Because theme weeks are fun, I've decided to throw an impromptu glitch week out there this week. Every once in a while, digital cameras and cameraphones and technology screw with the bits and bytes that comprise digital images. These will be some of the more interesting accidents I've had, and stumbled across.

I took this one yesterday accidentally, while trying to shoot a photo of my cat. I'm not 100% sure what it was supposed to be (I suspect it's the skin on my legs, but I wasn't even aware the camera had gone off until I looked at my screen), but I thought the colors were interesting and vaguely reminiscent of one of my favorite albums (and album covers) of all time, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. I've included that cover below, for comparison. What do you think?

P.S.: If you're curious what in the world that's supposed to be a picture of, it's the neck of a guitar, with a heckuva lot of extra exposures and effects. See? Crazy photograph effects were around well before Photoshop. :)

nighthawks (1942)

2011-06-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite paintings of all time, by Edward Hopper. Flickr recently posted a series of photographs inspired by Nighthawks. One of my favorites from their set is shared below.

art & pushpins

2011-06-01T20:46:00.003-04:00

Art #1, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

whiskers & cat corona

2011-05-30T20:03:00.002-04:00

Whiskers & Cat Corona, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

These are the kinds of pictures I take when I wake up way too early and let my cat into my bedroom to hang out with me while I try to go back to sleep. Needless to say, I was very tired, Chuck was feeling very affectionate, and I ended up kicking him out to grab some extra Z's soon after.

seems to be a leak here...when it rains

2011-05-27T02:57:00.002-04:00

Seems to be a Leak Here...When It Rains, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Taken inside of the Art & Architecture building at the University of Michigan earlier this week. I'd suggest replacing "when it rains" with "near constantly", given the rate of rainfall we've had in the last week - or this spring, generally - but that just makes me cry inside a little.

has it really been ten years...

2011-05-25T14:34:00.000-04:00

... since Douglas Adams died? I spent a good part of my middle school/high school/teenage years reading through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Books - even though I didn't like the last one, Mostly Harmless - and I remember being absolutely stunned when I heard he had died. Forty-nine years old, even to a teenager like I was at the time, seemed way too young for someone to die, and the cause of death, a heart attack, seemed absolutely unfathomable and out of nowhere. That having been said, although I was and am still sad that we missed out on future books and wisdom from him, he managed to fit a helluva lot of writing and life into his time on Earth.

A friend of mine sent me a Facebook invite a couple of days ago to participate in Towel Day - the first one was apparently held on May 25, 2011, two weeks after Adams passed away (the delay, it seems, was in order to make sure there was time to get the word out in those pre-Facebook/Twitter/SMS messaging days). Since then, it has become an annual event and way to celebrate the life of a beloved science-fiction writer and person. For those of you who haven't read any of the Hitchhiker's books, what are you waiting for? The first three are noticeably better, in my opinion, than the last two. And ignore the fact that it's called a trilogy. There's actually five, and it's sort of a running joke. Second, the reason it's called Towel Day is because, well, you carry a towel around. This stems from a bit from the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (both the real novel itself, and the in-book version of the Hitchhiker's guide), in which the usefulness of a towel is explained:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Flickr's got a few interesting pictures up on their blog about Towel Day, one of which is posted up top, before the jump cut.

assorted sketches

2011-05-23T20:22:00.002-04:00

Assorted Sketches, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Just scanned a bunch of random sketches I've drawn throughout this spring and uploaded them to Flickr. Haven't decided if I'm going to do an impromptu "sketch week" or not. Probably not.

(trigger warning, photograph of violence) a piece of history I didn't even know about...

2011-05-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

I'm placing the picture for this post after the jump cut, because it may be a bit shocking and unsettling for people, but it's definitely an image worth viewing, if only to see the best and worst of what humanity can do at once.

This is kind of a shameless plug, I guess, for a documentary that PBS is supposedly going to show, but CNN reposted an old interview/book excerpt about one of the Freedom Riders, James Zwerg, who was severely beaten in 1961 while attempting to desegregate public transportation. The pictures and the descriptions of the event are stunning in their brutality, but the most interesting part of the article for me was the discussion of the aftermath of this event. Zwerg's part in the Freedrom Riders was more or less ignored by his family, which saddened him because it was the religious background instilled in him by his parents that inspired him to stand up on behalf of African-Americans. He ended up having to seek therapy for the psychic wounds his beating and his family's subsequent reaction inflicted on him. He eventually recovered, and carved out a life for himself, though he never felt as close to his religion as he did during the Freedom Rider days. It's definitely worth a read.

flickr redesign & remembrance

2011-05-18T14:12:00.003-04:00

Flickr just redesigned the home page viewers see when they go to the page before logging in; for as long as I can remember, their design looked a little something like this: rotating through a series of images on the upper left hand side of the page. Getting an image here, obviously, guaranteed you a ton of exposure as a photographer. The redesign will keep a set of rotating images, but they will now take up the entire top portion of the page. I think it's a good look. It's definitely different, but not in a way that's off putting.

What I'm more excited about is what Flickr has done with the older images that used to rotate in that space (which, since the space is larger, will no longer be used there). They contacted many of the people whose photos were used in that space and asked them a simple question: What was the the best thing that came from the exposure you got on the Flickr homepage? The answers are interesting and illuminating, and really, a good way of tracking the history of Flickr. It's nice to see a tech company respecting its roots, and this part of why I actually will pay money to be a Flickr Pro.

