A last-minute mosaic. I didn’t really take any sky pictures this month. I don’t know, it’s not like this month’s skies have been ugly or anything. I just wasn’t sure if it needed doing. The skies in June are so predictably interesting in that unphotographable way. Pretty much every day’s sky demands to be documented, to the extent that it’s sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.
Have you ever actually shot fish in a barrel? It rules.
I wake up screaming #7: How-to
It’s been nearly two years since the first I wake up screaming post appeared on this site. More recently, Jane’s urging me to form a Flickr group centered around the motif has yielded a lot of fun. It’s fascinating to watch others send their own contributions from their personal catalogues of horrors. Though the group is still in its infancy, the range of entries is already impressive, and there’s a lot to love in the group pool. However, in a very limited number of cases, there is also a certain genetic drift in the direction of the merely annoying or puzzling. Rather than going in with the heavy hand of a group administrator, I prefer just to post this little how-to for those unsure about how to approach the daunting task of photographing a worthwhile IWUS candidate:
Step 1:
See how easy that was?
Notes:
Adam checks out the various functions (okay, one) of our new camera. Be on the lookout for his review.
So when he’s ready for a new passport, we’ll hand him the remote control and tell him to do it himself.
‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner’
Me: Adam, what are you doing over there?
Adam [in corner]: Adam in corner!
Me: ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner!’
Adam: Adam in corner!
Me [nudging Magda]: Honey, did you hear what I said?
Magda: What? Huh?
Me [proudly]: ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner!’
Magda: What’s that?
Me: [making ‘hello?’ face] ‘Dirty Dancing’? ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner!’? Remember, Jennifer Gray was…
Magda: Yeah, I guess I just wasn’t that INTO ‘Dirty Dancing’.
Me: Mmm. Good point.
Magda: Was that Patrick Swayze?
Me: I guess if you’d been INTO ‘Dirty Dancing’, right about now you’d be singing, [singing] OOOOOH, IIIII, HAD, THE TIME, OF MY LAAAY AAAY AAAYFUH…
Magda: AND I NEEEEEVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFOOOOOOORE…
Adam: ADAM IN CORNER!
Many months ago we were contacted by a French publishing house claiming interest in one of our pictures for use on a Slovene language textbook they were putting out. We exchanged a few emails, found out they were serious but pauvre, and agreed to allow use of the photo in exchange for the enormous fame we’d get out of having a picture on the cover of a language textbook. Here’s what we got in the mail yesterday:
The picture is a remarkably badly executed panoramic view of Ljubljana’s famed Prešeren Square that I made in May of 2005 (relatively small ‘large’ version is on Flickr here).
Apart from the card of thanks from Maurice Chevalier, my favorite thing about this is the fact that Magda and Adam have been immortalized on the cover of a French-Slovene textbook, for which the market is no doubt burgeoning. Check it out:
While you wait for Flickr to make you famous, why not read this excellent series of articles about how to position yourself to get more than a free book and some remerciements out of your photographs?
“Right now, every day, people with the power to pluck you out of obscurity are cruising Flickr. They are looking at photographs and at photographers.”
By the way, as neither of us can claim to speak French, and our prowess with Slovene is legend, these language-learning materials are up for grabs. In the unlikely event that our vast readership includes a Francophone who is dying to learn Slovene, drop us a comment or email promising a good home to the book and CD, and we’ll happily put them in the mail to vous.