Quick observation there...
I need some plastic army men for some photo shoots and prowl the dollar stores for cheap stuff. I've noticed lately that packages of army men are scarce. I can find bag after bag of police and firemen, but no troops. They were there just a few months ago.
That got me thinking...why?
Even though we still have thousands and thousands of troops still stationed in Iraq, news from there is scarce from the corporate-controlled media. I still think that troop presence, and the dangers they face, are important. It is still a dangerous mission. Why aren't we getting daily updates from Iraq?
The media largely guides what appears in the news. General Electric, for instance, owns NBC and one would think they might have an interest in what is reported in the news. GE also makes a ton of money from war contracts. Perhaps some conflict of interest here?
I don't think GE controls the Chinese-made army men sold in dollar stores, but perhaps 'army' is out of sight right now. With the recent health care bill, perhaps we'll see bags of health care workers, 54 in a bag, EMU techs, doctors, nurses, maybe even a few unconscious victims.
I wonder if these plastic figures will still sell after Michele Bachmann of MN can get the new law before the Supreme Court, so her friends Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas can strike it down and return us more to the Amerika we've grown to know and 'love' over the past thirty years.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
No Longer Coreled by My Software
My Canon PS SX10 IS came back in snappy time, less than a week in total, and was fixed by the Canon people. Very impressive service. So, I'm sort of back in the saddle, but my horse doesn't have a destination. The idea of returning to the streets of Detroit, with so many others who have claimed the streets as their own, does not appeal to me at all. I figure I had my shot and now it's time to move on. That doesn't mean I will "never" return, but for now, I am not interested. As time went by, I also began feeling that my visits were intrusive and that I wasn't doing the city any favors by showing my work. It is important for people to know what's really going on in Detroit, though, and that was my main objective. The corporate-controlled media is not going to show you what I saw. Perhaps you'll get a glance when a robust filmmaker shoots a documentary on the city, but you're not going to see street after street of a city that was abandoned by an industry the way the auto people fled Detroit.
Detroiters are really struggling to survive now. Good jobs are hard to come by, especially in Detroit. Sure, we're all having a rough time thanks to the last thirty years of watching the middle class in this country getting plundered by the rich.
I am thinking of turning my eye to some of the skirting 'burbs, a few in particular that are packed with people struggling to stay afloat in this weird economic environment. Those with less find interesting ways to survive and decorate their worlds. I drove through one such neighborhood last week on my way to a dollar store that I find to be THE most depressing I've visited, where I shot Mom's Taxi. Chinese Junk. That's what I find in these stores and I use this junk for my photos.
Someone listening to my rants might think I'm one of those flag-waving Americans who loved George Bush and wants this country to be a Christian nation. Truth be known, I am very interested in other cultures. I largely eat Indian (east) food, as I learned to cook quite an array of tasty dishes, firing up my pressure cooker for a steaming spicy bowl of palak mung dal, some fiery hot sambars and rasams, steaming pots of basmati and masoori rice...Really excellent food. I watch scores of foreign films. No, I do like being a citizen of the world and don't want a closed society. I don't want to stop buying foreign-made goods. But I do want jobs to return to the U.S., and I want a thriving middle-class where we get a slice of the pie, too.
Not only am I pissed off about what's going on with bankers and Wall Street thieves, but I'm even more pissed off that nobody seems that interested in what's going on. How can real life events that effect us all compete with the latest line-up of television shows?
Back to these poor neighborhoods. The ones I have in sight are not poverty-level areas, but hoods where it is a real struggle to stay afloat. I see some very interesting home decor, and that's what I think I want to go after next. I'm not looking for post-war bomb-out shots, but more quirky shots.
Sorry to disappoint all of you. I wonder, if I ever return to the streets of Detroit for photos, if those crazy-ass Wall Street tycoons would be interested in placing hedge bets on whether or not I return unscathed?
Something new regarding my photography...I'm shelving my Paint Shop Pro and delving into the world of Adobe Photo Shop. I will finally begin to experience all the wonder I've heard about this program. I have been using Paint Shop Pro for all my digital days, long before Corel bought the company. It has been okay, and performs basic adjustments alright. Perhaps not. I've really had nothing to compare it with. So it's time to boost up my computer, but in that new graphics card, pour in the RAM, and get ready. The software was shipped.
