Be very afraid | dooce ®

And feeling very Minnesota. o

Nothing says that it’s time for summer more than enjoying a late lunch outdoors. Nothing says funky like James Brown or maybe Parliament circa mid-70s. Nothing says funky lighting more than these groovy lights used to illuminate the front of a restaurant on Granville Island in Vancouver. o

Taken in downtown Vancouver at the Pacific Centre. Heather and Maggie were dying to see the new H&M which had just opened. I opted out of hitting the new Apple store and instead chose to take photos. I’m really glad I did. The weather was too good to spend our brief time inside a store! o

During a lovely walk we spotted this bro who totally took off .3 seconds after I took this.

We have had the best time in Vancouver. The weather has cooperated wonderfully and given us days full of sun. People are so nice and lovely and it feels like the whole city is about to explode with summer awesomeness.

I’ve taken a lot of photos on this trip and can’t wait to share. I’ll also be adding a few more for sale when we return. This has been a great trip for us. One we desperately needed. o

Waiting for boarding yesterday this plane was parked outside. Pretty and the mid-morning light was just right.

Then I ruined it by tweaking. That’s WHAT I DO, internet. o

I like that I can push RAW images hard and get nice pseudo-grain. Don’t know if I’ll be able to post any photos from Vancouver, but I’ll try.

p.s. Thanks for the support with the prints! The first batch went out today and should arrive shortly. o

I’m sure there is a chemical reason why every time I shoot this sign I see the colors this way. It has something to do with midtown Manhattan and how crazy it is up in there with the tall buildings and the light and the people and the smells.

Maybe it’s because the sign makes me think of J.D. Salinger and reading about New York as an adolescent and how midtown is the embodiment of that world for me. Even if I’m dead wrong, I still have a certain romance about midtown that I see when I think of Zooey Glass going to audition for television. Or maybe Holden Caulfield in the phone booth. When phone booths existed. o

Specs

8×10 printed on 8.5×11 (for matting purposes)
Photo Rag (308 gsm) matte finish archival paper
Museum quality, pigment based inks
Un-numbered. Signature upon request.
Price: $40 USD
Domestic purchase only. For now. If enough International interest is secured I’ll look into it. But customs scares me. I’ve never had good luck shipping anything internationally. Ever.

Questions? photos [at] blurbomat [dot] com
I’ll consider custom requests on a case by case basis. I’m relatively easy to work with.
I’m a total newbie with the shopping cart stuff, so forgive me if I have a weird setting or two.

Over the years, I’ve sold prints here and there (thanks readers!), but I’ve wanted to do it in a more organized and serious fashion. The problem has been time and hubris. It takes time to build a site or sub-site that would host the images for sale, the shopping cart and the fulfillment. Sure, there’s Etsy, but I just didn’t want to go through the trouble to set all that up, because I felt that the return wouldn’t justify the effort. It’s not that I don’t think my photos are appealing or have value. It’s that the overhead of running a site and the customer service time along with order fulfillment has put me off doing it. Plus, I was flat out scared. I’m a pretty good art director and designer. I’m not ashamed to take money for those pursuits. Photography is another beast. I’m not a museum snob. I didn’t graduate from a photography program. In my own head, I’m a hack. But so many of you keep asking. And I could go super high end and charge hundreds of dollars.

A few months ago, I got a request from Ms. Sarah Brown for a file to make a print on her own. Because I wanted a nice print for myself of the photo she requested, I asked her if she’d be willing to pay extra for a sweet print that was signed. She agreed and I liked the results so much that it spurred me to offer this to the general public.

After much research, hemming, hawing and being flummoxed I found a great printer, a great paper and did some more research. And more of what the Mrs. likes to call “lollygagging”. Let’s be clear, the Mrs. is wrong. It’s called indecisiveness. And a desire for perfection.

The print SHOULD be matted. I learned in my months of research (thanks Marshall!) that over time, inks can stick to glass, so a mat is necessary on this print. Because I’m not a decorator, I’ll recommend a white mat with a black frame. But that’s me. Once you buy one of these prints, all those decisions are yours to make.

The print will not rub your feet or your head. It will not tell you that you are a poor little bunny. o

UPDATE: A couple more for sale:
Semi-Nude Flasher
Golden Disney Hall

I hadn’t been to the 5th Ave. Apple store before. I wanted to go back in 2006 when we were last in New York, but other interests held sway. This past trip was so fast that we only had a few minutes to spare but I was able to convince Heather that we really needed to stop by and grab a couple of shots.

Of course the design is awesome. However, somebody has to clean that cube. I can’t imagine the pain. If you look closely, you can see some debris on the top. It was raining for a few minutes while we were inside, so you can see that as well. Kind of cool.

“They” also put down black industrial mats on the stairs to keep the stairs clean during winter months, which I did not know about and had wondered. How do you keep glass, spiral staircases clean? Custom made mats.

I did not spend more than 5 minutes in this store. It was packed like Disneyland. To buy stuff. Nutty. I love Apple and all, but that place was a zoo on a Thursday afternoon. I can’t imagine a worse way to experience a brand. It’s one of my least favorite things about Disney; they expect you to wait for a middling ride. I hope Apple isn’t headed in that direction. o