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    Monday, May 20th, 2013
    papersky
         		8:16p
    Thud: Thessaly
     Words: 2325
    Total words: 51589
    Files: 4
    Tea: Pu erh... I think I was going to make some more and forgot. Oh well.
    Music: Brandenburg Concertos
    Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

    So what tech level do you need to be at to fix a cleft palate as a birth deformity? Could the Victorians do it?
    pantryslut
         		12:44p
    I just realized that in addition to all the myriad ways working on "Gwyneth Paltrow's Head in a Box" is amusing me ("what are you working on now?" "I'm working on a story about Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box. It's called, 'Gwyneth Paltrow's Head in a Box'..."), that the title itself also counts as a spoiler. Bonus!
    selenak
         		9:40p
    Ten years ago today...
     ...the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was broadcast. I had a busy Pentecost and thus couldn't make a proper anniversary post. However, here is a beautiful article by someone about what the show meant to them. As for me, the best way to celebrate, short of any actual rewatch, is watching THE best vid of all times again, to wit, [personal profile] luminosity's Scooby Road: the entire series vidded to Abbey Road by the Beatles.

    If you're familiar with BTVS, you've probably seen it already; it's justly famous. If you haven't, or haven't for a while and feel like refreshing memories or just like celebrating, it's here, with notes by the vidder on the individual segments. Back when I first watched it, I wrote an enthralled review by which I still stand. And now, excuse, I'm off to watch and hum.

    This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/900515.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.

    Current Mood: nostalgic
    aphrodite_mine
         		12:26p
    I want to go to Hawaii
     1. Serious question: once Days of the Future Past comes out, would you or someone you love be interested in an xmmficathon return? We'd do something with opting-in on the various canons, like X3, XMFC, Wolverine, and the new film. Probably no comics options, because those are hell to match anyway.

    2. Are there any rumblings of a post-season Hannibal fic exchange? Because YES PLEASE and my brain doesn't work well with open-ended prompt claiming. GIVE ME AN ASSIGNMENT.

    3. I'm going to laugh until I cry or cry until I laugh if my night terrors fall off once this move is complete. My fuckin' brain, y'all.
    passion_perfect
    [ ralst ]
         		8:33p
    loneraven
         		8:09p
    fic:: you who fly with them / you who are neither before nor after [Fringe]
     This story was.... exhausting, and definitely not one I could have done on my own; troyswann did a very helpful edit of this story; [personal profile] forthwritten sorted out some plot points; Shim took on the mess of coding it and was triumphant. Thank y'all.

    (Usually I post stories on LJ/DW and on the AO3, but for reasons that will become abundantly clear should you click, this one is just on the AO3. Content notes on the story page itself; if you're an AO3 refusenik for whatever reason please feel free to comment here obv.)

    Written in response to someone's observation on Tumblr - at the end of Fringe, everybody lives... except one.

    fic:: you who fly with them / you who are nether before nor after
    by Raven
    12,000w, Fringe, gen, Peter/Olivia, September, Nina, Sam Weiss and others.

    "Who are you?" / "My name is September." 2015, seen across two timelines.

    raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are comment count unavailable comment(s). Comment there or here.
    steepholm
         		8:15p
    Soapy Sams
    "You should read The Werewolf Flesh," my mother said to me when I was a teenager; "It's just your sort of thing." I wasn't sure about that - horror has never been my bag. It wasn't until some while later that I realised she was actually talking about Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. I read it then, though I still wasn't particularly struck. Today I remember the book mostly because of the mondegreen it gave rise to. But that name - Samuel Butler. He was a writer, he had a somewhat unconventional take on the world while still being very much "of his time". Could he be a relative? That would be kind of cool, I vaguely thought, but as I hadn't liked the book that much I didn't dwell on it. (I still haven't read Erewhon.)

    I liked Hudibras and "The Elephant in the Moon", though, and at university I wondered much the same about the seventeenth-century Samuel Butler. He did seem tantalizingly close to being a relation. At the time he was born, my own branch of the Butlers was based in Claines near Worcester. They were solicitors, public notaries and things of that sort. Samuel Butler's family were based just twenty miles away in Strensham, and he spent much of his life employed as a secretary. It all seems very comparable, and a bit of coincidence, but I found no genealogical smoking gun. Also, it turns out that the same possibility had occurred to others before me. Some two centuries ago George Butler (see below) had gone looking for the same connection and come up empty. Which isn't to say it doesn't exist. Old Samuel's brand of satire feels so simpatico.