Bon soir Corel. And good riddance. I've been a loyal fan (forced to be for economic reasons, I might add, plus a touch of my attraction for the under-dogs of the world) but you have really let me down with your latest versions of software. I've invested hundreds and hundreds of dollars into your company. Thanks for the complete breakdown in support this past year.
waving with great enthusiasm...blowing a kiss to the north, to Canada, where Corel lives...thinking kindly of my Canadian neighbors and not holding Canada accountable for the buggy software that Corel publishes.
Detroiters are really struggling to survive now. Good jobs are hard to come by, especially in Detroit. Sure, we're all having a rough time thanks to the last thirty years of watching the middle class in this country getting plundered by the rich.
I am thinking of turning my eye to some of the skirting 'burbs, a few in particular that are packed with people struggling to stay afloat in this weird economic environment. Those with less find interesting ways to survive and decorate their worlds. I drove through one such neighborhood last week on my way to a dollar store that I find to be THE most depressing I've visited, where I shot Mom's Taxi. Chinese Junk. That's what I find in these stores and I use this junk for my photos.
Someone listening to my rants might think I'm one of those flag-waving Americans who loved George Bush and wants this country to be a Christian nation. Truth be known, I am very interested in other cultures. I largely eat Indian (east) food, as I learned to cook quite an array of tasty dishes, firing up my pressure cooker for a steaming spicy bowl of palak mung dal, some fiery hot sambars and rasams, steaming pots of basmati and masoori rice...Really excellent food. I watch scores of foreign films. No, I do like being a citizen of the world and don't want a closed society. I don't want to stop buying foreign-made goods. But I do want jobs to return to the U.S., and I want a thriving middle-class where we get a slice of the pie, too.
Not only am I pissed off about what's going on with bankers and Wall Street thieves, but I'm even more pissed off that nobody seems that interested in what's going on. How can real life events that effect us all compete with the latest line-up of television shows?
Back to these poor neighborhoods. The ones I have in sight are not poverty-level areas, but hoods where it is a real struggle to stay afloat. I see some very interesting home decor, and that's what I think I want to go after next. I'm not looking for post-war bomb-out shots, but more quirky shots.
Sorry to disappoint all of you. I wonder, if I ever return to the streets of Detroit for photos, if those crazy-ass Wall Street tycoons would be interested in placing hedge bets on whether or not I return unscathed?
Something new regarding my photography...I'm shelving my Paint Shop Pro and delving into the world of Adobe Photo Shop. I will finally begin to experience all the wonder I've heard about this program. I have been using Paint Shop Pro for all my digital days, long before Corel bought the company. It has been okay, and performs basic adjustments alright. Perhaps not. I've really had nothing to compare it with. So it's time to boost up my computer, but in that new graphics card, pour in the RAM, and get ready. The software was shipped.
Bon soir Corel. And good riddance. I've been a loyal fan (forced to be for economic reasons, I might add, plus a touch of my attraction for the under-dogs of the world) but you have really let me down with your latest versions of software. I've invested hundreds and hundreds of dollars into your company. Thanks for the complete breakdown in support this past year.
waving with great enthusiasm...blowing a kiss to the north, to Canada, where Corel lives...thinking kindly of my Canadian neighbors and not holding Canada accountable for the buggy software that Corel publishes.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
It's Freezing (Up)
No, not me! The damn camera. My main camera is jamming, and I don't mean dancing smooth moves to the latest grooves, or improvising wildly off a hot chord progression.
Dead.
Me friggin' main camera is only delivering grief. And just when I was sort of starting to get back into it a little. It's a Canon Power Shot SX1o IS, my second in this series. Even though this has more zoom power, I think I liked the first one better. This has been a slightly disappointing camera. I'm very disappointed in the noise I get from it on a gray day.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooloose-letrek/4398395318/
The sky is putrid. I don't have fancy software to fix it up. Nope. Just old Paint Shop Pro, for us poor saps that can't afford Photo Shop.
