This is insane...

Portable record player:















http://www.pyottdesign.com/linos/


oh, those clever industrial designers!

I love love love...

...this photographer. I wish I lived in these times. I love the fashion. I love the Kodachrome. Except I want that time to be magically placed in our time and we have technology and that fashion and that Kodachrome.

Slim Aarons. love.

http://www.photographersgallery.com/by_artist.asp?id=2

Speedy Stranger Photos

About a year ago, I joined the 100 Strangers Project group on Flickr. I love the idea of forcing oneself out of the normal comfort zone to ask people you don't know if you can take their portrait.

One evening, while at the street music festival with my husband and another friend, Tony, we decided to power through the strangers project, seeing as I had only taken 2 Stranger photos in 9 months.

I didn't get most of their names and I didn't spend any time with them, hence not really following the guidelines of the original project. This was still super fun, but I realized that I was making a NEW project, which could in turn become a new group: the Speed Strangers group was born.

The challenge I am creating for Speed Strangers: take as many quick one-person stranger portraits as fast as you can. If you randomly end up with their name or any other personal info, get it quick and move on. See how many random strangers you can photograph. The caveat: please try to take at least a little time to create nice portraits. The Strangers must know you are shooting them. NO random street strangers. Please ask people to take their portrait, snap it and go forth, por favor.


As a nod to the inspiration for this group, please see the rules for "100 Strangers:"


"The challenge : Take 100 photographs of at least 100 people you don't know. Approach a person or group of people and ask for permission to both take a photo of them and to post it to this group. Get to know your subjects. Who are they? What is their life like?
Try to tell a small story with each photo you take. This may be a story about the person or how you felt approaching that particular individual. You may have, for example, tried a new approach or used a new photographic technique. Try to learn something from every encounter you make."


http://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
thank you, "100 Strangers, " for the spin off idea!


Now, for a few random strangers and a link to my flickr set! I don't want to set a number yet for how many you should take. 100 will go really fast, so for now, the group is set as "speed strangers." numeral TBD at a later date.



enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/speedstrangers/

free classes

Creative Techs, a Seattle design company offers free Adobe CS4 design classes. Did you hear that? FREE!

Now go out and learn something.


http://www.creativetechs.com/

More Awesomeness!

This comes from a very talented photographer that is one of my Flickr contacts. This is seriously the coolest marketing idea that I have seen lately. SO brilliant!

http://http://onelovephoto.typepad.com/heathergilson/2009/04/the-blist-and-our-little-cameras.html

Stylin' Camera Bag

What every girl needs!

http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/bowler-camera-bag

Art CRUSH!

There's an artist whose work I am totally (newly) crushing on. I had heard of Andy Goldsworthy a few years ago, but kind of filed him in the back of my dusty head somewhere over the last few years. I was looking for an artist & project to teach at my daughter's school this month and stumbled back across him.

I am crazy about the idea of making art for art's sake. It is so easy to become attached to the things we create. I cannot imagine being in the mindset that all of my works created in order to

d i s i p a t e. Furthermore, Goldsworthy often produces his sculptures far away form any normal human pathways, so there is the potential that the only person who will see the piece in real life is the artist himself. Luckily, Goldsworthy documents his art in photographs so that the rest of us can taste a slice of what he has made. I imagine that a photograph is nowhere near as emotive as seeing his sculptures in the wild: kinetic, soulful, fragile, audacious and powerful. We hold on to our things so very much in this culture, that it is hard to wrap my head around an artist that does exactly the opposite that every time he creates. Every time. Fascinating.

I presented a few clips from the documentary, Rivers and Tides, to my daughter's class. We also flipped through several beautiful books of Goldsworthy's artwork. The kids were as fascinated as I was at his simple, yet extremely sophisticated works. Goldsworthy's art is stunning and fantastic, yet speaks to us on a Jungian, collective conscious level.

Kids are natural artists. It is insane what comes out of their souls when they are allowed the freedom to express themselves through art. Photos below of some of their creations.