    Then, the other week I saw this at a May fete.

    P200513_13.13

    It was only £3.50 and full of interesting coloured maps, so I had to buy it, right? It turns out to be by Samuel Butler, the grandfather of the Erewhon guy. Now, I've no reason to suppose he's a relation, but when you set him next to my great*4 uncle George, their careers seem eerily similar:

    Name:...............................George Butler.........................................Samuel Butler
    Born:.................................July 1774...............................................Jan 1774
    Education:..........................Sidney Sussex, Camb.............................St Johns, Camb
    Elected Fellow:...................1794 (I think)........................................1797
    Educational Career:.............Headmaster of Harrow (1805-29)............Headmaster of Shrewsbury (1798-1836)
    Ecclesiastical highlight:.......Dean of Peterborough (1842)..................Bishop of Lichfield (1836)
    Died:.................................1853.....................................................1839

    Can they really not be related? It's like there's a shadow family of Butlers, all called Samuel, hovering just out of reach. Taunting me with their Sam-ness. And their diff-rence.

    This must be resolved.
    itsallonething 9:51a
    unpacking my previous Star Trek post, plus Cumberbatch's Khan

    http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2013/05/unpacking-my-previous-star-trek-post.html

    1. Both villains were insufficiently established. Using Pike instead of Marcus would've deepened the part of the bad Star Fleet captain, and it would've allowed a little more time in the film to develop Khan.

    2. Women fared badly. Uhura's attempt to bluff the Klingons should've worked, and any new woman added to the cast should've been memorable for more than her underwear. I was not a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation (I rarely had access to a TV when it was being broadcast), but I thought Tasha Yar, the female security officer, was a smart response to the limited women's roles in the original show.

    3. While I had summer-movie fun watching Star Trek Into Darkness, I wanted more clever solutions and fewer "hulk smash" moments.

    I understand people wishing Hollywood would give more breaks to Bollywood stars, but the logic of capitalism doesn't work that way, and the notion that Cumberbatch looked "too white" strikes me as either ignorant or racist. Here's a Bollywood star who is actually named Khan:


    Here's Cumberbatch:


    That said, if I could've cast the part, I would've gone with Alexander Siddig, whose post-DS9 work has been great:


    I haven't read many reviews of the movie, so these shouldn't be considered "best of" suggestions, but I recommend them:

    Star Trek Movie: SPOILERZZZZ | Felicia's Melange

    Star Trek into Darkness Hostile to Star Trek, Intelligence | Sequart


    honorh
         		10:29a
    Jim Butcher interview!
     Just discovered this: The Arched Doorway interview with Jim Butcher. He talks about TDF, his new series The Cinder Spires and other things of epic epicness. Warning: Spoilers for the next DF book. He discusses the basic plot, though not much in the way of specifics.

    ( Basic plot talkCollapse )

    Discuss?
    sandrine
         		7:25p
    Beware. Rabid fangirl alert.
     THE NEW TEEN WOLF SEASON THREE TRAILER HAS BEEN RELEASED! *flails*

    1. I'm literally drowning in Deucalion feels. Drowning. Like Matt in the pool, only worse. Yes, I know this makes no fucking sense, but I don't care. I was sort of expecting this, but not really, because I didn't predict his voice to be quite so appealing. And fuck, the scene where he's talking to Derek re: killing his pack? So hot. Also: red alpha eyes. Work for me every time. Well, almost every time. (See #3.)

    2. What is that Allison/Isaac scene? I'm so confused. Is that just an epic tease, or is that something that's actually going to happen? If yes, I'm going to be all over it because Allison tried to slice Isaac up at the end of S2 and, hello, that's exactly the kind of pairing dynamic I usually go for. Still, this is a ship I totally didn't see coming.

    3. Scott, Scott, Scott, I wish I cared at all about you. But I don't, and I don't want you to be an Alpha. Actually, I wouldn't mind if the Alphas killed you. And Stiles too. Sorry.

    4. Derek can't catch a fucking break, can he? Let me give you a hug, baby!

    5. Other things happen to other people I don't really care about. Except for Melissa, but I'm 98% sure that the scene in the trailer is a dream sequence thing because otherwise it wouldn't be in the trailer.

    CAN WE HAVE SEASON THREE NOW PLEASE! (Well, not really. I want to finish my fic before that. But still. Want.)