The repairs will be covered under factory warranty, so except for shipping, no cost to me. The cost is measured more in lost time and killing my interest in getting out for shots.
I still have a camera to shoot, but another disappointment for me. The Lumix is capable of some nice shots, but I have some issues with shake. I don't think the anti-shake mechanism works properly. No factory warranty on that one, and that's the way I got it out of the box. But I must admit, in ideal circumstances, it does make a nice sharp image.
I tried a Fujifilm S2000 for a day and was horribly disappointed. It's not a great camera and costs roughly half the price of my Power Shot. The zoom was horrible. And it brought back a very bad taste in my heart, too. My first better digital camera was a Fujifilm Finepix S5000. It was great fun for me to get away from a totally retarded Kodak Point-N-Shoot 1.3MP junk box and into a camera with some controls. I think I had a little Nikon Coolpix in between the two, but beside the low resolution, it totally lacked any controls. I liked it, though. Anyway, back to my Fujifilm. It had problems out of the box and I didn't attend to them right away. Had I, I probably would have gotten a brand new replacement. Someone in a photo forum convinced me that it was a power issue and not a camera issue...and I didn't realize that I had such a small time frame for the right remedy, a new camera. So I got on the repair train ride. It went back to the factory tw0 or three times (who's counting?) and the problem was never resolved really. I was able to get photos out of it, but at times, the camera just went bonkers on me. I don't know why they couldn't fix it properly. But oh well, right?
I was disappointed in Fuji, to say the least. So when I had one in my hand the other day, for a few hours, I was on high alert. The zoom sucked, as did the display.
No more Fujifilm for me!
And then I learned about a new model coming out next month, a HS10. Man, it has features, and a super-dooper zoom, 30X. I can't even imagine what I could have done with that much zoom, and still stay out of firing range when I drove around Detroit for photos.
Detroit. Wow, what a change in sentiment for me. I still don't want to do what I used to do, and I'm thinking of getting some professional help to aid me in understanding why I did what I did in the first place. Perhaps I have a death wish? I just watched a local film about thugs in the city, mostly drug dealings and violence as the theme. I guess when one is feeling that disadvantaged in life, the value of life is minimal. Popping someone is no big deal. There can't be any thought behind that bullet ripping through and ending a human life. Life is shit so I shit on life?
But while I was driving down the streets of Detroit, there was a lot going on behind the scenes, drug deals and violence. It wouldn't be anything for someone to pop a white boy driving where he shouldn't be driving. I've written before that I was nearly car-jacked (or worse?) twice in my travels, and nearly accosted on foot a handful of times. The first time, I was in a mixed black-Arabic neighborhood early on a Sunday morning and two guys in a car were doing their best to cut in front of me, and probably stop me. I don't think they wanted my car because it wasn't much of a car, and I don't think they wanted sex because I'm not appealing that way. Every time we got to a stop/yield sign, they tried to pass me, but I gunned it and had a goal in mind, to reach a street some blocks away that I knew was populated with security guards, guarding some new cars in storage at the Michigan State Fair grounds. I won. As soon as I hit that street, they backed off and went looking for some other action. Another time, on the other side of town, in an area known for prostitution and crack, a pick-up truck pulled up next to me and when I decided to leave, left with me. And kept leaving with me. Fortunately I was driving a V8 and s/he was in an old pick-up and I was able to hit a main street before him or her. I never looked over at the driver and would not have been surprised to see a gun pointing at me. We got onto that main street and s/he pulled in front of me. There wasn't a cop in sight! I took a hard left just in front of some oncoming traffic and escaped down a side street.
Then one day I was pulled over against the curb, watching a nun eating a sandwich outside a church, just on the border of an area called DelRay, one of the nastiest areas in the city. I noticed some movement in my rear view mirror and saw a guy creeping up along the parked cars, heading in my direction. He was about a car length away and I got the hell out of there. When I was in my car, I always had the engine running, in gear, foot on the brake, with a clear escape path.
I'm really not anxious to see how many more of these 'adventures' I can have, just to feed you guys some interesting photos. And on top of that, I feel like I'm invading people's private lives. I hate it when someone takes my photo without permission, so why would I want to do that to others?
