At the Park

 

I shot these pictures in what felt like a Chicago song...Except that it was Sunday...and not the fourth of July...but it was at the park.

Jessica...one quarter century and counting.

Although it is a bit belated, here are some of the pictures of those near and dear to us that made it out a few weeks back for Jess' birthday shindig. I think you'll find that the final picture does a phenomenally better job of closing out the night than anything I could ever wright. So with that, Happy Birthday Jessica.

Long Exposures

The theme of my last post was black and white photography. The pictures in this post were taken with even less available light. The obvious answer to taking these pictures would be to lock down my aperture to 1.8 and crank the ISO to 1600.

Get Hitched

My good friend and colleague, David Hastings, will be showcasing his videography at the "Get Hitched" wedding show to be held at the Plains Art Museum Tuesday, November 9th. For more information you can visit www.gethitchednd.com or David's Blog. If you're in the area, need a videographer for your upcoming nuptials, or just really like shopping for wedding vendors...stop on by.

Jed and Joe...Concentrated Sex.

I was thinking to myself, I really shouldn't do two posts in a row about art.  Then I figured that no one really reads this and I shouldn't dictate my posts according to my un-readers' opinions. So today's post is less a discussion about art and more a showcase of the true essence of what art is.

Art for Art's Sake.

    "Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, ''l'art pour l'art'', and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function. This definition, pulled from Wikipedia, is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. The thing that brought it to the forefront of my brain wanderings was an episode from eleventh series of Top Gear. The episode was featuring the Alfa Romeo 8c (pictured below).

The connection between this particular car and "Art for Art's Sake" comes from a call Jeremy Clarkson had from a curator of the Tate gallery. He stated that a car can never be art because "true" art can have no purpose outside of itself. Within the show Jeremy concluded that this particular car didn't perform very well and was hopelessly impractical. Because of this it was good at looking good and nothing else. This got me thinking. I've finally figured out the reason for people that are famous but really have nothing to contribute to society. The likes of Paris Hilton,  Joseph Scallon, and any and all fashion models. They don't create anything, they don't contribute to society, and they basically only fulfill the purpose of being nice to look at. If I gave off the wrong impression with that I apologize. I like art, and that is what they are. They give us all something nice to look at. I know what some of you are thinking. Paris Hilton isn't art, she's hideous. But let me ask you this. Do you like the way that all art looks? I don't really like most of Pablo Picasso's works but you'd be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't think his works are art.  On that note, the only thing left to do is ask if I can hang one of these people on my wall. Anyone?

New Blog, Same Infrequency.

Hello and welcome to Blog 2.0. The website hasn't changed but the blogging service has. The fact that I didn't want to pay Steve Jobs way too much money every year deterred me from signing up for mobile me. This caused numerous issues trying to add comments or an rss feed. In addition to interactivity, the new blogging service, blogger, has a much easier posting interface which should, in theory, improve my posting frequency. If this isn't the case at least there will be functioning comments so that you, the reader, can keep me accountable. 

With that in mind, this concludes blog 2.0 - post one. But for good measure...here's a few of my latest pictures of my nephew.