Posts by Scott

Whenever I see images like the ones below by Drew Gardner, I always ask myself how the hell they do it. Apparently they do it with $36,000 cameras. That’s not to say it’s all about the equipment, but 39 mega pixels doesn’t hurt. The Phase One camera system seems pretty incredible: a medium format, full-frame sensor that can produce “Noise-free exposures of up to an hour”. Crazy…

Artistically Gardner’s work (examples below) isn’t really my style, but technically it always amazes me that people can create images like this. The Strobist recently mentioned Gardner and his Phase One Masterclass. At $2,850 I won’t be attending anytime soon, but it would be great to see the process of someone who has mastered photography on this level.

Here’s a peek at Gardner’s process in his “Epic Location Photography” trailer:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_MXwLxwrCc

Dusty Brown and I will be playing live sets at the LAUNCH Design & Music Festival in Sacramento this Saturday (July 25th, 2009) at approx. 8:30pm. See you there!

Photographer Tim Navis is participating in The Mongol Rally, a drive from the UK to Mongolia. You can follow along at Tim’s Rubik Crew page. Seems like an incredible adventure, I imagine he’ll be coming back with some amazing shots, can’t wait to see them. And in case you haven’t checked in on Tim since we last featured him, here are a few of his recent shots to refresh your memory:

Create Digital Music has a nice piece on the Walkman’s 30th Birthday. Pretty surprising actually, I don’t think I became aware of the Walkman until ’85 or so. Peter Kirn makes a good point: “Sony once had iconic design..” Link

Always loved the Nakamichi logo.

I almost didn’t want to post this link just so I could snag a few of the books, but I don’t think I really need to add any to my collection right now. The Strange Attractor turned me on to Counter-Print’s great selection of vintage design books. The real beauty here is the pricing; pretty reasonable compared to what I have seen elsewhere. The main attraction for me though are the great pictures and excellent page selections. Counter-Print: please, please keep your archive of sold books going (the grayed-out selections at the bottom) so we’ll always have a record of some of these rare finds.

Design books in general have always been a dichotomous obsession for me. On the one hand I am compulsively drawn to them; as if owning a physical copy of the images inside will allow me to understand or appreciate them better. But on the other hand, I rarely refer back to these books once I’ve owned them for any amount of time. They look nice all stacked up on the bookshelf, but whether they serve any real function beyond that I can’t really say. I suppose they are good to refer back to for inspiration or reference but for some reason I never actually take the time to crack most of them open. I suppose they aren’t really meant to be all that functional, perhaps they’re best viewed as a collection and something to be enjoyed as a whole. At any rate, you could do your own collection some serious good by checking out what Counter-Print has on offer.

I just got home from Portland after playing the Emrg-n-See festival on Sunday night. Thanks to everyone who made it out, I had a great time playing and the energy was amazing. I had the honor of sharing the stage with two artists I have a lot of respect for: Flying Lotus and Daedelus. Luckily I brought my little Canon SD780 Elf and in between setting up my gear backstage, I was able to catch a little bit of Daedelus’ set on video (Sorry they’re so short, time was really tight).

The SD780 really is amazing for it’s size; it cranks out HD and takes some great still shots too. If course, it’s not the greatest in low light situations so take the above examples with a grain of salt. I will post some daylight stuff this week that show it’s real capabilities.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFrLUzawtWg

Get well soon MCA. Also, Paul’s Boutique / Check Your Head / Ill Communication: maybe the best 3 album run of any band ever?

I saw this on This Isn’t Happiness today and it reminded me of my friend’s brother who used to be way into restoring VWs. He was always talking about “23 Window” buses like they were the holy grail of VW collecting (well, that and a split window Bug). I’ve seen one of these on the street in my lifetime — here in San Francisco — and one restored and sitting in a garage back home in Sacramento. I always wanted one, but at this point I think I’d settle for a new school one with the pop-top and sink and all that.

On another note: I love VW’s old adverts; they were always simple and to the point. They are all over my old Newsweeks from the 60’s, I’ll have to post some up soon.

I’m flying into Portland tomorrow for the Emrg+N+See Festival in Macleay, OR (outside of Salem). The event goes from Friday-Sunday and I’ll be playing a Tycho/ISO50 set with visuals Sunday night. From the looks of the lineup it’s going to be a great show (see below). The full schedule with set times can be found here.

Performances by:
# Flying Lotus
# Daedelus
# Plastician
# Blockhead
# Sean Hayes
# Gift of Gab (of Blackalicious)
# Lazer Sword
# Random Rab
# Tycho
# Sub Swara
# Mochipet
+ More

See you out there…