View allAll Photos Tagged technotes
This photo is here as a reference to the apparant tipping of the Caffe Pergolesi the the '89 quake:
Band shell on the beach in Santa Cruz after the quake.
Note how the piilings have driven up through the stage platform in the center and on the left side (behind the truss). This is evidence of the unusual up-down movement of the earth, also found in the damage of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.
If the Pergolesi building was out of plumb after the quake- as the photo seems to indicate- it may have been thrown up abit as a unit, and came down tilted..
Photo by Judy Foreman.
Failure isn't failure until you give up and stop trying. #Repost @technotestv with @repostapp. ・・・ Persevere and get it done. Give us YOUR words of wisdom and don't forget to #technotesquotes #technotes #technotestv #technotesquotes #wordsofwisdom #liveproduction #churchtech #theatrelife #foh #roadie #audiotech #lightingtech #lightingnerds #video #quote #learntech #livesound #churchproduction #audioengineer #audioengineering #HOWproduction
Page 3 of 3-
The trunk of the cell phone tower.
People have discovered the artificial tree and exposed some of the wire base for the plastic branches. An early cell phone tree on Mars could look just like this, but surrounded with barren earth.
Christopher McKay , planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, was featured in the PBS program mentioned on the sketch page, above.
I just sent word about these pages to Ames, thinking he would get a kick out of them.
( I also begged Ames to tell me that the Mars station painting with the trees is a Nasa image, free of copywrite. I'd love to put it in here instead of the sketch. )
Next is a single page on a new subject.
Pardon the photo title. Couldn't help myself. ( The truth is, I'm not apologizing; I'm making sure you saw it. )
This is Santa Cruz today (12.20.05) during a semi-rainy afternoon. The sea is up so there are not many seals on the rock, which is right off the point and the brick lighthouse. For a view of the lighthouse, go to my other website: californiaearthlodge.tripod.com/
Go to Pictures. It's the last photo.
To the left, out of frame, is world famous Steamer Lane. (See new photo to the left here.)
The waves are pretty big; a few surfers out there, happy that they showed up *.
They don't know it, but they are entertaining a bunch of French travelers with alot of excited kids. I think it is all pretty magnifique.
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* - I used to work with surfers here in custom painting. When they arrived at work in the morning they had already had their day. One would hear them murmuring about the early weather and waves. At the end of the work day you would hear them talking about tomorrow. They told me you have to be good to surf in the choppy water at Steamer.
In the photo you see a wave hitting the rock. The one behind it is starting to build as it approaches the surfers. It will be 16 feet or more by then. Makes the people out there (male and female) look pretty small.
One of the many Steamer websites: www.wannasurf.com/spot/North_America/USA_California/Santa...
Design note-
I took many shots to get this one. I had the gyst of the text in mind already and had two goals to correlate the photo with the story:
1- show a wave hitting the rock so people would see why the seals would leave the rock during a storm.
2- have some white behind the seals so they would be easier to see.
Tech note-
My camera's zoom is not great so I compensated by setting the camera to the highest resolution and least compression. I got the reason from Pete: This allows you to crop in to the subject 'closer' than the zoom can reach. If a lower resolution was used, you would get a rough, 'pixelated' image because you would be enlarging pixels to get a bigger picture. Given the way this photo was done, no quality was lost at all.
One can use the high resolution method to avoid using zoom altogether. Avoiding zoom is desirable when you are not using a tripod to stablize the camera. Camera movement is exaggerated when the image is telescoped; it produces a much shakier, blurred image. ( It's hard to explain why but it is true. Try it. )
Next day: I've got a way to partially explain it: if you hold a two inch stick in your hand, you can hold it very steady. This is like using the camera without the zoom. But if you hold a very long stick in your hand, the far end wobbles around all the time. This is like using a camera with the zoom. You have effectively extended where you are 'standing', say, twenty feet closer to the subject than you really are. Under those conditions, the wobbling shows alot.
This little scull sculpture was done by Ann for fun in the mid nineties. The string it hangs from goes through a rather large hole in the head.
To the right, is another photo of the kayak with the Chinese sail.
Marco and i brought Kaylah and Camille to sail at Pinto Lake when they were little. They were scared at first and tickled later. *
The photo is a still frame from video, made the hard way. The video was paused on a TV screen and the screen was photographed with a film camera. This is the print from the camera.
Direct computer methods are so easy now. These are the days.
We do get a cleaner result, now, on the computer with no use of a camera, but I do like the grainy, screen lines in the photo, here.
Lydia feels this way, too:
www.flickr.com/photos/skyvillain/2193818723/
To the left is an obsidian knife in the style of the ancients, made by chanter, Dave Evans. He did the flint knapping for a little film we made that was shown many times here on Public Access Television. Title, "Obsidian Knife".
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* - this video has a beautiful shot of Camille’s fingers, running through the water as the boat glides along.
[ don note- i do know that another sailing video has been saved by being converted from the original VHS tape to a DVD disc.
Many early tapes are preserved this way. But there are only about 10 DVD discs ** and it would take 30 or 40 to do it all. It may be too late to save all of the tapes.
The sailing video that is preserved on DVD was made- mostly by George in a little yellow kayak. It is about 25 minutes long. The title is “Moss Landing with Music”. The music is a Mozart piano sonata. Perfect.
The question here is, was the Pinto Lake Sailing video preserved to DVD. I don’t know yet... ]
The cast of the Moss Landing Video is George (camera), Marco, Kaylah, Camille and me.
The cast of the Pinto Lake video is Me (camera), Marco, Kaylah and Camille.
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** - the VHS to DVD device was a pain to use.
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Page 1 of 10-
This is the icon of the "Ideas" set. It is also a rough introduction to the first idea presented, which is about the shape of the cosmos.
On page 3, you will see a clean, gradient image of the 'Basketball Universe'.
The image you see here, however, is intended to convey the turbulent nature of the cosmos ( and to make a cool set icon ).
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( it had to be roughed up abit, because the plain version looked too much like a condom, as observed by one of my young female friends. I had to rough it up. )
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Thanks to Lydia, and then Frank, I'm finally aware of Banksy's work.
Interesting mix in this piece: he integrates existing graffiti tags, outlining the shape of the cat in white brush strokes and adding just enough black of his own to define the cat where the tags are not helping.
See this larger on Banksy's own site:
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[ For other painters -the silver strokes on the face could be on top of the black or that kind of paint might be able to bleed through the black. ]
This video shows one of my not-so-small pleasures of life: the BUNG-BUNG sound of a linen canvas, sized with rabbit skin glue. Cotton canvas doesn't tighten up like this.
It's fun to paint on linen.
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The 'hospital corners' are still loose. The staples used up to now are quarter inch- too short to reach through the extra cloth at the corners. After the nails are removed from the panel and the canvas is freed, the corners will be re-pulled and tightened up with the longer staples.
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LINK STATION-
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/33916195784/in/datepost...
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Pete's birthday is today (October 25, 2006). We went for a drive, south on Highway 1 ( in his Cadillac ! )
We were driving along a high, Big Sur, cliff and the giant Condor came up from below and flew next to us for a couple of seconds, then flew in front of the windshield about fifteen feet away, then dove off, over the water. This photo was taken from outside a half hour later but it shows the same view. It was Pete's birthday present.
© 2006 by Donald Cochrane.
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The other page on this.:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/279489263/in/photolist-...
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WHAT'S NEW- To see the newest pages, go here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/
That page is known as the "photostream".
When I send you directly to a photo (from an email) you enter the site through a side door. The photostream is the front door.
That page will tell you what's new and will also tell you where the new item has been placed in the site.
When in that page, click "Sets" in the upper right. That goes to page two of the site and gives you the cleanest display of the set icons.
FIND THINGS- On any page, type a tag word into the box on the right for all of the related pages. For example, when you type in 'Pete Cochrane', you see pages about Pete from four different sets. If you type 'food note' you'll get pages with recipes or techniques.
CAUTION-
You do have to be sure you're searching only in my site. Otherwise, you are searching 'food note' in the planet Earth ! You have to use the pop-up menu for the search window and select "doneastwest's photos".
WHAT'S NEW IN TEXT?
Finding new pictures is easy but text is trickier.
One way to find new text:
- if you are interested in a certain tag- you can check for changes. i have tagged all of the tech notes, for example.
- here is the list of tags that refer to text:
tech note, art note, design note, social note, political note, food note, science note, Flickr note, architecture note, language note.*
New text under existing photos:
- August 31, 2007- new text about a hole in the universe:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/118600906/in/set-720575...
- August 4, 2007- new text about the political side of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit":
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/64545879/
- May, 14, 2007- first work to extend and update my resume, which hasn't been worked on since the 90s. right now, the copy is in the Notes page of the 2003 Show:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/70168468/in/set-916565/
- Jan. 22, 2007- there is a new tech note on my camera here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/311375378/in/set-720575...
- Dec. 16, 2006- there is new info on a cheap solution for HDTV here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/98594629/
- Dec. 14, 2006- there is detail about the movie, "Midway" added here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/317499263/
- Oct. 23, 2006- there is new text on this 'Ideas' page...
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/118600906/in/set-720575...
... and a new photo on page 4.
- June 18, 2006- here is new text about a rhythm game to play with a baby:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/136696178/in/set-1331782/
- Ap. 6, 06- there is new political text here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/84453423/in/set-7205759...
- Mar. 16, 06- See note on work with no title:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/70168457/in/set-1021610/
- Mar. 13, 06- there is text and an address that directs you to a new Nasa photo whose status is Holy Cow:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/110547584/in/set-1132426/
- Jan. 4,06- there is important new writing here:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/73994255/in/set-1331782/
- Jan. 25, 06- refined platinum atom text:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/89460399/in/set-1132426/
- Jan. 9, 06- alot of new text and tech notes here now:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/83200223/in/set-1331782/
- Jan. 5, 06- new text under an old photo:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/66543341/in/set-1132426/
- Dec. 29, 05- new text and refs under Kelly's bike: www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/74504710/in/set-1331782/
- Dec. 16, 05- there is an interesting footnote added to the political comment in Note #1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/69794242/in/set-1223240/
- Dec. 14, 05- www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/46853206/in/set-1021610/
- Dec. 9, 05- if you saw the text yesterday when the photo came in, it has changed alot:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/71616309/in/set-1223240/
- Dec. 7, 05- www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/64051081/in/set-1036916/
- Dec. 6, 05- www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/63027932/in/set-1331782/
Tech note-
Usually you just click on a tag to get where you want. But there's another way:
Go to the photostream*. You find a little tag search window there on the right.
Type the name of the tag you want into the search window. You get a beautiful comprehensive display and the text. From there, you can click any picture and find it in its home set.
( Go, Flickr ! )
If you just click on something in a the list of tags, you don't get the nice display i'm talking about, but little photos without their text. They do, however, go home if you click them.
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* - once again, here is the photostream, with its little tag search window:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/
- actually, the tag search window is now on all Flickr pages.
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* don- maybe future need for: music note, history note.
Page 1 of 2.
This is an illustration I did for one of Hal Painter's books, though the publisher didn't use it. ( The scene it refers to may have been cut. ) I was frustrated because I wanted to get this simple idea out; now it is out.
The idyllic image comes from my grandfather's place on Lawrence Lake in Washington State, but that was not a "no" kind of place. It also comes from my dream of the ideal place to live: where your boat is just outside the house.
The illustrations were intended to look like nineteenth century engravings. So the drawings were done in ink on scratchboard.*
Tech note-
The little pier that we see here is much like the first ones we built at Lawrence Lake. We had to rebuild them a new way about four times untill we got it right. The ice on the lake was destroying them each winter.
In the successful design, the only rigid parts of the pier were the posts that held it up; the deck itself rested upon loosley mounted horizontal supports between the posts. the deck was allowed to slide or float as the posts were twisted around by the ice.
* Info on scratchboard technique:
www.thumbprintsart.com/page2.html
- you can also draw the ink lines directly on the clay surface and then cleanly scrape any part of it back to white. I'm working on clay here in order not to lose the horizontal lines which make it resemble an engraving.
The "graphic" character of most scratchboard work comes from the fact that large areas of the clay are coated with black before you start. (You can even get cheaper scratchboard that comes already black.) When you scratch into areas of black- instead of drawing with lines of black- the result is more likely to look bold, like a woodcut.
Illustration- Copyright 1980 by Donald Cochrane.
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don note oct, 2012- i came back to this after a long break and found it hard to see the pier. it's not hard to see in the original. the white border may be too much, as shown here. make the image larger.
- later- i'm not finding this. scan it again.
- ........... found it. turns out it is noticeably larger than this. these were my early days on Flickr. i didn't know how to get the photos larger. [ in addition, the new version of Flickr has larger photo displays on the page. it may not have enlarged the older photos.
Page 1 of 2.
In the Museum School we were taught to stretch a linen (flax) canvas in the traditional manner, with rabbit skin glue and white lead.
As the glue dries, the canvas shrinks so much that there is a danger that the stretcher will bend in on itself and break.* So it's touchy. The canvas has to be tacked on somewhat loose to avoid this.
If you get it right, a linen canvas is a thing of beauty. When you flick your fingers on it, it goes 'bung-bung'. That sound is music to a painter's ears: it means that the handling of paint on that surface will be heavenly.
As it happened, learning to do that correctly had broad benefits in the following years:
Stretching other things, like plastic to make a temporary window, or decorative cloth on a gallery wall, was easy and fun to do. The thought came, " I can do this because of learning to stretch a canvas." The connection was clear in those cases.
But later, unrelated activities also brought up the thought, " I can do this because of learning to stretch a canvas." This puzzled me at first.
Then came the idea that learning to do a challenging task - any challenging task- really well, may be so good for the brain and for confidence that it has broad applications and benefits. It makes alot of other things easier. By now, I feel sure it's true.
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* - this is not an issue when stretching cotton canvas. it does not shrink so dramatically.
Note the ‘eye’, mounted on the posts near the center of this photo.
This new, controllable, webcam, took the photos on the previous two pages.
I was 75 miles away, sitting home, in Santa Cruz, framing images and setting exposure with the webcam and making screenshots.
I put the previous one- "HeadMarco01.png"- in the Photographs set.
The new webcam is mounted on the north wall.
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Note to self-
Good going, Don. I needed this photo from 2010, in 2022.
I was talking to George when he mentioned a ‘webcam’ and i couldn’t remember what a webcam was.
Now i remember this, and also- in the old house- the little camera, squatting at the top of the monitor.
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Virginia- I think the red line- running along the white on the left- is going to make it.
This went up first in Facebook and had these notes added:
- ( this is a green I got from Virginia- a mix of green, white and red.
- for outlanders, the red serves to neutralize the green.
- then, the peeks we get at the red underlayment adds to that effect. )
- you can't talk ABOUT art.
- this is talking about it, in the sense that it's talking AROUND it.
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- the red is also a Virginia red- in this case a varied mix of red, orange, (white?) and green. again, the green serves to neutralize the red. the green actually peeks out of the red mix, now and then.
"Haight-Ashbury City Limits" poster on the right.
Poster made from a photograph of one of my celebrational events in San Francisco- probably in 1967.* This is not a Digger poster but it's in the spirit.
The legend is:
HAIGHT ASHBURY CITY LIMITS
Population: Subject to Change.
Elevation: Out of Sight.
February 4, 2014-
The HA poster, strangely, turned up on eBay:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/12310001253/in/set-1223240
The "You Are The News" stencil to the left of it is a Digger street marker.
See also: www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/73606007/in/set-1132426/
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The sign shown in the City Limits photo was up for a day or so. Usually things like this- which were technically illegal- lasted only an hour or less. In order to maximize the exposure, the newspapers were called as we were setting up in order to give them a chance to get a picture.
A full-size color photocopy of the original was used for the 2004 exhibition. (A color machine renders the best greys when making a one-off copy of a black and white image.)
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* The sign was set up on the lower east end of Haight Street at our calculated "gateway" to the Haight-Ashbury district. The camera faces south. (George lives within a couple of blocks of there, now.)
The photo taken at the event was a color slide which still exists.
Then this 20x16** black and white (chemical) photographic print was made from the slide by General Graphics in San Francisco.
I think there were a few posters made from this b-w print at the time but I don't have any. The poster spawned two or three spinoffs done by other people. One was a silk screen of the text of the street sign. There may be a second edition of the original this year or next.
** Actual size of the b-w chemical print is 19 13 /16 x 15 13/16 in. ; 48.1 x 37.9 CM. [ "chemical print" refers to photographs on film, as opposed to digital images.
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- [don- this stuff is in Giggles1. the text for HA City is in the G-5 Documents under 04 cofT Show. the text below the line is stored here temorarily. put it with the poster photo later. Check to see if the "You Are The News" ref in the text below the line still pertains after it is moved. ]
- [don- add here a close shot of the stencil and the poster.]
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- RE: "EXTRA STUFF"- if this page is seen out of context refers to the fact that my shows always have and open space for extra items, added in every few days- usually not paintings but other goodies. here, it's the photo poster and the street stencil.
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T 06.
SPIRAL CENTER.
As you have seen, there is no solid center column. The center is a HOLE with a spiraling handrail.
How to explain it? I think we should use pancakes (very strong pancakes).
If the tower used a central core, the pancakes would have been stacked normally, right straight up in a cylinder.