Not so many people stop by my photo gallery anymore.
On top of that, anybody who reads my comments know how I feel about what's going on in this world now anyway. The rich, the VERY rich, are in control. They, along with corporations, have a commanding lead on the American people, and what makes matters much worse is the fact that the American people (hell, the world's people, as it isn't just happening here. It can't happen here? It is!) don't seem to care that much. I used to think Americans were a people who respected freedom and liberty, but now learn they cower in fear of 'terrorists' and fully support an undefined 'war' against a principle. Hell, this is stuff right out of the pages of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. And obviously whoever is behind all this studied that book in great detail. Doublespeak is everywhere. A 'clean air' act that pours massive pollution into the environment, for instance. Bush is on record as using a quote right out of the Orwell classic, "War is Peace."
And now, I have no idea what's going on.
It's not just in Amerika, either. It's happening all around the globe.
So here I am, at odds with the world. I have some photo projects in mind, some involving the only friends I have, action figures and figurines I have accumulated over the years. Don't worry, I have some ideas that will no doubt be plenty offensive to some people, though that is certainly not my intention behind the concepts. But I'm having trouble with this because I find I do much better with my photography chancing upon something rather than setting it up. Maybe I don't have a good sense of layout design, I don't know. What I probably should do is get someone else to lay out the props, giving them a general idea of what I want to do, and then going to the scene and nab my shots.
That, and a horrible economy, is what's going on. I'm working on developing my business more and that has me hopping. And I'm back to work on my book, a non-fiction book, that I have been working on for years. I don't know why I even care, but I'd like to leave something useful behind, when I'm a goner.
Not sure what I'll be able to grind out with the camera with my main weapon in repair.
Maybe I should just get a lobotomy and an iPhone, watch American Idol and buy lotto tickets. Oh yeah, and pick up a six pack on the way home.
Dead.
Me friggin' main camera is only delivering grief. And just when I was sort of starting to get back into it a little. It's a Canon Power Shot SX1o IS, my second in this series. Even though this has more zoom power, I think I liked the first one better. This has been a slightly disappointing camera. I'm very disappointed in the noise I get from it on a gray day.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooloose-letrek/4398395318/
The sky is putrid. I don't have fancy software to fix it up. Nope. Just old Paint Shop Pro, for us poor saps that can't afford Photo Shop.
The repairs will be covered under factory warranty, so except for shipping, no cost to me. The cost is measured more in lost time and killing my interest in getting out for shots.
I still have a camera to shoot, but another disappointment for me. The Lumix is capable of some nice shots, but I have some issues with shake. I don't think the anti-shake mechanism works properly. No factory warranty on that one, and that's the way I got it out of the box. But I must admit, in ideal circumstances, it does make a nice sharp image.
I tried a Fujifilm S2000 for a day and was horribly disappointed. It's not a great camera and costs roughly half the price of my Power Shot. The zoom was horrible. And it brought back a very bad taste in my heart, too. My first better digital camera was a Fujifilm Finepix S5000. It was great fun for me to get away from a totally retarded Kodak Point-N-Shoot 1.3MP junk box and into a camera with some controls. I think I had a little Nikon Coolpix in between the two, but beside the low resolution, it totally lacked any controls. I liked it, though. Anyway, back to my Fujifilm. It had problems out of the box and I didn't attend to them right away. Had I, I probably would have gotten a brand new replacement. Someone in a photo forum convinced me that it was a power issue and not a camera issue...and I didn't realize that I had such a small time frame for the right remedy, a new camera. So I got on the repair train ride. It went back to the factory tw0 or three times (who's counting?) and the problem was never resolved really. I was able to get photos out of it, but at times, the camera just went bonkers on me. I don't know why they couldn't fix it properly. But oh well, right?
I was disappointed in Fuji, to say the least. So when I had one in my hand the other day, for a few hours, I was on high alert. The zoom sucked, as did the display.
No more Fujifilm for me!
And then I learned about a new model coming out next month, a HS10. Man, it has features, and a super-dooper zoom, 30X. I can't even imagine what I could have done with that much zoom, and still stay out of firing range when I drove around Detroit for photos.
