introduce you to my blogging and life 
09
06
2010
«A nomadic blog oscillating between New York, Vancouver and Cape Town, gathering HDR photos and jotting notes along the way»
09
04
2010
Entre chien et loup, from across the river at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, a river flowing strong at our feet and the urban air filled with playful sounds and smells of picnic and content, we saw Manhattan pretend to fall asleep as shadows took over a busy day and drafted the mood for later matters.
I am not a South African blogger myself but having strong ties to one, I keep an eye on the yearly South African Blog Awards and dutifully cast my vote when the time comes.
This year, however, I was stunned to discover a new twist in the voting system: for some unfathomable reason, organizers have decided to allow people to vote every 24 hours. Yes, you read this right. You can vote now, wait a day, and vote again. And again. And again. So here is a copy of the email I just sent them’ fine folks:
Dear All Mighty South African Blog Awards Organizers,
What on Earth has happened here? Voting is now allowed once per 24 hours??? I think you have just made sure that the 2010 South African Blog Awards will be biased - not to say flawed and even possibly rigged.
With the new 24-hour system, you are simply insuring that whoever can muster enough repeat voters, will win. This is no longer a vote cast by the many (most blog readers could not be bothered to vote more than once, or to actually keep track of their clock in order to put in their vote again after 24:01) but rather most likely a calculated operation ran by the few who have the available resources.
To push things one theoretical step further, I’d say bribes are likely and people could be enlisted to tilt the balance of voting by throwing in additional votes each day.
Let’s say that Blog A has good traffic and because of its quality, a decent number of honest followers (let’s say 100) who will each cast a vote and then assume their duty has ended, either having missed the 24-hour trick or unwilling to spend the time to vote once more, or twice more, or each day until the end of the voting phase.
Blog B, on the other hand, is crappy, full of advertising, poorly written and only manages some 20 followers, 75% of whom will cast a vote. Yet with 17 days to go, if Blog B recruits only 10 extra voters who will each cast a daily vote, by the closing of the votes it will have an approximate total of 185 votes against the 100 of Blog A. Blog B wins.
Am I missing something here? Since when is the process of voting a multiple-opportunity game? You know what would happen if we allowed our political system to match this scheme: exponential corruption and systematic bribery on a cosmic scale. Has this also happened to the South African Blog Awards?
Why not allow finalists to buy votes, while we’re at it?
»
09
02
2010
Below is a section of the Brooklyn Bridge Park that remains under construction, as seen from the Brooklyn Promenade above the (B)BQE.
09
01
2010
As Marie posted recently, the roof farm has been under assault by a battalion of enormous tobacco hornworms. They are green, somewhat pretty and 
they devour our tomato plants at a record speed. Check out her post for great pictures of the bandits in action.
So before waging a final battle against the invader, I got my macro gear out and despite an annoying afternoon breeze, got a few shots of the poor buggers. Their markings are simply incredible, so I focused on them - pardon the pun.
Even after reading that these are the conventional « eye spots », Mother Nature’s classic way of fooling predators, I still find it hard to believe that they aren’t real eyes. Look at the details! Complete with a pupil and actual ridges!
For reference, each eye spot is smaller than a millimeter in size. Granted, at that level of magnification it all becomes some kind of voyeurism and the quest for beauty turns into scientific curiosity...
08
30
2010
"Lying in a den in Brooklyn
With a slack jaw, and not much to win
I said to the Marie, 'Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?'
And she said..."
"Yes."
Score!
Posted at 11:43 PM in + Panoramas: & New York: & Schtroumpfissime:
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08
29
2010
These images didn’t make the cut but I am posting them now for documentary purposes, in a more down-to-earth look at Rockport and the Cape Ann area. Truly lovely, still.
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08
27
2010
UPDATE: Apologies to those of you who were stuck with the Rockport panorama coming up instead of this one. There was a conflict between two panoramas on the same page (sloppy coding on my part, I placed them in identically named DIV's.) What happened is that once you switched to the comment page, a single pano was loading and thus, worked fine. This should all now be fixed!
Here’s a 360° panoramic shot of a newly opened section of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, to echo a much more substantial post by Marie. It was taken last week at night on the way back from the overrated Grimaldi's Pizza, where we'll probably never go again, just not worth the trouble and wait. Maybe I'll post about that later.
Click on the "Full Screen" icon and then click and drag to navigate within the image in all directions.
To view virtual tour properly, Flash Player 9.0.28 or later version is needed. Please download the latest version of Flash Player and install it on your computer.
Notice the tidal pool and public boat ramp, probably intended for launching kayaks. Curious to see how vehicle access will be regulated. Also in the background, the 4 levels of the very poorly located and inconvenient BQE highway, with the lower service road, two levels of opposite high speed traffic and the pedestrian Brooklyn Promenade at the top...
08
24
2010
As a photographer, I am a child of the 21st century. I love color. I crave it. I couldn’t be or do without it. So I tend to underexpose a touch and to slightly boost saturation, or rather the newcomer vibrance*, because 
that better reflects my inner view of the world. I don’t really dissect a scene into zones like Ansel Adams did. What I look for are balance, color, contrast, shape, texture, question marks, surprises and puzzles. I let them talk. I analyze how much they move me. If they tip the scale towards the positive, I press the mental shutter first and the camera’s second. If not, the mind looks elsewhere.
But every once in a while, color fades and abstraction and mood prevail. The time has then come for black and white, or any monochromatic tone. It sometimes happens in the field and others back at the ranch, in the comfort of my digital lab. I have caught myself staring at a shot for an eternity, uncertain of what was wrong or missing, only to realize later that nothing had been - there was just too much color. I’d take that distraction away and the shot was reborn.
