So happy 2010. I like the pulpy quality of a cell-phone for this kind of picture. Sylvia and I went to a masked ball at the San Francisco Symphony, thanks to my friend Jack Vad, who engineered the sound for a CD, “Like a Passing River,” that I made with Roy Whelden years ago.
Whither now?
On the other side of the photographic spectrum, I’m happy to be home with my heavy-duty Canon 5D (Mark 1, alas,) rather than the lighter Canon G10 that I took to Australia. With a large format single-lens reflex camera, you have more of a chance of actually shooting the picture I want to shoot. Using those smaller point-and-shoot cameras is kind of like buying lottery tickets.
My old Mondo pal R. U. Sirius is editing a webzine/printzine called H+ these days. They put together a years best and worst list with a small contribution by me.
People sometimes say spring in California starts in January. A red-hot poker plant is blooming on the slope behind my house.
[I like these out-buildings with the rusty roofs. That’s pressed grape-seeds and skins in the mound.]
I still sell prints of my paintings, or try to—and my online dealer, Imagekind, featured me as an Artist of the Day one day this week. I sold about 60 prints during the years 2007 to 2008, but I did not, however, sell one single print in the year 2009. Help make this a banner year for Rucktronics, Inc., and get a print or even a greeting card so I feel like painting some more.
This one of the rare photos that I didn’t Photoshop at all. I saw this and, yeah, it was perfect. I like the color inside the pipe.
I’ve been thinking I’ll get myself a good photo printer so I can make nice big prints of my favorite pix. I’m leaning towards the Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II.
[View of Silicon Valley from St. Joseph’s Hill in the South Bay.]
Am I the only one who didn’t like the new movie Up in the Air ? It was set almost totally in the three kinds of places I least like to be: plastic offices of companies, airports/airplanes, and generic motels. Is this reality for that many people? And what about the business the main character is in: shoveling BS onto people getting fired…and not doing anything at all to keep them from killing themselves? This is a hero? Plus, the movie felt like world’s longest commercial for American Airlines. Dude!
Well, next on my list is Avatar, there’s a place near here that has the 3D tech.
In any case, reality is much better. Like playing with toy trains on an oriental rug with my grandchildren!
These days I’m going over the printouts of the current state of my novel-in-progress Jim and the Flims, correcting and revising. There really are quite a few spots I need to smooth over and rework to make the newly layered-on plot elements fit.
I’m enjoying this work a lot more than I’d expected. It’s nice to be digging into it, getting my hands on the verbiage, crafting and polishing. I’m getting the characters’ personalities straightened out. After writing so many novels, this is something I actually know how to do, like a cobbler making a shoe or a potter making a bowl. It’s soothing to do the work.