robglazebrook.com

Even though I haven’t been posting (or taking, for that matter) a lot of pictures recently, I still spend a good chunk of time almost every single day browsing through Flickr. I love going through my contacts to see what they’ve posted, or browsing the ‘interesting’ photos of the last 24 hours, or surfing randomly from person to person through comment chains. When I come across a photo I find particularly interesting (for whatever reason), I mark it as a favorite and move on. My favorites, then, have started to become a sort of repository for what I consider ‘good’ photography. In other words, my favorites can serve as a study of my personal aesthetic preferences. The image up top is a collage of my 36 most recent favorites, as of Thursday afternoon (I’ve added one or two more today). Indulge me in a bit of harmless introspection. :)

Vivid colors seem to be a key factor. Out of the most recent 36, only one is predominantly gray (although even it contains some blue). My eye seems to be attracted to rich colors in general, not specific hues and combinations of hues as I’d previously assumed. For instance, although there is quite a bit of blue pictured, other colors I didn’t think I preferred so much are also present. Greens, oranges, and reds are all better represented than I would have expected.

Human figures also comprise a larger number of my favorites than I would have thought. Of course, most of those people are women (go figure), and at least four are even of the same woman (solea, who is also my background at home, and whom I would marry were she to ask). Of the 36 photos, 13 are of people: 9 women, 2 men (well, one man twice (noqontrol)), and 3 children. And one stick figure, which I’m not exactly sure how to classify.

I like macro shots. A good third of the photos I’ve saved as favorites are close-ups of one sort or another. I also seem strangely attracted to water droplets, as three of the last group feature nothing but. Looking more closely, I think two of them are actually the same leaf in two different colors. I don’t think I ever noticed before. :)

Other random observances:

• I have two bird pictures saved. I don’t think this means anything.
• Building edges are surprisingly underrepresented, as I consider them an obsession.
• I seem to prefer people and man-made objects to nature. If nature is represented, it’s usually the (blue) sky.
• Almost all of the human faces are cut off. I don’t seem to be a fan of traditionally framed shots.
• I’m still a big fan of blues. A good 10 of the photos are faves in part because of the blue.

What does all this say about me? I’m not really sure. I suppose these photos represent the sorts of photos I would like to be able to capture myself, although interestingly my own photos generally don’t meet many of the presumed criteria. I need to find some women in colorful clothing who will let me take close-ups. :) I bet that’s where having a girlfriend would come in handy. Well, that among other reasons.

So it’s my turn to bring treats to my evening class tonight. As such, 11pm last night found me in my kitchen baking. I discovered pretty quickly that my kitchen is not a good place for one to get one’s bake on. I have roughly 1 square foot of counter space (more like 1.5 feet x 8 inches) to work with.

I made chocolate chunk cookies for the first of my two acts (they were my backup treat). These were decently easy because I cheated. Really, Tollhouse and my oven did most the work on that one, though it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. I pulled the package of cookies out of the fridge, only to discover I was supposed to open it with a pair of scissors. I couldn’t find any, so I just swung a steak knife at it a few times until it decided to open. Then I went to break apart the cookies, but they preferred to break on lines of their own choosing, not the predefined ones, so I ended up mushing most of them back together. Then I had to arrange them on the cookie sheet really, really quickly because the sheet was sitting on my oven range (the only place it’d fit), and the pilot lights burn hot enough to warm pans pretty fast (I’m amazed we haven’t started a fire yet). The cookies cooked up decent enough, and I cooled them on top of my pan rack, which has become my makeshift cooling rack.

While the cookies were baking, I started in on product #2: pineapple upside down cake. This one I made on my own, so it was a bit tougher. Once I had my mixing bowl out, there was no more counter space, so the cookbook sat on the dishes drying in the drying rack and I had to get ingredients out one at a time and put them away the moment I was done. I got it all mixed up (the good way) eventually, though, and into the oven it went. Then I discovered there must not be much heat in the center of my oven, as the sides cooked much faster than the center. The center also, because of this, rose higher than the sides, meaning when I turned the cake upside down (or rightside up, I’m not even sure anymore), the cake cracked in a couple of places around the middle. Also, some of my pineapples stuck to the pan a bit, and I had to stick em back on the cake. Then I wrapped the pan in tin foil and stuck the cake in the fridge, where it will sit until I head home to grab it in a few minutes. I’m hoping it’ll taste decent enough, cause it sure looks crappy. :p I’ll let you know.

Didn’t we set record highs a few days ago? We’ve got a shot at the record low tonight. God bless Iowa.

