philly

The world famous Zoe Strauss has just finished editing her first book, America which can be special ordered at Robin's Bookstore, Philly's oldest independent bookstore, over at 13/Sansom. I just called and they're selling it for $29.95 (find other local booksellers here). Why should you go to an independent/local bookseller and not use Amazon, Barnes & Noble…? Check out the front page of IndieBound.

Now, back to Zoe. She's the fucking bomb. If you haven't had the pleasure of going to her I-95 shows (I went in 2006 and 2008 and they'll continue through 2010), seeing her lecture in person or ran into her on the street, well, it's gonna get that much harder after she blows up even more than she already has. After I get this book, I'm gonna have to carry it and a Sharpie around with me as you never know when you'll run into this crazy girl. She will be leading an arts and crafts workshop on September 18 for Megawords.

Zoe's a USA Fellow for 2008 - a big time award. She's won an assload of grants and been a part of some bonkers shows all around the states and most recently in France.

The transparency in her work is incredible. You can read about it here and see the raw images here. Politicians and parents could learn a lot from her. The photographs themselves aren't too shabby either. We own two gorgeous prints (one of which still needs to be framed and hanged).

43 days until the bomb drops.

So I have Fridays off from work at Fair Foods. I also got up at a reasonable hour and didn't have a shoot. That left me with the chance to head over to World Cafe Live for XPN's Free at Noon concert featuring Melody Gardot, one of Philly's finest. Armed with a 4 piece band, her fingers strumming guitars and tickling the ivories, a sultry French-accented voice and legs that make your mind wander, she blew the crowd away. One lady standing next to me exclaimed to her male friend, "Look at those legs!" to which he replied, "They're almost as incredible as her voice." I guess I wasn't alone in noticing.

I had never heard of her before last night. Andi told me she was thinking of heading to the show and I took a listen and RSVP'd right away. Gardot was the 3rd artist whose music I was completely unfamiliar with 24 hours before seeing them live.

Her 45 minute set was a nice blend of tempos. The afternoon kicked off with an a capella blues song because "all jazz comes from the blues". With the help of the crowd's snapping fingers, she belted one out.

The set list isn't up yet on the XPN Music Blog so I can't say what songs she played, but you can take a listen to the entire set here. To take a listen to more of her music, check out her MySpace.

Above, Gardot asks XPN's Music Director Dan Reed for permission to sing an encore to the crowd who ants her to keep playing for another few hours. She tells the crowd to come see her show later this evening at WCL (unfortunately, it's sold out). A random woman in the front row gives her the okay and that's good enough for her. She reeled off a story of how her eastern European grandmother used to watch her as a child. She used to be plopped in front of the TV and stuck a copy of The Wizard of Oz for Gardot to watch. The soundtrack stayed in her psyche and the song Over the Rainbow kept a very special meaning in her heart. She dedicated her encore cover performance to her grandmother. All jazzed up, Garland's tune sounded nicely modern.

At the ripe age of 23 (yes, she's all of 23), she's been through a bunch. A nasty car accident where she was hit by a Jeep while riding her bicycle 4 years ago has her walking with the help of a lovely wooden cane. Her lyrics open the listener's ears to some of the heartache she's been through, but looking at her flickr stream, she looks happily involved.

Here's Gardot with her bandmates saying thank you to the crowd. Her music can be purchased via her website on iTunes, Amazon and Rhapsody.

More photos of this concert and other XPN Free at Noon concerts can be seen in my WXPN Free at Noon Concerts flickr set.

I've got me some serious Olympic fever. Lady (back to blogging!) and I had dinner at Singapore Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant on Friday night and then headed to the streets to check out the festivities in Chinatown on the opening night of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

There were huge crowds of people there watching exhibitions in fencing, rowing, baseball, table tennis, soccer among other events as well as some martial arts and lion dance performances. The opening ceremonies were shown on a jumbotron set up underneath the still being re-painted Chinatown Gate. I can't believe the re-paining of the gate overlapped with the start of the Olympics - really ruined a perfect photo op which will not happen again for a good while.

I've watched a bunch of swimming and a whole lot of Mike Phelps. Unbelievable that he's on track to break Mark Spitz's record 7 golds and 7 world records. I wish they put the soccer on TV during prime time, but oh well. Maybe they'll replay the medal games at a watchable hour down the line.

The NY Times has some incredible coverage. Boston.com's Big Picture photoblog had a great post on the opening ceremonies. I love the 990px wide photos they put up. I hope they'll have more than just the opening and closing ceremonies. And speaking of photography, I've been seeing a ton of Nikons among the formerly Canon-dominated field of sports photography. The D3 seems to have put Nikon back on the map with enough time for pros to get some stick time in preparation of this gigantic event.