    Current Mood: excited
    greygirlbeast
         		1:09p
    "That would be the test I could not forgive."
     If you should doubt
    My heart,
    Remember this:
    That I would lie to you
    If I believed it was
    Right to do.     ~ Wye Oak

    I see my last entry was made on the 17th. And this would be a longish one, but I'm pressed for time. I'm several days behind, and I very much need to finish Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #12 today. A bad headache all day yesterday. Two nights in a row I've gotten to sleep early and easy, but then a sudden roller coaster of nightmares that's left even me impressed, before awaking six hours later, cold and disoriented and unable to get back to sleep. None of this, obviously, is conducive to the tedious, painstaking task of making a movie at a measly five-seven frames-per-page. But there's actually a lot I want to put down. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. These are the maybes that just get me farther and farther behind.

    Only six – or seven – days remaining until birthday -09. I say six or seven because I was born on a leap year. Technically, most years, my birthday isn't the 26th, but the 27th*. And I didn't figure that out until last year. Which is pretty weird. Anyway, if you are the sort who wants to send an aging curmudgeon a distraction on her birthday, I do have an Amazon wish list with nice distracting stuff. I was going to post this earlier, but I forgot. I forget a lot these days.

    I haven't gamed/roleplayed in five days. Go me. I think the last time was Wednesday. It was time to unplug for a bit. Time to remind myself there's a real world out there, and that I'm neglecting it for a pixel simulacrum. To the people I have been rping with, apologies for the sudden absence (though I did leave stsisyphus with an ic notice). I'll likely be back, probably very soon.

    My hair is now a rather wonderful steely grey. Three days ago, I'd had enough of the pale yellow mess the salon made of it a month ago, and I'd see a girl last Thursday on Thayer Street with wonderful steely grey hair. So, Spooky did research. And, behind the cut, is the result. Note that this is a temporary wash, because we wanted to see if I'd like it before committing. I do. So, next step, semi-permamnet. Note, in the photos, I was not really in a "look at my face" mood. I've lost too much weight this winter and cold spring, and I need sun...

    ( Grey on PurposeCollapse )


    Here are Spooky's instructions for how we got this color: We used Roux Fanci-full in True Steel. I got a couple of tubes of Ion Color Brilliance in Titanium, which is a similar shade of grey, if the sample is to be believed. It's a semi-permanent dye, like Manic Panic. That will be the next step. I would note that my hair had been bleached platinum blonde beforehand. This will not work over dark hair.

    Grey,
    Aunt Beast

    * My late Grandmother Ramey's birthday. She was not born on a leap year.

    Current Mood: half awake
    basingstoke
         		12:57p
    ack
     I have 7500 words of Teen Wolf story that bids fair to turn into a 40k epic.

    Congratulations, Teen Wolf pimps at Escapade. You won.

    This entry was originally posted at http://basingstoke.dreamwidth.org/442274.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
    crowleycrow
         		12:07p
    The grim slide
     In Michael Dirda's fine and heartfelt overview of the work of James Salter, in the new issue of what Rodger Cunningham dubbed the New York Review of Each Other's Books, that amid James Salter's journalism is an interview with Vladimir Nabokov for People magazine.  Salter interviews Nabokov for People.  This sounds like an alternative universe, but it's only the past, another country where they did things differently.
    papersky
         		3:56p
    Thud: Thessaly
     Words: 2297
    Total words: 49264
    Files: 4
    Tea: Pu erh
    Music: Brandenburg Concertos
    Reason for stopping: end of chapter

    In a way, this is an even weirder book than MRC, but nobody will notice that because it looks so much more like a conventional genre story.
    matociquala
         		11:28a
    no sleep 'till brooklyn
     I have olive bread, sharp cheddar, orange/cardamom tea, wrist braces, & 16 unscheduled hours. This draft dies today.

    Current Mood: cheerful
    innerbrat
         		11:29a
    Alright, let’s make this official

    I’m going home.

    This is not what I wanted, and it’s stressing me the fuck out.

    But it’s okay in many ways. I miss Abby. And Charlie. I miss Izzy, and Sam and Lauren. And I hate uncertainty.

    New York was the very best thing I could have done for myself. The reasons didn’t pan out, but I am a healthier, happier, more knowledgable person than I was three years ago. And New York, Bank Street, Gotham Girls, Ana and Becca made that happen.

    The job I’m leaving is the very best job I could ever have had – the job and my boss and everything about it seemed so perfectly designed for me and my expertise and my personality that me not getting to do it for longer feels like concrete disproof of the existence of narrativium in our lives.

