My good friend Kirk launched a new business, Poached, which is a kind of jobs listing service for restaurants, bars and hotels. Sort of a high end alternative to craigslist with a much cooler interface. Anyway he asked me to shoot some chef tattoos for him to use in promos, etc.. Here’s a few:
My friend Lauren Henkin made a compelling case on her blog for saving work for the experience of seeing it printed and finished and the risks of showing online. The average website stay is something like 37 seconds, so it’s doubtful anyone ever takes a considered look at worked seen on the web. The briefest of looks, judgement made, “Next”.
So I’m having doubts about the wisdom of leaking this work in this way considering the project is still taking shape. In other words, I’m not sure exactly where this thing is going. Then again, I miss those dinner potlucks with friends we used to hold regularly, wine and photography. Throw down some work prints and ask for opinions from people who know you, your work and what your sensibilities are. Casting risks of overexposure aside once again, I’ll throw down a few more to share. In a few weeks I may come back and delete all these, or re-arrange, edit and organize them better. But for now, here’s a couple more. Please forgive the lack of continuity and obvious technical flaws, dust spots, etc..
Seeding Greens, Altheimer, Arkansas
I’m continuing to scan, have about 55 now. These images I am posting are akin to viewing work prints as they have had little consideration as to whether they work in the context of this body, much less any sequencing, etc..
Someone a couple years ago at a seminar told me it was absolutely necessary to have a blog. I argued that no one would be interested in reading my drivel but the point was made that of course no one would actually read the blog, but it was really good for the search engine optimization.
Now I’ve personally never heard from any of my colleagues about landing a sweet gig because someone found them on google. But who is to say and can any of us discount the opportunity that may, just may arise from having good seo? Well I know I can’t, or at least, I’m willing to say what the hell, okay I’ll roll with it. But the thought of loading up a blog with posts full of keywords just didn’t appeal to me, so I continue to post my drivel.
Anyway, I recently uploaded a bunch of new Stock Photography to my Photoshelter account here: http://robbiemcclaran.photoshelter.com/. The stock photography I uploaded was here: http://robbiemcclaran.photoshelter.com/gallery/Oregon-Coast/G00009VJ5D.NVDDA/.
If one was searching one might find other stock photography of Oregon located here: http://robbiemcclaran.photoshelter.com/gallery/Oregon-Stock-Photography/G0000Gbwo4mAU1_c/
Here’s a couple of sample images from the lovely Oregon Coast Stock Photography that are available for license or print purchase via my photoshelter site:
Now, back to the regularly scheduled drivel.
Winter roses, photographed on January 4, 2012 using out of date Polaroid Type 67 (I think)
Heidi Kirkpatrick presented her work today at Portland Art Museum’s Brown Bag Lunch series. All I will say is that she is amazing and deserves to be a rock star in the art world. Here’s some good places to start if you haven’t seen her work before:
http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/01/heidi-kirkpatrick.html
http://www.23sandy.com/kirkpatrick/catalog.html
http://www.panopticongallery.com/artist/heidi_kirkpatrick/#Heidi_Kirkpatrick_24.jpg
And her site here: http://heidikirkpatrick.com/
I’m very proud to present my contributions, the June and November pages from the Western Star Trucks 2012 Calendar. Produced with Creative Director Jeff Nichols, and Art Director Lawrence Wolf at CMD along with stylist extraordinaire Kymm Ernst.
A few weeks ago President Obama announced he would delay a final decision on the Keystone pipeline for one year. Now in a cynical political move Republicans are attempting to attach Keystone to the President’s jobs bill. This is a terrible plan and should be scrapped. Not only would the building of the pipeline itself cut a swath across six states, cross major rivers and threaten critical drinking and agricultural water sources, it says nothing of the oil it would transport.
Of course major oil companies and construction conglomerates such as Bechtel think it’s a great idea. It could certainly be argued that the enormous pipeline project would create jobs, but a deeper investigation would reveal the trade off would simply not be worth the ultimate price. Keystone would transport oil produced from Canada’s tar sands and while I’m certainly not opposed to some of the benefits of reducing our dependence on oil from the middle east, this is not the kind of oil we need to be producing.
I visited the Athabasca Valley region in Alberta, where the major tar sands production takes place, three years ago on an editorial assignment for Bloomberg Markets Magazine and what I witnessed shocked me. This is a near zero gain, environmentally devastating process. Let me explain.
The first step is the virgin boreal forest must be clearcut. The land is then strip mined for the sand which has oil embedded in it. Trucks transport the sand to processing facilites where the oil is extracted essentially by super heating with steam. It requires massive amounts of fresh water taken from the Athabasca River only a tiny fraction of which is clean enough to return. The toxic water left behind, some 90+% is then pumped into massive tailing ponds, some of the largest structures ever built by humans, currently covering 50 sq miles and easily visible from space. These massive toxic lakes of tailings are deadly to migratory waterfowl, killing thousands annually.
As if this weren’t enough the process produces three times the carbon emissions of normal oil extraction. The natural gas used to process tar sands in one day could heat 3 million homes. Considered too expensive previously oil produced from tar sand has only in recent years become feasible, due to high worldwide oil prices. I won’t venture what role our middle east wars have played in raising the price of oil but the connection seems obvious.
Coming from someone who drives a car, rides motorcycles and takes an occasional airplane, all this criticism might sound hypocritical. But building the Keystone pipeline will hand oil companies an incentive to expand production of this dirty oil, further increasing carbon emissions, keeping oil prices inflated and doing nothing to solve our dependence on oil. Our entire economy may be based on petroleum consumption but we’ve got to find a better way than this.
For more reading, John Lippert’s excellent story in Bloomberg can be found here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0308_story1.html
National Geographic has another excellent story here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text/1
I’m really looking forward to seeing Susan’s newest work tonight at Froelick Gallery. Anyone coming into town for Photolucida should make it a point to see it.
