Chinese photography, Ruhe?

On the iPod: "About Her" - Malcolm McLaren

Another night, another waking flood of design ideas and research. I'm now almost convinced that ...hush... needs to go away and I need to come up with a new idea for a design shop. I've only branded two sites under the ...hush... label, and it wouldn't be that difficult to go back in and switch it up.

Right now, I'm very partial to the Ruhe Design Co. concept, but my biggest issue with that is the fact that not everyone can speak, or pronounce German words like I can (Roo – he).

I think it speaks to my design style. Very simple, calm and quiet. I don't get really crazy, I loathe using flash for anything other than video or slideshow presentations. Not to mention, it rolls off the tongue nicely if you ask me.

On a completely unrelated note, I was surfing PingMag last night and came across this interesting interview with a Chinese photoblogger.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about the evolution of the relatively tiny art scene in Shanghai and a country as large as China. As you'll see in the interview, some of the photography is quite incredible and a lot of the concepts are unique and deep.

Best part of the interview is that it seems to really focus on the fact that most Chinese artists are really trying to break the mold and not just rely on using the Maoist pop-art that dominates their culture. Many of these artists are relying on a punk mentality, pushing the edges and boundaries of traditional Chinese ideas and ideals.

It's worth the read.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a wiki to develop. Also, I spelled Ruhe wrong originally in the post below. Thank you anonymous for pointing it out.

The anticipation has got me blue

On the iPod: "Expo '86" - Death Cab For Cutie

They say if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't be speaking at all, hence the silence the last few days. But I'll brake it momentarily to talk about my best friend's wedding (no, not the movie). My buddy Andy got married on Saturday to his lovely (and absolutely perfect for him) new bride Amy.

It was a fine afternoon. I stood in the wedding party and also acted as chauffer from the church to the reception and reception to hotel. Andy and Amy had the sort of wedding I would hope to have. They shared these intimate moments. There were whispers, smiles and touches that made me wish I was acting in the capacity of photographer. While I think their photographer did a fine job, I would have been stealing those private little moments, because those private little moments are what are burned into my thoughts of that day.

And seeing those moments made me realize what a special talent and gift photography really is. There are all these basic rules that need be followed, but at the same time, the process is totally subjective. I find it fascinating to learn about why a shooter might decide to open up to f 2.8 in a bright light setting or why depth of field is so distorted for a certain shot.

For me, (and this probably comes from dating a woman for the better part of three years who shot in this fashion) full frame photography is incredibly impressive. So few shooters do it well. In fact, many books seem to avoid teaching good full-frame shooting practices. They focus more on developing the shot into the rule of thirds as opposed to finding the way to best use the negative space.

Maybe digital is slowly killing off the need to shoot in full frame, which I think is a shame. You can really get the most out of your shots, digital or otherwise, when you know how to properly frame a moment. It requires the shooter to be more thoughtful, more creative – to be an artist. So many "photographers" today aren't artists. They know how to make a picture, but not how to work in the medium of photography. So many of today's shooters seem to be better with Photoshop and not so great with the camera itself.

Web site fixes, new features

Web site fixes, new features

On the iPod - "The Fine Art Of Falling Apart" - Paint It Black

I've fixed the problem with the CSS that was effecting the display on several browsers. I hadn't noticed that when I had modified the copyright information in the footer of my static HTML pages, that I had reset the margins in some way. This problem was rectified by using a 48% margin from the left to return the page to center.

Don't you feel better for knowing that? Also, I wanted to let you know that soon, I'll have finally finished the photo galleries that I had intended on creating some time ago for the site. I just needed to think of the best way to display them without allowing them to be taken. I've solved said problem by going to a Flash based solution called SoundSlides.

I had experience with SoundSlides when I was working Monroe, but hadn't been aware that a PC version of the program had been developed. I bought a license for my home computer and the work machine and am already hard at work on cranking out a few galleries. I like this solution as an alternative to a lot of the crappy slideshows that are oh, so prevalent on the MySpace profiles (sorry darlin').

At any rate, keep your eyes peeled, but don't let them dry out. I'm full of empty promises lately.