    I don’t want to go.

    But I can do it.

    Now, who wants to buy my comics?

    This post can also be found at Thagomizer.net. Feel free to join in the conversation wherever you feel most comfortable.

    ratphooey
         		11:18a
    Weekend update (with neither Seth Myers nor Amy Poehler)
     Saturday was fine.

    I slept well, and woke up looking forward to taking #1 to Aikido, where we could be together with the other students, families and instructors in our sadness over the loss of Sensei. But #1 had a sore throat and a runny nose, so I had to call the dojo and make our apologies. Instead, I took #2 over to the rec center for little league picture day. He looked typically adorable in his uniform, and was typically energetic as he bounded around the gym with some teammates while waiting for their group's turn. I did manage to catch him in a brief quiet moment with a particular pal of his, who is one of the most beautiful little girls I have ever seen in my entire life - my snapshot does not begin to do her justice:



    After the shoot, the kids continued to romp while the parents chatted a while and recovered from the large checks we'd written to the photographer. And then we went home again, with two hours to wait until #1's turn in front of the lens.

    The spousage took him, and #2 tagged along; I stretched out on the sofa with a magazine. Got to the third page before utterly and completely conking out. Awoke three and a half hours later only because #2 leapt onto the sofa me. Then it was the spousage's turn for a nap, and as we approached the boys' bedtime we realized that we'd both be able to survive a late movie. With grandma on patrol. we grabbed a bite and saw Star Trek Into Darkness, which made me even more of a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch than I already was. (The rest of the move was fine, but he was... better. As A.O. Scott wrote in the NYT, "Mr. Cumberbatch, pale and intense, has become the object of a global fan cult, and it’s easy to see why. Whether playing a hero (as in “Sherlock”) or a villain, he fuses Byronic charisma with an impatient, imperious intelligence that seems to raise the ambient I.Q. whenever he’s on screen").

    We got home only to realize that the half of my keychain with the house key on it was nowhere to be found; the spousage thought he'd heard keys fall to the ground as we were getting into the car, but since I still had the car key, he didn't mention it. He graciously went back across town AND FOUND MY KEYS RIGHT THERE ON THE GROUND, and I stayed downstairs to faff about online a bit. Jenny Linksy jumped up and joined me, and she was making these cute little sounds, sort of a combination of purr, snore and chirp. I stretched out on the sofa to give her skritches, and the next thing I knew, it was 7:30 AM Sunday, and the boys were jumping onto the sofa with me and asking for breakfast. Which I made them, while simultaneously coloring my hair, which had gone a little too auburn in the spring sunshine of the past several weeks.

    From then on, I had one of those days where I just wanted to ( crawl under my duvet and hide.Collapse )

    And now it's Monday, and I'm freshly showered, and my foot wrap is freshly laundered, and I'm acting the part of a productive part of the workforce.
    theinferior4
    [ pgdf ]
         		11:02a
    desperance
         		6:59a
    In which we are here
     We're in Huntsville, Alabama, for my father-in-law's funeral.

    This morning we are the perfect image of two people who should really not have spent all of yesterday in transit. Two planes between three airports have played combinatory havoc with our various owies. Karen vanished into the bathroom muttering that everything hurt except her left hand; as it happens, my own left hand is actually quite painful. Though not as much as the arm that it's attached to, which is nowhere near as painful as the shoulder and neck above. That whole anarcho-industrial complex has been seizing up all week, despite anarchic interventions and industrial levels of analgesics; I can neither stand nor sit nor lie, move nor keep still except its hurting. (We have been here before - it's why I have stashes of codeine on two continents - and we know that it will go away. Last time, some serious massage drove it out early. I would like to try that again, but, y'know. Huntsville, Alabama. We're a way from our hands-on specialists.)

    Talking of [placename, state], though, Jeannie made us watch Mystery, Alaska t'other night. I really, really liked that. A sports movie that actually works (largely, I guess, by dint of being about something else underneath: but that may actually be true of all sports movies that work? Or possibly all movies that work, regardless of genre? I dunno; I'm really not a movie buff, I just know what I like, and I liked that).
    crack_van
    [ turnonmyheels ]
         		9:20a
    It's Bad Enough We Get Along FireEverything, MarieLikesToDraw (MarieLikeToDraw)
    Fandom: TEEN WOLF
    Pairing: Chris Argent/Peter Hale, background Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
    Length: 13000 and a sequel!
    Author on LJ: Unknown
    Author Website: MarieLikesToDraw at AO3 and FireEverything at AO3
    Why this must be read: Fandom often over-looks the hot-ass GROWN MEN of Teen Wolf fandom and that is a crying shame, because Dr. Deaton, Chris Argent, Sheriff Stilinski, and Peter Hale are just as gorgeous as any of the kids, and those of us 38 and older don't feel nearly as squicky when imagining their exploits as we sometimes do imagining the younger generation.