The picture accompanying this entry is probably my favorite of the images that was cycled through on the main page. It was taken, apparently, by a photographer in Fukushima, Japan (yes, that Fukushima). I love the framing, I love the colors, and I love the mood it evokes: loneliness, even with a crowd of traffic passing underneath.

egypt (1991?-2011)

2011-05-16T18:28:00.002-04:00

Portrait of Egypt At Top of Stairs (picnik retouch), originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Maybe later, I'll have something to say, but right now I'm too sad to fully process it. The cat my family owned for more than half of my life passed away today.

parking pass

2011-05-15T18:31:00.002-04:00

Parking Pass, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

This one comes from Spring of 2003. Back when they still let freshmen park at Ohio State's campus parking lots. Back when a lot of things used to be different.

Forgive me the tangent, but I think what makes it tricky for me to think about Ohio State is the fact that, on the surface, so much of it is still the same. Yes, they've revamped a significant number of buildings (the main library and new Ohio Union chief among these), but a large number of them remain the same. My old English stomping grounds at Denney Hall I can almost virtually guarantee are the same, as well as the Journalism Building (well, minus the journalism library). Ohio Stadium has been there forever. So has Enarson Hall (the original union, for those of you who don't know). So has University Hall. So have an overwhelming majority of the dorms on North and South Campus (who remembers Baker Hall? Taylor Tower? Haverfield House?). In some ways, it's a little like jamais vu. Enough is the same that you can still recognize it as Ohio State, but enough has changed, both on campus and the surrounding area, that it's not the Ohio State I knew, lived in, and attended classes at for four and a half years. I think if I ever moved back to Columbus, I would have to live somewhere other than the university district or Clintonville. It'd just be too weird for me.

That said, I'd move back to Columbus in a heartbeat.

will do, anonymous graffiti artist

2011-05-13T17:09:00.000-04:00

You! Have a Sexy Wednesday!, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

may is...

2011-05-13T17:07:00.003-04:00

May is..., originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Taken in May 2010. Worth keeping in mind, I think.

$1.00 beer, sex, justice in palestine

2011-05-10T17:34:00.003-04:00

$1.00 Beer, Sex, Justice in Palestine, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

The college experience, summed up in one bit of graffiti. Taken in 2002 outside of Independence Hall at Ohio State. The sad thing is that other than the price of beer, this could probably come from any year between 1991 and 2011.

i feel you, anonymous graffiti artist.

2011-05-06T14:48:00.002-04:00

I feel you, anonymous graffiti artist., originally uploaded by brixton.

Courtesy of a Facebook posting from a friend of mine, from one of her friends. I also agree with the sentiment.

hiding fail

2011-05-05T00:00:00.002-04:00

Hiding Fail, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I took this picture of one of my friend's cats while I was stopping in to care for them for some weekend while they were out of town. I believe this is Medea, the shyest of their cats. When she wasn't eating or drinking, she spent almost all of the time I was there hiding under the couch. Most of the time, she was better at it than this.

today's lesson

2011-05-02T18:59:00.000-04:00

Look closer at photographs you've taken from years ago. There may be things in them that you didn't expect to see.

heterochromatic

2011-05-01T14:53:00.002-04:00

Heterochromatic, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Apologies for the somewhat sporadic posting schedule I had for poetry month. I'd hoped to do a little more with it, but wrapping up my last two classes toward my degree, work, and then graduating ate up more time than I anticipated. Hopefully you still got something out of it.

In unrelated news, a photograph! This is of one of my friend's dogs. Sadly, I only met her for all of a day or two, so I can't remember her name (the dog, not my friend). Oh well.

i'm graduating...

2011-04-28T19:47:00.002-04:00

"Graduation" by Daniel Kim, originally uploaded by MLibrary Photo Contest.

...this weekend. Imagine that.

mussels, pulled from the shell

2011-04-25T21:06:00.002-04:00

Mussels, Pulled from the Shell, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Don't these mussels look
delicious? No? I'm inclined
to agree with you.

this dumb brick

2011-04-23T00:12:00.002-04:00

This dumb brick, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

This dumb brick does not
Speak. It cannot speak; it’s brick,
Mortar, clay, iron.
No mouth, no life, no message,
Just pressing weight on its back.

(possibly not safe for work) andres serrano's piss christ

2011-04-20T11:27:00.002-04:00

Piss Christ, originally uploaded by isamizdat.

I'm going to cheat a little on my "poem for every post in April for poetry month", since I feel like this is an issue that demands attention. Last Sunday, four religious extremists went to a gallery where Andres Serrano's controversial photograph "Immersion (Piss Christ)" was on display, threatened guards there, and managed to deface both "Piss Christ" and another photograph of a nun's hands in prayer. It's not the first time this piece has courted controversy, or been damaged. In 1989, it was part of an exhibit partially funded by the National Endowment of the Arts, which infuriated many social conservatives. This exhibit, along with a 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Corcoran that was eventually cancelled due to worries about losing NEA funding, were symptomatic of censorship and societal assaults on controversial art. The Guardian also noted that "Piss Christ" was vandalized when on display in Australia.

What's interesting, or perhaps tragically predictable about this controversy, is the fact people are missing the point. Sure, it's meant to be shocking and attention-grabbing. But it's not meant to imply that Serrano is urinating all over Jesus, or Christianity in general. It's not shock for pure shock's sake. Serrano has stated that the work is meant to be a criticism of the "billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry" and a "condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends." Sister Wendy Beckett, a nun and art critic who did a series of art history documentaries for the BBC, stated that she wasn't offended by Serrano's picture, and that she saw it as an admonition of "what we are doing to Christ." Perhaps my favorite interpretation of this photograph, though, comes from poet Andrew Hudgins. In his poem "Piss Christ", he points out one of the things many critics have noted about the work: that if you hadn't been told that it was a crucifix in urine and blood, it might actually seem beautiful and holy. The rest of his poem is a meditation on the relationship between beauty and ugliness, and how the baser aspects of our existence make it possible for beauty, art, faith, and other good things in our world to exist. It's an admonishment of those who would whitewash the suffering that Jesus went through. It's a powerful poem, and definitely one worth reading.

garbo or arbor?

