Buddhist Marketer

Win A $25,000 Dream Trip

I’m not entering the Conde Nast Traveler $25,000 Dream Trip Contest — because the entrance form has, like 10,000 fields — but if I were, I’d enter these snaps:

Verona, Italy - November 2004

En route to London - September 2005

Leiden, Netherlands - September 2005

Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany - September 2005

Mexico City, Mexico - February 2006

St. Petersburg, Russia - April 2006

Krasnaya Ploschchad (Red Square), Moscow, Russia - April 2006

Downtown Oranjestaad, Aruba - March 2007

Canary Wharf, London - April 2007

The Seventh, Paris, France - April 2007

Reykjavik, Iceland - May 2007

–

Hmm.  It’s been too long since I took a good international trip.

Giddy Shout Out To My Girl Kath

In her work, Newbegin investigates these stories [of oftentimes politically-driven suppression] and this momentum, thus also analyzing universal conditions for being sheltered or unsheltered. Katherine Newbegin explains her choice as follows: “… set against the western idea of an affluent middle-class family driving to Disneyland, it is this stark contrast which acts as the crux of my fascination with these hotels. One of the most compelling aspects of the vacations offered to the ‘best workers’ of the Soviet regime was the element of control and monitoring which took place during the trips.”

I am guilty of having drunk the Katherine Newbegin Koolaid long, long ago, and have been a fan of her work for over a decade.  Her next solo show opens in two weeks in Berlin at galerie Open.

That’s my girl on the right!

Congratulations, Katherine, and please save a signed copy of your coffee table book for me!!

Leica’s digital SLR

A homeless man once reported to a photographer I dated many years ago that a camera lens was like a woman’s girl-parts:  it was the most important element and demanded to be cherished and respected.  Maybe also he was trying to differentiate cross-dressing cammy-ras from actual cammy-ras.  Not quite sure about his train of thought there but he concluded by noting that Leica lenses were by far the best girl-parts in the business.  The video footage of this homeless man’s knowledge-dropping struck me, not only for its poetic lunacy, but also because prior to that I’d never heard of Leica.

So Leica’s got a digital SLR and one of my favorite features of Flickr is that you can sniff around and see actual pictures that actual humans are taking with actual cammyras.  So, for example, I ama-churlish-ly shoot with a Nikon D70, a camera that the makers of comparison charts refer to as pro-sumer (professional / consumer hybrid (hybrid vigor!)) digital SLR (single lens reflex, which according to me means it has a cylindrical lens that you can put your mitts on and focus yourself and stuff).

There’s currently a pretty good deal on the Leica V-Lux-1 10 Megapixel Digital Camera at J&R Music World (rebate, free shipping), which not only shoots stills but also video (mine does not).  But do I like its work product, if you will?

I moseyed on over to Flickr and used their camera finder tool to discover actual pictures shot with this camera.  Unfortunately, the photographers’ permissions do not permit me to post the ones I liked best within my blog, but here are links to two that caught my eye:

• Sparklers, a body of water, and a duck
• Young man on a train

I’m not sure if it’s my eyeballs, but I’m not dazzled by any of the photographs.  If the most interesting photographs across all Flickr users by the Leica are less compelling to me than photos that I’ve taken with my Nikon, then that’s probably a strong signal that I should stick with my current machine.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Anyhoo this entire line of thinking is entirely academic given my impecunity and larger fish that beg a fryin’.

A photographer after my own heart

I checked out photographer Oliver Wasow’s exhibit at White Columns earlier this summer and straightaway added his “Lava Road” to my wishlist.

Now, whether or not I gravitate towards the art of individuals with whom I share lines of code is not something I’ve formally explored (though I do have the same therapist as one of my favorite photographers).  But you can imagine my delight when, while cleaning off files I’ve downloaded to my desktop, I finally got around to reading the following from Yalie photographer Dana Hoey’s interview of Wasow:

I enjoy the practice of accumulating, indexing, and categorizing things.

Color me shocked!  I had no idea that sorting and re-sorting things could be pleasurable.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sort my crayons into color-based piles now.

Worst. Week. Ever.

Blog post title written by my best friend (holla!).

The title of this photo is “Anittah’s Week 25 Levels of Freedom.”