Drat!

September 28, 2007

Busy lunch hour. No time for more bloggy business. So, to tide Brian and Teresa through the weekend, how about a big sloppy kiss?

I’ll have much more for all on Monday. I’ve even been working on the disposable camera stuff the last few days - there’s some good ones (but damn those things take forever to correct, and they still look iffy.)

Thank you to my early bird print buyers! I’ll think of all of you when I’m obsessing over my new camera!

Posted in: bloggy business, photo, vancouver 1 Comment »

New Portfolio Link, Update

September 28, 2007

I’ve given up on building my image galleries by hand. Too tedious. My trial run - a somewhat aged portfolio - on Picasa/Google has gone well, so I think that’s how it’s going to go from now on. Not the most glamorous galleries, but function over form in this case.

Stop by!

I think I’ll keep the “dynamic” bodies of work there. Then when something is set in stone - like the Lebanon stuff or the book pages (oh, did I mention the book? guess not. “in limbo” at the moment) - I will solidify an archive gallery. This, of course, means I should think about filling in all the current archive galleries. Plus, I should stop calling it the archives. In fact, I should restructure Inflight Shutdown entirely. I hate the web. It’s a lot of work for little returns. Ah, well.

Otherwise, I will be continuing my Vancouver wrap-up on my lunch hour, so stay tuned this afternoon.

Posted in: bloggy business, photo 2 Comments »

Inflight Shutdown FIRE SALE!

September 27, 2007

We interrupt your wedding viewing with an announcement:

I need a digital SLR.

You need more art.

Let’s help each other out!

From here until my purchase of a shiny new Nikon D300 ALL prints are available at the bargain-basement price of just $20!

That’s right: you pick the image, I personally custom print it at your favorite size (older digital images need to stay below 5×7 to look good, maximum 12×18 for all others) and deliver the archival, ready-to-frame results! No fuss, no muss!

Every dollar of profit goes into the “Buy Jim A DSLR” fund. Only 95 prints to go before this offer ends!

Simply look over the blog or the website for your favorite image, describe it or right-click and “save image as” to see the file name, and then email me the details and PayPal me the money at jmlong@mit.edu!

Simple!

Think of all the new fantastic images I could make with a dedicated DSLR!

You can be a part of that process!

Hooray!

Posted in: photo 2 Comments »

Vancouver, Day Two: Sleep, Bachelor Party!

September 26, 2007

Thursday morning I awoke rather early. I wanted to make sure that I got the evening’s accommodations settled before heading in to the rest of my day. When I stepped out on to the sidewalk I was greeted by rain. Not too surprising, I guess - Vancouver is notorious, much like Seattle, for being a little soggy. Despite this I decided to walk to the other hostel - about 4 miles. It was a nice walk, and served to get my legs a bit more up to speed for the rest of the trip. Along the route there would be an occasional opening between houses, and I would take a couple of pictures much like the one below. Overcast, low-flying clouds, water, mountains. Welcome to Vancouver!

After I was all checked in it seemed like a great time for a nap. I slept the afternoon away, and got up just in time to get cleaned up and head back to the city for the evening’s festivities. Before I did I checked out the view from the water - there were some noisy gulls hanging around, but otherwise very quiet. It is hard to see from the below image, but this very gull is yelling directly at me for not bringing some snacks.

Edit: I couldn’t resist. The bird is pretty funny.

As I headed back to town the clouds started to break up here and there. I took a couple of pictures from Teresa and Brian’s hotel - the first is in the preface to these blog entries, and the other is below. It doesn’t take much talent to get a nice image out of such amazing surroundings!

Once everyone was gathered up we headed out for the bachelor festivities. First stop: The Yaletown Brewing Company. I had a very pleasing IPA here, and we also enjoyed some nice appetizers.

Considering that it was, indeed, a bachelor party I could label the below photo in a very interesting way. What are they both looking at with such expressions? What are the hand gestures trying to describe? However, I will let you come up with the story yourself while keeping in mind that: this is the very same location as the above photo - a simple, harmless brewpub. Sometimes timing is everything.