You know what has really amazed me the most since I’ve started taking photos more regularly (what with the new camera and all)? The number of photos I ~don’t~ take. That is, the number of times I see something and think to myself, “wow, that’d make for a fantastic photo” and still do nothing. I envision how I’d frame it, how close I’d want to be, the angle and so on… and then walk away.

I understand in part the reasons behind this. First, there is the problem of time. When I’m out on campus, walking between buildings, I usually see several things I’d like to take a picture of. Unfortunately, if I’m between buildings on campus, that means I’m going somewhere, and I’ve probably only a few minutes to get there. To stop and take the picture would risk me being late to class. For example, I’m obsessed with Catt hall’s exterior, yet I rarely have an excuse to walk to just the places necessary to give me a good, unimpeded view of Catt’s spires. It’s out of the way. So I don’t take the picture.

Sometimes I don’t take the picture because I realize my equipment just isn’t up to the task. I love my camera, don’t get me wrong, but there are some things it is simply not capable of capturing. For example, I love the reflections of the other buildings off the windows of the Parks Library from about 200 yards distant to the south. On a sunny day, you can see most of Beardshear in the library’s glass front. However, my camera only has a 3x optical zoom, which isn’t enough to capture the windows with sufficient clarity to do the shot justice. Also, without a tripod, the shot would probably come out too blurry even if I did have the zoom. I do not have a steady hand. I even tried moving closer to get the shot within my range, but that changes the reflections entirely. I hope somebody captures the shot someday, but it probably won’t be me.

Other times, and probably moreso oftentimes, I don’t take the picture because the picture includes People I Don’t Know. The thought of walking up to someone and taking their picture when they are Random Person on the Street and I am (presumably) Creepy Guy with a Camera is still far too scary for me to contemplate. I’m sure that’s an indication that I am very much an Amateur Photographer. I’m hoping the fear goes away someday, even though I’ve no delusions of ever being anything more than a Mediocre Photographer. For example (you loving these yet?), I was walking out of the library yesterday and saw two girls sitting on a stone bench, engaged in a friendly, animated conversation. One was dressed in traditional Midwestern garb (plain tee in subdued tones, shorts of a pale color), while the other was dressed in traditional Arabic garb (deep, vibrant colors, nothing but her face uncovered). I thought it’d make a fantastic photo, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull my camera out of my pocket and start shooting. Then, after I left the library to head to class, I passed a statue known as Border Crossing (which is a good shot in itself), and somebody was lying propped against the legs of the statue, reading. Again, nice shot; again, I didn’t get it.

I’m overcoming this last fear slowly, I think. After all, I did take out my camera in the men’s restroom yesterday (pictured above). :) I couldn’t stop myself from that one, mostly because I thought of the title of the picture before I took it. And when you’ve got a title as good as “if i can’t whip out my camera in a men’s restroom and start snapping pictures, the terrorists have won,” you’ve really gotta take that shot.

It seems I’ve yet again let an entire week drift by without updating (thanks for noticing, Debs). The scariest part of that is I didn’t really notice the week passing. Apparently these things (such as the passage of time) are able to operate very much on their own, without any contribution of my person. Weird.

Not a whole lot has happened this week, though, aside from the going-to of classes and work, the riding-of the bus between campus and home, and the wading-through the homework. Although I must admit that homework was a lot more fun than it should have been this week. I guess homework is what you make of it. Monday night, Quinn and I put together a handout for our classical rhetoric class, which was a lot of fun to make considering, you know, it was on classical rhetoric and all that. Then, after Wednesday’s class, I headed to Café Diem with Rachel, Molly, and Kate, for homework with air quotes. In reality, I only got about twenty pages read in two and a half hours, but considering I was reading for a class this ~coming~ Tuesday, I don’t feel too bad about the going being slow.

Thursday night Justin and I decided to go out to the Corner Pocket for beers and pools, which was a pretty good time. I won the first two of six games, and lost the following four. I was pretty bummed about that until I discovered last night that Justin played pool every single weekend in Seattle this summer, and I did not (I wasn’t even in Seattle). Ergo, he’s all practiced and stuff. Hehe… I just wanted to combine “ergo” and “and stuff” in one sentence.

Last night was also fun, and it also found Justin and I at the Corner Pocket for beers and pools. This time, though, we had the happy addition of Rachel, Molly, et Kate. I again won the first two games (before the ladies showed up), and again sucked it up every game thereafter, to which the picture up top can attest. I believe I was shooting for a striped sphere in the side pocket, missed it horribly, and ended up putting the cue at the edge of the corner pocket, next to one of Justin and Kate’s balls (we switched to doubles when the company arrived). Or that story could be impossibly wrong. I really don’t remember. I just thought it’d make a good picture.