    Peter's voice is so sharp and precise and sassy it should be a crime. And Chris is in such a vulnerable place and knows better than to play with the big bad wolf, and yet he keeps on doing it.

    “Where’s Derek?” Argent demands without preamble, without any pretense at diplomacy. Peter could sigh, if he was feeling demonstrative.

    “He’s learning to delegate,” Peter says.

    Argent looks livid, lines in his face deepening.

    “I want a truce,” he says at last.

    “We have a truce,” he reminds him, watching him with senses open like he was taught, many years ago. Chris Argent has a strong heartbeat, deep lungs. He’s a mess, emotions sliding off him in waves.

    “I want it in writing.”

    Oh.

    “Invoking a contract is a more complicated business,” Peter says, telling him what he must already know. The Argents are a clan not without history, however human. The age of their traditions also carries weight.

    “Don’t pander to me,” Argent says, voice low in his throat.

    “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Peter hedges, voice light.

    Peter never dreams of anything but fire and mouthfuls of dirt.

    It's Bad Enough We Get Along
    nwhyte
         		2:52p
    May Books 13) “I have an Idea for a Book ...”: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg
     The Hugo Voter Pack is out! So I have merrily downloaded all the nominees I hadn't already read (and a few that I had), and started with this from the Best Related Work category.

    Unfortunately it's not very interesting.
    Dr. Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) was the most prolific anthologist and book packager in the world. During his nearly 40-year career in publishing, he created 1,310 anthologies (including 199 single author collections) and more than 950 novels, along with 228 nonfiction books, for a total of almost 2,500 published works. During this time, he commissioned more than 8,350 original short stories and reprinted more than 13,300 short stories (including 807 novels).
    This is a list of all of the books he edited, including ebooks, and it will be useful to people who find this sort of thing useful. The authorship attribution is a bit puzzling; there is a short introduction by John Helfers, but no indication that he assembled the rest of the material (indeed he is explicitly given copyright only for the introduction); the very short biographical sketch from which I quote above is listed in the contents page as "Commentary by Martin H. Greenberg" but clearly isn't, as it refers to him in the past tense and is cast in the first person plural, without ever saying who "we" are. I read the three pages of introductory material, but it would be an exaggeration to say that I even skimmed the rest.
    nwhyte
         		2:38p
    May Books 12) The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
    I'm coming back to Tibradden, to live with Charles again. I've driven down from Belfast with boxes stacked on the back seat; Colin will follow with the rest of his belongings when his term has finished.
    Selina was one of my brother's college friends at TCD, and I always vaguely regretted not getting to know her better, and wondered what she ended up doing. Well, she ended up taking on the (small, run-down) family estate in the foothills of the Dublin mountains, and combining the burdens of twenty-first century farming with her academic career and family. This is an extraordinary book about dealing with changes in family and society, beautifully written, lucidly and emotionally told, and with no punches pulled in her own self-examination of dealing with the intricacies of both family commitments and government bureaucracy, in the years of the inflation and bursting of the Irish property bubble. It's brilliant and you should all go and get it. (I see it's just out in paperback as well.)
    i_kender
         		1:12p
    I am the world. I am the children.
     ...doesn't sound creepy at all, no?

    Someone on my Facebook is on a nostalgia trip and keeps posting photos of her old school days. I find this slightly disturbing, as they were my old schools days too and every now and then I turn up in one of the photos. Only I don't recognise this proto-person I used to be. All I can see is his awkwardness, like a gangly newborn giraffe: his unhappiness, his shyness, his loneliness. And I'm not sure how to feel about that. Should I pet him? Give him advice? Get him drunk? Or just steal his pocket money?

    London is still freezing, even though it's nearly the end of May. I'm not sure why this is, but it makes me want to staple duvets over all the windows in the flat. And also design a duvet full-body suit that I can wear out of the house. Seriously, I should not still be wearing double socks, nor wearing shoes and a leather jacket indoors.

