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a blog exhibit by erik stinson, 2010

going to write more about my childhood maybe

Death In Autumn: Two Short Stories

Death in Autumn: Two Short Stories

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1. “Wax”

Once upon a time, a man went to a garage sale and bought two candles. They were matching, but had been burned to different lengths. This bothered him, and so when he arrived home, he lit the taller candle and placed it on his kitchen counter. He set the shorter candle next to it, such that he would be able to judge when the taller candle had burned down sufficiently and could be extinguished.

It was a Sunday, and he had been out late the night before. He felt tired, and took a nap. When he woke, he found that the (initially) taller candle had burned down so far that it was in fact now shorter than the other candle. He blew it out, put on his jacket, walked down the street, and jumped in front of the CalTRAIN. He died instantly.

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2. “Clipboard”

Once upon a time, a man was walking past a stairwell which lead down, below the street level, into the basement of an apartment building. Mr. Morales walked from the bottom of the stairwell up toward the street, stopping three stairs below the street level. Mr. Morales was carrying a clipboard. Neither of the men had ever seen each other. It was autumn.

“If you had to describe yourself in one word, what would it be?,” Mr. Morales asked the man.

The man thought for several seconds, scratching his chin and muttering “hmm...”

“Old-fashioned,” the man said.

“That is two words,” Mr. Morales said.

“Oh. But it’s a compound word, with a hyphen...,” the man said. He started to think of another word, again scratching his chin and muttering.

Mr. Morales set the clipboard down on one of the steps of the stairwell, but it started to tip. The steps were not wide enough to accommodate the entire clipboard. Mr. Morales rearranged the clipboard so the heavy metal clip was as far forward on the step as possible, with the lighter part of the clipboard hanging off the step. This kept the clipboard from tipping. His hands empty, Mr. Morales removed a revolver from a holster hidden under his jacket.

Mr. Morales aimed at the man’s chin. Mr. Morales closed his eyes and tucked his lips into his mouth a moment before he pulled the trigger, because he did not know if the man’s blood might spatter onto him, and although the man did not have hepatitis or HIV, Mr. Morales did not know this. All he knew was that the man had described himself in two words when explicitly instructed to describe himself in one word. Mr. Morales shot the man. He died instantly.

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Next, on Menthol University Press:

1. Stories about neat freaks: being neurotic isn't as simple or straightforward as you might think.
2. The word "Girl" has the abbreviation "IRL" ("In Real Life") in it. Coincidence?
3. Did you know that Germans refer to the constellation we call "The Big Dipper" with a phrase that translates literally as "The Big Cart"? Well, now you do!
4. Sometimes, you see someone and want to sleep with them. If they're wearing a fedora hat (or if any of their friends are), it's quite straightforward: just walk up to them and ask "Excuse me, is the word 'fedorable' in your vocabulary?" It's pretty easy from there.
5. As people get older, they tend to become less idealistic. My level of idealism is about equivalent to that of the average seven-thousand-year-old.
6. I am starting to no longer believe in things that can't be assigned units. I still halfway believe in things like distance and filmspeed and vehicle speed--but what about things like love, truth, and Australia? They have no units, so their existence is suspect.

October

I have been interviewed by Print Libaration Philadelphia PA

http://printliberation.com/blog/

Death On Broadway: Three Seattle Poghems

Death On Broadway: Three Seattle Poghems

Hello Menthol readers,

Below are three short poghems inspired by my recent week-long jaunt to Seattle. They should tide y’all over until I get the rest of my film processed

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1. “Brand Loyalty”

I am end

lessly pleased

with PhotoShopAfterEffectsInDesign

the consistency

of the products with each

of my intentions and each

other.

Adobe should

diversify and

make ColognePastaStreetDrugs.

Have you

tried the new

CS6?

I put on some CS6

went to a club, did some CS6

met someone, fell in love,

we went back to my place,

ate some CS6

and lived creatively ever after

in a suite.

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2. “SeaTac”

Two men behind me

are speaking African French

I join in: Vous venez d’ou, where

do you come from?

A young woman

turns at my French

tells me: You

should do that more often.

I am fairly

sure she is beautiful and very

sure she is wrong.

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3. “Gear”

Everyone is moving in

with everyone else

he moves so often he

is hard to find or

to avoid.

If he asks me why I

pay for dental work in cash I will

say “because of global

warming” if he asks me why I

didn’t write a check I will

say “because I had to

drive” if he asks me if

i am growing my hair out I will

say “yes would you like

to have a race?”

