Keepin' on the Sunny Side

New York MoMA - April 2009

Political mud slinging and grid lock, unemployment still high, banks still playing shenanigans, another former child star died too young as an adult, the great easy rider, Dennis Hopper, died, and the oil disaster in the gulf is wiping out an ecosystem.  It is getting hard to find anything to smile about, but that is what I need to do right now or I will just go deeper into that black hole.

Good things -

• My vertigo is gone
• Work is moving along
• My big art project is moving along.
• My yard's bark chipping is almost done
• My niece graduated from college
• I got a new 27" iMac which is much better to use for photo editing than my dimming 15" Macbook Pro
• I gave blood
• The moon is really pretty tonight
• Palomar is playing on my iTunes
• I just watched episodes of Justified and Californication  and recommend them both
• I am getting ready for my New York trip by arranging work with a model there 
• My wife and I are doing well
• My truck is busy being a truck by hauling bark chip and other yard stuff
• My 10+ year old dogs still love to play fetch and brawl with each other
• Some friends got new jobs, including one who could  not come out as lesbian at her old one in fear of losing her job
• A friend who has bad back pain was able to get some cortisone shots today
• There is fresh snow in the Sierras and one or two resorts are going to reopen for the weekend

Sometimes I have to just turn off the radio, computer, tv, and stop reading the news for a little while.  It gets to be too much too fast.  I don't want to disconnect from the world, just take a break and enjoy the things that are good.

I plan to write more about Dennis Hopper later.  He was a  big role model for me.

She Still Works Hard

Legs - A celebration - and a new (to me) way to publish my photos

Piernas (Andrea on the hood of my old truck)

 Last Friday I saw a great photo essay by Magnum Photos on the theme of Legs at slate.com.    I remembered Joe making a movie using images of Dr. L and another model and knew I wanted to experiment. This inspired me to try and make a movie out of my photos as well.  Along the way of creating the movie, I discovered a few challenges and some rewards as well.

I went through all my digital or scanned photos and chose some that I believe the legs are the key ingredient to the image.  After some editing and post production work in Lightroom, I was ready to make a movie.

At first I used the online movie-making service at animoto.com.  While this service is free for 30 second videos, longer videos cost a little bit.  I opted to get the one year membership and made a few movies.  It is a very easy tool.  You upload the photos, choose background music from their free library, set a few parameters and then their program does all the work.  In the end you get a slick video with little work.  The downsides are the music selection is limited, you can not put in custom text/credit screens, and their is very little customization.  The video at the very bottom was my first attempt.

After playing in that, I used iMovie on my Mac.  It allows for much more customization and editing.  I could also choose any song from my iTunes library, which I did.   After a good bit of time of editing and putting in transitions and text screens, I made the movie you see here.

I thought loading it would be the easy part.  First I tried blogger's video upload.  While convenient, the output player was way too small.  I then created a youtube account and uploaded it there with very tight privacy settings (unsearchable and not published publicly).  I have a few concerns about posting this video there, but I doubt I will keep it there for long.

This is my second attempt at making this type of video.  I see room for improvement, but I am happy with it as a beginner's effort.  Any feedback is welcome.  So, without further ado, here it is - Piernas Bonitas (Nice Legs).

vimeo version

Piernas Bonitas from Karl B on Vimeo.

blogger version

Piernas - Candace

Out of Expediency

Just Seconds Before Lines
Photo by Karl

It is funny how work is careening forward into the end-of-the-year wall to get stuff done that we should have been doing all year long. I am putting in long weeks to get stuff done before 2010 graces our calendars.

So today, out of expediency, it is another blog version of the clip show. All of these images should be new, but repeats may occur.

I miss writing good (in my mind) stuff. Here are some flowers for the ladies.

I Never Remember the Name of a Flower
Photo by Karl

2
Phot by Karl

Front Passenger Side
Photo by Karl
Berkeley "Exhibitionist" and Voyeurs
Photo by Karl