In fact, the pancakes are staggered, and coil up, as we see. Somehow, the builders knew that the coil would be strong enough to carry the steps and stabilize the tower.
This makes me think of Beauvais:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais
The way those builders found out what would work, was to have the thing fall down around their ears a couple of times.
But their motivation was to be the tallest, so they may not have been thinking too clearly.
Speaking of cathedrals, my favorites are Chartres and Notre Dame:
Chartres-
images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?c=chart...
- I love Chartres for the building and the stained glass:
www.flickr.com/photos/melvindonaldson/1356498178/
- not sure this is at Chartres but it's good:
www.midrealm.org/mkyouth/images/stnglsbird.jpg
Notre Dame-
- aerial view shows the pattern of the flying buttresses:
www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbg.cgi/Notre_Dame_Cathedr...
- this famous Paris gargoyle has been showing its contempt for humanity for about 800 years:
www.flickr.com/photos/innusa/138687495/
Medieval light science-
- this window is back at Chartres- a close-up of a fine piece taken by a Filickr member from Santa Cruz, California. Note the handling of the blues and reds:
www.flickr.com/photos/77615443@N00/64373660/
Medieval designers were working empirically with halation effects.
Halation (the word, halo is in there) is the spreading of light beyond the boundaries of each piece of glass. (The strongest halation effect is found in blue glass.)
With this effect in mind, figures- including fingers- were made long and thin, so that- with the glow effect added- the proportions of the figures would appear normal.
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At last, my final holiday mittens have been received. I knew they wouldn't necessarily fit everyone who got them (jokes!) but I wanted to do something for a lot of people for winter. Mittens seemed like they'd be especially cute to send to families, so to families they went.
I made 12 pairs of these total, until I ran out of fabric. This is the first part of the batch, in varying states of dress, plus and minus some mailed on time (!) and a couple repeat pairs. (Those snowflakes were the only design I decided was at least 75% dude-safe.) I hadn't done a nice sewing project in a while, and I hadn't used most of these materials before. May I draw your attention to the very fancy elastic wrists, supplies now available at Duane Reade.
The embroidery patterns themselves needed masterminding. I tried some iron-on ink but it wasn't happening, so I Girl Scouted a solution using some stabilizer paper I had from another thing. I didn't know what it would do, but what it turns out it does is act like tracing paper (I used a Sharpie) over your picture, and then can be trimmed and pinned onto the piece so you embroider right over. (You can see this going on with the planets piece here. Too bad for the photo -- I think that ended up being my favorite mitten.) The gamble was whether it was as water-soluble as the package claims, but boy is it ever. It leaves the thread a little starchy, but I'd do this again.
I was really pleased/relieved how much I liked the outcome. I highly recommend the sewing pattern, which turned out to be perfect. Embroidery designs courtesy the Sublime Stitching book and www.needlecrafter.com, plus futzing as always.
Blog entry is at www.ubiqkom.org/blog/?p=71
An Arduino controlled vehicle - still to be enhanced with a Bluetooth remote control (module already shown in the "parts view") - uses an L293 motor controler chip - see www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/robot/technotes/L293/L293.html
void setup()
{
pinMode(2, OUTPUT); // set the digital pins as output
pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
pinMode(6, OUTPUT);
pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
}
void motor_fwd(int offset)
{
digitalWrite(2+offset, HIGH);
digitalWrite(3+offset, LOW);
digitalWrite(4+offset, HIGH);
}
void motor_bwd(int offset)
{
digitalWrite(2+offset, HIGH);
digitalWrite(3+offset, HIGH);
digitalWrite(4+offset, LOW);
}
void loop() // run over and over again
{
motor_fwd(0);
motor_fwd(3);
delay(2000);
motor_bwd(0);
motor_bwd(3);
delay(2000);
}
... painted in Venice in 1963, decorating my bedroom 43 years later.
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Title- "Still Life with Empoli Vase".
Description- nickname- yellow painting. red-ornge glass vase with large leaf branches.
Completion date- . March, 1963.
Medium- Vinavil on prepared paper, canvas mounted.
Dimensions- 17 3/4" x 20 7/8"; 45.1 x 53.1 CM.
City- Venice, Italy.
Copyright 1983 by Donald Cochrane.
WHERE- here.
- there are many pretty good color photocopies in full size, and lower. the smaller ones were made for horizontal and vertical format photo booklets.
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- in my book, this painting is correctly framed with a flush frame that reveals all of the edges of the image. If it had been frame with the usual, overlapping frame, it would have had wood stripping added around the edge first. the idea is that the added wood becomes the part that is lapped by the standard frame- not the edges of the painting, itself.
- and i'm not just preventing the overlap of the image- i mean to SHOW the edge: how the canvas and the paint 'arrive' at the edge. this is a natural border that is a pleasure to see.
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Tech note-
- spelling of Vinavil is a guess. it was sold at the art store near the Accademia. i assume it's not around any more.
.....
- just googled it. it's an Italian company, still going.
- there is a category in the Vinivil company called 'vinyl acrylics'.
- i see only what look like medium bottles, like bottles of polymer.
- as i remember it the color was in the product. i certainly wasn't mixing pigment powders with it in Venice as we had to do at the time in the States. (there was no Liquitex, as yet. i didn't encounter Liquitex until we moved to San Francisco in 1964.
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don note- get a square-on photo in here.
Page 1 of 4.
Some of my art students from Roxbury visit the studio- an old 4th floor loft on Columbus Avenue.
Big enough to ride a bike in. Well heated with coal in a pot belly stove. The first studio that had a swing in it, and a dart board. This was awhile before Ann and I were married- maybe early 1961- and our last year before we got the painting scholarship and moved to Europe.
This was my "Fifth Year" studio:
The way that grad work was done at the Museum School was that you stopped going to school: the teacher came to your studio periodically instead.
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The Museum:
The Museum School:
www.smfa.edu/enter-the-gallery
- the scholarship: the Page Fellowship for painting.