2011-04-18T22:38:00.002-04:00

Garbo or arbor?, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Garbo or arbor?
A letter is missing but
I'm not sure from where

(Taken on a building in downtown Ann Arbor. I'm pretty sure the missing letter is a r and not an a.)

(NSFW) Bonus Post: Minicomics Day, 4-9-2011

2011-04-10T02:04:00.000-04:00

All right, I'm breaking from my plan of writing a poem for this post, because it's bonus content and because I make the rules. I participated in Minicomics Day today, despite my complete and utter lack of drawing talent. In the course of about...six hours or so, I drew an 8-page minicomic, collated it, and ran off a final copy for inclusion in the new minicomic collection a co-worker of mine is creating at our library. That's right, there's a very good chance my horrid art will be part of a library collection.

Anyways, there's a good chance that scans from that and/or the final version of the "comic" (I'd argue that since there's no real sequential connection from panel to panel and page to page in my minicomic, it's probably not a comic/sequential art in the truest sense of the word, but I digress) will be making it up here at some point, most likely in May, after poetry month and the insanity of the end of school and graduation subsides. Until then, here's one of the sketches that wound up in my mini, albeit in (very) altered form.

what's over there, chuck?

2011-04-08T22:43:00.002-04:00

Look to the left, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

What's over there, Chuck?
Some sort of bird, a blue jay
Or a woodpecker?
Maybe it’s a squirrel, a
Mouse, hidden behind the glass.

(NSFW) graffiti in ann arbor & poem

2011-04-06T20:34:00.003-04:00

Back when we’d bomb the 2 and 5

(Back when you could say bomb

in public without setting off panic,

back when burning trains was

vandalism, not arson, still crime)

we wrote our names on concrete and sky,

getting up high as we could

on bridges, highways signs, project towers,

all greys and browns before we

arrived, Spanish Montana

hidden in pockets and backpacks,

shut tight until the moment

arrived: blank wall, beige as canvas

waiting for the snap of the cap,

the hiss of color fizzing and spreading

spider-webbed and speckled, then solid

on cement, then lapping in waves of black,

blue, orange, red, stencils and wildstyle,

bubbles and blocks, clearing out

dull colorless emptiness,

the ads for a new generation’s

choice, the stagnant swoosh

swept aside by our tags, our

manifestos: TAKI 183, COPE 2,

T. KID, DONDI, SEEN.

No more message than

the fact we went up there,

spat in the face of police and transit cops,

made our names,

made our names beautiful,

made our names art we

could sell in galleries,

t-shirts and sneakers,

and still be seen as criminals,

still be arrested and forced

to power-wash, to buff, to destroy

that which was made to be permanent.

What’s left is memory, grainy photographs

and videos of end-to-end murals

on trains and freight cars, stories

we tell our children and cameras,

pieces hanging in museums and houses

who don’t deserve them,

and, if we’re lucky, one

of our blockbusters will survive

rain, snow, heat, cold,

landlords and politicians,

and we can hop the gate,

head down the IRT,

catch the burners on the 5

and dream of all city,

a city entirely painted

neon, coating everything

drab with flames

and our real names.

smudged heart

2011-04-04T14:12:00.003-04:00

Smudged heart, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

gasoline and oil
burn into smoke and vapors
lungs hurt, heart beats on

in honor of april fool's day...

2011-04-01T13:16:00.002-04:00

...one of the most infamous photo hoaxes of all time. That classic photo of the Loch Ness Monster from 1934, sometimes known as "The Surgeon's Photo", came about because of an earlier prank related to Nessie. A year earlier, after a road had finally been created that allowed a clear view of the lake, someone claimed to have spotted a large creature in the lake. A local newspaper hired a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to investigate the sighting. Though he did not see it in the lake, he claimed to have found footprints of the beast. These turned out to come from a dried hippo's foot, and Wetherell was disgraced. At least, until a year later, when he conspired with a surgeon and a model-maker to create a fake Nessie, put it in the lake, and snap photos of it. The rest, as the say, is history.

fun with effects

2011-03-30T17:14:00.001-04:00

BaldBenPainting.jpg, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

The photograph that I used to create this funky little image is lost to the ages, near as I can tell; I've never been able to find the original on any of my hard drives or computers. This was taken outside a coffee shop in my home town, some time in the evening - possibly after the shop had closed? We had a weird thing, way back in the day, of just sitting outside and shooting the breeze after the store closed, because there was little anyone could do to kick us off the sidewalk beside the store, and because it was the sort of thing that was "fun" to do when you were 20 and stuck at home over summer break in a town with very little to do in general and even less after dark.

Other fun, quick facts. This photo was taken some time in the months after I had my head shaved (can't remember if it was the first or second time I had done it). It's a look I've not returned to since. Yes, I have a horrible soul-patch goatee. Yes, I'm doing the devil horns. In the right hand section of the picture is our friend G.P. I'm wearing a Bad Religion shirt with the cover from their third studio album, Suffer, on it. I don't remember who took the original picture.

like peanut butter and jelly

2011-03-28T11:51:00.001-04:00

Satan and The New World Order, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Spotted this on a parking garage in Ann Arbor near downtown. I have a thing for amusing, crudely done graffiti. A flight of steps down, I saw someone had a similar idea, albeit with worse handwriting and a lamer message ("I HATE SHEEPLE"), although they'd managed to write it on a cinder block above people's heads.