Detroit. Wow, what a change in sentiment for me. I still don't want to do what I used to do, and I'm thinking of getting some professional help to aid me in understanding why I did what I did in the first place. Perhaps I have a death wish? I just watched a local film about thugs in the city, mostly drug dealings and violence as the theme. I guess when one is feeling that disadvantaged in life, the value of life is minimal. Popping someone is no big deal. There can't be any thought behind that bullet ripping through and ending a human life. Life is shit so I shit on life?
But while I was driving down the streets of Detroit, there was a lot going on behind the scenes, drug deals and violence. It wouldn't be anything for someone to pop a white boy driving where he shouldn't be driving. I've written before that I was nearly car-jacked (or worse?) twice in my travels, and nearly accosted on foot a handful of times. The first time, I was in a mixed black-Arabic neighborhood early on a Sunday morning and two guys in a car were doing their best to cut in front of me, and probably stop me. I don't think they wanted my car because it wasn't much of a car, and I don't think they wanted sex because I'm not appealing that way. Every time we got to a stop/yield sign, they tried to pass me, but I gunned it and had a goal in mind, to reach a street some blocks away that I knew was populated with security guards, guarding some new cars in storage at the Michigan State Fair grounds. I won. As soon as I hit that street, they backed off and went looking for some other action. Another time, on the other side of town, in an area known for prostitution and crack, a pick-up truck pulled up next to me and when I decided to leave, left with me. And kept leaving with me. Fortunately I was driving a V8 and s/he was in an old pick-up and I was able to hit a main street before him or her. I never looked over at the driver and would not have been surprised to see a gun pointing at me. We got onto that main street and s/he pulled in front of me. There wasn't a cop in sight! I took a hard left just in front of some oncoming traffic and escaped down a side street.
Then one day I was pulled over against the curb, watching a nun eating a sandwich outside a church, just on the border of an area called DelRay, one of the nastiest areas in the city. I noticed some movement in my rear view mirror and saw a guy creeping up along the parked cars, heading in my direction. He was about a car length away and I got the hell out of there. When I was in my car, I always had the engine running, in gear, foot on the brake, with a clear escape path.
I'm really not anxious to see how many more of these 'adventures' I can have, just to feed you guys some interesting photos. And on top of that, I feel like I'm invading people's private lives. I hate it when someone takes my photo without permission, so why would I want to do that to others?
Not so many people stop by my photo gallery anymore.
On top of that, anybody who reads my comments know how I feel about what's going on in this world now anyway. The rich, the VERY rich, are in control. They, along with corporations, have a commanding lead on the American people, and what makes matters much worse is the fact that the American people (hell, the world's people, as it isn't just happening here. It can't happen here? It is!) don't seem to care that much. I used to think Americans were a people who respected freedom and liberty, but now learn they cower in fear of 'terrorists' and fully support an undefined 'war' against a principle. Hell, this is stuff right out of the pages of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. And obviously whoever is behind all this studied that book in great detail. Doublespeak is everywhere. A 'clean air' act that pours massive pollution into the environment, for instance. Bush is on record as using a quote right out of the Orwell classic, "War is Peace."
And now, I have no idea what's going on.
It's not just in Amerika, either. It's happening all around the globe.
So here I am, at odds with the world. I have some photo projects in mind, some involving the only friends I have, action figures and figurines I have accumulated over the years. Don't worry, I have some ideas that will no doubt be plenty offensive to some people, though that is certainly not my intention behind the concepts. But I'm having trouble with this because I find I do much better with my photography chancing upon something rather than setting it up. Maybe I don't have a good sense of layout design, I don't know. What I probably should do is get someone else to lay out the props, giving them a general idea of what I want to do, and then going to the scene and nab my shots.
That, and a horrible economy, is what's going on. I'm working on developing my business more and that has me hopping. And I'm back to work on my book, a non-fiction book, that I have been working on for years. I don't know why I even care, but I'd like to leave something useful behind, when I'm a goner.
Not sure what I'll be able to grind out with the camera with my main weapon in repair.
Maybe I should just get a lobotomy and an iPhone, watch American Idol and buy lotto tickets. Oh yeah, and pick up a six pack on the way home.
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