[caption id=“attachment_3224” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civilization IV: Colonizaton: My First Colony”] [/caption]

Do not be fooled by the Civ IV part of the title to the updated to the classic Colonization.  You do so at your own peril; well, your colony’s peril.  Colonization is primarily a game of economics while Civilization is primarily a game of domination.  In Civ you work the tiles around your city and either get “money”, production, or food.  In Colonization you work the tiles around your city and get cotton, tobacco, ore, sugar cane, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.  And, while in Civ you simply use the production to build units and city structures, in Col you take all these raw products and produce finished products: cloth, cigars, tools, guns, rum, and coats.

The beach was covered with snow, but that didn’t seem to bother the seagulls. As I approached, they let me get really close and if I got closer they preferred to run rather than fly.

The Brooklyn Bridge. It was completed in 1883 and it links Brooklyn to Manhattan. It’s also possible to take the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn, but it’s far less picturesque. I’ve been to the Brooklyn Bridge a few times to take pictures with the first time being when I bought my Fujifilm Finepix S7000. This was the first time I took photos from Brooklyn Bridge Park; every other time had been from on the bridge itself.

What can I say about visiting the Lomography store that hasn’t already been said? It provides a very interesting contrast with B&H Photo Video. B&H is a photographer’s sex dream. There are cameras and lenses of all kinds everywhere (on the second floor, nowadays). A conveyor belt system brings your order to the guy taking your order and then over to where you pay. It is massive (taking up a good chunk of 9th and 34th) and it feels chaotic on a Sunday afternoon. You instantly feel as though you need to win the lotto so you can posses it all. It feels like a microcosm of NY with people trying to get every which way and pushing around.

?This is part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.

See part one here, part two here, and part three here.

Unlike the previous entries, this one was written a week after the events, but it covers events from 14 Feb 2010.

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[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“160” caption=“The Boardwalk covered in snow”] [/caption]

This is part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.

See part one here.

See part two here.

?this was originally written on 14 Feb 2010

Life sure is strange.  This morning I was sure I’d be buying a Holga today.  After talking to Danielle, it even seemed that SHE would get one too.  She wanted to have one loaded with color film and one loaded with black and white film.  Then she asked a few questions.  I can’t remember the exact words, but it got me thinking.  Do I REALLY want a Holga?  I mean, the biggest attraction for me was the ability to medium format film.  As I mentioned on 12 Feb, it’s a connection with the past and a chance to shoot with better film than I ever did.  But the more I looked at other photographers’ Lomo results, the more I wondered if this was how I wanted to re-experience film.  What put me off the most is the fact that the results are so random.  I don’t understand how people go on vacations to places as far away as Asia with a Lomo as their sole means of capturing their experiences.  They could be getting completely blown out photos the whole time and come back without any photo memories.

Part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.  See part one here.

this entry was originally written on ?13 Feb 2010

I went to the Lomography store yesterday and it was a very interesting experience.  The store matches the aesthetic of the Lomography movement.  It has a very casual feel to it.  It definitely belongs in Greenwich Village.  The wall is a huge collage of Lomo prints; most appeared to be of or taken in New York City.  There was a lot of repetition and it had the feel or working well as a larger work of art.  It’s worth visiting the store just to see the wall.  But the layout was also great - all the cameras are sitting on a table in the middle and you can touch them and handle them and get a feel for the camera.  I have a feeling they would have probably let me load some film in and take some shots for them to keep.  (And I might have if I hadn’t been there with others)  The table has an outline of each camera beneath it with the price of the camera listed.  The staff (well, the one woman there at that time) was very knowledgeable and helpful.  Definitely a good hire.  There were also tons of books and magazines wholly consisting of Lomographic images.

After reading Dan’s great Japan travelogue, Super Ichiban Travel Blog, and another source where someone had his children always keep a journal when they travel, I decided I wanted to do this as well.  To practice for when I go to some place that’s foreign to me, I decided to start keeping a journal when I travel to places I’ve already been.   Here’s the first entry from last weekend’s trip.

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I know I’m a day late, but I was busy celebrating the new year.  It’s now the year of the tiger!

If you read anywhere on the web, you’ll see people talking about how Photoshop (and digital photo manipulation) is ruining the purity of photography.  People argue endlessly about this as if they could get everyone on their side.  Guess what?  This controversy is older than radio.  Recently I’ve been reading the great photography history, How To Read a Photograph.  It turns out that as early as 1898,  people were purposely publishing their photographs straight as they happened to develop.  In the 1920s there emerged a division between photographers over whether it was more proper for photographers to alter their negatives (and therefore become an interpretive art form like painting) or if they had to be developed as is.  People had already been experimenting throughout the 1900s with the usage of different chemicals to affect their prints in different ways.  Photographers even used different films from different manufacturers because they were known to give darker greens or more saturated colors or better grain.  Digital photography is no different - it’s just that dark rooms took years to master while anyone can get the basics of the Canon RAW (or Lightroom RAW) editor.  But, having seen that this division has existed within photography for the past 100 years, I don’t think it will be going away any time soon.