Once we were done with appetizers it was time for dinner. We headed to a very nice place called Glowbal. The beer selection left a bit to be desired, but regardless we had a splendid meal. I had my first encounter with truffles and did not regret the experience in the slightest…

After dinner the camera took a rest as we continued on our way. Further drinking and merriment. The last-callers stuck it out until 3am (myself included), and we then stumbled to our respective shelters - there’s a rumor afloat that Brian had some trouble with proper bed orientation, but you didn’t hear that from me. A well-earned sleep followed.

Posted in: photo, vancouver 4 Comments »

Vancouver, Day One: Arrival

September 26, 2007

As I had gotten home around 10:30 the night before I was to fly and had a lot of packing and leftover junk to do, I didn’t really get much sleep before I had to get up at 3:30am and get to the airport. I don’t fly much these days, so the excitement and anxiety of air travel usually keeps me up a bit.

The flight was uneventful. Air Canada, while not terrible, seems to be having financial problems here and there - the in-flight entertainment lagged far behind even Lebanon’s own Middle East Air, and we were treated to an aging 767 complete with ancient three-tube movie projector. Food was purchase only, and I made mistake of asking for the roast beef sandwich. I instead received a sad BBQ beef brisket thing that was soggy and revolting. Live and learn.

Landing was without incident, and it wasn’t long before I was able to connect with Brian and Teresa. After the usual luggage-gathering and rental car-retrieving we were on our way. We got them all checked into their hotel and proceeded to lunch at Sequoia - a very nice restaurant situated in Stanley Park. It was the destination for the rehearsal dinner, and they wanted to stop by to make sure the choice was a good one. Here we are seated at the lovely patio, which was shielded on all sides by plexi (a bit windy out there!) and even had a nice fireplace. This image doesn’t do much to show you the view, but…

After lunch we headed out to take care of some errands. Oddly enough, you pick up your marriage license at a local chain called London Drug. Also stopped by Costco for some other needs, and I took the opportunity to get a box of Crunchie Bars. Excessive, I know, but they were so cheap in bulk compared to our import price of $1.59/bar here in the States. Now I just have to be careful about rationing them… both for economy and my waistline.

I then headed over to my hostel. Unfortunately, there was a bit of confusion and it appeared that my reservation did not really exist! Oops. They “allowed” me to stay in the one single room they had left, but I had to figure out something else for Thursday night. The best bet was the Jericho Beach hostel, about 20 minutes away by bus. Ah well, about half my normal morning commute so no big deal all things considered…

Posted in: photo, vancouver No Comments »

Returned from Vancouver

September 26, 2007

Got back Monday night. What a trip! The wedding was beautiful, it was great meeting Teresa at last as well as all the other friends and family, and Vancouver is amazing.

I learned a few things on this trip:

1) My love affair with Boston is fading fast due to me liking every new city that I visit. Vancouver definitely encouraged this problem. Is it the lure of the new and unfamiliar? Possibly. But there’s other concrete reasons too. I won’t bore you with them here.

2) I need a big-deal digital camera. Badly. I shot about 200 images with the little Panasonic, and about 50 with the Nikon. I have already reworked the 40 best images from the digital camera, but the rolls of film from the Nikon are still in my bag, waiting to be processed. Then scanned. Then, and only then, can I start working with them. What’s wrong with this picture (no pun intended)? Maybe the new Nikon D300… but damn, $1800 is a lot of money. (plus more for a new lens… ugh!)

3) Could I make it as a wedding photographer? Without trying particularly hard I would up with some great images. Well, images that a client would like - not just my arty nonsense. Hmm.

The concrete details of the trip are forthcoming. In the meantime here’s a lovely image taken from the bride and groom’s room in the Westin - it had been raining that (Thursday) morning, but started to break up towards evening, resulting in high image drama:

(p.s. the boating roundup will appear as well, but I thought I had the image files on my iPod - alas, they vanished so once I bring them in from home that will go up too)

Posted in: photo, vancouver 3 Comments »