March 06, 2007

Googly Eyes Make Food Look Forlorn, or Cute

In case you missed it, WNYC ran a contest on the Leonard Lopate show that involved googly eyes and food and was sponsored by Amy Sedaris. Go entertain yourself with the photos. Here's the WNYC page. Some of the photos in the pool are even funnier than the winners...so browse around.

Posted by csageday at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

Thanksgiving

I'm not so much into photography these days, but here's a shot from Thanksgiving weekend.

Posted by csageday at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)

July 24, 2006

Sunday Photos

In lieu of interesting blog posts, which I seem to lack inspiration for these days, here's a mini photo essay.

I took my camera to the flea market again last Sunday. The light wasn't right in a bunch of shots, but I like these two:

After that, I caught a bus to the Brooklyn Museum, where I tried (for the most part, unsuccessfully) to catch an interesting shot of the fountain. Inside, I saw the grafitti exhibit but found it to be smaller than expected. I did my customary loop of the fifth floor, with a stop in the stainless-steel storage-type area, which always seems to be empty and which I love exploring. It seemed to offer plenty of interesting photo opps, but I couldn't seem to assemble anything.

When we got home, I found that my memory card had been corrupted and I couldn't access any of the photos I'd taken that day. The cause may have been a low battery or too many successive shots. Derek saved the day, as usual, recovering most of the pictures with his PC. The mac is kind of not-so-good at these types of things, unfortunately.

Posted by csageday at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2006

MoMA Photos

Can I rant for just a little bit? So MoMA is all different and huge now, and there is a fantastic Architecture & Design area (with Apple products and subway signs and a Bic pen), and there are warehouse-sized rooms downstairs and famous paintings upstairs.

My favorite part of their collection, however, is the photography. What have they done with that? They've dedicated one of their less-glamorous, back-of-the-building mazes to the art, and they cram in whatever they can willy nilly. There's a little Stieglitz, a little Steichen, some Cindy Sherman, and some newer stuff all in the same room (or at least it feels that way). And it's crowded as hell. And MoMA owns tons of really fabulous photography. Why can't they showcase it better?

I'm so disappointed every time I go there, because I head straight for photography and then feel as if I'm on the subway -- people stand right next to me, and it feels like one of those cars where every ad is designed differently. If I'm lucky, there will be some great photography in one of the mammoth rooms, but you have to wander through random huge welded things to find it. Next time, I have to try ICP instead.

Posted by csageday at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

Remember Asher?

I just discovered a whole bunch of extra Asher photos on my camera -- this iPhoto view seemed like a good summary of Asher's killer personality. I should probably have assembled this properly in Photoshop, but I'm lazy so it's a screenshot.

Posted by csageday at 11:08 PM | Comments (2)

May 04, 2006

Bananas

Does anyone have any idea why this is my most viewed photo on Flickr?

Posted by csageday at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

Don't go stealing my idea now...

I just thought of a great use for Mom's new wide-angle lens. We could visit a bunch of hipster and high-end restaurants and bars and document their tiny but creatively decorated bathrooms (this wide-angle lens could get at least three walls in one frame, I swear). We'd shoot the ones with red walls and gilded mirror frames and ridiculous linen napkins, and the ones with the european-style washtubs and ancient pipes instead of normal sinks. It would an ideal coffee table item for hipsters. They could play "Where's that bathroom? 71 Clinton Fresh Food or Per Se?" drinking games. Genius, no?

Posted by csageday at 11:35 PM | Comments (2)

January 08, 2006

The Canon and the Coop

I got a few photos of the Park Slope Food Coop today with the Canon. (I still haven't uploaded the photos of Xander on his first birthday -- I'll do that soon). I love the Coop, since it's full of good food and nice people and it's the opposite of a big box store. Someone took a bunch of good photos of the displays there a while ago. I tried my hand at it, but I have a long way to go in understanding how to get the most from the Canon. It can store an incredible amount of detail, but in order to get the shot I want I have to learn how to play with a bunch of settings. The lighting in the Coop always seemed warm to me in person, but it created glare in the photos. My standard approach of turning off the flash and balancing the camera on the nearest shelf is not the best method of achieving good color, either. Still, it was fun to try and I am very pleased with the clarity and quick response. Can't wait to spend the day in Prospect Park with it when it's sunny.

Posted by csageday at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

Photo Finish

New photos are up on Flickr. Bonus: A photo of Rose at Yarnivore!

Posted by csageday at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

The Grade School Diva and Grow

joe's nyc posted a great photo on Saturday. Clown wig, boa, veil, dancing shoes, glamorous pose. It's great. He also has a link to this online exhibition, which has some interesting photos.

