Video Link: Pulse (HD)
Pulse (HD) from Jason Chen on Vimeo.
The Art of Photography
I had a chance to catch the last day of the Anne Leibovitz exhibition at the Legion of Honor yesterday in San Francisco. This short post by Miguel Garcia-Guzman, the writer of blog Exposure Compensation, is a good follow up to my thoughts after the exhibition.
An excerpt:
The idea that anyone with a “digital” camera can take a photograph is quite true, but making a good photograph is as difficult today as it was 50 years ago. This reminds me of the pointless idea that the current large volume of digital images has changed in any way what makes a good photograph. Of course it hasn’t.
Remembering Cassette Tapes
The Ipod and mp3 is inducting the CD into the archives of history. A royal f-u. Just as cassette tapes did to vinyl records.
I remember back in grade school and junior high that life was about who got the best recording on a cassette tape of the latest radio jams. That is, perfectly getting the song without the radio ads or the voice of the DJ and putting just the right gap between that song and the next. That was cool those days. So cool that the kid with the best cassette tape was king. All the other kids wanted to duplicate this mastered tape and if you weren’t in that circle, you weren’t part of the in-crowd. I secured my place early but didn’t have the schmoozing skills back then to really make it big.
Remember the revolutionary walkman? I never had a walkman myself and that was OK. Because instead of a walkman, I had a mini-stereo that I got for Christmas. While people were doing their jogs and bus rides with their ultraportable walkmans, I was doing these activities with a stereo.
These days, the cassette tape is a piece of nostalgia and history. But it used to be the heavy weight in the music industry in the 1980s, with mass production starting in 1964 in Germany where it was called the “musicassette”. In reality, cassettes weren’t just emblems of cool for musically-inclined kids in the 80s. Cassettes were used to overthrow the Shah regime in the Iranian revolution of 1979. As Time Magazine wrote, “… transistor radios and cassette tape recorders with messages relayed over telephone lines to some 9,000 mosques all over Iran allowed a 78-year-old holy man camped in a Paris suburb to direct a revolution 2,600 miles away like a company commander assaulting a hill.” Technology is powerful. It’s been true in history and it’s true today.
It goes without saying, history repeats itself. But every repeat still stands on its own as an important piece of the linear timeline. For now, the cassette tape culture lives on.
Ode to Long Weekends
This dude is coming into town. My weekend just got a whole lot better. I wasn’t planning on shooting in the City at all until Tuesday but now it looks like plans have changed.
Let’s do it Gerk. Where you at Sammy? Tell me you’ll be around.
Movies in the Queue
I’ve added Helvetica to my Netflix Queue to watch it again along with three other films:
- Into the Wild
- Manufactured Landscapes
- Juno
Cheers to good cinema. There’s very little that can substitute for a good film.
Prioritizing Life
There is one thing I will always remember from the summer of last year. My uncle, the eldest of my mom’s family, was in town visiting for a month to babysit his newborn grand daughter. I always enjoy his company. He’s lived a remarkable life - the kind of life that a select few in this world get to experience in one lifetime. He’s traveled. He’s shaken hands with presidents. He’s taught at universities. He’s impacted business in major countries around the world.
What stands out to me though is that he always remembers where he came from and the lessons that he’s learned from all the trials he’s been through, particularly from his days as a young man in France with nothing but the shirt on his back thanks to the Vietnam War.
We were sitting at dinner one evening that summer and he looked at me and said, “You need to find one thing you love to do and do it. Do it well and do it with excellence. Everything else will follow.” The words were simple but the moment was unforgettably moving.
One of the tell-tale signs that you might be getting older is that you begin to realize your limitations - in a good way of course. For me, it’s been the realization that I only have so much time and I cannot continue seriously pursuing 100 different things that I fancy or am curious about. My achilles heel has always been that I have too many interests and too little time. That lack of time has showed as I look at the last 27 years of my life. Of interests, hobbies, and knowledge, I am a dabbler in many but a digger in none.
This week I’ve been reflecting on what my uncle said to me last summer. It’s a pearl of wisdom I will keep in my back pocket for the rest of my life. I’ve been wearing the mining hat a lot the last year or so and it’s beginning to fit me well. It’s wearing in and it’s feeling good. And as a result, life’s been simple these days. In short, I’m learning one thing. Do the few things that matter to you most and the rest will follow.
Coudal Partners
As an avid reader, I find that there are rare sites on the internet that are brimming with good content. Those sites are usually the ones that make me want to pack up my blog and call home. Coudal Partners, a recent site I discovered through Naz Hamid, is certainly one of them.
The family at Coudal is a design, advertising and interactive studio based in Chicago. Their about description reads like this: “If browsing around here while at work has had a negative effect on your productivity we’re sorry but imagine what it’s done to ours”. I don’t come across many sites that truly have this kind of draw. Some are good with talk with little substance but these guys are rich.
Case in point: Their video wall. Their Museum of Online Museums. And their latest link to Corey Arnold, a really good photographer who has spent the last six years documenting his life as an Alaskan crab fisherman.
So just do it. Visit Coudal and explore.