time comes undone

It’s a little late to be posting best of ‘07 lists, but as our CFO would say, it’s not late as long as it’s posted in the first quarter. So to get the ball rolling, here are my favorite photographs of 2007, in mosaic form.

Favorites from my photostream

1. Marissa Nadler @ Spiro’s, Austin, TX 03-16-2007, 2. Boris @ Spiro’s Rumba Room, Austin, TX 03-16-2007, 3. The Psychic Paramount @ Spiro’s, Austin, TX 03-16-2007, 4. Moog man, 5. Donny, 6. 702, 7. Sea Zombies 1 of 3, 8. Robot revolt, 9. The Mohawk, 10. The Laugh Factory, 11. Shell of infamy, 12. Fuck you guy

Favorites from others’ photostreams

1. Fall in by the lexie mountain boys, 2. Sun Meets Wall by misanthrop, 3. Untitled by isado, 4. Parasols And Paddles by tarotastic, 5. Essaouira by rasiel, 6. Simmy is iTrapped by stillframe, 7. underwood by talibaba , 8. mates of state by recovering lazyholic, 9. Space by dick cocktail, 10. Untitled by epmd, 11. Untitled by hanna_e, 12. Cherry, Cherry by cognitive ambition, 13. chill´ by hanniballl, 14. BATTLES by karmajunkie, 15. Grain at the old mill by objecta, 16. George W Bush by stu_pendousmat, 17. loltombstone by stu_pendousmat, 18. another (closed) roadside attraction by antal, 19. gd melodica by greg davis, 20. Lost Grip by sharon k. cooper.

As a nod to the classic Bill Hicks bit your children aren’t special, I’d like to extend that by saying your love is not special, either.

I’m not a cynic. Nor am I one of those people who don’t know love. I’m just saying there’s no need to romanticize romance to a degree that’s irrational.

In a discussion on digg.com about some research a few years ago that revealed that passionate love fades on average a year after it begins, there was rampant resistance to the idea that scientific analysis can be applied to the phenomenon of love.

My two cents on this were the following: Why would something need to be mystical, mysterious, or beyond reduction to a scientific explanation in order for it to be beautiful? Does knowing that our experience of infatuation is regulated by hormones in any way cheapen the intensity of it?

I was always so annoyed by the scene in Contact where Matthew McConaughey turns to Jodie Foster and asks her, “Do you love your father? Prove it.” As if to imply, we can’t prove God or love, but they’re both real. Aggh, stab me with a spoon! There are several problems with this “argument,” not the least of which being that it is emotionally manipulative hollywood claptrap, but for the purposes of this blog post I will just say this. We can prove love. We can see it on an MRI and measure it on an EEG. We can observe recurrent patterns and fit it into a model of human behavior. Love is actually quite well documented.

So what is love? Love is hormones and neurons firing off in such a way as to yield an evolutionary advantage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great ride. I just don’t entertain any illusions about the cosmic significance of it.

I bought my first digital SLR today, a brand new Nikon D60. New to me and new to the shelves — it just came out this week.

I’ve been building to this purchase for over a year, during which time my interest in and knowledge of photography has blossomed, in part thanks to flickr. isado, siskind, fuzuoko, and bjenright are just a few of the photographers who have delighted and inspired me with their public photostreams. By emulating them and others I have learned a thing or two about how to compose a shot. But, much as I love my Fuji Finepix, most of its output comes out looking like what the flickristas would derisively call a ’snapshot’. Until this:

I thought for a second about what a fitting first subject for my Nikon would be, and right away I knew the answer. My friend Sasan, who works at Wolf and helped me select the camera.

We both marvelled at how professional it looks. I said, incredulously, “It softened the background.” He said, “It’s supposed to.” I said, “I know, I just can’t believe how nice it came out.” My fuji had a portrait mode too, but I never got results like this. He said it’s the best picture anyone has taken of him in years.

This camera is quickly destroying the high photography mystique. All this time, I’ve sort of believed that the fabulous pictures I find all the time on flickr are due to some combination of superior technique and superior post-processing. Now I realize it’s largely superior equipment. I was just using the wrong tool. Ironically, all I did here was point, and shoot. With the Nikon, all you have to do is to know what to look for and how to frame, and the camera makes it gorgeous.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I can snap pictures far more judiciously. With the Fuji I’d burn through 50 shots of the same subject just to have one turn out well, whereas with the Nikon I can just take the one picture and my work here is done.

When we went back into the shop to print Sasan’s picture, a woman buying a low-end Canon remarked on the size of my camera. She asked, “Are you a photographer?” I said, “I am now.”