Have I mentioned I love how crisp my cameraphone's photos are?

self-portrait in rainbow

2011-03-25T12:54:00.001-04:00

pschyedeliben.jpg, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

An old, old photo-manipulation I did, and probably not the best one ever either. I couldn't even begin to tell you how I managed to get this effect, but I think it's certainly striking, if not the best thing ever done with photo-editing software. I should play around with Paint.NET a little more and see if I can recreate the magic.

three sketched faces

2011-03-23T19:46:00.003-04:00

Three Sketched Faces, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

To borrow the horrid phrase, it is what it is. Also originally part of a NSFW comic strip I made for a friend, but it doesn't really fit the strip all that well, so I don't feel so bad about pulling it out.

neat photo of my current stomping grounds

2011-03-21T20:12:00.000-04:00

A local photographer took a fascinating picture of the building that now houses the program I'm enrolled in, as well as the home of UM's general graduate school. He did some interesting tweaks to his original image in Photoshop (which you can read about on his blog), but this is a case where, I'd argue, the digitally altered photo is better than the original.

sketch-y

2011-03-19T16:50:00.004-04:00

Crazy-Eyes Sketch (Picnik Retouch), originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Did a little bit of touch-up on a sketch that I did as part of a comic I wrote for my friend. The rest of the comic is incredibly NSFW, and therefore not linked nor viewable in this picture. But if you ask nicely, over at my Flickr account, I may add you to my contact list and let you see the glory that is this comic.

Although really, it's not that good.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

2011-03-16T19:07:00.001-04:00

Stoned Wheat Thins, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

These were actually on sale the last time I was at the grocery store. I did not purchase them.

yasl

2011-03-14T21:52:00.001-04:00

YASL, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

From SI's old office in West Hall, and the student organization lockers. YASL actually stands for Youth and School Librarians; it's more or less the School Library Media specialization's student group, with some children's and teens' librarians thrown in.

elevator buttons

2011-03-11T19:12:00.001-05:00

Elevator buttons, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I could easily make this a series or Flickr set, if I could find more interesting button panels than the ones I usually stumble across. Anyone want to pay for a trip to Chicago or New York?

bert's study lounge, five hours after grand opening.

2011-03-09T15:17:00.001-05:00

Bert's study lounge, five hours after grand opening., originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Monday was the unofficial first day that Bert's Study Lounge, a new study space carved out of Shapiro Undergraduate Library's old lobby, was open. There was an incredibly quick turnaround on the building of this; it was less than a year, I believe, between when Bert Askwith made the generous donation making this possible and the day they first opened the space (Bert's really an amazing person, and you should really read up on him yourself). I'll freely admit, seeing students already taking advantage of this study space just a few hours after it opened, warmed the cockles of my heart. That, right there, is the past, present, and future of libraries.

great catch and a great save

2011-03-07T17:12:00.000-05:00

Because I'm feeling a bit lazy, and because I'm in a baseball mood, I'm going to share with you a quick little tidbit about an amazing catch and photo of said catch. A fan attending a spring training game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Atlanta Braves managed to catch a bat flung into the stands accidentally. With one hand. And with the other hand holding onto a can of Red Stripe. Deadspin's right; this guy is a hero.

reflections on d.c.

2011-03-06T13:35:00.001-05:00

Repurposed, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

In many ways, it's really unfair for me to pass judgment on Washington D.C. on the basis of a two-day trip, four years after the last time I visited the city. And four years ago, when I was visiting D.C., I was still a visitor, albeit one from a college town about 10-15 minutes outside the city. That having been said, I do have some observations to make on my time in D.C., both this weekend and in the past.

Little has changed in the city. That might be hard to believe, considered the last time I was there was 2006, when Bush Jr. was president, but I do think it's true. The buildings were all almost exactly the same. The Washington Monument and National Portrait Gallery were open, but from the outside, the monument is the same as it's always been (can't say with regards to the gallery, as I didn't make it over there). And the people were very much the same. Among my age group (early 20s to late 20s), there's a lot of "churn", I think. People move in and move out as jobs, government contracts, terms in office, etc. start and stop, and my feeling is the people who chose to stay in the area leave D.C. proper and go to the suburbs in Maryland or Virginia. There's not a lot of lawn space, or affordable houses, located in the district, and the people who get married and have kids usually want those sorts of things (and prefer to avoid the urban setting). So four years on, me and my friends were sort of the "tail end" of that group, hanging in places where younger twenty-somethings and older twenty-somethings did.

I hate flying. I really, truly do. Almost on a John Madden/Tony Kornheiser level. Take-offs are mildly uncomfortable, landings a little more difficult to take, but a bumpy, turbulent landing just leaves me feeling awful. I get motion-sick and I get cold sweats like crazy. My landing in D.C. last Friday was like that. It's been two years since my previous flight (from Detroit to St. Louis to Madison and back), and God willing, it'll be at least as long before it happens again, but considering some of the places I'm applying for work at, I might have to bite the bullet.

Even worse than the act of flying are airports themselves. They're really horrible, nasty little places. I vaguely remember the times I flew before 9-11, and while I'm sure they had security, it wasn't nearly as annoying (and deserving of the term "security theater") as it is now. I thankfully dodged the bullet I had to bite the last time I flew - switching terminals and having to go through security yet again to catch my final flight - but it didn't make taking my shoes and belt off and placing all my crap in a plastic bin any more fun. More loathsome to me, especially now, is the rampant commercialism present in airports. Advertising signs are everywhere, for various products, services, the airport and the cities themselves. Every couple hundred feet you have a restaurant, or a newsstand, or a McDonald's, or a coffee stand ready, willing, and able to charge you a 50-75% mark-up on food and drink because, hey, where the hell else are you gonna get a burger and fries at?

I never really pay attention to the airlines I fly, so I may have missed this in the past, but holy crap was United ever heavy-handed in pushing its revenue-generating services. I had to click past at least three attempts to "upgrade" my seating to print my boarding passes, and listen to a United spiel right after the security spiel the flight attendants give.

