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How funny. I was editing and tweaking this picture just as "The Lighthouse" by David Byrne and Brian Eno came up on my playlist.

I love the rays like this from the sun. Every time I see them I feel privileged to have been in the right spot at the right time to see something so moving.

You can see a brighter line along the horizon above the water. That's an artifact of the tweaking I did in Photoshop. I'm far from perfect at this yet.


Ludington Harbor at Dusk from the Deck of the SS Badger

© Stormdog 2010


I was talking to a friend about my Photoshop workflow and how I get the look of my pictures. I asked whether they look realistic to him, or whether they seem overprocessed. He told me that they look "hyper-real", but in a good way. I'm not quite sure what look I'm looking for or evolving to, but I guess that's a good start. Do you think my photos look natural or artificial? Why?

I'm going to visit my grandparents after work tomorrow. Yay!

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Thanks to jojomojo for sharing a link to more Depression era color photographs. These are all amazing. I particularly like the one of a shepherd on a horse with his dog looking up at him. But the one that just blew me away was the last one, of a worker at a carbon black plant in Texas.

Carbon black is produced from 'sour' gas that's a byproduct of petrochemical production; gas with a lot of particulate matter content. It's burned off to produce a nearly elementally pure carbon powder that's used in tires, rubber and plastic goods, and many other things.

I look at this picture and try to imagine what this plant was like. What this man was working with before posing for this picture. How soot and grime was caked and annealed onto his face like a stone mask. This is one of the most powerful portraits I've ever seen.

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What I feel is my first foray into actual cooking turned out pretty mediocre. I'm eating a bowl of it now, and it's fairly bland, as Posi told me it would be. As a food, in itself, it's not very exciting at all. But that's ok. I'm still proud of myself for going out to the store, buying veggies and beans, and chopping everything all up and putting it together. That was a first, and I'll get better from here, I'm sure.

I have rather a lot of this stuff. I'll have to get some Tupperware soon to keep leftovers. I think I'll have food for two or three days worth of lunches and dinners out of this pot o' stuff, and for only $5.71 plus tax. That's pretty decent.

I'm keeping a spreadsheet to figure out how much I'm spending on food and average costs per meal and where I can buy things most cheaply. That should come together better once I've been living down here longer. I've been in and out a lot lately and haven't tracked things as well as I might have.