Bastille Day Fete

Spent Saturday afternoon at the Bastille Day Fete at Jamison Square. Very colorful.
It was fun watching all the photographers there, some of them pros.

There was music, a demonstration of fencing, some ballet, and probably the main event, the annual waiters' race. They had to go around the block 3 times carrying a tray of Perrier and glasses of water, and were judged both by the order of finish and by how dry their tray was at the end.

Second to last day in class

I love helping my classmates. Because I worked with web site programming I am more familiar with how the html should work, though not necessarily how Dreamweaver should work. If I look at the code I can usually figure out what needs to be changed.

And I know that I was able to spend a lot of time the past few days getting my portfolio prints printed and re-printed, since I print them myself. I don't have to run back and forth to the lab, to Costco, etc. This was due to a decision I made over a year ago, when I realized I had spent over $200 on print lab work in two terms and that therefore a $250 printer would save me money if I didn't waste too much paper and ink (and it's fun too).

But it is agonizing how close to our deadlines these people are cutting it. For two years we have been aiming for this Wednesday, don't they know?, and yet most are not quite ready yet. I wish I could run around to each of them and help them get their stuff together. Most of them are perfectly capable of doing this, but I am always surprized when someone says, "Oh, were we supposed to have ..... ready today?" Ah, youth.

Remembering a New Years a long time ago

I attended Columbia University for one year of graduate study, and for various reasons I was invited to a New Years party in Greenwich Village that year. Along about midnight I hooked up with an attractive girl about my age, and being pretty drunk, we made fools of ourselves. Her parents spirited her away when they got the chance, dammit. I remember her angry mother asking me, "What do you want?" This was surely one of the stupidest questions anyone has ever asked me. Nancy, for that was her name, was the daughter of New Yorker cartoonist Barney Tobey, in town for the holidays from Italy. She was beautiful and clever, way out of my league.

I got to thinking about that evening today, and did some googling, and discovered that she died in an apartment fire in Rome in 2002.

A lazy Saturday evening

I lived for 30 years in Canada and, being a sports fan, got hooked on hockey and especially its playoff excitement. I remember the first playoff series I watched many years ago, when Montreal was the most powerful team. Boston and St Louis had great stars as well.
So permit me some Canadian rant.
Just watched the first game of the Stanley Cup finals, between Detroit and Pittsburg. I'm glad it doesn't involve some weird teams like Anaheim and Charlotte, with no hockey history.
But this guy Sidney Crosby, who is touted as the big super star of our time! He is nothing! Compared to the stars of my time, like Orr and Gretsky, he is a non-entity. I know the game has changed, and defense has become dominant, but this is the championship series, and the leaders have to step up, even if they are only 21. Right now I predict a 4-game sweep by Detroit.
BTW, Bobby Orr is the greatest professional athlete I have ever seen. Tiger Woods is second.

Delivering invitations for our portfolio show

Beautiful weather in PDX these days, though a little too hot for my taste.
I decided to ride out to the college and deliver invitations to some of the people there who helped me either by being subjects for my environmental portraits project or by other means.
So I had a visit with Rick Zimmer in Theater, and dropped off an invite for Chelsea Van Baalen at The Advocate and put an invite in Lori Lorion's mail box, and finally met Chris Baskin in the ceramics studio. I especially like his proud pose with his beautifully proportioned ewer fresh from its first firing.
Tomorrow I will visit Laura Russell at 23 Sandy gallery and give her an invitation.

Near the end of the Pro Photo program

Well here I am finishing up the Pro Photography program at MHCC. I have a fairly long list of to-dos and today, even with a doctor's appointment and a trip downtown to pay my PGE bill and get stuff at Art Media, I managed to check off a few of the items. Didn't tackle the big one, printing the final prints and figuring out how to mount them in the portfolio, but did take care of some of the smaller items.
First time printing on a CD (DVD actually) and the printer performed perfectly. I'm using an image from France, of a couple colorful balloons, mainly because they fit pretty well and allow for the hole in the middle.

It occurred to me that I should tell Rick Zimmer, the director of the MHCC theater program, about winning the 2nd place award for my picture of his production of Guys and Dolls. So I sent him an e-mail about it and attached a jpg of the photo so he would know which it was. In his reply he calls me a "great photographer," which is surely a stretch. But he has been good to work with and I appreciate the sentiment.