The Metro probably never changes at all. It was just as dark and claustrophobic as I remember it 4 years ago, and the cars had the same seating they did 4 years ago (and probably 10, 15, 20 years past).

Bottom line: D.C. is a nice place to visit, especially for the National Mall and monuments and art museums, but in my mind it's still not all that great of a place to live. I don't get that feeling of "creativity" in the air like I did when I was around fellow poets at Ohio State, or even with the creative writing students at the University of Maryland. There certainly are some creative people who have come out of D.C. (Henry Rollins, Fugazi, Dismemberment Plan, et al.), but that vibe never reached me where I was, either in 2006 or now. Honestly, I'm not really sure how I should feel about that.

your point?

2011-03-04T18:36:00.001-05:00

Originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Ten years ago this fall, when I took my first real dip into "serious" photography, I had a very different mindset and "eye" than I do now. I was a depressed 18-year-old living nearly two hours from the small town he'd grown up in for 10 years prior to that, in an unfamiliar city and an unfamiliar college campus. Most of those photos were taken at night, on a crappy digital camera that was mysteriously included for free in the desktop PC I got for school. Between the lack of flash, the glare of street lights, and the general junkiness of the camera itself, most of those pictures weren't very good. But it's still interesting, to me at least, to look back on them now and again and see the worldview I had: dark, empty, full of shadows and empty places and missing nearly any sign of human habitation. All things considered, though, there's a good reason I've removed them from my Flickr account.

Cut to today, almost ten years later. What interests me now, and what I'm hoping to dive into further, is portraits of people. Friends, primarily, but not exclusively. Nearly a majority of the photographs I took while I was in D.C. were portraits or self-portraits of some kind, primarily of myself and the friends I was visiting. This one stood out to me as the cream of the crop. I took it on my iPhone with what is probably my favorite Android photo app, Vignette, on what I believe is the London setting (described as "contrasty black white and red" in the app and on the features web page). I need to remember to start making note of what filters and settings I'm using when I take pictures with camera apps; I took a series of three self-portraits today to try and guess what the name of the filter I'd used was. Both the subject and I agreed pretty much right away this was an interesting picture, and I still agree with that assessment.

where was this taken?

2011-03-02T14:44:00.001-05:00

Originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

A. Some random spot in D.C. where there happened to be a gate in the background.
B. Near one of the countless embassies spread throughout the city.
C. Outside the White House.

If you guessed C, you're right. Because of the angle I took this picture of myself at, you can't actually see the White House, even though it's there, somewhere over my shoulder and behind the gate that's behind me. To be perfectly honest with you, the White House is not terribly impressive. It is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a large, white house. One that has a fountain in front of it, one that's probably a good 500 yards from the road and separated by a tall wrought iron gate and police checkpoints, but a house nonetheless. Much of its importance comes from who lives and works there, rather than any sort of grand architectural statement. Security fears and construction around the area make the building and the surrounding area pretty weird. There's a street with no traffic, except for police cars parked diagonally across the road. There were two groups of people playing street hockey, since the complete lack of traffic made it probably the city's best spot for such a game. You had road blocks that presumably could be unblocked when a cleared person came by, but I'll be damned if I could figure out by eyesight which of the concrete pillars in the road would drop down and let traffic through. And, of course, you had streams of tourists walking through and past it, stopping in front of the gate to take pictures, though a big black gate, green lawn with a fountain, and house well off in the distance isn't exactly the most ideal backdrop. I don't think I had ever seen the White House before this day, but it could very well be that I had actually seen it in the past, and it was so utterly unremarkable that I didn't bother to remember it. Call it a case of monument hype.

union now!

2011-02-28T20:43:00.001-05:00

Union protest, Dupont Circle, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

While I was in Washington D.C., there was a protest Saturday in support of those fighting the efforts of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to remove much of Wisconsin state employee's collective bargaining rights. Apparently sponsored by Moveon.org, among other left-wing organizers, there were similar protests taking place across the country.

As far as protests go, it probably wasn't all that large - maybe one or two hundred people. And Dupont Circle is no White House, Capital building, or other major monument. My friends and I were trying to figure out why they would have gathered there, instead of at one of those other places. My initial guess was because it would have been harder for them to get permits for the electrical equipment they would have needed for the microphones they were using for their speakers closer to those more popular places. I also figured there were more people sympathetic to the cause in the area then there might have been elsewhere, though D.C. is generally a relatively liberal area (Obama got 92.9 percent of their popular vote in 2008).

It wasn't until after I left D.C. that I came up with what I think is a more plausible reason, and one that solved another minor mystery. The headquarters of a fairly substantial union (2.2 million members), SEIU, is located very close to Dupont Circle itself, and in the heart of this neighborhood. That might have made things easier to organize there. When I had first passed by the SEIU building, I couldn't figure out what exactly SEIU was; I had thought it might be a university, except for the fact that its URL is a dot.org, because their advertising used very bright and distinctive colors (purple and gold) and felt a little like the University of Phoenix's "I Am a Phoenix" campaign. The truth, as it turned out, was a possible answer to another riddle.

kick-off for washington, d.c. week

2011-02-27T22:41:00.001-05:00

Metro Center, Washington D.C., originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I spent the weekend in Washington, D.C., and I took far more pictures than I normally take. As a way of acknowledging this fact, and because theme weeks are fun, this week's going to be Washington, D.C. week. Fair warning, it's probably not going to be pictures of the things you expect people to snap photos of when they're in D.C. I have a weird and complicated relationship with the city, that may or may not come out in the photos I've taken - and the photos I talk about and post here. You'll just have to tune in on Monday/Wednesday/Friday to find out, barring any delays of course.

