16-2-28

16-2-27

 Hand painted. And lovely.

Osso bucco. Post sear, pre 3 hours in a Dutch oven. That single scoop of long roasted marrow was one of the most heavenly things I've ever eaten. The rest? Well, the whole thing was a religious experience.

16-2-26

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16-2-24

"There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point?"

That's the very last line of the television show The Office. I don't think that's a spoiler, if you haven't seen it yet.

And it's true. There is beauty in the ordinary.

Rosa Eggleston, shared this story of how (William) Eggleston was inspired to first start photographing “ugly stuff”:

“Bill at one time said to his great, highly respected friend: well, what am I going to photograph? Everything here is so ugly.’ And our friend said, ‘Photograph the ugly stuff.’ Well we were surrounded everywhere by this plethora of shopping centers and ugly stuff. And that is really initially what he started photographing.”

16-2-23

16-2-22

The iPhone 6S has a 12MP sensor. The Nikon D700 has a 12MP sensor. They are not the same cameras by any stretch of the imagination.

I took this photo with a goddamned cell phone. The minute size of the photo sensor sites gives it a muddiness making it more like a painting than a photograph, at least when you look at it at full resolution.

Small cameras are evil things.

Even my APS-C sensor sized camera is lackluster at times.

And it bothers me that so many cameras fight with blues when, well, the sky is blue. And in a lot of photographs.

My D700 is acting up. I need to clean the sensor more and more and the controls aren't super happy anymore. The rubber grips are held on with carpet tape. I bought mine when it was spanky new, was on the waiting list for it when it was announced way back in 2008. 8 years is a long time for anything electronic to last, and I've certainly used this camera a lot. Correction, I've abused this camera a lot. It's been thrown in bags next to bottles of wine, books, hammers, without a whole lot of protection. It's been dropped. It's been to the beach. It's been to Europe twice. It's been on thousands of kilometers of bike rides and thousands of kilometers of motorcycle trips.

It might be time for a new camera.

I'll keep using the D700 until I can't use the D700. It's still a better camera than an 8 year newer iPhone camera of the same resolution. It's better than a 1 year old, revered, APS-C Fuji camera, that I also own. But I can only claim that as long as the thing works.

And today I took a photo with a goddamned cell phone camera.

16-2-21

16-2-20

Almost 1000 houses will be demolished in Vancouver this year. There are two on my block alone.

16-2-19

I didn't have the heart to tell her I've been working on it for 20 years and still haven't figured it out.

16-2-18

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Fog over rain. And an easy walk to work.

16-2-15

 Japanese lenses and Czech beer. Two of my favourite things.

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16-2-13

Rain.

16-2-12

Bonus picture. Sponsored by "late night walks."

16-2-11

Neighbors.

16-2-10

16-2-9

Late night walks are a good thing.

16-2-8

Two bridges bike ride. Lovely day in Vancouver.

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Funny, not much caught my eye in Victoria. There's that big, old building where the men in suits hang out and talk about politics. And some water and stuff. But I liked it here. Victoria is a nice little town.

16-2-5

Victoria BC. I haven't been here since about 1997. Not Monty's, I've never been there.

16-2-4

There's a guy in America who fixes the light meters in these lovely things. They will both be sent to him on Tuesday and when they come back they should outlast film production. Or both may outlast me.

16-2-3

Ever get the feeling of deja vu?

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Susan Sontag, in her famous book, On Photography, complained: Photographs create the beautiful and - over generations of picture-taking - use it up. Certain glories of nature... have been all but abandoned to the indefatigable attentions of amateur camera buffs. The image-surfeited are likely to find sunsets corny; they now look, alas, too much like photographs.