God's Country
I don't often use that sort of expression, but if any place I've been deserves that title, then Southern Utah should be it. Here are a few pictures to get your proverbial juices flowing. If you want to see more I've put together a small
web gallery (haven't had time to do too much retouching or correction). These were all snapshots taken with the Canon s400. The more serious work has to be processed and scanned, but I will share the best of those at a later date, either here or at
futurballa.com.
The wife and I drove from San Jose to Reno to see family on day one and then drove on to Salt Lake City.
Temple Square
Not much to do there on a Sunday, but we had a nice dinner and a pleasant walk around downtown and Temple Square.
From there we drove through Provo and rural Utah to Torrey. A charming town with a couple of restaurants that would be at home in any major city. I'd especially recommend the Diablo Cafe, which I'd categorize as Southwest Fusion. We stayed at a charming lodge overlooking Capitol Reef.
This was our view
Mule Deer abounded
Capitol Reef is named as such because it reminded the early settlers of a reef in the ocean that blocked the way, and the dome of the major feature was reminiscent of the Capitol Dome in Washington.
Early morning
We drove over the Escalante
A stop at Kodachrome National Park. And yes, it did have nice bright colors.
Kodachrome (actually shot with Ektachrome)
Then on to Bryce Canyon. The canyon itself is a breathtaking site. Rugged red rock, awe inspiring vistas, stomach churning ravines, and geological formations called Hoodoos. Sadly, the lodgings in Bryce were not up to snuff.
Hoodoo, you do
More hoodoos at the aptly named Fairyland Canyon
We spent our last two days in the town of Springdale, just outside Zion National Park. The
Driftwood Lodge, where we stayed, sports a fine Photographic Gallery, featuring the work of David Pettit, of which I purchased a small print.
View from our porch
Zion and Springdale offer free shuttles through the town and park, which limits traffic and are very efficient, running about every 10 minutes. Springdale has a hip vibe and we found a couple of excellent restaurants. The Bit and Spur offers upscale Mexican and Southwest cuisine, and Pentimento (located at the Driftwood) had a pretty nice rack of lamb that I tried.
I also recommend the River Walk that runs an easy mile along (of all things) the Virgin River and ends at the entrance to the Narrows.
The Narrows
From there we headed home, which was a fairly gruelling day, driving through such garden spots as Barstow and Bakersfield.
Zion National Park
I'm Baaaack
And I promise you, as soon as I've sorted some pictures out and caught up on email, I'll have a complete trip report with pictures. Check back.
Mahalo
Busman's Holiday
I'll be taking a short hiatus next week for a bit of well deserved vacation. Promise to come back with a refreshed perspective, a sunny attitude and lots of pictures. In the interim, may I direct you to the blogrolls on my right, where you can find the best in culture and politics that the blogosphere has to offer.
Be seeing you!
Breakfast of Champions
Writing in
In These Times, the iconic author, Kurt Vonnegut shares 81 years worth of wisdom in a wide ranging essay on the state of America and the world. In his curmudgeonly voice Vonnegut talks the kind of sense that is all too often lacking in political discourse.
Read
Cold Turkey.
All Your Digital Photography Needs
Why do you come to Futurballa?
The answer for that is usually I searched for something totally unrelated to Futurballa Blog and stumbled on to this pointless blog. I was checking my referrer logs and this guy linked to me. Or, I went to college with Rick and feel obligated to look in once a day.
But, if you are the one who stops in here for my perceptive takes on photography, to see my photo blog postings, to link through to my
other site, or to find out what is hot and new in the world of digital photography. Have I got the links for you.
These are the stops I make every week to get the latest news, learn about techniques, read the forums, and generally waste some valuable time.
Digital Photography Review - DPReview is the best site to keep up on news and reviews if you are looking for gear.
Steve's Digicams - Steve is the next stop after DPReview. Also a great resource.
Rob Galbraith - Rob's site is a great place for more in depth info and analysis.
The Luminous Landscape - A fantastic stop for techniques.
Norman Koren - Norman has the best tutorials around on scanning and color management.
That should keep you busy for a while.
Political Animal
Kevin Drum has a few very good posts on Bush and on Abu Ghraib and links to some
interesting commentary.
One of the writers he links to is Senator Lindsey Graham. I saw Graham on yesterday's Meet the Press, and was a bit of surprised. You may remember that Graham, while still a congressman, was a major player in the impeachment hearings and was a hard line Clinton antagonist. While still doing his best to be a good Republican soldier, Graham obviously hackled at Cheney's assertion that people should "get off of Rumsfeld's back", and seemed sincerely disturbed by the treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
All I could think watching this was, if Bush is losing the full support of this guy, things are going south really fast.
Coincidence, I think not...
Crooked Timber's Chris also saw Wender's
Wings of Desire for the first time recently. His one word review,
splendid. He doesn't want to give too much away in terms of the story, but he sums up the movie's theme with a wonderful quote from Dennis Potter.
I can celebrate life. Below my window there's an apple tree in blossom. It's white. And looking at it - instead of saying, 'Oh, that's a nice blossom' - now, looking at it through the window, I see the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous. If you see the present tense - boy, do you see it. And boy, do you celebrate it.
My original post can be found
here.
The Cathode Ray Mission
A New Look at Copyright
I spent a part of the morning today listening to a presentation by Stanford Law Professor and blogger,
Lawrence Lessig. Mr. Lessig was promoting his
Creative Commons Project, which is a new way to look at copyright and licensing of artistic product. Of course, as someone involved in both software used by creative professionals and as a photographer, I was very interested in what he had to say.