wednesday blahs

2011-02-23T17:50:00.001-05:00

White Mug, Mail, & Speaker, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

No real reason behind me selecting this picture, except that I haven't posted any old digital camera photos in a while, this one doesn't require me to write very much, and I'm in little mood to think much after my midterm. This photo is pretty exactly what it says on the tin.

the world's worst Pokemon

2011-02-22T10:51:00.001-05:00

VARCHARIZARD, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I drew this horrible, horrible sketch of what I called "Varcharizard" during a group meeting for my database application class. Those of you who are familiar with this class, or are familiar with database stuff in general, might recognize the term VARCHAR. For those who don't, it's essentially a way of formatting data that goes into a cell in a database. Or you can read the Wikipedia entry on it.

the ghosts of monuments and tourists

2011-02-21T19:22:00.000-05:00

I discovered this site via my usual blog-reading, and thought it was pretty amazing. Swiss photographer Corinne Vionnet did what many people have probably done at some point: searched online for pictures of monuments and tourist sites. What she did next was slightly less common: she took 200 to 300 photographs of these sites taken by amateur photographers and tourists, and layered them on top of each other. It may sound like an easy thing to do at first (if somewhat tedious), but looking at the images she created belies that. Places that are heavily visited by people have weird, wispy shadows in the foregrounds where they may have walked by in one photo, or posed in another (like in this picture of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow). The monuments themselves vary in appearance; some, taken at many different angles (like the Eiffel Tower) are blurry reproductions of the original, while others (like the Kaaba at Mecca ), are surprisingly static. What's fascinating to me is how these superimpositions turn what were likely meant as realistic depictions of these monuments into something that more closely resembles impressionistic painting. The foreground of the houses in front of Mount Fuji, or the Louvre Pyramid, have a sketchy, dreamy feel to them. It's really quite good stuff, and worth taking a look.

squirrel outside hatcher graduate library

2011-02-19T10:09:00.001-05:00

Squirrel outside hatcher, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

The squirrels here in Ann Arbor are quite tame, as are most squirrels located near universities, I would imagine. It did take me a minute or two of walking up and down the handicap ramp following the squirrel (who was a wee bit skittish) before he/she settled down long enough to let me take this picture.

my about me page

2011-02-16T13:44:00.000-05:00

You'll probably be disappointed by how little information is here, but I've finally gotten around to creating an about me page. I don't know where the number 16 comes from in the URL, but oh well. Enjoy it for what it is?

pensive kitteh (yacp)

2011-02-14T15:10:00.001-05:00

Pensive kitteh, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Took this picture earlier this morning with my cameraphone and the Vignette for Android demo program I've got installed on it. I used the dreamy setting, and I think it turned out well. The soft-focus works well with the half-sleepy face Chuck has. One of these days, I'll get around to taking pictures of things other than my cats. One of these days is not today, though.

now that's a party!

2011-02-13T11:47:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to tell you to check out my friend's photo blog, especially one of his recent entries. It combines two of my favorite things in the world. Oh, and you should also consider buying one of his zines.

bonus post: pretty pictures of libraries!

2011-02-10T14:54:00.000-05:00

Putting this one up a little earlier than usual, because it won't take me much to write a blurb for this, and because the pictures here are just flat-out amazing. Architecture and interior design, I think, is and will be a key part of the future of libraries as they shift from presenting books and materials to presenting experiences. This photo essay gathers fifteen gorgeous, large pictures of some of the most stunning library buildings in the world. Looks like I have a few places to add on my itinerary if I ever find time to see the world.

consume! obey!

2011-02-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

doesn't guy fieri...

2011-02-07T23:45:00.001-05:00

Guy Fieri Shills Ritz, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

look like a massive douchebag in this advertisement? Spotted this in my local grocery store. It's been up there for the past month or so, presumably in anticipation of the super bowl. It didn't inspire me to buy Ritz crackers.

a message for you weekend warriors

2011-02-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

the snowstorm...

2011-02-03T01:15:00.001-05:00

Originally uploaded by m1kelikesbikes.

...didn't hit my neck of the woods nearly as bad as it did some places, but those places it hit hard, it hit really hard. I've got a few friends who live in and around Chicago, and seeing photos of Lakeside Drive filled with abandoned cars is both weird and eerie.

Not surprisingly, when you get almost 20 inches of snow, combined with wind, you get cars buried in the stuff, like my friend's wife's car here.

the jokes write themselves

2011-01-31T20:10:00.001-05:00

Found at Kroger, Cookies and Crackers Aisle, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

But I will leave it up to you to write them.

first picture with new cameraphone

2011-01-30T15:20:00.001-05:00

Portrait of Lila, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Were you seriously expecting it to be of anything else? :)

There's a whole spiel to be written here about how this tiny camera within my phone blows my old digital camera out of the water for picture quality, but it's the weekend and I don't feel up to it. Suffice to say I was blown away when I saw the picture quality this thing cranked out.

death trap elevator

2011-01-26T23:46:00.001-05:00

Denney Hall Elevator, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I took this picture while taking my life into my own hands in Denney Hall's elevator at Ohio State. This was an ancient piece of machinery that broke down quite frequently, and ran quite slow when it wasn't breaking down. It may very well have changed in the intervening years, but when I was in school, the fourth floor at Denney was where most of the English professors had their offices. I spent much of my undergrad days in good 'ol Denney; considering how little money English brings in, you can imagine the rest of the building was in similar shape. It had its charm, though.

Some day, I'll tell you about the time I got stuck in an elevator for about 20 minutes or so. Not today, though. P.S., it wasn't this elevator, believe it or not.

vertical sunset

2011-01-24T23:00:00.001-05:00

Sunset!, originally uploaded by the_vampire_hanna.

