Another picture made explore:
I had a bad car accident last Sunday night. I am better, but I feel like a rib is broken. My energy is coming back but it was scary. We spun around a few times and hit the wall and ended perpendicular in the middle lane. I went via EMS to the emergency room and had 9 Xrays. The insurance company wants to settle now but I will wait until I have the bills. I may also consult a lawyer and seek a settlement. I was a passenger in the car that was hit by another driver who was at fault.
This is a rather odd amalgam or sources. I used a Kiwi Smoothie photo from Miwa’s Note in Tokyo, lights from a video installation on Congress Avenue in Austin, my video of Zurich, SBB, a Basel streetcar in Dornach-Arlesheim, the train line to Luzern, shots above the Boden See in Germany, and the ocean at Den Haag.
Tuesday my Ricoh R8 Camera arrived from Adorama in New York. I am very pleased with it. It is mainly a point and shoot but has easy access to change exposure compensation, white balance, and ISO. It is about the size of a cellphone and so much fun to use. It is the perfect road warrior street photography camera.
I like the way it captures light and shadows and the overall clarity of the image. It does not do well in low light. In bright to average light about -0.3 through -2 exposure compensation is needed to avoid blown-out highlights. I got good results in the early morning and especially at dusk. But if you like to take artistic, interesting shots it does not disappoint!
I have been pleased a number of my photos and the Shinjuku and Luzern videos were featured on the Flickr Explore page. This is one of the recent photos:
I finally uploaded my January 2008 Canon HV20 HD Europe footage. Tonight I put together a Luzern video. I took the train from Wetzikon to Zurich and then to Luzern to shoot for about 90 minutes. After non-stop walking and setting up the camera I had no lunch and returned to Zurich and Wetzikon for rehearsal that afternoon and the performance in the evening. It was quite a day.
This video so far has made #58 on Explore in Flickr. I am pleased with it.
I put together a video combining West Texas, Chicago, a homeless man from Shinjuku, and a short electronic score. It is 88 seconds so it can fit on the flickr website. Although flickr has the time limit, they retain better video quality than YouTube.
I am back from Rochester, Ithaca, and Durham NY in the Northern Catskills. I had a nice time with the MacLean’s and also was able to see my friend Richard Carlson and his wife in Ithaca for dinner. Ithaca holds no charms for me, but I would love to have a place on the eastern side of Seneca Lake. It is a magical place with a special quality of light.
I did find where Aubrey Tobin lives..I think…but there was no sign of anyone:
It is very secluded, overgrown, and covered with tall grass. It is not easy to penetrate the property. The writing on the mailbox is the same as that of the letters I received. I walked around and found a doublewide up on a hill behind a very old farm house:
The Town of Durham was settled around 1784 and has many old houses. Highway 145 is an old trail from the NYC metro area north, past curative baths in various cites and into the Mohawk Valley. I enjoyed the drive. I was nervous, expectant, unsure what I would find. It appeared a car had been on the driveway in the past couple days, the mailbox was empty but had bear paw marks on the top, and fresh-cut wood was in an outbuilding close to the end of the driveway. But someone would have to park a car and walk past the old farmhouse, up the grass covered hill with no driveway, no path. It takes effort to go to the doublewide. Perhaps my father is house-riden, people come and bring him things. Or perhaps he knew I wanted to come by sometime in early July and decided to be elsewhere. I may never know.
I do understand how this secluded location would make one less accustomed to people, to responsibility. He may have gotten scared, ran off, or was simply avoiding contact with me, assuming I would tour with the Austin Eurythmy Ensemble in the fall and perform in Copake, NY. But the tour is cancelled, it is expensive to fly 1800 miles one way, and I spent $90 on gas driving to see him. It was the chance to meet for the foreseeable future..
I will send a letter and a picture. I have not received anything in 2 months. I may never hear anything. But after visiting this place I am content with things as they stand.
I continue to enjoy the new lens I got just a week ago. I ran out of battery power this evening just when I was getting started, but I did manage to take a few decent shots. Nancy Schiesari thinks I should apply for the MFA film program at UT Austin. If I were 15 years younger I very well might. But there are jobs and a female life partner to be found. I am applying for an exciting job in LA that would involve the high school for the arts. I will keep you posted. In the meantime I am editing the Tokyo film and am thusfar pleased the the Japanese translator. Below you see a photo from tonight with lots of “bokeh”, a Japanese term for clarity in one part of the frame and diffusion in the rest.
