Archive for June, 2010

I’m writing a lot this week, so I’m desperate for photos. Here’s one of my son’s GeoTrax train system.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Film: Kodot Verichrome
Flash: Off

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Film: Kodot Verichrome
Flash: Off

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

Most days I do my writing in the family room half of our basement. (My office occupies the other half of the large room.) And this is my typical view: the iPad, it’s Bluetooth keyboard (optional), and one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies playing on our tragically undersized TV.

Edited in Live FX.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

Yeah, this one’ll end up costing me about $10k.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

To a 7-year-old kid in 1977, the Milennium Falcon was a legend before I even set eyes on her in docking bay 94. Just hearing space cowboy/ smuggler/scoundrel Han Solo describe the ship was enough for me. The opening sequences of Star Wars portrayed a menacing view of space, a place where every move was controlled by an evil Empire. But when the Falcon blasted off from Mos Eisley spaceport, space was suddenly marked by adventure and freedom. This is the actual model used in that sequence and the entire original trilogy. And that, in a word, is awesome.

Edited in TiltShiftGen.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

Working on the novel this week, I find that I’m at the point in the story where I am layering details, and meanings, into more of the narrative. I don’t know if any reader can ever catch all of it, nor if I can even remember it, but the depth of detail is certainly creating a richer fictional world.

Shot in Hipstamatic with the RoboGlitter lens and Ina’s 1969 film, layered in BlendCam.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

This is the final entry in my examination of the spirit of Alabama as embodied at the northernmost welcome center in the state. As we learned yesterday, Alabamians have a mixed legacy with regard to intellect. On one hand, we designed and built the rockets that sent men to the moon. On the other, we don’t always come off as the brightest lot when it comes to little things like grammar.

However, no matter how dumb we may seem, we always assume others are even less intelligent. How else to explain the labeling of this receptacle? Clearly some employee of the highway department believed anyone coming from the North (and by North, I mean from Tennessee up) would be too stupid to recognize this as a trash can.

Maybe we should change the state motto to: “Alabama. We dare defend our rights, because we may be dumb, but not as dumb as you.”

App: Lo-Mob with Photocard 3 filter.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

This is the hand dryer in the restroom of the I-65 Welcome Center at the northern end of the state. Yes, the same rest area that greets visitors with a boastful reminder that Alabamians conquered the engineering challenges necessary to launch men to the moon then presents them with this stunning bit of typography. I suppose a printed and laminated sign on the wall was too much to ask, which means an actual applied decal was right out. Nope, scrawling the instructions on there with a Sharpie and poor grammar should suffice.

Recapping, it IS rocket science, but it’s not literature… Or graphic design… Or grammar… Or even punctuation.

App: Lo-Mob with photocard 3 filter.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics

When you stop at the Alabama welcome center on I-65 (the one with the Saturn rocket that I mentioned in the previous post,) you’ll notice this concrete marker near the entrance to the building. “We Dare Defend Our Rights” is the state motto of Alabama. It was chosen to “interpret the spirit of our peoples in a terse and energetic sentence.” Were we New Jersey, perhaps it would have ended up: “We got rights. You got a problem with that?”

The cynic in me says the rights we dare defend would be the rights to own other human beings and oppress people because of their heritage and skin color. However, the history buff in me knows the truth is more complex, that we dare defend our constitutional rights to sovereignty and secession at such times as the union is no longer beneficial to our mutual purposes. Unfortunately, we’ve historically muddled those rights with an unenlightened view on human rights. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So let’s recap. As you enter Alabama from, appropriately enough, the North, you are told in short order that we are willing to fight for our rights and that you should think twice before testing us on it, because we’ll launch your butt to the moon if you cross us.

Edited in Lo-Mob using Photocard 3 filter.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Wannabe Pics