Lately, I've been more interested in sharing interesting photos my friends took than showcasing my own photography. Could be because I'm not taking as many pictures as I was earlier this month/late December, since school started back up again. At any rate, this one comes from a friend of mine in the same graduate program I'm in.

graffiti (not safe for work)

2011-01-23T00:30:00.001-05:00

Graffiti, originally uploaded by statixc.

Funny picture, courtesy of one of my friends. Enjoy the weekend!

lost history

2011-01-19T21:12:00.000-05:00

I caught an interesting story the other day on CNN, about an auction sale of a bunch of photographs of John F. Kennedy taken by his White House photographer. Many of these photographs have never been seen by the public, since Cecil Stoughton, the man who took them, managed to keep them incredibly private. His family just auctioned them off recently. They include the only known image of him with Marilyn Monroe and one with his daughter at her fifth birthday party, the last one before he was killed (five days before her sixth).

What makes this interesting to me is the "discovery" aspect of this. Even though the odds are good that some, if not all, of these pictures were thrown in a box unseen for 50+ years, the fact remains that some of them remained in good enough shape over that time that the man who purchased them could show them to CNN (link goes to video). I think chances are, if you asked the average person what is most likely to survive 50 years and still be viewable, they'd say digital pictures over any of the many analog forms (film, lantern slide, daguerrotype, etc.). Yet many archivists and preservationists would say digital pictures are less likely to survive that long. Physical decay is inevitable amongst analog forms of photography (take a look at this daguerrotype of Andrew Jackson from around 1844, or this faded 1956 photograph), but some of it can be mitigated through proper care and treatment, and can be repaired if the damage is not too severe. Digital photography theoretically can give you limitless perfect copies of an image, but if the format an image is taken in is no longer supported by image viewing software, it's going to be very difficult, even impossible, to look at that picture. Don't think it can happen? How many computers have you seen lately with 3.5" floppy disc drives. Probably none, or not very many. Yet people saved plenty of documents on those discs for 25+ years (since they were introduced in 1987). Some effort will have to be made to either keep a working disc drive around, or to migrate that data into some other format, all without corrupting or changing it. The same could easily happen to born-digital pictures - this site discusses the perils of file format obsolescence and how to avoid it. Long story short, it takes a lot of maintenance to ensure a file format remains viewable through time.

What's the point of all this? Well, with the vast majority of pictures now taken digitally, the days of the serendipitous old photograph cache finding are numbered. Many people will not make the effort to migrate files forward to new formats if needed. In the past, you could get away with throwing pictures in a box or a photo album, and trust they'd still be there years or decades later. Do that with a flash drive full of jpegs or tiffs, and we may not be so lucky. Fifty years from now, we may find a hard drive stuffed with photos of Barack Obama that we may not be able to see, and that would be a shame.

portrait of e.v.c.

2011-01-17T20:08:00.001-05:00

E.V.C. Portrait, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I think this portrait says a lot about what you need to know about E.V.C. His love for the Columbus Blue Jackets, Columbus Crew, and Ohio State Buckeyes and his love of idiosyncratic decoration. Before I moved into my house on Frambes, he, along with a couple other incoming roommates of mine, spray-painted the walls of my room with random phrases (which, if you know college guys, you can probably guess what they involved). I thought it was pretty funny, honestly, but it figures that I would get the sex jokes while he got to boast about his #1 status.

I took this picture at a very small size with a very mediocre camera, so I unfortunately can't tell you what the text bubble says next to him. He was guest-editing an online poetry journal, didn't have a portrait, and needed one for his guest-editing profile page, so I obliged him with a last-second shot. They cropped some of the image out on the site when they posted it. This is the original, in its (somewhat mediocre) glory.

I still miss him very much.

squee!

2011-01-14T10:29:00.001-05:00

kitten pile in fes, originally uploaded by smfny.

'Nuff said.

no more ruin porn (safe for work)

2011-01-12T14:31:00.000-05:00

Something interesting popped up recently on The Onion A.V. Club, one of my favorite web sites for getting news, reviews, features, interviews, and all sorts of interesting and entertaining information on just about every entertainment format out there. In one of their newer features, Great Job Internet, they actually took a much more sarcastic and nuanced look at a trend that's actually been around a lot longer than I realized: photos of Detroit in ruins. They point out several photographers who have been making hay out of images of abandoned, destroyed, and desolate parts of the city, like Ives Marchard and Romain Meffre, two French photographers who have been taking pictures of the city for 5-plus years for a book on the city. More locally, a pair of local photo-bloggers, James Griffioen and Kevin Bauman, have worked on similar projects. Bauman's got a Flickr feed called 100 Abandoned Houses (now at 139) that is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Griffioen apparently has a more nuanced view according to the A.V. Club writer, showing pictures of abandoned houses being reclaimed by nature and his young son going through the city dressed as Robocop (my favorite picture is probably the A.V. Club's favorite as well: little Robocop, sitting by himself, riding on the retro-futuristic and almost entirely abandoned People Mover monorail).

When I mentioned this site to a co-worker, she brought up a phrase I had never heard before, but which has apparently been around for some time: ruin porn. There was a story about this phenomena on NPR's On the Media in September 2009, where the show talked to a reporter from Vice Magazine who covers the city. The reporter stated that these pictures were frequently taken and presented out of context, like when pictures of the Packard Auto Plant were presented as signs of modern decay, when the plant has been closed since 1957. The reporter also discussed reporters who came in dead set on capturing Detroit's ruins to the exclusion of any other story, misleading readers by using different labels (a building name and a street name) for the same spot of land to increase the perception of widespread decay, and framing pictures to keep out evidence of thriving homes and businesses.