And the people who know me a bit know that I have a bunch of photo gear. I'd love to have more (who wouldn't). But just seeing what the best takes along on a non-stop fortnight plus of shooting makes my back ache and my mouth drool at the same time. Laforet is on assignment for Newsweek along with 2 other big timers, Donald Miralle and Mike Powell. All 3 are shooting Canon big bodies. And the pace is so quick to shoot, edit and upload content that all of the lovely EXIF info is left intact on the photos I've peeped so far. Bodies like the 1D MIII, 1Ds MIII, 1D MIIN and exotic lenses like an 800mm f/5.6 are being pushed to the max. Laforet brought all of his tilt-shift lenses too ;)

You want it. You know you want it. We polished off two of them on Friday.

You can have one (or two if you dare) also. Just head on over to Franklin Fountain at 116 Market St and ask for the Broken Hearts Sundae. It's simple, tasty and just short of gluttonous.

Until then, you can look at bigger photos on flickr starting here.

Stick a fork in the old man.

For the final installment of Great Expectations's The Big Canvas event, approximately 90 people came out to Moore College of Art & Design on July 30th to discuss the future of the Arts in the region. To read up on the first four installments, check out the posts from bloggers from the Malvern, Villanova, Conshohocken and Doylestown. Above, the Inky's Chris Satullo explains the history of the project to date.

Penn's Harris Sokoloff took the mic and in his professorial role, broke the evening down into its various components. The large group in the auditorium was broken up into 11 groups and took over most of the college. I tagged along with a group headed up to a 4th floor studio classroom which just happened to be the coolest room of the lot.

My group of 9, 45+ except for one under 30, (plus 2 moderators) eased into quick introductions and right into the agenda which can be seen here. The lovely, open and airy space was nice and conducive to creativity. The brainstorming group was overwhelmingly in support of exposure to the arts, especially at an early age to which Anne added, "What else is living about?". After exposing the youngsters to art, they must also be inspired to become artists by passing along artistic knowledge to them. Herb, a lifelong lover of the arts when his neighborhood playmates were more interested in Phillies box scores, not only wanted access to art for all, but also, forums to discuss.

Kimberly pointed to Mural Arts Program and their building of community involvement to put up murals all over the city. In addition to simply exposure, Danielle (the youngest in the group) wanted to see art education so that people can better understand what they see. Anne wanted to have groups put pressure on City Council to put more money towards the Arts in schools to which Walden noted that so much money has been taken out of education. Pru closed out the brainstorming session by advocating in "seeing the original" instead of a picture in a book. The entire group became excited, just as a first-time visitor to the Sistine Chapel might. They all agreed that the fluttering of the heart upon entering the space where the original hangs is part of the experience as well as seeing that object in person. The definition of 'art' was questioned as well and the group wanted to see culinary, performance among other non-classical arts to be a part of the conversation.

The moderators shifted the conversation to barriers to the Arts. The group brainstormed a few ideas: money, transportation, parental disinterest, peer pressure, time, not knowing what's going on and poor publicizing of events. Anne shared her perspective: as an adult, she likes to go out for a drink and some dinner before a show/event. She needs bars, restaurants and transportation available to her as she lives out in the Chestnut Hill area. She said that trains stop running back out to her area at 10.30p on the weekends preventing her from seeing many shows and the $30+ cab ride, if she misses the last train, is even more discouraging. Extending SEPTA hours on the weekends seems like a reasonable solution. I lived in D.C. when they started expanding service on the weekends. It was wonderful. Later on, they extended service during the week and even later on the weekends. No city is going to have the 24/7 service NYC has, but a city of first class like Philadelphia should have a proportionately available form of mass transit.

Part 4 of the evening was discussing what to do with a $60M/yr specifically for the Arts. Eyes lit up and the ideas flowed freely: niche museums, educational integration of the arts, regional theaters, paid internships, affordability for families (packages), ticket subsidization, youth music lessons, more money to efficient/successful programs, community art centers, historic building preservation. All these great ideas. But not a single person suggested giving money to the artist. [crickets] Thankfully, the Malvern group suggested microgrants for individual artists! How to get that money is another thing, putting it on the board is a great start. I'm not sure how many artists there were in the group I was in, but given the responses, it was clear that there were lots on the administrative and patron side of things.