    I have seen both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness, and lo, they were good. But both have huge spoilers that would diminish the film if you knew about them before watching, so I have to be careful what I say.

    - Iron Man 3: Robert Downey Jr should continue playing Stark for as long as he can, because he makes these films awesome.

    - Star Trek: Benedict Cumonmeback (as someone on Facebook crudely called him) was pretty great in this film. I can't say I was particularly sympathetic to his character, if that's how you were supposed to feel, but I found it hard to tear my eyes off him when he was onscreen. Kirk, on the other hand, was somehow even more inept in this film than the first one. Not sure how he managed that. I would not let him be in charge of a garage band, never mind a starship. In other news: not enough Sulu, too much Uhura.

    I have visited Bahrain recently, which was interesting.

    And I am currently a gentleman of leisure, which is fun, but not as much fun as it sounds. For example, I do not wear immaculate dressing gowns around the house, eating peeled grapes, with a brandy flask tucked into a pocket.
    daegaer
         		1:00p
    kylecassidy
         		7:58a
    Behind the Scenes on the Philadelphia Weekly cover shoot with Neil Gaiman.
     Behind the Scenes on the Philadelphia Weekly cover shoot with Neil Gaiman.

    While it's the cover shoot, it ended up not being the actual cover photo. The actual cover was a photo I took last year of Neil taking a Behind The Scenes tour of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology given by Dr. Brad Hafford (you can read about that here. The photo that I'd actually taken for the cover ended up on a full page on the inside, which is fine, because it's a better photo and the cover had an ad on it that needed to be fit in, so the one I liked better got an uncluttered layout. There were about six different cover variants, of which I got to see the final two.




    Which do you prefer? You may clickenzee to embiggen.


    Anyway, the shoot was really basic and really fast. It was late at night, Neil had just gotten into town and picked trillian_stars, Amanda and I up at a house party in North Philly and we were headed back to center city. I'd wanted to do something with the Philly Skyline in the background because the story's about a speech that he gave in Philly a year ago. So we went out onto an island in the middle of broad street. I love the view down that street and I've used it a couple of times before.

    Here's one that I took of Trillian on our way home from somewhere a couple of months ago -- a fog bank had rolled down and the place was lit up wonderfully.




    Clickenzee to Embiggen!


    One of the things that happens when you take a lot of photos of things is that you start to tuck little shortcuts away in your brain like "ah, now I know how to do this, I can pull it out of my hat later." I figured this lighting setup with this background might be useful later and it was.

    So, with the idea of getting Neil and Amanda out of the street and into bed as quickly as possible, I figured the easiest and coolest thing to do would be to photograph Neil the same way, right in front of the pretty-pretty city hall. This is, I think, one of the most important aspects of a lot of my photography -- being able to move really fast. Many's the busy politician or musician who sighs mournfully when their publicist tells them they need to do a shoot for some magazine and then it's your turn to save the day by coming in and saying "I can be in and out in 9 minutes." It puts the pressure on, but it also makes you a lot nicer to work with and then people start asking for you.



    Photo by Amanda


    The lighting setup is really simple, there's one flash behind a shoot-thru umbrella. I'm using a Luma Pro LP605s light stand because it folds down really small and some generic double fold umbrella for the same reason. The camera is a Panasonic GX1 and a 20mm f1.7 lens -- I'd brought a Leica 45mm f2.8 as well but that had somehow broken earlier in the day and wouldn't focus -- which brings up a point -- when you're going on an important shoot, bring two of everything. I had a backup camera body and two lenses which the small footprint of the micro 4:3 format allows you to do relatively easily.

    So, shooting with the 20mm lens and an off-camera flash you have two sources of light, the flash, and the ambient street light. The ambient street light is made up of traffic lights, street lights, and the bright klieg lights aimed at city hall. The first thing to do is expose for city hall, and you do that by setting your f-stop and aperture until it shows up properly. In this case it was f 2.2 at 1/130th of a second at an ISO of 200. THEN, once that's figured out, you set the exposure for your subject with the flash power. Two light sources, two different controls -- camera first, then flash.

    Once the light is properly balanced, you just start shooting. Badda badda bing.





    Later in photoshop I burned in the edges to darken the bottom of his jacket and most of the street behind him -- this draws your eyes to the subject -- there are two things you want the photo to say "Neil" and "Philadelphia", and here you have it. You can read the article about "Make Good Art" here.

    Hope this was useful.




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