Any way. Here’s a monochromatic look at Rockport, with more color photos on the way soon.
* Vibrance is the new chic variable in color correction. While the old saturation adjustment would boost color saturation of ALL colors - actually clipping those already quite saturated, a rather destructive result in terms of quality - the new vibrance smartly boosts the saturation of the less saturated colors and leaves the saturated ones alone, achieving images that are much closer to what the human eye perceives in its infinite wisdom of intelligent universe translation.
08
23
2010
In October of 1991, the quaint little town of Gloucester, MA, was put on the map at the epicenter of a highly mediatized maritime drama when one of the strongest extratropical cyclones in Eastern Seaboard history, fed by the 
remnants of hurricane Grace, unleashed its fury at coastlines and scrambled open seas, engulfing boats and randomly taking lives. It was a « Perfect Storm » that sunk the Andrea Gail and lifted Sebastian Junger to the top of charts.
Yet all things weather-wise are rarely that intense around Gloucester and casual summertime visitors would never know the region hides such a terrible temper under its clever cover as a touristic but pleasantly quiet coast. There are many gems to be discovered, neat little places that seem to have avoided the pitfalls of over-development and remain as they were five decades ago, tranquil, well-behaved and picturesque.
One such rarity is Rockport. Located 15 minutes north of her big sister Gloucester at the northeastern tip of Cape Ann, Rockport could easily be missed as one takes a sharp left towards Essex Bay and pushes on to New Hampshire. The town bears its name well, consisting of little more than a small harbor nestled within a cove between natural rock formations and a man-made breakwater. Leading out along the port is the Bearskin 
Neck, a mostly pedestrian stretch of eclectic art galleries, sinful fudge and candy stores and various eateries.
By some twist of fate - or maybe the actions of a smart town council - Rockport has thus far skipped the typically North American infestation of fast-food chains and strip malls. The town seems to be 95% residential and obviously survives from tourism alone as a seasonal industry. There are plenty of options for those seeking summer accommodation and although it gets pretty busy during the warmer months, crowds never seem to be out of control and decibel levels remain acceptable. The fact is that one doesn’t come to Rockport to party, but rather to relax.
A series of beaches interlaced with rocky shores gives Cape Ann a moody character. While nearby Gloucester charges a whopping $25 for parking at its two main sand strips, the beaches of Rockport are free and less crowded. Whether it is at the sandy downtown Back and Front beaches or further south at the long mix of pebbles and sand of Cape Edge, the summer ocean remains chilly all year-round. It smells fresh and pungent and is usually clear and inviting. Locals are nice, too, smiling a lot and greeting 
everyone, and once behind the wheel they respect pedestrians in a very West-Coastedly manner. In a word, Rockport... rocks.
So Marie and I decided to escape the Big Apple frenzy for a few days and hook up with a few of my relatives who ritually spend a couple of weeks by the sea. Car rental rates being outrageous in New York, we opted for the trusted Amtrak train that took us to Boston in 4:30 hrs. There, we hopped on the subway, crawled stealthily underneath the city and emerged at the North Station where we caught a wi-fi equipped commuter train to Cape Ann. We were stepping down onto the Rockport station dock at 3:30 PM.
I had messed up our arrival time notification and no one had come, so we did what most people do all day around there, we walked. Our guesthouse was located about a half-kilometer away but not having visited the town in at least 20 years, I took us on the long way home, suitcases in trail and photo gear on my back.
But Rockport is a small place and it wasn’t long before I spotted a cousin walking towards us with a welcoming smile. We were escorted to our shelter where more 
welcoming notes awaited with explanations of everyone’s current location, mainly the beach (mom), taking naps (undisclosed) or playing PSi (my nephew Yann.) Word of mouth was in full swing and with family members staying all over town, it was going to be a fun week of friendly gatherings here and there, the older children roaming freely between houses and beaches and everybody maintaining an deliciously independent schedule within the general momentum.
Lazy days were spent perfecting the sacred art of doing nothing. Marie and I stayed in a charming small room right across the road from Back Beach at the Beach Knoll. In the morning, we had breakfast on the porch looking at the sea, coffee in hand, feet up, analyzing tides, watching divers on their check-out dives, counting cormorants and letting our thoughts drift and our hearts calm down.
There were various daily beach rendez-vous, there were games of pétanque, there were swims in the cold water and wild body-surfing 
sessions, and lobster picnics with Gitte, and pizzas and fudge sampling and ice cream extravaganzas. There was a proper meal with my adorable mom at My Place By the Sea, sitting outside at the very end of the Bearskin Neck as the sun went down, and it was almost like sitting at Harbour House in Kalk Bay with our other adorable mom, half-a-world away in the southern hemisphere.
There were drives out of town to Gloucester and the marshy estuary of the Essex River. There were sunrises and sunsets - and pitiful attempts on my part at recording them, as I succumbed to the seaside town’s incredibly slow rhythm and began to replenish my soul with peace and laziness turned wisdom.
Then all-to-soon we were on a train again, and as we left the ocean behind and rolled rapidly towards 8 million of our fellow New-Yorkers and a 
single black cat, my blood pressure rose a bit and my heart sank. Just as Da Vinci said it so well for the skies and love of flying, so it goes for one’s attraction to the sea: once you have slept for a while in salty air, rocked by the gentle sound of waves flirting with their beach, the ocean will flow in your veins forever. It never gets out. Your blood becomes salty and when stranded far inland or near dirty water, you can only lick your lips and remember the taste of everything maritime, the motion of swells, the cry of sea birds and the eternal cycle of tides.
The ocean might have given birth to life itself but if we do not take care of it, it will take life back. For now, though, it keeps sustaining my dreams.
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Date of comment: 2010-09-06 11:59 • Reply