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Re: color grinder ( when googling, they call it a grinding muller. )
www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&client=safari&am...
- what you don't see in the picture is that the flat surface of the muller is rough.
- these were the early days of modern, water-based paint with a polymer binder- what is now called acrylic.
- you bought colors in the powder state and ground them with polymer, an artist's grade white glue. The new medium had been recently invented by an artist in Boston. * we bought the polymer in five gallon metal drums. i went through several of them in Boston.
- most of us continued to work in oil paint, but a water based color was desired as well.
- i still use both, but, nowadays, i use alkyd resin instead of oil paint. ( Oddly, the new resin based paints are actually an old idea: they were used before oil, by painters such as Rembrandt. ) alkyd resin colors go under the name, Griffin, by Windsor and Newton. i don't grind my colors anymore.
- the bikes in the background had an unusual journey: made by Fiorelli in Italy, they were shipped to Cambridge, Mass where we bought them and rode them back across the river to Boston. then we took them to Italy and brought them back to Boston.
- they were beautifully balanced. you could ride straight and make turns without touching the handlebars.
* - the artist inventor got the patent in, just before a big company did.
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Coal:
The term 'clean coal' goes back as far as 1918...
atomicinsights.com/2007/03/clean-coal-history-lesson.html
… but there is no clean coal.
Even if coal was cleaned up once it was on the surface, the mining process is destructive to the land. The debris and toxins are dumped into the streams. This is to say it is a dirty business:
One of the horses at the local riding school on a horsey 'coffee' break.
TechNote:
For those who might be worried that the 4/3 sensor in Olympus and Panasonic cameras is too noisy over ISO 400... this was shot at ISO 800, f 5.6, 1/250 sec. in RAW. Processed in Photoshop CS3 and compressed to .jpg for the Internet... no grain.
Long gap in the work on this. damn.
Virginia- check out the highlight note, lower right.
( The music is Pandora- the Theloneus Monk station. )
There was some benefit from the delay. I rethought how the (Virginia) green would go in a straightforward way. I had planned to continue the green-amber-orange treatment all the way across- sort of cascading.
This is both simpler and also opening up more interplay with the red that's been waiting, to be underneath.
The lines will be red, this time, of course- the opposite of 'Var.V. 02':
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/7252684194/in/set-72157...
and
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/7269905888/in/set-72157...
This is Reginald Laubin lacing up what looks to me like the large- size tipi known as a meeting lodge. I think so because we didn't have to go up high like that to lace the front of the horse era tipi that we made in Berkeley in 1970. Nowadays, that is considered the regular size- about 18 foot in the long diameter, front to back. The larger tipi was made possible for the Indians once they had the horse. Before that they used dogs to move the tipi. The next photos are of a dog era tipi- our second- made in Santa Cruz in 1991.
Reginald Laubin and his wife, Gladys, are the authors of "The Indian Tipi".
Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
I used the 1957 edition, but there is a new one. It is a wonderful book.
There is also a DVD copy of a video movie I made called "Tipi Tech". It shows the raising of the tripod, setting the poles, placing and pegging the cover, setting smoke flaps.
It then goes into alot of detail on the design concept, making a tipi, sewing, etc. It includes some things that that came up that are not in the book.
Photo from "The Indian Tipi" is not credited.
Jan. 16, 2012-
I was planning to make a DVD copy of "Tipi Tech" soon.
Just read here, that I already did. Can't find it. Don't think it exists.
Page 1 of __.
Ann made this glorious sail after the design was proven.
That's Jeff Bickner admiring it with me.
Tag search "sailboat" for other views.
The sail for the sea trials was of blue plastic. Dan Landry * suggested it be covered with yarn telltales to see how the air passed over the surface.
The design to fit the 16 foot kayak is only 36 square feet but has easily moved the equivalent of three people and towed a fourth in another boat.
06july1- This photo was starred by a person who built a kayak called a 'Mill Creek':
www.flickr.com/photos/dwstucke/sets/72157594158123888/
His boat reminds me of one of Doug Martin's boats which was detailed in a cover article in WoodenBoat Magazine. (#48, 1982). Doug Martin designed the shape of this sail and gave me other help in a wonderfully detailed letter.
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* - sailor, Dan Landry is also the leader of the chant group.
Hennessy is currently using Marvin Gaye's image to promote their rather pedestrian product.
Did nobody mention to the rather morbid marketing team behind this rather mawkish/Mac-ish advertisement that this soul icon's life was cut tragically short when he was shot by his alcoholic father?
Also, I somehow doubt that the reference to blending in is a punctilious pun on the barbaric blending process that some of the less wonderful cognacs are subjected to.
This is another lost painting, painted again.
It's done in oil paint, to benefit from the slow drying time. The original was painted in Rome in 1962.
Title- "Geometric Still Life"- larger oil version.
Medium- oil on canvas.
Dimensions- 12" x 8 1/4"; 30.5 x 21 CM.
Completion date- June 20, 2012.
City- Santa Cruz, California.
WHERE.
Here.
_______________________________________________________________
Many THANKS TO VIRGINIA:
On April 4 of this year, Virginia said, "can we have a war of paint?"
Of the six paintings in the works since then, four are finished. That's in less than three months.
Before this, I had been struggling to finish two pieces a year; sometimes failing to manage even that.
ALL HAIL, VIRGINIA SMITH !
_______________________________________________________________
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The original painting is lost. There are three repainted versions: two in acrylic at about the original size, and this larger version in oil. I got the idea to do it because i had all that oil color mixed for the "Painting in Greys".
The oil paint is used for slow drying, as stated, but also to lend body to the image. The original was lighter, painted in layered washes with a water-based medium. The second and third replacement paintings are painted in the same way as the original, using acrylic. In this oil version, the painting is direct, with no layering.
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This photo has been squared up in such a way that it cannot be considered an archival photo.
