Peripatetic Eye

has a blog

[peripateticeyeblog]

The 18-40-60 rule

I heard this random quote somewhere, and it has been bouncing around my head for a few weeks. I can’t remember where I heard it, so let’s say that it was on NPR (but it was probably Facebook).

“When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you.  When you’re 40, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of you anymore.  When you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all this whole time.”

With three teenagers in the house, it’s painful to watch them twist themselves into knots about everything that they won’t remember in twenty years. And that any advice that I try to give will be unintelligible to them until they have figured it out for themselves anyway. All that I can do is look in the mirror and recognize that I’ve made it only halfway between 40 and 60 myself.

[peripateticeyeblog]

“Joe, run.”

Directed by Mark Putnam. B&W stills by Bill Moree.

[peripateticeyeblog]

The Daily

I've been reading The Daily since its launch this week, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only daily news application, instead of my usual NYTimes.com. They are really exploring the design potential that comes with a device like the iPad, and the result is very attractive. Strong use of full bleed photographs considered for both vertical and horizontal formats contributes to the generally beautiful design, the interface comes alive, and only occasionally does it look like they are trying too hard. The New York Times iPad app feels old and half-hearted in comparison. (Lufthansa's iPad app version of their inflight magazine is still the most beautifully designed iPad mag that I've seen so far.) The ads in/on The Daily caught my attention: The design of one for Virgin Atlantic looked like a standard full page ad layout in any print mag until, after a momentary page-load-pause, all of the photographs on the page started to move Harry Potter-like, in short video loops. Here is another use for my hybrid still/video productions. Another ad, for the Land Rover LR2, is designed with one main image area that becomes a YouTube imbed. Rotating through these, the whole ad feels like Land Rover's YouTube channel page. The first video that I was served was about the making of their TV commercial, which ironically I didn't get to see. The next was a charming short film about a Dad and his young son going off to explore a Canadian desert. Another great use of the kind of small Canon-based work that I do, that's a job I would have liked to have gotten. The Daily shows us where publishing is going to go. I have no doubt about that. Whether this particular execution of that idea will still be around in two or three years is another question, and that depends on their ability to write and deliver the actual news. After exploring and being delighted by The Daily, I still need to go back to NYTimes.com to find out if Hosni Mubarak is still in power this morning.

(Edit: NewsCorp created The Daily in February 2011 as an iPad-only application. It ceased operations in December 2012.)

[peripateticeyeblog]

The amazing discovery of pop music

Family snapshots: Ever since Theo came home from camp this summer with the realization that he liked something that he called ” ‘top 40 music’, I looked it up”, I have all of these songs floating in my house that I knew but never paid attention to. Song of the day: “Hey, Soul Sister”. Train? So many hits that I know from a band that I’ve never known the name of.

That’s what happens when you have a kid. For ten years, all of the music that you can sing along to are by yellow aliens or purple dinosaurs. Then your precious child transforms into a tween (which is like watching a caterpillar transform into a moth) and the unexpected consequence is that you suddenly get twelve years of pop music back in one Autumn.

[peripateticeyeblog]

Jacaranda tree across the street. These trees are suddenly completely PURPLE. Originally from South and Central America and the Caribbean, they are ubiquitous in our little seaside town.

I’ve started photographing things that are on my property. Never having owned property before, nor trees, nor a flower bed, this small plot is a whole new frontier. I never understood before how people like Hal, who have real gardens, are so connected to their land, so at home. But now I am compelled to walk around the property each day and I see important little things that I never noticed before. Last week 15 or 20 caterpillars that will be Monarch butterflies were swarming over the Milkweed flowers. Suddenly they are gone. Have they gone to become chrysalises? Or were they eaten by the seagulls and terns?

Oh, the drama.

[peripateticeyeblog]

Honors & Awards

Recently, while still in the field on a shoot, I caught myself thinking that what I was shooting would be perfect for this year's contests. I actively decided at that moment that I would no longer enter contests.

My clients still enter the Pollies and Reeds each year, and work driven by my photographs wins awards each year. That is perfectly fine. We all want our work to be seen and recognized, and I am no different.

But for the time being, I don’t want to allow myself to get caught up in thinking about how the photograph will be received before I make it, and to be taken out of the moment and break the flow of my creative process.

Right now, I want to simply concentrate on doing the best work that I can, for myself and my clients.