Drawing?

Photography On A Schedule, Photos, Thoughts May 29, 2008 – 2:17 pm

I think people consider me an artistic guy, possibly owing to my degree in art—go figure. Nevertheless, I’ve never been great at drawing. If I get some regular practice I’m not bad, so I’ve always sort of assumed that if I practiced enough, I could actually be good. And I like drawing. So I’m considering, for June, doing a drawing a day. Lord knows I’ve got enough Moleskine notebooks lying around, I’d just need—well, not need, but want—to get a couple decent pens. And I’ve got a fine scanner, so I could share my drawings here. Thoughts?

Also, I’ve kind of been itching to do more photography, which I take as a good sign. I’ve been thinking of trying film, though—getting back to basics and all that. We’ll see. Here’s a few bonus (digital) shots from this month:

ChopsticksLeafChairWalk

By Jordan
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Failblog

Photography On A Schedule, Thoughts May 23, 2008 – 1:14 pm

Yeah, this month’s project went down in flames pretty fast. While I found it beneficial for my photography, it was a little too disruptive and stressful for my life in general. I’ve had a spectacularly unproductive month, but a busy one. I’m thinking about what to do next month. Leave comments if you have any ideas, and stay tuned.

By Jordan
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May 2

Links, Photography On A Schedule, Photos May 4, 2008 – 9:56 pm

I was bad, bad, bad this weekend. But I have some photos for you from Friday. Still awful bland, but there’s actually a couple in here that I really like. Even just two days of taking photos on a regular basis has begun to reawaken the part of my brain that looks for good subjects.

9:27 a.m., Bedpost10:53 a.m., Cereal11:53 a.m., Shower12:26 p.m., Bus Stop12:18 p.m., Exit

12:25 p.m., 'I've got to stop taking photos like this.'1:47 p.m., Lines2:14 p.m., Beans3:49 p.m., Photo4:31 p.m., Sky

4:55 p.m., Cookies6:56 p.m., Shoe7:53 p.m., Sky 28:51 p.m, Birthday Girl10:08 p.m., Joe's Doll

Now if only I could get up the nerve to approach people I don’t know, ’cause it’s people photos that really turn me on. On a similar note, I came across this article tonight: Being fun. I think it contains the sort of advice that most people think is obvious to the point of stupidity but people like me really need. That sort of thing—the stupid-obvious parts of social interaction—is the stuff that’s often the hardest for me.

Hopefully this week I’ll be better about taking photos than I was this weekend. I need to get out of the house more, but that’s news to nobody.

By Jordan
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May 1

Photography On A Schedule, Photos May 2, 2008 – 1:04 am

Okay, so I was having mobile upload issues today. I don’t know. So I uploaded them all tonight. Which is preferable insofar as it gives me the chance to clean them up a bit beforehand. Here’s what I captured today:

9:04 a.m., Window9:56 a.m., Still Life With Microwave11:19 a.m., Shower Fresh Jordan11:47 a.m., Flora11:48 a.m., Self Portrait In Grill1:14 p.m., Comfortmakers2:01 p.m., Up

3:16 p.m., Wires in the Wall4:11 p.m, Door Slime4:57 p.m., Bird5:48 p.m., Roxy6:59 p.m., FRESH7:51 p.m., Captive Audience10:27 p.m., Parking Lot Tree

Some interesting wrinkles that appeared in my plan: 1) I was in the shower when one of my alarms went off. I actually didn’t hear it, even though the phone was sitting just a few feet away, but I probably wouldn’t have leapt out to take a photo anyway. I did take one immediately after emerging, though (try to guess which!). 2) I actually went to a movie tonight—Iron Man—which I don’t do especially often, and I opted to turn off the alarm during it. But I did take one immediately before it started, and one immediately after.

In practice this first day was kind of a pain in the ass. It reminded me a lot of my very first photography courses, and not just because I’m so terribly out of practice. Just like having to have a certain number of photos to show off on a certain day of class in high school, having to take a photo at a certain moment can be a little stressful. And as I predicted, some of them are pretty boring. I spent most of the day at home today, which is particularly challenging because though there are things to photograph in and around my building, I don’t see them because I’m so used to being there and, well, not seeing them. I predict that it will be easier on days when I’m out of the house. Or I may just go crazy.