Francis must have been chuckling quietly to himself when he posted the link to Grow -- I'm not the only one who has wasted an evening trying to figure the damn thing out (look at the comments). At one point, Derek came in and threatened to commit suicide if I didn't make the music stop. I've gotten to the stage where the water flows down into three waterfalls, but I gave up after that. I was having flashbacks of playing Zelda in elementary school. I wasted countless hours watching a little blocky person walk around and around doing pointless things. It's even worse than Tetris. At least I can convince myself that somehow, in some hitherto undocumented way, I'm improving my math skills by playing Tetris for a few hours once in a while. Not so with Grow. Which doesn't mean I won't be back at it tonight while Derek's at the Yankee game.

Posted by csageday at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2005

Flickr Update

I just uploaded a few more photos to my Flickr page. Since the first go-round I've learned a few things.

1. It's best to upload the high resolution versions of photos (thanks Tony)
2. You can list other Flickr people as contacts (again, thanks Tony)
3. Flickr can extract more information that I knew existed about each photo -- time, date, focal range, camera, whether the flash was used and if so whether it was on auto mode...
4. You can track how many people view each photo, and whether they marked any as favorites
5. Random people leave comments!

Posted by csageday at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Flickr

I finally joined the rest of the blogging universe and tried out Flickr. I just got tired of exporting my photos from iPhoto and then running search-and-replaces to fix the HTML.

Flickr lets you upload photos, label them, add descriptions, and show them to the rest of the world for free (there's a 20MB/month upload limit, but if you resize and optimize your photos beforehand that's not too bad). Best of all, Flickr, unlike Ofoto and other photo-sharing services, doesn't require a username and password from people trying to see your photos. It's also very blog friendly.

There's an "Organizr" feature, but so far it seems to be allergic to both of the browsers I use on the Mac (Firefox and Safari) -- probably because my OS is a little out of date. Or maybe it's a Mac issue. Here's my first Flickr "set" of photos, taken last Saturday at Sebago (we're doing some construction -- more on that when I get around to writing an entry about Sebago, my favorite Brooklyn canoe club. Yes, canoe club. Go to the website.).

Posted by csageday at 01:20 AM | Comments (1)

May 05, 2005

Subway Photography

Patterns appeal to me, and patterns with little irregularities appeal to me even more, so I love subway stations. I always want to document the endlessly repeating iron-wrought gates (with their little embellishments from different eras) or tile designs that accommodate the shape of the tunnel or have been altered by water damage. Usually I'm too shy to whip out my camera -- and my photos usually suck when I do -- but the proposed banning of photography in the subway has given me a push.

So far my technical ignorance has been making things difficult. Things that look beautiful to my naked eye look completely different once they appear on my digital camera screen. The flourescent lighting gives everything a blue tinge that doesn't translate well. Killing the flash helps, but then I need a tripod if I want a non-blurry shot. Here's the best of the bunch so far.

Posted by csageday at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2005

Remember January?

I finally managed to make it to B&H to pick up some prints (and a CD of digital images) of the snowstorm we had in January. Here they are. The commentary can be found in my very first blog entry.

Huh. I just figured out that this is my three-month blogging anniversary (only three months??? feels like years). Happy anniversary, blog. I have to admit that the honeymoon is over, but having a blog is kind of like do-it-yourself therapy for self-absorbed, moody people like me, so I can't complain. I'm not saying it works, but it's cheaper than the real thing, right?

It's somewhat disturbing how much time is involved, though. Here's an update to the blogging lessons-learned/side-effects list:

• Rule number one: DO NOT badmouth anyone you know or it will come back to haunt you. Not that I would ever do that. (Corcoran will be blacklisting me one of these days.)
• I assume everyone who knows I have a blog reads it. This is not true. The world does not revolve around me. This is painfully clear when people say things like, "I didn't know your apartment was being sold!?!"
• Not everyone knows what a blog is. It's very odd, but it's true. How these people exist or get their daily news is beyond me.
• I have a crappy hosting service so I only figure out what kind of traffic I get on Sundays. There's not a lot of traffic, but I know some people are reading it so I always check it. It goes up and down inexplicably and each time I figure out that ANYONE AT ALL has visited the site I get excited and immediately report the number to Derek. Derek doesn't really care all that much.
• The checking-for-comments is chronic, but since only the most loyal blog readers deign to comment it has abated somewhat. I must be very boring. Or maybe I'm writing about things that are completely irrelevant. Like my relationship to this blog.

Posted by csageday at 11:51 PM | Comments (3)