As a former journalism student, this is something that was brought up to us during our coursework. Not only do reporters have an obligation to seek out all sides of the story, but so do photographers. It's not any less dubious for a photographer to fudge a picture or inaccurately portray an area in his photography than it is for a reporter to reword quotes or not talk to the opposing side of a story. But it is trickier for them. Images have power, and can tell a story that is instantly recognizable without a single word: this one, this one, or this one. But even then, when you dig deeper, the truth becomes murky. Eddie Adams, who took the famous picture of a Vietnamese general right before he executed a Viet Cong prisoner, regretted taking the picture, because viewers didn't know what had happened before it was taken (the general had just lost several of his soldiers - and one soldier's family - to a Viet Cong attack violating a ceasefire) and because it forever altered the man's life - he eventually moved to Virginia and attempted to open a restaurant, but it closed after word of his identity became known. Adams himself wrote "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera." And the famous Times Square V-J Day kiss photograph, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was interpreted as a soldier coming home to his beloved, when in fact he was merely sweeping every woman he saw on the street off their feet and kissing them. Also interesting is the fact that kiss was captured from a different angle by a Navy photographer, Victor Jorgensen; because he was an active duty member of the military, his photograph is in the public domain and reproduced much more frequently. But perhaps most interesting at all was the fact that neither man captured the names of the kissing sailor and nurse, meaning several people came forward throughout the decades claiming they were the ones.

We always say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes you need more than that. This is true for iconic images and photos of Detroit buildings in disrepair.

i needed this this morning

2011-01-10T15:08:00.001-05:00

Coffee Still-Life, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

10:15 a.m., Monday morning. Chuck woke me up twice with his caterwauling outside the shut bedroom door, then tried to make it up to me by grooming me when I finally caved and let him in. Combined with a later-than-usual bed time, I was a zombie from the moment I left my apartment until I arrived at Bert's Cafe. Cafe au lait with hazelnut coffee got me nice and perked up.

I had another topic I was going to cover today, but I'm going to save it for when I'm not operating on a caffeine battery back-up.

the new year's first photo

2011-01-07T09:57:00.001-05:00

K.W. oversaturated portrait, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

I took this portrait shot of a friend at 2:30 in the morning on New Year's Day, using my cameraphone's Vignette for Android program and the oversaturated setting. The resolution leads something to be desired on the picture itself, but I love the shadow effect around the image where there wasn't enough light to process. I'm generally a fan of the oversaturate effect; bright yellows and vivid reds and oranges are really neat looking to me.

the day niagara falls stood still

2011-01-05T09:43:00.000-05:00

More from the back file of links I wanted to write about last semester but didn't have time to due to classes. A Connecticut man recently stumbled upon a shoebox full of photographs taken by his in-laws, showing Niagara Falls in 1969 when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers temporarily dammed up the Niagara River to push the flow away from the American side of the falls. The result? The falls ran dry, at least on the American side. Why did they do such a thing? Originally, they were removing rubble from the bottom of the falls in order to ensure that the falls would not stop flowing, but that proved cost-prohibitive. Instead, they bolted down some of the faults in the riverbed to slow its erosion, in hopes of increasing the amount of time the falls would keep flowing. The article is a quite interesting read, as are the pictures of a dry Niagara Falls, which looks a lot like a desert without the water.

most viewed

2011-01-03T13:42:00.001-05:00

Sleepy Smile (picnik retouch), originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Right now, this is apparently the most viewed item on my Flickr account. Kind of strange, because it's not something I think of as a special picture. I originally took this photo with my old digital camera, then came back to it sometime later and edited it with Flickr's special online photo-editing suite, Picnik. I gave it the usual "cat" tag and "picnik" tag, added it to a photo set I've created of all the pictures I've retouched with Picnik, and that was that. Just goes to show you, I suppose, you never really know what will resonate with people. Relatively speaking.

momma, don't take my Kodachrome away

2010-12-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the last day that anybody in the world could have Kodachrome film processed. The last place left processing the film, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, ran their last batch of Kodachrome yesterday. The film, first created in 1935, was the epitome of color photography for decades, though as this article notes, it was tough to shoot well and first diminished in importance when photographic prints and not slides (which Kodachrome pictures were developed into) became popular. When it was shot well, as in this famous 1985 photograph of an Afghan girl, it captured colors in a vividness that verged on more real than real.

It was so famous that Paul Simon wrote a song inspired by it in 1973, titled (surprise surprise) Kodachrome. This blog entry's title takes its title from a line in that song.

Between various film formats vanishing and the disappearance of dark rooms from many photography/art school programs, sometimes it seems like film photography is going to go the way of the dodo. I hope not, because they've yet to find a way to include the idiosyncrasies of film in digital cameras. Perfection is boring, and the imperfection of film cameras presents reality as it is because, and not despite, the fact it is an imperfect representation. We need a little bit of artificiality, a bit of oversatured color and vignetted corners and red and orange halo smears on the pictures of our lives. We need lo-fi as much as we need hi-def, to show all sides of our lives, messy and clean.

mischief

2010-12-29T14:17:00.001-05:00

Who, Me?, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Chuck is usually the one getting into trouble around the house. Usually. This one's on Lila, though.

oh, did i hurt you?

2010-12-22T19:33:00.001-05:00

Oh, Did I Hurt You?, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

Took this picture by laying underneath my computer chair while Chuck was sitting in it. He just happened to look down on me and put his head in frame in the nick of time.

pseudo-arty photograph...

2010-12-20T13:46:00.001-05:00

Inside of a Mug, originally uploaded by kerouacat_pics.

...because I've got a lot of irons in the fire, but I'm not quite ready to pull them out and give them the time and thought process they deserve. Instead, have an old digital camera photo I took!