I am preparing for my first 10k race. Ran 6.6 miles (10.7km) for the first time in my life. First 30 minutes I ran uphill, then series of uphills and downhills. Quite challenging for my overweight body. The most difficult part is to fight the brain that keep telling – “quit, quit, quit”. Pace of this run was much better than previous “long” one, so I am very happy.
5 hilly miles in 53 minutes.
PixChannel has several video interviews with some great photographers of our time.
I found the perfect watch that satisfy all my wishes to such device. Its name is The Citizen Chronomaster CTQ57-1022.
Too bad it is insanely expensive and it seems is not available in USA.
www.worldpressphoto.org/images/stories/videos/Interviews/
Platon’s story about making a portrait of Putin is quite entertaining.
Watched ‘Devil wears Prada’ late in the night. Jane (5 years old) was sleeping.
This morning we all together saw an old (1979) video clip with Alla Pugacheva on youtube.
Jane watched it with all her attention and then said:
“I wonder what kind of shoes she is wearing?” 
Here is the clip btw.
Found these on one of the forums and like them both a lot.
“It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning”
Salvador Dalí
“He’s a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage”
George Bernard Shaw
Flickr has a group to discuss a recent book by Joe McNally ‘The Moment It Clicks’. People over there also share their stories of the moments when ‘it clicks’. Here is my take.
I asked a local library for permission to take photographs of all librarians in there. I wanted to play with both lighting a big space and photographing people at their work. I brought two strobes and a flash with me. Because of strobes they chose a slowest hour when there is no patrons and I was given an hour to do everything. Turned out to be a mistake, library feels deserted without people in background.
I was about to photograph library’s director when she got a very important call. She sits in a shoe box size room, full of papers, boxes, metal cabinets and without any windows. I tried to photograph her by bouncing the flash of the walls, but did not like results at all. Photographs were dull and did not have any volume. I then noticed that room in fact has a window into a bigger library space. That window was covered by book shelves on outside and metal cabinets on the inside. Hmm, I thought, it can be fun to put the light through this window. I almost ran out of time. Without asking I freed some space in director’s room, and moved cabinets away from the windows. You have to see directors eyes, but she was on the call with a politician who promised to find the money for a library expansion so she could not talk to me. I put one strobe outside the room and directed light through bookshelves, windows, shades into the room. It created a pattern of lights on the wall, just what I needed to make this photograph alive.
Tips: Think outside of the box, literally. Sometimes it pays to do it first, ask for permissions later.
P.S. Joe McNally gives a presentation of his book at the new B&H’s conference room.
Notes about creativity on the back of business cards by gapingvoid – link
