Est. 2003
The blog of one Michael Heilemann, expatriated Dane coming to you out of New York City. Half machine, half grapefruit, Interface director at Squarespace, design lover, film enthusiast, Star Wars historian, creator of the Kubrick and K2 themes, and holder of opinions, many of which are shared on his Twitter account.
Ouzo, is there a liquid more vile, and yet more appropriate for putting the world on notice: “World, I’m ready to party” (Update: Yes there is, and it’s called Sambucca, and that’s what Garret was being lit on fire with in this shot, or so I’m told). At Bjørn and Chloë‘s wedding, Ouzo (capital O) Sambucca (capital S) was what it came to. Miraculously, my 50mm caught it at just the right moment.
Bjørn and Chloë‘s wedding was a truly fantastic day in the arms of friends and friends of friends, regrettable only for lasting a mere single day, not nearly enough under such circumstances.
Now, coming back from the mid-lands, we’ve stopped in London for the weekend, figuring it would be a waste to not lay down our hard-earned cash here, when we passed so close by. As it happens, I’m typing this on my brand-new 13” MacBook Pro, which marked a good ending to a great first day.
It’s been about a decade since we were last here, and to be honest it doesn’t stand particularly clear in either of our memories, which has made our visit that much more enjoyable, as we’ve already come to fall in love with this city (as we do with all the major cities we visit… With the exception of Rome. Sorry Romans).
To this day however, there are things that boggle the mind about England. First of all, what’s with the windows? Here we are, seventh floor of the otherwise very nice Hotel Russel, wonderful room, approaching what one might term Scandinavian in its design choices, and then the windows… I believe a large part of the US actually have the same twisted concept of windows; the kind you unlatch and then pull up?
Not only do they almost always require the strength of a well-built man to open (I struggle), but to counter that horrible design flaw, they’re about as air-tight closed as they are open. And not being air-tight, you’re right to question their sound-proofing; because there is none.
And this isn’t merely an issue restricted to the posh Hotel Russel, the otherwise fantastic Westfields Private Hotel we stayed at near Endon had the exact same windows (though with a second, newer layer of glass over it). It’s as if this country hasn’t figure out that windows serve purposes other than stopping the major elements from rushing in and killing people; that there are in fact some ‘subtlety’ to be ironed out of their 16th-century design.
To think of the heating cost and noise pollution a building the size of Hotel Russel could abolish, were they as meticulous with their windows as they (or their predecessors) have been with their marble-covered lobby.
If nothing else, it would save us from having to use ear plugs to sleep…
Even as an experienced photography-enthusiast, people remain the hardest subject for me to capture. Not only do I rarely find myself in a situation where I’ve brought my DSLR
Well, we’re all a ‘cheese’‐conditioned lot, who look into the camera, smile and wait for the ‘I release you from this spell’‐click. Sure, you get people drunk, it’s another story—rabbit-ear-fingers, cheek licking and funny hats—but the basic premise remains the same; namely ‘acting’ for the camera. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it yields nice in-focus photos of happy people who’re willing to hold still long enough for me to adjust the focal length and take it up an f-stop or two to get the shot right.
But the ones I really want and the ones that stay with me, are the stolen ones. And I don’t mean paparazzi-style 1500mm gyro-mounted zoom objectives from a hilltop 2 clicks away and down into your garden where you frolic around in your birthday suit. Just friends and family being themselves, unaware of the CCD ready to reach out and snatch away their soul.
Those shots are elusive. Real life doesn’t stop while I switch from auto to manual focus; which in turn means that when they once in a blue moon do happen, they’re that much better. In fact, out-of-focus snapshots are often even better than cheese-shots by pure virtue of the intimacy of the subject(s).
When people know they’re being photographed they stiffen up somehow, suck in what can be sucked in, squint, go from ‘listening’ to ‘listening, intellectually’
Then again, maybe it’s really the other way around. By virtue of my understanding of the construction of ‘cheese-shots’; that little else is happening between the portrayed than what meets the eye, which is what makes even the most pedestrian stolen shot unexplored and unexplained territory.
What I’m driving at, is that in the end, when all else fails, a chimp will never give you the cheese-look and that’s why chimps always work.
I’m sorry for this past week’s permission-problem-outage, but despite having vacation, it’s been everything but quiet around here. And before we get on to other business, let me just take one more opportunity to congratulate Rasmus and Anna-Vera on their wedding this weekend, it was fantastic!
Now, down to business.
I think I’ll try and upgrade BB to WP 2.6 one of the next few days, just to have the chance to play around with it properly, before finally taking the leap up to the just release Habari 0.5. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to play around with it yet, but I’m so very proud to have been a part of that project so far. The work we’ve done these last few months is really something. There’s also a new project site, which is quite an improvement already.
So that’s coming along strong. I can’t wait to get it up and running on BB; I’m really just waiting for Chris to do the textile plugin he promised me… (nudge nudge, eh eh?).
Now, I’ve got some drafts for various entries I didn’t get to post over the last week, but now that the weather in Copenhagen has turned from LA to Seattle, what else is there to do but honker down and get some writing done?
Well, there’s watching movies, reading books and cooking food, but… Well, I’ll get them written, alright? I get enough whine from my friends about the activity-level on here already, so I guess I need to pick it up a bit, eh?
In the meanwhile, Steve Lam has been working quietly behind the scenes, and just released a new release candidate (haha… We just like the sound of it) of K2 yesterday, all 2.6 ready and everything. Knock yourself out!
And in closing: Twitter killed the blog. It’s true.