Speaking of pictures, Sammie and Mandi have finally been replaced as my most-viewed subject matter on Flickr. No offense to the ex-roomies, of course, but it was starting to bug me that the only way I could garner viewers was via pretty brunettes. The picture to replace them? Oddly enough (in my opinion), it’s the picture I took of construction paper yesterday at work. I’ll admit, it’s a cool shot, though I’m personally a bigger fan of the photo of Justin’s guitar. Still, you shoulda seen my jaw drop when I opened the box marked “Construction Paper” and saw the rainbow of colors I had to play with. Course, I was looking for a white, and there wasn’t a single piece to be found (so I got to make a trip to the copy center), but it was worth the time I spent just the same. I spread the paper out on my desk so I could see all the colors, and almost put it back in the box before I thought to myself that I should at least take a picture. And now, as of this moment, it’s had 275 viewers, which is roughly four times the number of viewers any of my other photos have had. :p And 32 people have marked it as a favorite, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :) I made people happy with a photo I took. This is how flickr rocks.

And I’m glad I have that to make me happy, because otherwise I’m a little sad today. I’m worried I may have screwed up a friendship or two yesterday. I’ve been having a bad run as far as friends go recently. I think I’ve lost more friends than I’ve made in the last month, which is impressive considering the school year just started, meaning there’s thousands of new people on campus to meet and befriend. I’m hoping I wasn’t as stupid yesterday as I suspect I might have been, but I’ll have to wait a few more hours to find out. Until then, it’s pretty much the only thing I can think about.

I almost just titled this post “Look at my balls” after suddenly realizing my pool photo could be seen as mildly suggestive.

I’m happy to report that this weekend was an orgy of fairly irresponsible fun. And you all, I am sure, are equally happy to hear such excellent news.

Friday night the ex- and current-roommates and I all celebrated the 21st birthday of one Paul Ladwig, Justin’s brother. I’m pretty sure his birthday was actually earlier in the week, but that didn’t slow us down any. We made it to the bar around 7:30, I think, which was good because there were manythousand Hawkeye fans in town for the Iowa - Iowa State game on Saturday, meaning Welch Avenue and its surrounding tributaries were chocked with humans bodies by sunset. Hrm… that sounded gorier than I’d intended. Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, as I was saying. Justin, Paul, Sam, Sammie, Mandi, Elliott, and I spent the evening hanging out primarily at Paddy’s. We started out with a few games of pool and a few pitchers of beer (I won two of the three games I played, go me), then sat around in a booth talking, with a few more pitchers of beer. Then we all headed to Sam/Sammie/Mandi/Elliott’s place to do more hanging out and more drinking. I quit drinking around 11pm, but still managed to have a good time (I know! Weird, huh?). We got home around 3:45am, after a brief stop at the Burger King drive through. The best part of the night, you ask? Good question! Driving down Lincoln Way in Paul’s car, blaring the Cheers theme song as loud as the speakers allowed, singing at the top of my lungs. The people on the sidewalks loved us.

I woke up strangely early Saturday, or 9am as the rest of the world probably called it. I was absolutely unproductive until around noon, when I had a Jimmy John’s sandwich (the veritable epitome of productivity). We watched the game on TV (we kicked royal arse, for those not in the know) and yelled appropriate things at appropriate moments. Eventually it was night again, which was cool, because that meant it was time to go out again.

This time the roomies and I went separate ways. Justin, Paul, and Mackenzie headed to SamEtAl’s house, and I headed to Welch Ave Station with a bunch of English MA’s. That group consisted of (let’s see how close I get): Rachel, Molly, Krystal, Scott, Dana, Steph, David, Jordan, Mike, Anja, and myself. That list is roughly in the order I saw people. Anyway, the first of us got to Welch Ave around 8:30, and there was already a line. We got in after only a few minutes waiting, and closed down the place. When we walked out of the bar at 2am, the street was packed. Very packed. It looked like VEISHEA, and the atmosphere felt similar, too. Charged, excited energy everywhere. I sorta wanted to hang around to see if anything was going to happen (you know, since that worked out so well for me last time), but considering my company, that probably wouldn’t have been the best idea. So we headed back to my apartment for a brief reprise, and after a bit, everyone went home. I was in bed by 3something.

If anyone’s curious to see my visual record of both nights, I’ve posted pictures on my Flickr feed. Each night has its own set (on the left) for your viewing convenience. I’m really proud of myself… I remembered to take a good dozen pictures on Paul’s birthday, and I took two dozen last night. I’m actually ~using~ my digital camera, not just owning it. It’s been one of my better purchases in quite a while.