3 posts tagged “photo”
I keep forgetting to take these while I'm out, but I finally took my first series of photos yesterday for use in panoramic software, resulting in the stitched image you see above. Do make sure to take a look at it in its biggest size; that's the precise thing I'm excited about with this S550 and panoramic shots, is that I can finally do ones that are high in quality from one edge to the other, ones I could actually print and frame if I wanted, after doing a fine-tuning of the settings and getting a really smooth shot (which admittedly today's example is most certainly not). I've got to get more into the habit, but I'm really hoping to present a lot more of these, and to hopefully take more care with future ones and get the elements more perfectly aligned.
This is the 3300 block of North Clark (north to your left, east to your right), halfway between Belmont and Roscoe in the Lakeview neigborhood on the northside, or in other words three city blocks (six human-sized blocks) south of Wrigley Field. It's precisely because this block is so typical, I think, that makes it a perfect example of why nearly every block on the northside sometimes seems cool and unique; notice here the great combination of old Industrial-Age buildings and modern, how several have been gussied up in a "Painted Ladies" style color scheme, how many of the first floors have been renovated into very contemporary pubs and restaurants and boutiques, how the entire thing is surrounded by tall, mature trees. Chicago is a very thriving, very alive city, in an American Midwest full of dying Industrial-Age cities; and you can see that even on just random corners of residential neighborhoods, which the block in this image very definitely is. I have to confess, I really loving in a section of an urban environment where I'm surrounded by scenes like this, an active city environment that relies on the cultural, architectural, and culinary diversity of immigration combining with the jobs and money of the creative class, sitting on a broad sturdy base of history and gravitas. Maybe that's a bit too flowery a way to put it, but you hopefully see my point.
I've talked about the following online several times before (including here at VOX just a little further below, or perhaps on the next page depending on when you're reading), of how I believe in this new mental condition that's recently come about because of the Web 2.0, which in an attempt to coin a phrase I call "Global Displacement Syndrome" or GDS; it basically can only come about in people who consume a massive amount of amateur creative content from around the world at once, usually through online means, just hundreds of photos at Flickr and hundreds of videos at YouTube every month, just like I've been doing more and more in my own life over the last several years. Because when you do something like this, you end up getting not only the cool high-end artsy stuff like usual, but also just a ton of casual and informal media from around the planet too, photos from birthday parties and school events, cellphone images of a neighborhood statue posted a hundred times a year to some moblog or Photobucket account, showing that statue in a hundred different states of weather and daylight. And I've said before, getting that kind of regular multimedia input into a neighborhood halfway around the planet from you makes you...well, not exactly a local, you can't exactly call it that, but no longer a stranger or simply a tourist to that city either, with you now knowing a lot more about that city each day than a simple tourist would know.
When you get too much input in your life like this, when you spend too much time thinking about it all like I have, then your brain can get into certain strange mindsets at certain times, which for me always seems triggered by things like warm summer afternoons, pot, laid-back European dance musicians, and a host of other things. And that's a mindset where it suddenly becomes difficult to determine rationally just what city you're in at that exact moment in your life -- whether it's Chicago or London or Frankfurt, Sydney or Seoul or Ljubljana, Rio or Toronto or Cape Town. In fact, it's like you're not in any of those particular cities at all, but rather a strange and mystical world where all these cities have combined into a tenth, entirely fictional one, one where you and all your online friends from these other nine cities are all living at once, a place just as real and concrete in your head as the actual physical city you're currently located in. And when I'm under the spell of GDS, like I've said before, I sometimes have these really strange experiences here in Chicago where I physically live; for example, when I look out the window next to my computer here at home (the image seen in this entry, taken just a few minutes ago), it's hard for me to tell whether I'm still in Chicago or maybe suddenly in another one of these cities just mentioned, that if I were to actually go downstairs and open the front door of my building, hell, who knows, maybe I just will find Barcelona or Oslo or Saint Petersburg right beyond.
I find myself getting into this mindset more and more with the passing years, the longer I'm exposed regularly to all these hundreds of casual photos and videos online from around the world, all the underground bands and artists I follow around the world all at once. The Social Singularity? The Coming One World Culture? Or just the sad result of too much Flickr, 420, and time alone? Hmm.
So, regular readers know that I've been spending 2007 trying to make some pretty radical changes to my life, and for the most part it's been going swimmingly well -- I've now been cigarette-free for almost 10 months, for example, ended up bicycling a grand total this year of somewhere around 750 miles, and a bunch of other stuff along those lines. In fact, the only place where I've been having big problems is with my weight; which is ironic, I know, because unlike most other people dealing with weight issues, I'm actually trying to gain weight this year instead of lose it. See, for my height and body type, my ideal weight is somewhere around 165 pounds; but I've only been at 165 once in my whole life, right at the end of high school, with my weight eventually slipping down into the 150-155 pound range during college and pretty much staying there throughout my twenties and early thirties.
In the last several years, though, as I've dealt with persistent unemployment and persistent poverty, my weight has taken a dramatic downward turn as well; at my lightest, in fact (roughly a year ago at this point), I was actually down to 135 pounds if you can believe that shit. And that's why I added weight-gain at the beginning of the year to the rest of my "radical changes to succeed at in 2007" list that I've been working so hard at, because frankly 135 pounds is just a dangerous point for me to be at as far as overall health. But it's been tough, much tougher than the other things on my list, because of still being just as broke this year as I always am, plus now adding six miles a day of bicycling to my routine and all the rest.
Anyway, I'm down in St. Louis right now, celebrating Christmas with my family; and this morning I weighed myself and learned that for the first time in years I'm at least back to my normal 150 pounds. And that's good, that's very good, and makes me happy and optimistic about putting on the rest of the weight in 2008. And now combine that with the fact that I ultimately ended up succeeding at just about every other resolution I made last New Year's, and you're left with a very happy Jason indeed.
Christmas is going okay, by the way; it's a bit of a weird one this year, in fact, in that I only came down for three days this time, in that we were going to celebrate Christmas in January this year, in that this was the only time my brother and sister-in-law were going to be able to make it to town. (Alas, they've ended up having to cancel even that; this tech start-up my brother works for is running him ragged these days.) Plus, I'm reading this book for CCLaP right now called Three Fallen Women, by a Chicago author named Amy Güth, which has ended up affecting me in this really strange way that I'm finding hard right now to describe; this sorta intense connection that I'm having with some of the characters, but for a reason I wish didn't exist, just...well, it's complicated, and like I said I'm having a hard time describing it. I'm sure I'll be able to hash out a decent review for the CCLaP site by the time I'm done, but for now I'm just going through some really strange emotions while actually reading it. Anyway.
Bleh. This entry didn't come out right at all. I can never write anything fucking decent at my parents' place, what with the TV constantly going and people constantly running around and cats constantly bothering you and the like. I swear, I don't know how the hell authors with families ever get anything actually done.
Pictured: Me at three years old, hanging out with our family dog at the time, a photo of which is hanging on the wall at my parents' place. Just thought you'd get a kick out of it.
