Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Long drive for a home run


The Photographer
Originally uploaded by sergei.y
This morning I was invited to join a hundred people on a trip up to Toronto to see a baseball game. Sounds like a riot, but all are driving up there in their own cars and it's about four and a half hours.

Of course part of me says "screw it, head on up" while the other says "work, long drive, overnight stay" and of course "you don't like baseball" - which side will win I have no idea.

Last night we went to a gallery opening. Photographs of Alabama taken over 40 years by a guy whose technique didn't seem to improve. Most of the people there seemed to be asking the same question "This guy is famous because....????"

It's one of the great statements of the upload age. People used to say "I could do better than that" ---> now they say "I HAVE DONE better than that" and in many cases they have.

I was reading an interview with Sir (!) John Hegarty where he was talking about being the chair of an art committee. He said that he can easily search for "picture of woman holding a baby" and the search engines and stock photo sites will give him 10,000 options. The only problem is that they'll all be rubbish. And what he wants is one GOOD pic of a woman holding a baby. Alas "Good pic of woman holding a baby" isn't a search engine friendly term.

As he said if you search the art world for the same pic you may not find the exact image and angle that you want but you're much more likely to stumble upon something that shows you something new or that invites you to think about the subject in a new way - and that's more valuable.

Also last night 38 Drinks with the very lovely Rebecca, who looked amazing swathed in the diffused glow of my favorite bar in Ann Arbor. I may have had more thatn I thought though -as this morning I'm feeling weirdly weak and out of sorts. Blaming the allergy patches for that though.

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