I still have to come up with a better timer mechanic. Using my phone’s calendar kind of spoils the spontaneity because the phone’s main screen tells me when my next appointment is coming up.

By Jordan
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Next!

Photography On A Schedule, Photos, Thoughts, Walking April 30, 2008 – 10:59 pm

Well, that was fun. Kinda. I’m glad my month of walking is done (and so are my feet, I’m sure), but I’m proud to have walked five miles almost every day for 30 days. I think I’m marginally more fit as well. For completeness’ sake: Yesterday I walked 5.3 miles and today exactly 5.

Tomorrow I start my May project: Photography on a schedule. Roughly every hour an alarm will go off and I’ll within thirty seconds I’ll take a photo. Of what? Whatever I can find to photograph within thirty seconds. This will generate lots of boring photos, I’m sure, but if there’s one thing I know about great photographers it’s that they throw away hundreds, even thousands of shots for every one they bother to print. An interesting side-effect is that it will give you a snapshot (no pun intended) of where I am and what I’m doing fourteen times a day. Fourteen? Yeah, roughly once an hour from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Why do I keep saying “roughly”? Because I’m trying to ratchet up the randomness. The easiest thing would be to set a timer (or my $10 digital watch) to beep every hour on the hour. But then I’ll end up saying, “Oh, it’s just about X:00, almost time to take a picture” and start looking around for things to photograph. If, however, I make it random—get an alarm to go off near, but a random number of minutes before or after, the hour—I won’t know when it’s coming. I won’t be able to prepare for it and spontanaety, ironically, will be compulsory.

This turns out to be a bit technically tricky. I’ve been putting off coming up with a real solution to the “random timer” problem—it will probably involve writing a script that emails my phone at randomly-generated times—but for tomorrow I’ve just rolled some dice and manually entered 14 calendar items into my phone. This is less than ideal for a variety of reasons that are uniformly boring, so just take my word for it. As I’ve mentioned before, whenever possible I’ll be uploading photos directly from my phone to this web site (which involves some dreary memory card-swapping between phone and camera), so put on your voyeur hats and check back often.

As for April, sometimes soon I’ll put together a postmortem post with charts and graphs and stuff showing what I did and did not accomplish. I’m also brainstorming other ways to keep getting exercise without boring myself to death, so expect to hear about that. I can tell you’re on the edges of your seats.

By Jordan
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Nearing the end

Thoughts, Walking April 28, 2008 – 6:11 pm

Look at me, once again a lousy blogger.

This weekend myself, Roxy and our friend Tom went to Chicago for our friend Cara’s birthday party. It was a lot of fun, but I was bad and didn’t walk on Saturday in favor of sleeping in after a day of driving long distances, getting poured on by the sky, and partying. It is what it is. I did, however, manage to squeeze in 5.4 miles on Friday despite having absolutely no time for it, and 4.7 miles last night. It wasn’t a full five miles because I just guestimated on the route and didn’t check when I got home to make sure it was a full five. But it’s close enough for me.

Has it truly been five days since I last posted? Here’s the rest of those days’ figures: 5.4 miles on Wednesday, 6.4 miles on Thursday, and more or less exactly 5 miles today. I’m going to update the mile counter over on the left once I’m done posting this.

There are only two days left in this month and I’m glad. Frankly, the past week or so I’ve been pretty sick of walking. Iowa City is pretty but there’s not a lot of variety in the landscape, at least not within walking distance of my house. For May I’ve essentially settled on Photography On A Schedule for my project. I haven’t quite worked out the details yet, but basically I’ll be setting some sort of timer to go off every hour or so (ideally there would be a degree of randomness to this) from some time in the morning to some time at night, whereupon I’ll be compelled to take a photograph within, say, 30 seconds. When I’m able I’ll send the photo to this blog immediately, but when it’s not convenient I’ll save them until it is, or til the end of the day.

That’s the basic idea. I may tweak the parameters as the month goes by. But I’m pretty excited about it overall.

So what about walking? Well, I’m hoping to still walk a lot. It’s just good exercise. But I’m not going to feel compelled to do it every single day. I’ll keep walking to my favorite places—downtown to Fair Grounds or over to the Java House—instead of taking the bus or the car, when it’s practical at least, but for exercise I’m hoping to introduce some more variety. More on that later, I guess.

By Jordan
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The Optimism Tax

Links, Thoughts, Walking April 22, 2008 – 10:47 pm

Today I walked 5.2 miles and yesterday 5.7. Not much to report, except I ran into a friend from college yesterday. The weather has been completely amazing this week. It’s great to be able to walk in short sleeves. I’d like to buy a good pair of walking sandals, though—my feet demand to breathe.

I came across an article, or perhaps anecdote is more accurate, about what the author calls the Optimism Tax. I wear my optimism like a badge, and the anecdote made me smile. It’s short—read it and maybe you’ll think about it the next time you expect the worst.

By Jordan
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A few photos

Photos, Walking April 20, 2008 – 10:15 pm

My weekend wasn’t that busy, but I feel like it was. I got out of my bubble and spent some time with friends, and got some good walking in. Today was utterly gorgeous. Yesterday was very nice as well. Friday, though, I was bad, very bad, and did not walk but a few blocks. It was rainy out, that’s my excuse. I walked essentially the same route Saturday and today, though: 6.8 miles on each. It was nice.

I’ve been promising you photos. I haven’t got many, but I might as well post a few I’m fond of. They’re by no means the pinnacle of my art, but I hope you enjoy them anyway. As always, click to enlarge.

Rainy highwayFashionable AcresSign verticalPost boxSecurity

I’ve been thinking more about my photography on a schedule idea and still think it might be a fun project for May. I haven’t gotten much feedback about it, so now’s your chance.

By Jordan
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Photography on a schedule

Photos, Thoughts April 17, 2008 – 2:46 pm

An idea just popped into my head regarding photography. I’ve been kind of having a photography block for, well, longer than I’d like to admit. Much of this is related to habit, i.e. I haven’t made a habit of going out and photographing things. So here’s an idea, or the germ of an idea at least: Take photographs on a schedule. Carry a camera everywhere (which I’ve been trying to do anyway) and set my watch or phone to go off at an arbitrary interval throughout the day and at when it does stop whatever I’m doing and take a picture of something. It could be anything, but I’d have to do it within, say, thirty seconds (thus forcing myself to take a picture without wandering around for half an hour looking for “inspiration”).

I’m not certain about this idea yet, but on the surface it seems like it could be positive. The biggest problem I foresee so far is that it would be disruptive in obvious and non-obvious ways. Consider: Driving, watching a movie at a theatre, carrying on a conversation, etc., etc. An interesting side-effect of my absurdly connected lifestyle, however, is that I could, with some fussing, get photos online almost instantly, though I might be tempted to eschew that when it would be additionally disruptive.

So. Thoughts?

By Jordan
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Bring on the weekend

Links, Thoughts, Walking April 17, 2008 – 1:31 pm

Well. Monday I did a stupid and didn’t realize until the next morning that I had only walked four miles. So that’s a four-mile day. But on Tuesday I walked all over downtown—sort of trying to break up my routine—for a total of about 6.8 miles, and yesterday I did 5.5. I’ve done three today and will probably do another three on the way home.

Roxy sent me an interesting article today called How to Overcome Apathy (If You Can Be Bothered…), not because I’m apathetic—though I certainly have my moments—but because it has this to say about goals:

The time spent working on a goal isn’t wasted, even if you never reach the goal. This is because the whole point of setting a goal is to connect you with what you desire. Actually finishing the marathon, earning a million dollars or starting your own business are less important.

I have goals that aren’t finished today. I might achieve them in the future. I might not. That doesn’t matter. What really matters is that my goals fill me with enthusiasm right now. Even if I never reach the end, thinking about my goals makes me enthusiastic about life. That’s the point.

So, if you give up on a goal midway, that isn’t a failure. The goal still served it’s purpose. It made you enthusiastic at one time. When it can’t do that anymore, you’re probably better off finding a better goal.

Another friend told me much the same thing the other day, even citing the sunk cost fallacy as the article does. I already know most of this on some level, but being reminded of it is particularly reassuring.

The rest of the article is worth a read, especially if you’re feeling apathetic today.

By Jordan
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