The group was split up into 2 smaller groups to whittle down the big list to the most important ones to receive that $60M/yr. The 2 groups voted, with each person getting 3 voting dots, to rank them. The top 4:

1. Developing arts in education interdisciplinary integration (a mouthful)
2. General operating money (as opposed to money given for specific parts of an organization)
3. Community art centers
4. Paid internships

The group was then told that the budget was cut to $20M/yr and voted again, this time with a single dot. The results were the in the same order as with a $60M/yr budget. And there was one final exercise, the one I thought was most important: what other priorities are there in the region and are those priorities more or less important that arts & culture funding. The bullet points below should be read as: "______ is ↑/↓ important than arts & culture" to start off, the group voted that violence is a more important issue than arts & culture funding

• ↓ public utility accountability
• ↑ violence - safety/crime
• ↓ development of the waterfront
• ↑ healthcare
• ↓ poverty/homelessness
• ↓ continuing education
• ↑ environment (you gotta breathe!)
• ↓ transportation
• ↑ public education
• ↓ youth welfare
• ↓ community development
• ↓ encourage retired to work with kids
• ↑ attracting corporations to Philadelphia
• ↑ race relations / cross cultural issues

With that list in hand, the final part of the group session was how to convince lawmakers that an investment in the Arts would enhance the points above. Herb argued that an investment in the Arts is an investment in an outlet for kids to stay out of trouble and the streets. Danielle said that arts & culture are community building and an investment in arts & culture along the riverfront would instantly build community. Pru suggested that the School District not be allowed to get their hands on money dedicated for children; instead, have museums and institutions receive the money and go into the schools with programs. Kimberly capped off the night questioning how to get into the communities and find out why they are not currently involved in arts & culture programs.

Once the whole group came back together in the auditorium, Satullo and Sokoloff ran through what was covered and what is to come. Satullo noted that there was one topic came up in every session in the burbs and he was surprised: transportation. He figured that transportation would be the largest issue within city limits (it was a big issue with the Philly crowd), but it was high up in the burbs as well. Sokoloff encouraged the participants to expand the conversation online at the Great Expectations website and to read the writeups from each breakout group to see what fellow forum goers were thinking. Satullo mentioned the final Big Canvas event which is to take place at the Valley Forge Convention Center (a few miles past KoP). I didn't catch the date, but there were certainly groans from the Philly crowd about the location. It was noted that there would be shuttles going out to Valley Forge for those who want to make the trip but are car-less. So keep your eyes out for that one. Hopefully the turnout there will be a big one comparable to the big turnout at the forum at the convention center which brought out 500 in the snow. See you there.

The full set of (larger) photos from the forum can be seen in this flickr set.

What are you doing on Friday August 1st? We'll be helping to support women living with breast cancer. Everyone's favorite baker, e, shot us an email about Bust Out! Eat Inspired. Support women living with breast cancer. It sounded great, we were free and we'll be taking part. Bust Out! has arranged for some of the city's finest eateries to come up with breast-inspired dishes (think strawberry iced cupcakes with cherries on top, roasted chicken breast with cranberries, or melon sorbet) and donate 50% of the proceeds from those items will go to Living Beyond Breast Cancer, a local organization committed to assisting women at all stages of diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

The full list of participating eateries can be found here and M&P will be at our favorite ice cream place in the city, Franklin Fountain eating up, what e called, "one sweet sundae" - we're psyched!

In addition to the various eateries around town and their marvelous creations, there's also going to be a launch party from 4p - 6p at N.3rd and movie at 9p at The Arbol Cafe.

Help spread the word and eat up!

(cross posted from Messy & Picky)

<rant>

I recently had a couple customer service incidents involving some of my photo gear. One experience was horrid, the other was great. The horrible one involved two lenses (worth about $2500) and Comet Camera based out of Cherry Hill, NJ. Comet Camera is the closes Nikon and Canon authorized service center; I'm a Nikon shooter. The repairs I needed were for the grips of my Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 and Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 lenses. The rubber grips were coming off of the lens barrel. Not the biggest problem, but it would be a big problem once they fell off completely so I figured it would be an in-shop repair and went to Comet instead of simply mailing in my lenses directly to Nikon for warranty repair (mail in those 5 year extended service slips people!).