If I may attempt to summarize his thesis, and I hope do it a bit of justice... Lessig makes the point that copyright law derives from 18th century technology, and as written, causes a lot of problems with 21st century technology. Since the 1980s it has been assumed that copyright is granted upon time of creation. I.e., hit SAVE and it is your property. The onus is on the person seeking to use your material to seek permission from the artist. But what if the artist would like to share their works, but set reasonable limits. Copyright law does not provide for a method for the artist to do that up front.
That is where Creative Commons comes in. The artist simply goes to CreativeCommons.org and makes some choices on a web form. Such as, does he want attribution, is he sharing for non-commercial purposes only, are derivative works to be bound by the same contract? And voila, 3 documents are generated. A human readable license agreement, one in legalese, and a machine readable document.
The goal is that at some point using metadata that digital creations will be able to link back to the license, and creative persons will be able to see to what extent they can use or repurpose artwork created by other artists.
"All creativity is based on the past," says Lessig. And he hopes to remove the intermediary where no intermediary is necessary between creative individuals, and hopefully foster an explosion of creativity.
He doesn't seek to replace copyright, but instead to offer a method to "opt in" to a more open system. I'd be interested to hear from those of you who are creative types yourself, and from my creatively legal friends as well.
Stuff an Nonsense
This is a very disturbing use of Flash. [via Lileks]
Hi, I'm Rick and I'm a noisaoholic. Pretty much the whole day in my office, either KFOG, Air America Radio, or iTunes is playing. In the car it's KFOG (again), a Giants game, NPR or I'll surf talk radio to get pissed off.
What I'm reading: Neil Gaimon's
Stardust
A grownup fairy tale about a boy looking for a fallen star.
On the shelf:
The Triplets of Belleville just arrived from Netflix and is slated for this weekend's viewing.
If you haven't been over to
Futurballa Photography lately, be sure to check out the new look.
Today's Suggested Viewing
The German film director
Wim Wenders can be a pretty frustrating guy as an artist. Some of his work is borderline schlock, and he has had his flirtations with Hollywood fame, but at his best he is a visual poet. In his best films, Wenders has a slow, languid style of filmmaking. He concentrates on the visual, on the rhythms of the scene. Plot takes a back seat, but he manages not to be boring.
Arguably his finest work was 1987's
Wings of Desire. This movie works on so many levels, a love story (That was unfortunately remade with Nick Cage), as an essay on Berlin before the fall of the wall, as a meditation on the secret lives of ordinary people, and as an allegorical tale about an Angel longing to touch and be touched.
Oh, and watch for Peter Falk. I often forget what a fine actor he is.
Point Counterpoint
If you are looking for a remedy to RNC spinpoints and the So Called Liberal Media, former conservative hitman David Brock has started a site for just that purpose. You might call it "
Fox in the henhouse watch".
Media Matters for America
I'll be your mirror
There has been a major revamp of Futurballa Photography. It's a whole new look. Check it out.
Futurballa.com
Barfly
I pass this place quite often on my way to lunch, but never go in. The Caravan sits conveniently next to the Greyhound station. It's downtown San Jose before the tech boom. An oasis for barflies and bums in a high tech desert.
There was a time that I would have ventured in and pulled up a barstool. But now I walk by and take a picture.
The Caravan
Ulla, Dance
Nicole Kidman will be answering the phones, "Bialystock and Bloom" when she picks up the mantle (not to mention the blonde wig) of Ulla, in the film version of Mel Brooks' Broadway musical.
"Last night a star was born on Broadway - the lovely Miss Ulla
Inga Hansen Bensen Yonsen Tallen-Hallen Svaden-Svanson.
We predict that her name will soon be up in lights. If they can find enough bulbs."
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick are slated to reprise their stage rolls and word is that Will Ferrell will be taking on the role of Franz Liebkind.
Here.
God of Last Night
Aaron Haspel's
satirical take on About Last Night is almost spot on. However his title was missing one necessary little touch, if you want to totally get that Teachout style he so aptly parodies.
It should have read
AH: Administrivia.
Here is Terry Teachout's good natured
response.
Hot Enough For You?
It's been a few days of scorching weather this week in Northern California, but today is supposed to be cooler. These kids had the right idea.
You Will Watch This Space
It seems to be a trend, but many of my favorite bloggers and friends are too busy with their dayjobs to post at the moment. Alas, I too must say stay tuned.
Combustibles
Had a very entertaining DVD watching day yesterday including some worthy recommendations to pass on.
School of Rock... Jack Black doing a pretty good
Angus Young impersonation in this Sister Act for heavy metal fans. Light weight fare, certainly no
This is Spinal Tap, but good innocent fun.
The Searchers... Following my comments earlier on John Ford and
Terry Teachout's appreciation of Ford's "painter's eye", I had to return to the greatest western every made. This is a multilayered film about racism and obsession. There are all sorts of unanswered questions that take on meaning with each repeated viewing. Like the tension in the early parts of the film between John Wayne, his brother, and his brother's wife. Could Natalie Wood's character be the biological daughter of Wayne? Had never thought of that possibility before, but it struck me last night that might be the case. Would certainly add another layer to the fact that Wayne is ready to kill the girl after she has become the wife of the Indian war chief, Scar.
Finally, I ended my triple feature with Robert Aldrich's,
Kiss Me Deadly... The Mickey Spillane classic starring Ralph Meeker in the role of Mike Hammer, with a very young Cloris Leachman (Blucher... neigh) as the blonde who sets the story in motion when Hammer picks her up on the road. The film contains the infamous suitcase full of ?????(could we say, combustibles?) that has been paid homage to in Alex Cox's
Repo Man and Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction.
Next up...
Evil Dead II
