Monday, March 28, 2011

$5 for Water, and Other Harrowing Tales

I've just arrived at the Amtrak Station in Solano Beach, CA, which is actually a cute little train station. I am early and on my own, both things are rarities. Currently Kevin is trying to hold onto his video camera as he rides shotgun with a pilot doing daredevil stunts in an open cockpit plane over the Pacific. I've come down to San Diego to visit my best friend from college, and her husband, two kids, two dogs and a cat.

Although I ate some sort of Raw food "quiche" concoction for lunch before boarding the train, I am starving. As I alighted on the platform, I spotted the Coke machine and started salivating. Regrettably I do drink Diet Coke all the time, although not quite as frequently as I used to. But after getting off the train, I splurged for the full-on High Fructose Corn Syrup real thing baby. What is it about traveling that opens up the junk food crave? On going through his receipts while doing his 2010 taxes, Kevin marveled over the amount spent on Red Bull and Candy. That's the driving along the interstate thing -- I get sleepy when driving, hence the Red Bull (stop judging you New York health nuts, how many of you have criss-crossed America lately and tried to subsist only on water and 'healthy' snacks like, oh, gas station-fresh fruit?). Candy, well, candy is part of the tradition. It was a part of every break on the road during our childhood, and, no, my sister and I are not obese. Maybe that's because our parents let us/made us play outside.

None of this, however, explains the exorbitant price of hotel mini-bar junk food. And that stuff is junk food -- I've yet to see a mini-bar stocked with peaches and pears. I take issue with the assertion by Randy Cohen, the former NY Times ethicist that it is unethical to avoid a mini-bar charge by re-stocking the bar yourself. Kevin, incredibly, is in league with Mr. Cohen. Personally, I feel it is unethical for the hotel to price things with such a crazy mark-up. The customer is nearly trapped. I abstained from the little $1.50 bottles of Poland Springs at the Westin in Copley Square, Boston, last month.


© 2011 bridget batch
Can you see that $5 price tag?

But Kevin had some Pringles because he was starving. They were $5 too. The bill listed them at $6.15, however, $1.15 in pernicious local taxes raping the visitors. Kevin didn't have much issue with his tiny 50 cent container of saturated fat being priced at a 500% markup but he howled over that tax. "WHHHHHHATTTT, that is SO ridiculous! It's almost 25%."

I told him he sounds like the tea partiers and greedy corporations. So businesses can handle ridiculous mark-ups on hotel charges as a business expense -- a tax-deductible business expense, but they can't deal with paying extra taxes in order to actually fund government programs that ultimately support them and and their success -- like education, research and infrastructure? Uh huh.

Regrettably, the Amtrak station is missing a snack machine. I am hungry and waiting for my friend. Damn, she actually doesn't eat junk food, keeping those daughters in line! No candy this time around. But she does drink...

Friday, March 25, 2011

LARCHMONT CHARTER SCHOOL AUCTION 2011

I have donated a 15x11 inch print of Spectre to a charity auction for a Los Angeles charter school. The auction will be held at Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City.

Larchmont Charter School
6TH ANNUAL GALLERY NIGHT GALA BENEFIT
@
Kopeikin Gallery
2766 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Culver City, CA. 90034
(310) 559-0800 tel

April 1st, 2011 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Invite your friends and family to widen the circle of people supporting our school.
Please pre-buy your tickets with a credit card.
Call 310.559.0800


© 2010 bridget batch

NEW DESIGN - and same old problems

The world seems to be reeling these days, with good news, and horrifying news, and same shit, different place type of news. Who am I to comment on it?

But as someone who thinks often about war, and has written about it here, and as someone clearly concerned with photography, I commend and recommend this article from The New Yorker written by Seymour M. Hersh. As the "intervention" on Libya continues I think about these issues. It's very difficult to want to be a pacifist when looking at a madman, rich and drunk on power and oil cash, who's happy to bomb his own people. But war -- and it IS war -- always always kills and physically and emotionally maims the innocent. And the individuals fighting it, even when they are the perpetrators, are also, always, victims.

In happier news, I've redesigned my website. I will make the images larger but I don't have access to all of my big files from my temporary Los Angeles lair. However, I was too excited to bother waiting for my return to New York, so here it is. I've obviously tweaked the blog's settings to match.

A portfolio website is a type, of a very specific ilk. Blogs are the same, they have to work in typical, predictable fashions. This is merely good information design. But my heart rebels against such conventions. I want discovery and I want to claim originality. The very first website I made had a "hidden" table of contents -- icons appeared when one dragged a mouse over the image of a hopscotch plan being drawn in chalk by a woman (a photograph of mine). A new user would not have any idea that they were to roll their mouse over the hopscotch squares, they just had to figure it out. If the user got that far, they wouldn't have any idea what the icons meant. This type of thing is great when you are a student but, well, we didn't have Google Analytics back then. Now, I don't want to see any stats where visitors abandoning my site immediately. So I sigh and follow the sound advice of simply making the site easy to use.

I've changed the background color to white. It's jarring. White courses from the monitor, I am not sure that it does not overpower the images. But it does seem to make everything a bit lighter, brighter. Doubtless, white provides a new context. Does the portfolio become more "professional"? Is it slicker? Is it more mundane, as the site morphs into a more standardized presentation? Or is it, hopefully, a far more effective way to communicate the real thing -- the meaning and aesthetic of my images?

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Friday Night City Lights

Spirit, California, by bridget batch
© 2011 bridget batch


I guess most people probably don't consider hanging out by a sluiceway of the L.A. River their ideal Friday night. I've already worked through the "going out" jones. Not many more surprises could wait for me in the bars of the world. A hidden gate and entryway into a forbidden place is far more engaging. Kevin and I photograph beside each other, on our own pieces or helping the other with one. One of his thoughts leads to mine, one of mine leads to his, the feedback loop goes from quivering to straight and strong, and loud.

The Los Angeles River, I didn't even know such a thing existed before I came here -- I hadn't seen Chinatown. I wonder if many Angelenos are unaware of its existence. About a month ago, some musicians from Manitoba were fished out of it. They were illegally "sailing" down its banks in order to make some sort of music video. Apparently the waters, which lie completely encased in concrete in a monument to more ancient urban blight, can be quite dangerous.

More about the LA River.
http://www.rocktheboatfilm.com/
The River Project


Recreational Vehicle, California, by bridget batch
© 2011 bridget batch

Thursday, March 10, 2011

A Hike in Rustic Canyon, Pacific Palisades

Yes, this is my blog, and I will show you personal imagery.

Rustic Canyon in the Pacific Palisades: its dark history.



© 2011 bridget batch


© 2011 bridget batch


© 2011 bridget batch


© 2011 bridget batch


© 2011 bridget batch



and in Santa Monica...


© 2011 bridget batch

Superdude!


© 2011 bridget batch


© 2011 bridget batch Lisa and John


© 2011 bridget batch Some Cooleys


© 2011 bridget batch

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Best Flash Site Ever

I've heard that Flash is going out of style, but not after you see this.

Poom Thai Cuisine

I hear the food is great, it's supposed to be at our place already.

Poom Thai Screenshot
from Poom Thai website

Friday, March 4, 2011

Bruce Mau's Guidelines for Creativity

This is the most inspiring thing I've read in awhile.

From Bruce Mau's website.


1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to
be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.