Looking up between the canopies through the oculus. *
Note that you can see inside of the white hexayurt.
The playa photo behind the drawing is copyright 2007 by Lydia White.
Original photo:
www.flickr.com/photos/skyvillain_events/1436279863/in/set...
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With only six posts, the span between each pair is about 32 feet. The edges of the canopies may have to be protected from the wind with a border of metal tubing, as we see here:
www.flickr.com/photos/agb/241068290/
The span in the linked photo looks pretty long but there may have to be more posts than six to take off the strain.
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* - Oculus:
When Ann and I first arrived in Rome we got on our bikes at the train station and proceeded to get lost in the center of the City. We stopped by a fountain to get our bearings and looked abit to the right and there, by God, was the Pantheon.
images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historyforkids...
The distance that the dome spans inside is astonishing, even by modern standards.
A hint of the scale is, the little hole in the top is actually about 30 feet across. And the building is 2000 years old.
No, she is not a Vogue cover model.
It's Egyptian queen Nefertiti, in a museum in Berlin. The sculpture is more that 3000 years old.
Source page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefertiti
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See also:
www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.womenlargejaw.com...
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Painting tech note-
- i'd like to know what paint was used on this: there is a faint sheen on the skin and the rest has a matte surface. Egg tempera is my guess. It lasts remarkably over time.
Egg tempera paintings are bound with egg yolk.
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Played around with some longer-exposure shots while on the beach. I liked how this one came out resembling a painting.
[TechNote]: This is a five minute exposure at ISO100. Here's where I'd be curious to see how Nikon's new 12.1-megapixel FX-format CMOS sensor would have handled the same scene. It's quoted to have "extraordinarily low noise" and an incredible ISO range... I wonder if there would still be this much noise. That's the $7100.00 (Nikon D700: $3200, Nikon AF-S 14-24mm f/2,8G IF-ED: $2000, and Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2,8G IF-ED: $1900)! Okay, I suppose I could also just rent the camera, but really, that's just not as much fun. Instead, I'll ride out the recession by totally over-spending!
The third big show was postponed twice, waiting for the completion of this larger painting.
This is painted with acrylic; also india ink. It's abit over three feet wide. This gives a better feel for the size: www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/757569720/in/photostream/
Jenn likes it alot, which makes me glad.
She describes her liking of it by saying that she wants to cry or melt or lie on it.
That can't be a bad thing. Kaylah likes it too. That was special, as well, because she described it when we were out to lunch, not when she was in the studio. Camille did that once, as well, talking about this larger oil* painting when it wasn't there:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/122356838/in/set-1021610/
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Title- no title.
Description- larger painting on DW linen canvas with wide band of blue across a grey field.
- file name is 'new blue'.
Completion date- _______2010.
Medium- acrylic and india ink on canvas.
Dimensions- 32 7/16" x 37 13/16" ; 82.5 x 96.1 CM.
City- Santa Cruz, California.
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Note- this painting has the nickname, 'new blue', to distinguish it from 'big blue', which is the icon for the 2004 show. neither of these are titles. only descriptions and handy file names.
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Tech note-
* - in ref. to Camille and oil painting, in second paragraph:
- when i say oil painting in the past few years, i really mean alkyd, which is resin based. Rembrandt painted with resin based colors. oil attacks color more and alkyd- which handles the same as oil- has more luminescent color. some people like it because of faster drying. that doesn't matter to me so much. slow drying and fast drying are both handy.
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[ don- reshoot this painting and compare. in this photo, it may be lit more from the left.
- don't like the photo of the 1996 painting in the link. makes it look like a flat acrylic painting. reshoot.
- also, this photo is dim- maybe shot on the wall at coffeeT.
- the icon photo is brighter...
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/5070195895/in/album-721...
... but it looks to be lit with the lights. not great either.
Page 3 of 4 in the Lately set.
George reminded me recently that he had been going with me to computer shows like the Graphics Gatherings when he was nine. At one of these events, he was taught to use MacPaint by Bill Atkinson, the designer of MacPaint.
A friend of ours had a good technical/art job and didn't have any kids.
He noticed Geo's interest and decided he should have a Mac.
He combined his money with my Apple Developer discount. As a result, we get these wonderful photographs of the first day the Mac was in the house.
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MacPaint is the first graphics software with a lasso and a pencil and pen, etc. Photoshop stands on the shoulders of MacPaint. and how.
This is Yvette, who is seen smooching her sister in the previous photo.
At the time of this picture she was in training in paramedic work. It's now November, 2005. She is a driver of a paramedic ambulance.
Yvette is chatting with Ben who is seen again after the Yvette photos.
Note- Yvette and Noelle's last name is San Souci. The usual French spelling of the term for "no cares" or "no worries" is Sans Souci. Their grandfather changed the name- probably because Americans wanted to say all of the "s"s.
Nov. 6, '05- Yvette still works with the paramedic group but also works back at CoffeeT again. This gives her time to go back to school for nursing.
Tech note-
This photo is a still frame from video, taken before I had a digital still camera. The bad thing is image quality; the good thing is you can pick the frame you want when shooting motion. Every second you have thirty frames to choose from.
It is also good for people who want a picture taken of themselves but are too shy in front of the camera. You just put the camera in the room on a tripod and walk away from it. They sort of know it's there but they can ignore it better.
In speaking of this, i like to vary the Woody Allen joke: "I don't mind having my picture taken; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
Yvette is not one of those people. She was able to ignore me and the camera, which was being held up about eight feet high on a closed tripod for the overhead shot.
[ don- Ricker. pre-med, techis, in school he studied cellular something.
Colleen tells me that is Hickory on the left. (Correction: that is Ian Vogel. See comment below from Colleen.)
Lydia tells me that the guy in the middle is Andy.
Go here to see Colleen in dreadlocks in 2001:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/67979800/in/set-1223240/
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Tech note-
- sometimes photos get lighter as they are saved for web and stay too light when they come into Flickr, so it is an error in Photoshop, not in Flickr.