So I drove over to Cherry Hill and found the storefront. I brought in my lenses and was told that they'd order the grips from Nikon and they'd have my lenses back to me within 2 weeks - I was headed to DC for a job and then to CA for vacation so it was important that I get my lenses back in time. They said not to worry as the more major repairs take 2 weeks or longer, but a simpler repair like this one would be done well within 2 weeks. I was relieved. After a week or so, I called in to see if the grips were ordered or if there were any problems as I was nervous about not having my 2 most prized and most used lenses for my DC shoot and first trip to CA (and first real vacation in at least 5 years). I was told the grips had not come in yet. I started to worry. I started to call every other day for updates. I called 2 more times and was told the same thing.

The Wednesday before my Friday trip to DC for the shoot, I called once more. No grips were in house. I asked if I could just come by and pick up my lenses and take them as-is to my job in DC and my trip the following day. The person I spoke with looked at my order number and told me that the lenses were shipped to NY for warranty repair. I flipped out. Why was I not told? Why did they ship it out? Why was I told that it would be an in-house job? Why didn't anybody tell me this the previous 3 times I called? The best the guy said was "sorry". What a fucker. I was never under the impression that they'd send my lenses out to Nikon for repair. I could have done that myself and saved the round trips to Jersey. He said that I should've been told that it was a possibility that they'd end up sending it out for repair. Great good that did me 2.5 fucking weeks later.

So now I had to use film for my shoot in DC and for my first trip out to CA. So off I went to Photo Lounge and told my man Pete my situation. He told me he'd give me a discount on every 5 rolls of film. Awesome. I went away with 15 rolls (Portra, Tri-X, 400H). The DC shoot and the trip to CA went well on film. It was great luck for me that I've been shooting some film in the last few months. If not, I would've been shit out of luck because of the fuckers at Comet Camera.

While on vacation, I called into Comet for updates. During one call, I was told that the 17-55mm was finally ready for pickup. I asked why I wasn't called and told it was ready. The best the guy on the phone could come up with was "maybe we were backed up and didn't get around to calling you". Fuck you. After getting back from CA, I'd call every few days. The 80-200mm was still in NY. I called on July 24th (37 days later) and they said it was ready. I had not received a call. I booked over there and picked up my lenses and walked out of there and I'll never be back.

I don't know what kind of volume they do, but if you're holding $2500 worth of pro equipment, how the fuck does the customer not receive a fucking phone call? I can't stress enough that you should absolutely not deal with the people at Comet. Deal directly with your manufacturer. Get extended warranties for your gear either through your credit card, dealer or manufacturer. I would've taken the lenses as-is to DC and CA had I known that it would've taken over a month to get them back. I definitely missed out on a lot of shots (and spent a good chunk of money out of pocket for film and processing along with needless trips out to NJ and the stress) on both trips. That 200mm would've been great for shots of the blue heron, the ground squirrels, harbor seals and brown pelicans. The 17-55mm zoom would've allowed me to get some shots of the hummingbirds which buzzed about at varying distances. I love the shots I took on film. I would've loved it even more if I had my 2 most useful lenses as well.

Now onto a great customer service experience. Several months ago, I bought an Arctic Butterfly SL700 after a recommendation from my friend Steve. It's a charged brush which removes dust from a dSLR sensor. It works wonderfully well. It runs on a single AAA battery and it's simple to use. I've been using mine for quite a while now with no problems. I've also been using it to clean the mirrors and focusing screens of my SLR cameras as well. Those cameras are old and have a lot of junk in them. Crud just peeling off and oily buildup. It's clogged up the bristles of my brush and I haven't used it to clean my D200 or D70 in a little bit (thankfully I haven't had to either). But the time came for me to start looking for a solution. At first, I was disappointed at the instructions page on the SL700 as there was only a link to a dead page on their site. So I called the 877 number for their office in Alberta, Canada. I was transferred once to a very helpful guy with a thick accent of some sort.

Not only did he spend 10 minutes on the phone with me telling me what kind of alcohol to purchase and why, a backup plan and finally, if all else failed, to send it in to him and they'd clean it up and send it back as good as new. On top of that, he told me where to find a step by step video up on YouTube of how to clean the brush. Now that's some good customer service. Not only do I highly recommend the brushes myself, but the company as well.

I'm happy to have my 2 lenses back (just in time for job on Wednesday) and my sensor brush clean.

</rant>

People are stealing manhole covers like they're going out of business they fear the price for iron will sink sooner than later. Here are two stories in the Inquirer from the last month about the increasing trend. And I just read this NYT story about the nationwide trend with the rising price of scrap metal.

In the past year, city officials from Phoenix, NYC, Cleveland, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Philadelphia among others are reporting crazy increases in manhole covers. Last year alone, Philly reports over 2,500 manhole/inlet covers stolen in the last year and change - about 2,000 a year, up from 100 max in previous years.

