Gramarye

Or, in this case, black-crowned late afternoon heron:

Thank you, $14 30-year-old teleconverter.

Watched a couple of episodes of Jekyll recently on a whim, and I am extremely impressed. This is not always the case with British television, which often seems to have an air of naval-gazing and insularity that I dislike — same problem I have with ??Seinfeld??, although in a rather different manifestation. And British science fiction seems to me mostly very Dr. Who-ified — not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a pretty tight niche.

??Jekyll?? is a modern extension of the classic Jekyll/Hyde story. It is not, as is customary, a retelling, but rather takes place in a universe in which the Stevenson story reported semi-true events; the protagonist of the series is supposed to be a “descendent” of Jekyll, although there are indications that this doesn’t mean standard sexual reproduction in this case. Our Jekyll Jr. and his other have achieved a truce ruled by means of a voice recorder and mutual surveillance, and their ability to punish each other in absentia. Add to this a shared psych nurse/personal assistant, a couple layers of conspiracy, a very pissed-off wife, a couple of lesbian detectives, and a dead-lion-gram, and you’ve got the setup.

This is all reasonably interesting, in a sort of ??Nowhere Man?? meets ??Dark Shadows?? way. But what makes the show really engaging is the performance of James Nesbitt, who is perfect as both Jekyll and Hyde — demanding total audience attention at all times, and managing somehow not to seem to be reenacting a string of ancient cliches. (The supporting cast is good, too, although they don’t generally get to hit the same fever pitch. )

If you get a chance, take a look — this is easily not only the most entertaining British show I’ve seen in a long time, it raises my expectations for science fiction, especially superheroes and super-antiheroes; I feel like I can’t look at a show like ??Heroes?? witout feeling it’s diminished just a bit by comparison. (Not that I ever felt ??Heroes?? was the cream of the crop — but even something like ??Lost??, which has built its own little industry around intense morally ambiguous or unknown hero/villain performances.)

They’ve been flying over the channel, but they finally landed yesterday.

Seriously, I’m going to set up a separate photo blog. There are some things I have to sort out first, hosting-wise.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do — and I may have mentioned this here previously — is get better at separating the wheat from the chaff, among the images I capture and process. I’ve racked up around 15,300 shutter actuations so far, or about 3,000 per month. Of those, anywhere from 300 to 900 per month last long enough to get uploaded to flickr. Of these, I’m trying (as of May) to select 30-40 images that are some amalgamation of the best, the most interesting, and the most unusual, and in any case are the 30 or 40 that I want to be able to immediately see if I come back in a few years and think, “What the hell was I taking pictures of in June of ‘07? Let’s check.”

Here are the links to each month:

May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007 (In progress)

I’m also trying to maintain the monthlies in some sort of physical form factor. Unfortunately, this is tricky; photobooks are pricey and not very high-quality; I don’t own a printer of my own, because they’re not cost-effective. Currently I’m using cheap 5×7 and 5×5 prints stuck in a Clairefontaine journal/album that has alternate scrapbook-type and lined writing pages. It’ll do for now, although at some point they’ll stop being available in the US (at least, that’s how it usually goes with awesome, weird european notebooks and me), and I’ll probably default to sticking them in labeled boxes.

I just wanted to make sure I’d explained what these were, since I’ll probably be bitching about them soon, when I try to slim down August.

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This movie is awesome. A small disclaimer: I tend to be more excited about this movie than other people do. This has been true since the moment I first saw the trailer, then showed it to someone else who claimed to be utterly bored by it.

What enthralled me about the (first) trailer — and what perhaps leads some to find it less enthralling — is that it is mainly about people dying in fascinatingly diverse ways: heat, cold, drowning, exposure to vacuum, violence, whatever it is that happens at the end…this is interesting because it underscores something that has historically been more clear in written science fiction than in cinematic and televised science fiction: space wants to kill you.

Movies figured out relatively early on what it meant to be on a submarine: fantastic pressure, both psychological and physical, creating an environment in which total efficiency of action is the only alternative to certain death. In reality, space travel takes all this to much greater extremes — the operating tolerances are much lower, and both the environment and the technical apparatus necessary to keep moving pose greater and more diverse threats than those found underwater.

A few movies have skirted these implications — ??2001?? and ??Alien?? leap to mind, both of which are at least visual influences on ??Sunshine??, by the way. But in both these cases, space quickly faded to a background element over which the real story took place. At no point in ??Sunshine?? can the viewer ignore the ubiquitous, menacing presence of space and/or the technical apparatus, both inimical to human life and indispensable to it. This is really all the trailer promised, and my immense satisfaction with the movie in large part stems from the fact that it substantially lives up to that promise. In a sense, ??Sunshine?? gets its highest marks from me not because it exceeds standards but because it is maybe the first movie to meet what should be some of the most basic standards.

The story is, to some extent, secondary for me. Which is not to say that I didn’t like the story — I would have done several things differently, and I think the ending was, while not unsatisfying, less interesting and challenging than it could have been, based on what the rest of the movie asked of the viewer.

I won’t go into the details of the plot (astronauts must restart sun, bad things happen on the way), because the basic ones are obvious, and the non-obvious ones are spoilers. I will say this about the plot, though: despite its weaknesses, it has one great strength: despite the presence of an apparent “bad guy” character, the real villain of the film is space — or, rather, space and what we find in space, what space reveals about humanity, and what humans find in it. (Madness, the death impulse) The void staring back into us, as it were…

Similarly, the hero is not the person occupying the protagonist position; it is the unrelenting, inhuman insistence upon life by that which is alive — embodied not by the main character, but by (of all people) the guy who plays Johnny Storm in the fantastic four — oh, and by a small frond….

For the past couple of days, I’ve been shooting with my newest unjustified expenditure: a 135mm f/2.8 lens. Now, when I say “unjustified,” I may be exaggerating somewhat, since I spent all of $20.00 on it.

It’s an excellent lens, although it’s been a bit beat up over the years. And when I say “years,” I should specify: this lens was probably manufactured some time between 1965 and 1972, meaning it’s anywhere from 11 years older than I am to almost as old as my mother. It’s built like an absolute tank, and bears the Nippon Kogaku name (which when you slap ‘em together gets you “Nikon,” apparently) — and weighs an imperial fuckton.

Still works fine though. There are plenty of scratches and dings (which is fine by me, since they’re all cosmetic, and I’d rather have equipment which looks like it’s been used), but the only functional problem I’ve noticed is that moving the focus ring is like opening a jar of oversealed spaghetti sauce. But that still beats the heck out of an under-dampened focus ring.

The main reason the lens was so cheap is that it’s a pre-AI lens, which means that it can’t be mounted on any modern (meaning from the 80’s on) Nikon camera without breaking the lens mount — except mine, which for reasons I don’t think anyone’s ferreted out yet, can mount almost any Nikon lens ever made. (It’s definitely not because the target market is expected to want this functionality!)

Now, while it will mount, and you can actually use it to take pictures, it absolutely will not (even a little bit) meter, which is unfortunate. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, by any means, and guessing my exposures is an acceptable price to pay for getting a $20 f/2.8 lens with that sort of reach. (I had previously reconciled myself to not being able to afford any fast-aperture lenses longer than 50mm.) It helps a little that I only realistically need to get a feel for how to expose it at f/2.8 and f/4, since I already have a fully functional lens that covers that focal range at slower apertures.

What this will be useful for is portraits, where you need to be able to throw the background out of focus; my 50mm f/1.8 (another excellent bargain) is great for this, as long as your subject doesn’t mindy ou standing right in their face. But in some cases, distance is a good thing.

But it’s also useful for general street photography:

And for slightly surreal available-light interior shots:

And while it’s really, really not a good idea to use it for wildlife, it is capable of capturing a slow-moving squirrel:

Click the link:

Flickr: Photos tagged with moustacheparty