empty signifiers

In February of this year, I began experiencing extreme pain in my jaw, as well as difficulties opening and closing it. It started slow, and I originally thought it was an ear infection. After flying home to Tennessee and back, I realized in the airport that I was randomly losing my hearing in my left ear--only to have it phase back in after ten or fifteen minutes. I was worried.

I went to a dentist, an otolaryngologist, a GP, and finally an oral surgeon, who diagnosed me with TMJ. The prescription? No solid food for a month and a half, no chewing at all, 400mg of ibuprofen every eight hours, and when I really needed it, some heavier pain medications.

All of that is tangentially related to what we're here to discuss tonight, though: Communism.

Continue reading "The redness." »

10:13 PM | Permalink

Alas, the old photo printer I'd been using, an HP Photosmart 7550, gave up the ghost yesterday in the midst of printing out wallet sizes for the commission I mentioned below. Armed with a fairly broad working knowledge of who's producing the best consumer imaging products, I went out to Best Buy and CompUSA to pick up a new photo printer.

(The joy of having disposable income.)

I vacillated between two Epsons, the R220 and the R340 (PDF warning for both links), but finally decided on the R340. If I had the inclination and the income, I would have sprung for the R800 or one of the UltraChrome enabled printers, but I am satisfied with the purchase I made. It prints borderless up to 8x14, and even on the surface of inkjet-capable CD-Rs, which might come in handy for the mix CD album cover I need to design.

Though I have no illusions as to the nature of inanimate material, I always try to treat my property with respect--I've always anthropomorphized my belongings, ever since I was little. The HP served me well, for several years, and I'm sad that it's finally done. But hopefully the Epson will serve me just as well, for just as long, or longer.

08:00 AM | Permalink

I've finished the second photographic commission I've ever undertaken, this one the graduation photographs of a coworker's daughter. I rarely pursure portraiture--I don't like the staged artificiality of most portraits I've seen, and it's simply more my nature to coax the personality out of a place or moment than to attempt to draw that mood out of a human being. There are too many cultural imperatives to act or perform in front of a camera, and it's ultimately quite disappointing to attempt a portrait that cuts through the subject's impulse to hide, to withdraw.

I'm not entirely sure I hit a genuine note with the photographs I took that weekend, but for graduation pieces they seem to work pretty well. I got the thumbs-up from the subject, which is always good, and from her mother (who pays the bills), and that's even better. What's more is the interest this job has generated among my other coworkers. I've already received three requests for estimates and price lists.

Perhaps this "side business" thing really will take off.

10:24 PM | Permalink

Ars Technica had a newspost a ways back about the traditional film manufacturers falling on hard times. While somewhat true, film isn't in any danger of disappearing--there are far too many artists, prepress operations, X-ray machines, and consumers in general who purchase film for the medium to truly disappear. Further, the arguments on the forums moved between those arguing that digital is a much better medium than film and vice versa. What I would like to comment upon is a point that lends more credence to the idea of film as a signifying medium over digital.

One of the primary draws of digital photography is the idea that the digital source file will last forever. A digital copy is after all a stream of numbers; the numbers do not change, and barring a catastrophic data loss, those numbers will never age, corrode, bend, or yellow.

It is this factor that is digital's greatest detriment.

Continue reading "Old photographs." »

05:11 PM | Permalink