Fueling the thefts is the price of scrap iron, which has nearly doubled in six months. Michael Marley, chief correspondent for an industry online newspaper, said the type of scrap that includes sewer grates was selling for $300 to $330 a ton six months ago. Now, it's up to $500 to $530.¹

According to the same Inky report, Kensington, Nicetown, Tioga, and North and Southwest Philadelphia are the hardest hit areas. Bonkers. The NYT story has a photo essay to go along with the story. On a related note, I don't understand how poorly implemented the new philly.com's photo accompaniment has been rolled out. The photos show up at the wrong size all the time.

On another note: great things in Philly right now: Batman: The Dark Night at the Franklin Institute IMAX Dome. Lady and I saw it last night. It rocked. There are a few scenes with true fullscreen IMAX filming. Those alone are worth the price of admission which is just about the same as seeing it on a regular puny screen which isn't 40+ feet tall and doesn't have a jillion dB of sound coming at you from through the screen. Get your tickets here in advance as every show between 5p, 7.45p, 10p start times are sold out until July 27th.

For added new media fun, peep Why So Serious. Heath played The Joker very well. But I still like Jack's version.

So I've had all of my film and scans back for a couple weeks now from the California trip. I've been uploading the film rolls one by one to Flickr. I've uploaded 7 of the 14 rolls so far. I recently finished one of the rolls I still had in my F3 and I have a few more frames in the final roll with California frames on it in the FE2. But I'll start pointing to the individual sets and my favorite shot from each roll. Above is Edgar from Santa Ana, CA. I met him while on the bus in Anaheim and took the photo on my first roll. Shot with a Nikon FE2 with a 28mm f/2 on Kodak Portra 160NC-2. He noticed the vintage strap on my camera and struck a conversation. He's a rockabilly Mexican-American who likes cars from the 50s. We talked about cars and taking photos for about 20 minutes as I was riding to get to the Fullerton Arboretum and he was headed north to help a friend move and have some BBQ. The Tuff Cats is an automobile club based out of Santa Ana.

Above is a plant I took a photo of at the Fullerton Arboretum. I have no idea what it is, but it's all over SoCal. This roll was shot with a Nikon F3 on Fujicolor Pro 400H; this shot in particular was with a 105mm f/2.5. Nobody we met knew what this plant was called. Anybody?

The girl above was eating her ice cream cone in the shade of The Farmers Market in LA. This roll was shot with the F3 on Kodak Portra 160NC-2; this shot in particular with a 50mm f/1.4. I like the muted colors in the shade with the reds popping above the rest.

One of the very coolest things we did in LA was see the city from the hills at Griffith Observatory. It was quite smoggy, especially with the fires burning in Santa Barbara, but seeing all those lights is kinda mesmerizing. Amazingly, I could spot the Big Dipper above us through the nastiness. Roll 4 was shot with the FE2 on Kodak Tri-X 400; this shot with a 20mm f/3.5 which gives some nice natural vignetting wide open.

My second favorite shot of Lady from the Cali trip is the above shot taken at the Getty Center overlooking the lovely, blooming garden. It's a portrait with a bit of a landscape feel with the foreground, midground and far background elements with lines, colors and areas of focus pointing you from one section to the next. This roll was shot with the F3 on Fujicolor Pro 160S; this shot with a 50mm f/1.4. I had to go to Freestyle Camera Supply to pick up some more 160 speed color film as the 400 speed I bought in not so sunny Philly wasn't gonna cut it in SoCal. I was quite happy with this new-to-me film I bought hoping for the best based on my use of it's more sensitive sibling, Pro 400H.

I really like photos of bridges and I'm quite happy with this shot of the 76 bridge connecting San Diego and Coronado Island where we watched the fireworks on July 4th. This roll was shot with the FE2 and Fuji Neopan 1600; this shot with a 20mm f/3.5.

I was hoping the bright red and white umbrellas would be nice and contrasty and they are. The white caught a little of the light blue sky above on the underside of the umbrella cooling the color of the frame before transitioning into the shaded part of the frame revealing all kinds of stuff within the tent. I can't recall ever seeing beach umbrellas on sale like this. Being an east coaster, I guess that's of no surprise. Roll 7 was shot with the F3 on Fujicolor Pro 160S; this shot with a 50mm f/1.4.

I'll get to pecking in the EXIF data for the last few rolls of film and finishing and processing the final 2 rolls soon enough. But in the meantime, I'll be watching Batman on IMAX tonight! I hope you enjoy clicking through the photos.