Alpental

As I’ve mentioned on this blog, and to some of you privately, I’ve recently been shooting with a 35mm. SLR. The first few rolls of film I ran through it were negative film, the kind of film which produces “negatives” (i.e. the more light a region receives, the darker it becomes). This is the dominant sort of film in use. I’ve switched over to using a different kind of film, so-called “color reversal” or “slide” or “positive” film. This film produces a positive image when exposed. It’s vastly less popular than negative (“print”) fim for several very good reasons.

Positive film is very difficult to expose correctly- slightly too much light and a frame will be solid white, slightly too little and it will come out solid black. Negative film, on the other hand, can be over-exposed or under-exposed by significant amounts and still come out well enough.

Positive film cannot be easily used to produce prints in a darkroom, while negative film is perfect for enlarging.

Positive film suffers from reciprocity failure much more than negative film. Ideally, the exposure on a piece of film should depend only on the total amount of light received, not on the rate at which light impinged on the film. For example, if I increase the ratio between the focal length of a lens and the diameter of the aperture by sqrt (2), then at a given focal length, the diaphragm area is half as great (since it depends on the square of the ratio between focal length and aperture diameter) and so half as much light will come through per unit time. All I need to do, theoretically, is to double the exposure time to keep the exposure constant. With negative film, this usually works. With positive film (especially the kind I am using), the exposure depends on the total amount of light that hits the film AND the rate at which the light hits the film (!). Worse still, these dependencies vary according to the type of light that is illuminating the scene, the color of the subject, and the shutter speed (!).

Finally, positive film itself costs much more than negative film, but the real difference in cost arises in the processing step: positive film is ruinously expensive to have processed, and not many labs will do it.

Regardless of these issues, I am starting to prefer positive film to negative, insofar as it gives better resolution and more accurate color reproduction. I’ve been shooting in downtown Palo Alto. The images below are from my first roll of positive film, a roll of Fuji Velvia ISO=100. Most were shot through a Vivitar Series 1 lens at a focal length between 70mm. and 210mm.

The Series 1 is a strange lens. Shot wide-open at 70mm., it is blazingly fast (F/2.8). Shot wide-open at 210mm., it is creepingly slow (F/12). Very few zoom lenses show such a change in the [focal length] : [maximum aperture diameter] ratio. Most zoom lenses are faster at the short end than at the long, but a difference this large is unheard of, even in zoom lenses which offer a much wider range of focal lengths. The Series 1 is a 3X zoom lens, but its speed varies much more than a typical 10X zoom lens. To change the focal length of the Series 1, you push and pull the lens barrel, rather than rotate it- this is unlike virtually all other zoom lenses. In the Series 1, you rotate the barrel counterclockwise to focus at greater distance, which is opposite the behavior of virtually all other lenses, zoom or otherwise. The Series 1 also has a macro function; it can focus on very close objects, but only when the focal length is set to the full 210mm. Virtually all other lenses have a longer minimum focal distance at longer focal lengths; the Series 1 behaves opposite this. Such behavior is baffling; it is as if the engineers thought “hmm, photographers will probably want to zoom in on nearby objects and zoom out on distant objects”. Finally, if you push the lens to 210mm. and set the focal point close, you cannot un-zoom (shorten the focal length) until you turn the focus further away, due to some kind of locking mechanism in the lens itself. Despite these bizarre characteristics, the optics are decent. Focusing at F/12 is a challenge; you really need California sunshine for that.

Below are some street shots from California Avenue.

Click an image to view it larger.

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"Woman With Electric Hair And Phone"

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"Man With One Visible Earring"

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"I Have Two Cups Of Coffee"

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"I Have A Book And An Orange"

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"I Like To Hang Out At Antonio's"

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"I Have Only A Single Cup Of Coffee But I Do Have A Chair"

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"Man With Strange Red Chevrons On His Shirt"

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"Woman With Silver Hair Touching Her Eye"

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"Wistful Bro At Coffee Shoppe"

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"Woman Smoking Cigarette In Red And Blue"

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"Woman With Blue Mechanical Pencil"

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I have two rolls from Seattle (one black-and-white negative, one color positive) which I am having developed at this time. I plan to be around long enough for them to be finished, but beyond that, I want to travel to wherever there is the most potential and the least positive feedback, the "land of opportunity" if you will.