Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
My Digital Cameras
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| I have two digital cameras, pictured above; a Canon
Digital Rebel and a Minolta
XG. The Rebel is currently about $800 and the Minolta
about $180. The Rebel is for pictures I care about [mostly
portraits]. I can make enlargements up to 12"x18" that look
spectacular. The Minolta is my go-anywhere camera that fits
in my pocket.
Using a Digital SLR like the Rebel, which is the cheapest one available, is like driving a Porsche. It's an absolute pleasure to take pictures with and the images themselves are of superb quality--near equal to film but with all the advantages of digital [instant feedback, no processing costs, custom white balance, and changeable ISO settings]. For anyone who's interested in buying a digital camera and is looking at the more expensive, so-called "prosumer" models I'd recommend spending more to get this camera. There's a discontinuous jump in image quality, design and control with a Digital SLR and everything else below it. I thought I'd use the Minolta more. It's always with me but I rarely take it out. It's nice and sleek but I've found my picture taking to have grown more deliberate [arranged photo sessions] rather than spontaneous. Still, it's good to have and it's a lot better than a shitty phonecam [which will someday be OK, just not yet]. I wish it ran on AA or AAA rechargeable rather than a proprietary one. I like to have all my gadgets running the same type of batteries. It makes the "recharging" lifestyle a little easier to manage. For this blog, most of the photos are taken with the Rebel, altho I shrink the images so severely that the difference is hardly evident [altho any picture with a narrow depth of field [blurry background] was definitely taken with the Rebel as the Minolta's lens is too small for that effect]. The Paris Pictures were all taken with the Rebel while Portugal was all done with the small Minolta. |
Portraits 2004
| The link above goes to a page with all the portraits I've posted to this blog in 2004. |
Will
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| This is my brother Will. The picture is from back in February. My mom pointed out that I haven't posted any photos of him on the blog, so I dug thru my files and found this one which I quite like. I recall Will's comment that posing is like going to the dentist. |
Merry Xmas
| Some travel/highlights from this year's blog:
In August I switched from 300x300 pixels to 400x400 in response to Yahoo's [my webhost] more generous terms. |
I ♥ Murray's Bagels
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| Carb-phobia aside, I'm a big fan of a well-made bagel and Murray's are some of the best. I'll often hit up the one on 8th & 22nd before setting of for an afternoon visiting art galleries. |
My Sweater at MoMA
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| On Sunday I went to MoMA [again] with my friend Tom. I was wearing a rather loud, striped sweater from H&M that Luc once helped me pick out. My idea was to take a picture of me next to a large Frank Stella painting. Unfortunately the one large canvas by him on display has a rather more pinstripe pattern. And so, mostly at Tom's suggestion, I posed in front of other contemporary pieces. My thanks to Tom [pictured below] for taking these pictures. He's responsible for the composition. |
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DIY Passport Photo
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| I need a new passport and hence a new photo. You can do it yourself, rather than pay $10 for some horrible polaroid. The State Department's Guidelines outline how the lighting and the composition need to be. This article from ephotozine talks about editing you need to do in photoshop. The best part is that I can fit six of these on a 4x6 print that costs me $.19 at the photostore. Actually, the best part is that I can take 50 pictures and pick the one I like best. |
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| I have to thank Aaron [above] for taking the pictures of me. We did it on Saturday while checking out art galleries in Chelsea. There's lot of great spaces with plain white backgrounds and even lighting. |
Figures & Heads
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| Last Saturday I went to the Aztec exhibit at the Guggenheim and then wandered down to the Met, skipping my usual favorites [Vermeer, Velasquez, Manet] and wandered through the Mesoamerican, Asian, and African galleries. Usually I respond to still images but this day I really focused on different representations of the human form, in 3-D, across the centuries and continents. I should always take pictures of the captions so I know what I'm looking at afterwards but if I recall this right, the pictures are, in order 1) Aztec, 2) Greek, 3) African, 3) Mesoamerican, 4) Brancusi, 5) Giacometti, 7) Chinese, 8) Rodin. I hope I'm not being too Imperialist by naming to the three Western Moderns on the list. |
MoMA
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| On Sunday I went to the new MoMA for the first time. It was
an oddly disembodied experience. I crawled out of bed,
hungover, and went to the museum on a whim, thinking fresh
air and light would do me good, before realizing just how
queasy I felt. I shuffled thru the galleries unshaved,
unshowered, wearing a baseball cap and listening to my
mini-disc, head throbbing. Everyone else
was well-dressed and intently engaging with the art,
seemingly determined to get value out of their $20
admission. I'm spoiled by my free pass. Some first impressions: Damn, they have a lot of Picassos, There's nowhere to sit, Minimalist art looks much better in large old factories [Dia], Contemporary photography looks better at exhibition [where you see a bunch of it side-by-side, altho I guess the same can be said of any artist, witness the whole room full of Picassos], the Contemporary galleries are BIG. On the plus side, they have a very generous photography policy; pretty much everything is OK, except, [oddly? ironically?] the Photography galleries. BTW, if you know me, I can get you in for free. Just let me know. |
Rockefeller Center During the Holidays
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| Along with about 5000 other people, I went to Rockefellar Center on Saturday afternoon to check out the Christmas decorations. |
Porto, Oporto
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| Oporto [aka Porto] is Portugal's 2nd largest city and where Port comes from. I took the train from Lisbon and explored it as a day trip. And here's a couple of remainders: |
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Bird of Paradise for sale in Funchal.
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Cafe a Brasileira in Lisbon.
Madeira
| Madeira is an island about 600 miles southwest of Lisbon. It's small, old and volcanic with dramatic mountains and valleys and narrow roads covering every part of the island. I flew there for four days, rented an underpowered hyundai and explored the island. |
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| Sunrise over Funchal, the main city on the island. |
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Seacliffs
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| Here you can see a road cut directly into the face of the cliff. It's the old road to Cural de Freiras. Unfortunately... |
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| A rockslide prevented me from going any further. |
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| Madeira is roughly parallel with Los Angeles but gets rain like it was Portland, so it was very lush. One day these cloud heads moved in off the Atlantic, one after another, bringing curtains of rain but in between there was bright sunshine and beautiful rainbows. |
Xmas in Portugal
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| The Christmas lights in Lisbon and Funchal, Madeira were some of the prettiest and elegant I've seen. |
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| Everywhere in Portugal the plazas and sidewalks are done with this black & white stone mosaic in different patterns. |
Lisbon - Trolley Madness
| Lisbon has about five operating trolley lines using streetcars from decades back. There's also three funiculars that make short jaunts up hills. |
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| Also, here's a good photo gallery of streetcars, and some more artsy pictures of Lisbon. |
Portugal - Lisbon
| Last week I flew to Portugal and visited Lisbon, Porto and Madeira. Here's some photos from the trip [I'll be posting these for the rest of the week]. |
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| Traveling the day before Thanksgiving is never fun. This is Penn Station on my way out to Newark Airport. Trains were delayed. I left my office 3.5 hours before my flight and just made it. |
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| Torre of Belem. |
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| Jeronimos Monestary, nearby in the port district of Belem in Lisbon. |
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| Oriente Station, designed by Santiago Calatrava who will be designing the transit hub at the World Trade Center. |
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |