This stone is from the inner circle of a double ring of standing stones in the Berkeley marina that my friend Christopher Castle turned me on to during a beauty walk the other day.
By the way, this photograph is one of the series of loose images I chose for my final digital photography class project, which you can see displayed on my photoblog… check out the fliptychs I made from photos of the Dresden trip!
The digital photography class is coming along brilliantly… here’s one of my favorite exposures from a recent assignment: it’s a blown glass vase my step-son made for me, which makes it particularly beautiful (it looks better against black – check it out in the new photo blog I started for the class).
I just started a class in digital photography out at DVC (a local college which has a GREAT multi-media department) with a brilliant teacher/artist-photographer, Jessamyn Lovell.
I’d been blissfully clicking away using my fancy SLR’s semi-automatic mode, but this week after only two classes Jessie cut us off from such simple pleasures, cold-turkey. She said it’s time to "take the training wheels off" and banned us from using anything but manual mode from now on.
The problem with this is that with the training wheels off, I’ve fallen
flat on my face. I can’t even get an image to show up on the screen
anymore. Never mind capturing the elusive secret of life, I’ll be lucky
if I can get my first assignment done.
I’m doing some work right now with a woman who is absolutely new
to computers. I’ve been watching her struggle bravely with things I can
do in my sleep and there was a slight feeling of disconnect for me
until having this experience with my camera helped me remember what it
is to be helpless in the face of technology. If nothing else, it’s
increased my compassion-capacity. Now all I need to do is figure out
aperture and shutter speed settings!
The fun for me at MacWorld this year wasn’t really the cool new tools – although there were some pretty cool new tools being shown, notably the new iPhone, Leopard and Adobe’s Creative Suite3 (none of which are being shipped for months, which I’m afraid kind of takes the edge off the excitement factor for me. Also, the new iPhone is only 8G – what are they THINKING?!!!).
I did get a big kick out of the extraordinarily complete array of
Canon lenses, all laid out in the case like a row of jewels ready for
me to try on in turn, and of course I did, effortlessly adding 3-4 to
my ‘covet madly must have now’ list. I always enjoy looking in on the free workshops, and
as usual I learned several things I didn’t know just in passing eavesdrop mode.
I couldn’t help but notice the convention-wide attention placed on
laptop chic. There were literally dozens of companies dedicated to computer charisma, including some absolutely gorgeous Italian-leather custom laptop covers from a company called case-mate, and so many varieties of bags it was hard to keep track of them.
But the most fun for me was in people-watching – the mix of ages, sizes, tech-ability and interests all sharing a mind-space like this is really inspiring. I stopped in to check
out a digital photography session where the majority of eager
students sitting in front of their shiny new 24" flat screen
monitors were 65 years of age and upwards. I couldn’t help being touched, by both the patience and
kindness of the much younger instructor-geek and the eager innocence of
the retiree-students in their enthusiasm for learning this new life-enhancing skill.
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