- when this happens i go back and make a special, darker image to save for web. when lightened from there, it comes out looking like the original. this is one and the photo of George with the green cup is one.
Below, see comment by skyvillain on this issue. "Levels" is a Photoshop tool in the Image menu under 'Adjustments'. The saturation adjustment is found there, too.
Photo by Stefani Peltier.
Page 1 of 6.
This is the summer location for the "Guerilla Drive-In" where you can come and see free starlit movies. You just turn at Ferell's Donuts and go down to the tracks and there it is on the right.
The big building becomes the movie screen; the audience sits on blankets and portable chairs.
I heard about it from Stacey, who now works on this project. At the first one I went to, they showed the movie on a bridge abutment by the river; the show was busted and we had to move it.
The left side of the tracks is owned by a winery that gives us permission to use it.
The Guerilla Drive-In drew the attention of the New York Times, which wrote a Technology article about this Santa Cruz goodie:
www.guerilladrivein.org/press/nytimes-040730/
The guy in the NYT photo is Wes.
Stacey (our Stacey) often does the hosting for the events.
Page 1 of 3-
The little sketch shows a possible future view of a Mars station, complete with trees. The sketch is here to lead you to the original image.
Click "MARS AS HOME" on this website page from a PBS program: www.pbs.org/exploringspace/mars/terraforming/flash.html
When i saw this image on PBS ( on Mar. 22 ), and the cypress trees in the distance, a local illusion came to mind:
I suppose cell phones might be used on the Mars station. I imagined future meetings on Mars where- before trees could survive on the planet- someone would propose that the cell phone towers going up, should look like one here in Santa Cruz. It might make people feel soothed to see trees in the landscape even if they knew they were not real.
Page 11 of 17.
This is a hexagon village with five houses and a courtyard. The entrance is on the right. The courtyard is protected with a double canopy. The edges are connected mostly to the roofs of the hexayurts, with a post out front at the entrance.
The top canopy is rendered transparent to show how the spreaders open up the cloths between the houses. This drawing was done at the Palomar, where 'kevin dude' suggested that the spreaders would have to be repeated all the way from the edge to the center hole, as indicated once here. The wind may make this a necessity but I think it would make the sewing job forbiddingly complicated.
This drawing shows a double hole or oculus, but i think it would be better to leave the lower canopy without one and just have the top opening to vent the heat between the layers.
Page 8 of 10-
Caffe Domenica's Angel Ceiling, painted by Ann in 1984.
The balustrade appears to rise up into the air where the angels are. This is a perspective illusion that Ann created by elongating the posts to an unnatural extent. It was photographed from across the room, the intended viewing angle. From that angle, the elongation disappears and the perspective seems natural.
In the next photo you will see how the illusion was created.
(Note the angel with the yo-yo in the upper right. The yo-yo string appears to be tied to the finger of the angel and there is a real string and a real, down-scaled, yo-yo hanging into the space.)
Page 4 of 4.
The top image is the MacPaint screen- a scan of the "Clip 1" logo on the cover of my image software. The scissors was drawn with the mouse. Notice all the familiar tools.
The bottom image is Photoshop- and, yes that is a photograph of the same scissors used to make the drawing in the logo. ( I like this. )
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint
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Detail-
The lower picture is a screenshot. The upper one is a photocopy of an Imagewriter printout, so we're losing some quality on that one.
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Woops. the following text has been reviewed by George. he says res is subjective and relates alot to screen size. perhaps the model set up below works only if the screen of the older black and white display and the new colors screen are the same size:
Though it doesn't look it- in both cases the resolution of the screen is 72 dpi. The pixels are about the size of a square of pepper.
The difference in quality is that the early pixels could only be black. Now they can be millions of colors or millions of shades of grey.
So, it is the advanced tonal range that creates the brilliant detail, not the pixel size on the screen. It took me a long time to understand this when the Mac started to come in colors.
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October 6, 2011-
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/6218250034/in/set-1132426/
Page 5 of 5.
For those interested in photo manipulation, this is the original, base photo for the four layer composite on the previous page (page 4 of 5). The red bird painting and my sunlit face are the dominant elements of this image.
I wanted to focus on the camera, which is hard to see at best, so I wanted my face in shadow.
So I set up the still camera where it had been for this photo ( the big camera and Mary were gone by then) and took a new photo of the scene, without me in it, for background.
Then, I took a new photo of me pretending to be fooling with the lapel mike (the wire is just a TV cord). That way, there was a reason for me to be looking down, with my face in shadow.
So, I used the background photo to cover where my face is in this image (very close to the big camera) and blanked out that area.
Then I dropped the new me into the picture.
That created a problem: I was now, the front layer of the picture and covering the tripod of the camera, when I was supposed to be behind it.
So, I put a cleaned up capture of the big camera tripod in front of me.
This took some doing. Call me crazy but I'm happy now.
See the previous page for the result.
Don and Colleen at Zachery's breakfast.
This is the Colleen of the Burning Man set.
She was in the same BM crew as George and Lydia. i have known her through George for years. We have become family to each other. That's a good thing.
( The extended family may be dispersed by modern society but .."life will find a way." * )
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* - in case it is bugging you that you can't remember where you heard, "Life will find a way", it is actor, Jeff Goldblum's, famous line in "Jurassic Park"
Tech note-
The ketchup** is resting on its side because it's a new bottle. I have a theory that it will get a bubble all along the bottle which will help get the red out. One of the waitresses there also told me that if you bang on the "57" on the bottle it helps (not the 57 on the paper label; there are three 57s around the bottle in the glass itself, above the main label.)
So now you know.
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** The reason we can't decide how to spell catsup/ketchup is because- like dungerees- it is a word from India. The original ketchup was a sort of chutney and had no tomatoes in it. Back then, Italy had no tomatoes in it either. It's hard to imagine Italians without tomatoes to keep them busy.
If the Roman Empire had tomatoes, it would still be going great guns. The soldiers’ food was not that great, back then.
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Page __.
This page may be temporary and just for me.
It is neat, though, because we get the two images, right together, with their highlights on at the same time.
I was making a top view diagram and- seeing these patterns together- it became clear that I had it wrong.
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Tech notes-
This photo is coming into Flickr early- with corresponding highlights- to help me figure out the pattern. Maybe it will lead to a clear explanation of how the outer and inner 'layers' relate to each other.
These highlighted points are the places where there is an inner ball, directly 'behind' the outer one. The rod that connects them is radial- oriented straight into the center of the part. Most of the outer balls don't line up, radially, with anything on the inside: they connect at a sharp angle to the inner parts.
The rods that connect the outer and inner 'layers', constitute a lattice, and makes the connected outer and inner layer, a truss.
The connecting lattice can be clearly seen in this older photo in the first set of the series:
www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/4030882913/in/set-72157...
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Mar. 17.
THIS PAGE IS MISPLACED.
The Speeding Up stuff will only cover the multiple cut/weld and the multiple floating touch wands.
This page is getting into the pattern and the way the pattern is positioned by finding the point in space where the balls goes before welding.
Detail of "Big Blue" painting, shows the scraped-back colors under the white 'background'.
Stacey used this image as her computer 'wallpaper' for a while. Made me feel good.
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Did you notice the quotes around the word, background? That is because the painting has no background in the sense that no area is less essential to the whole. Even the edges are part of the painting. After all, that is signifigant: how the color and the canvas itself looks as it arrives at the edge and turns out of view. Also, the texture of the paint usually changes because it has arrived at the edge- almost like waves arriving at a beach.
This creates a potential problem for the future: it is common to make frames for paintings that overlap the edges of the work as much as a quarter of an inch. It is only slightly more work to frame a painting, letting the real edges show, by adding a strip of wood around it that becomes the part that is overlapped by the frame. This leaves the whole canvas visible. ( A fully visible painting: that's a good thing. )
Because of this problem, I leave a notice not to overlap the edges of paintings if framed or reframed at a later date.
Page 4 of 6.
( Jen and Stacey, at work, are surprised by the orange, range-finding light in the camera. )
This blue screen comes up from the projector, during setup, against the side of the building.
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Sept. 18- Wes already found this photo and wants to use it for the GDI site. This makes it doubly worth the trouble. It took a while to prepare, because:
- the blue screen doesn't show if you do a flash photo.
- the building and the people don't show if you do a no-flash photo.
This means the image has to be built up as a composite. So extra shots were taken to ensure that the scene would appear as it did to the audience:
- the grey outline of the building is faintly indicated from a flash photo.
- the blue screen is dropped into that, then the people are dropped in front of that.
Page 2 of 2.
There were two mother / baby pairs at this location- unusually close to the cliff near the lighthouse that faces the wharf.
Photo note-
- if you shoot a zoom shot, the camera image is hard to hold steady. *
- i learned from Pete that you could get a closer shot without risking a blurry picture: you simply shoot at the highest resolution and crop in, afterward, to bring the image 'closer'.
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*
Jiggly zoom shots:
- the tiny movements of the hand-held camera are exaggerated in zoom mode.
- let's say that you are zooming out to the equivalent of standing 10 feet closer to the subject. - it's like trying to hold the camera steady when it is mounted at the end of a 10 foot stick. the tiny movements of your hands are magnified at the far end and tends to produce a blurry image.
- so, to solve the problem, you shoot at high res, then crop in to get a closer shot.
These vault lights used to be colorless when they were installed at the tum of the twentieth century. The glass used for this purpose contained manganese as a decolorizer. Ironically, over time the manganese reacted with the UV rays of the sun, turning a lovely amethyst color. See also here: www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/technotes/ptn47/intro.htm
and here: www.glassian.org/Prism/Vault/index.html
[edited by Nelson Adams?]
Toronto, Coach House Press, june 1978.
2 unattached sheets of 8-1/2 x 11 buff Domtar Belfast Bond, all printed deep turquoise offset.
cover photo by Paul Collins.
7 contributors ID'd:
Nelson Adams, Paul Collins, The Green Parrot, David Hlynsky, bpNichol, F.W.Nietzsche, D.Pretmal,
Nichol contributes
i) Technotes: Duotones, as by "The Green Parrot" (prose)
i) THE INKS AND THE PENCILS AND THE LOOKING BACK (prose on Sean O'Huigin)
ii) Coach House Bibliographic History (part 6), unsigned (includes The Pipe & The Story So Far 2)
____________________________
unknown whether this was issued 3-hole punched; variants may exist
[ Notes for Don-
These are sort of a set- both headed to be bold 'oil' paintings. *
The small one is a commercial cotton canvas; the big one is a stretcher made from scratch, stretched with heavy linen canvas.
The cotton canvas is primed with acrylic gesso; the linen is sized with rabbit skin glue.
As we see, the smaller canvas has acrylic background color laid in, before the work starts in oil.
The first color to go over the hide glue size, will be what would traditionally be the next coat: white lead, which is dried for two days before the regular color goes on. White lead dries faster than regular oil paint, but the two day's drying time assures that the color layer with not disturb the white lead ground. If that were to happen, the white might be scraped away or mixed into the colors above.
In this case, the ground will not be laid in all over the surface. It will be laid in a loose, checker pattern that will expose the sized linen color. It is harder to see now, but that is what was done with the small painting. In that case the 'linen' color was painted in over the white gesso on the cotton canvas. The small one has had another round of background work and the checkerboard doesn't show any more.
At least early on, the paintings will look similar.
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* - the 'oil' is really alkyd resin.
March 8, 2013-
- the big one was finished today. it's the one with the big red shape in the middle.
- it will be referred to as, 'the crazy one'.