“So benumbed are we nowadays by electric lights that we have become utterly insensitive to the evils of excessive illumination.”
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
My most recent trip to Japan was most enjoyable personally, but it was quite challenging from a photography standpoint. It made me realize that travel photography is a special skill and an art form. And I suck at it. I am always looking for landscapes instead of finding ways to capture the delight of travel.
This photo of the Tokyo skyline (below) perfectly exemplifies my landscape photography approach. Now that some days have passed since I returned, I can revisit my photos with a more critical eye. Most of the images I made with my Leica are still on my computer’s hard drive, waiting for their moment in the sun. However, when looking at my iPhone photos, I am starting to see some narrative outlines.
And a lot has to do with light and its interplay with shadows. The closer I look, the more I realize that this relationship between the shadows and light explains the varied contrasts of Japan. It is a country where modernity comes at you at the speed of light. The neon, the bustle, the mass of humanity, always moving.
The proverbial bright lights and big cities. Step into shadows, time slowdown, and quietly eases you in the past. And nowhere do you experience that more often than in a traditional building, a house, a ryokan, or a temple. Screens create a wonderful framing of the outside and are accentuated by the interplay of light and shadow.
I want to recapture my journey and my thoughts in a short fine-art book — and have already started working it. If you are interested and would like to buy a copy, you can stay in touch by signing up for email updates.
I rescued a good bit of old trim from a nearby remodel. It was just going to go into the trash! It’s basically identical to the beautiful old trim on our house. I think I could make some nice small pieces (boxes, picture frames, etc) from this stack. But holy crap they loved to drive the nails.
If you're a regular FeedLand user who also uses Bluesky, please respond to this post. I'd like to loop you in on the new stuff when it's ready for testing. You don't actually need a Bluesky account to get the benefit, that's the cute/cool thing about it. We're bringing Bluesky to the open web. 😀
I borrowed a lot of prior art for FeedLand from social media, specifically, the idea that subscription lists are public. So you can walk a network of followship, and get ideas of who to subscribe to that way. Click a checkbox and you're connected. That makes it easy to peer with social networks, if they support OPML subscription lists and RSS feeds of posts. As I reported on May 24, we now have that for Bluesky. I've spent the last few days teaching FeedLand how to do with Bluesky what it does with RSS feeds. Today I got it working. Real sense of accomplishment here. Not deployed yet, but I'm pretty sure it will be soon. The pieces fit together amazingly well.
Thanks again to @vincent for fixing one of the servers yesterday while I was in Rocky Mountain National Park with no cell coverage. Not happy with the blips in downtime recently, going to reprioritize this. Enjoying the morning with good wi-fi and coffee at Inkwell & Brew in Estes Park. ☕️
Last Saturday, Brandy and I attended Carolina Fear Fest. It was a last second decision, right after lunch, but I’m glad we made the trip. I attended the show last year, but I feel like things were improved this year and we got some really cool swag.
Fear Fest is held at the North Carolina Fairgrounds Jim Graham Building, which is perfect for a con of this size. It wasn’t overly crowded, which also makes for a more enjoyable experience.
Like all pop culture conventions, the show hosted vendors and celebrities. Lots of folks arrived in various horror cosplay and well… there was a shocking number of strange animals there. A wildlife outreach had a table and when we walked by the first time there was a massive snake. The next time a massive owl. Then we saw a couple walking around with a stroller and a pet monkey!
Brandy loved all the vendors, and she ended up buying a Freddy Kruger/Jack Skelton inspired sweatshirt, that was torn like it was cut by Freddy’s claws.
She also got a cute little ghost light and a candle.
We took some photos in front of a replica car from Christine, which had an awesome set up full of vintage Stephen King booths and actual props from the film.
There were two celebrities there I really wanted to meet and so I did.
The first is Dee Wallace, whom I like to refer to as my 80’s mom. She was the mom in ET, Cujo, and dozens of other films.
The second was Barbara Crampton, known for her roles in The Re-Animator and Chopping Mall, she is one of the essentially scream queens of the 80’s.
On our way out, we stopped by a neat set up where we could get our photo taken with Jason. Major kudos to the photographer CJ Spence and his excellent customer service.
Overall, Carolina Fear Fest was a fun time. I think it was better than last year’s and I’m glad we popped in for a few hours.
I borrowed a lot of prior art for 
