Levitated Ass

“Levitated Mass”, LACMA’s $6M orphan boulder by Michael Heizer. Perched over a pedestrian underpass, this sad quarry-speck is isolated by a bleak gravel pan where grass and trees once stood. People circle it, pause, then run away from it. Described as a megalith, it is not, as a megalith is associated with Stonehenge, Easter Island, and so on. This is merely a displaced 21.5′ boulder from a Riverside Co quarry. 
LA Co Museum Of Art, Los Angeles, CA. April 2013.

But that’s the pretty view. Feast your eyes on the harsh one:

Creating the “100 Mile Runners Book”

Cover: Jussi Hamalainen, 66. 2012 Angeles Crest 100
Jussi has finished all 25 AC100s. He won it twice, and all but 4 of his
finishes were less than 24 hours. July 22, 2012. Loma Alta Park, Altadena CA.

I started this project in the summer of 2008. After fits and starts, I paused on it in November 2012. It was 100 pages, ambitious, and still not working. I paused to work on LA:2012.

Fast-forward to several weeks ago. I had a conversation with an outdoor lifestyle photographer I’ve worked with before. The project got new impetus when I realized it had to get done well before the end of June, when the 40th anniversary of the Western States 100.

I looked at what I’d done up to November—HATED IT. Too long, bloated , etc. Using the example of “La Jetee“, which incidentally, is one of the 10 best films ever made, and only 27 minutes long. Make it concise, direct, and emotionally powerful.

LAYOUT Tech Details

Using blurb’s Book Creator has accelerated things enormously. Ballpark the number of pages you’re going to need. Create the pages document.

Blurb Book Creator

Churn through your revisions, etc. When you get to final, this is where the fun starts. You’re going to want to upload a PDF file that is completely void of PostScript and OpenType references. Otherwise your PDF and ebook will suffer bizarro font substitutions.

1. Go to the Book Creator and generate the appropriate cover art
2. Revise and correct as necessary
3. Make identical copies of both Pages and Cover documents
4. Convert all fonts to outlines.
5. All folios have to be outlined on each page, not on the master pages. Otherwise you’ll have the placeholder letter from whatever master-page you’ve used.
6. Check, re-check and double-check that you don’t have text and caption boxes that got overlooked when you converted. These will pass the preflight, but will set off alarms at the ebook conversion part. The good news is that you’ve got 15 days to pay blurb before they flush your file. Don’t order anything until you’re absolutely sure that your files are clean. If you screw up, delete the file, correct, re-upload for free.

upload TECH DETAILS

Follow the blurb cues for pre-flighting and uploading your files. The image resolution preflight is solid. Now you’re ready to upload.

• Write a snappy capsule description of your book. Have it ready in a free-floating text doc somewhere. You’ll be using it. When I’m uploading, I can brain-fart and forget something.
• Have a tag list that describes your opus. Relevant descriptors like subject, location, details that will help people find your book.

If you have both a print book and an ebook, blurb has an annoying aspect that you cannot modify the description once both are uploaded. Sucks, but that’s a fact. You’ll have a URL for each format, like this for my book:

blurb ebook window

• 100 Mile Runners (ebook)
  
  http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/387646-100-mile-runners
  

blurb book window

• 100 Mile Runners (print version)
  http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/4266518-100-mile-runners

Hot pink circles show how the two different formats link up. Post both URLs, some people are gonna want one and not the other.

Now, on to the next project.

Enigmatic Post-Modern Masterpiece surfaces in LA.

LOS ANGELES, CA: January 4, 2013 – Bloated Corpse gallery director [redacted], center, and [redacted], right, stand near Guy de Malpissant’s manipulated piece “You’ve Got To Be Shitting Me, BoHo Poseurs! (4)”, one of the pieces in a show at the Bloated Corpse gallery in Los Angeles. Both were at a a loss to elaborate on the enigmatic artist’s larger intentions. The piece was bought by a prominent personality for a record $80M.

This story just screamed “Kick me!”

Read the original LA Times story and decide for yourself. Please inform me if I missed something. Prior Post-Modern Art musings, here.

(Original photo by Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Large-Format Inkjet Printer Heresies

“I know a lot of you do photography and would like to know what printers you think are the best? I’d like to print as large as possible w/o the price getting out of hand!”

Costco. Seriously.

For the money involved, I’d just as soon pay Costco to chase the technology. For the time being, my days of giving Epson lots of money for prints that averaged $10 a linear foot are long gone. 

 

$10 a foot? Holy shit, Mr Pre-Press! Where did you pull a number like that from? Bitter experience. Adding up the numbers on what a roll of real paper [not the low-end thin stock, which added 5-7% yellow], plus the 8 ink cartridges, etc. Never mind the maintenance.

 

Now, from a color proofing perspective…When I was at the Workbook, we had an Epson 7800. We’d pull target proofs from it for advertisers who for whatever reason, didn’t have one. We also had a Canon color-laser copier [17x11] in the shop. One fine day my boss asked me to pull proofs of the same spread to both machines. He laid them side to side and asked me what I saw. Both were pretty similar, the Canon within 5% of the Epson. Yes, the highlights tended to blow out at top end, ditto shadows, but the midtones were pretty accurate. Cost difference was $0.10 vs $10. We unplugged the Epson.

 

An Epson printer in many ways is like an ice-cream maker. You’re not going to save money on the final product, but it may enable you to craft a particular flavor. You have to decide how and what your machine will do for you, and go from there. 

Invisible Client Gifts, And Why I Don’t Give Them

Client holiday gifts are real tricky. And gifts to 3rd parties “in the name-of” are also something to be approached with extreme caution. On the face of it, it’s “Aw, gee, I’m glad that Charity X got $” can be idealistically heart-warming and so on. The flip side is that the “gift” is invisible, not trackable, and open to the dark notion that perhaps nothing at all was truly given.

Hmmmm…

 What I do is send the client a copy of a blurb.com book I’ve done that year. Its tangible, its not going to get them drunk if they’re AA, fat if they’re worried about that, and presents your creativity in a different light [perhaps] than what the scope of work calls for.

For instance:

“LA:2012″ 
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3734938

LA:2012

“R2R0: anacardiumphilia” 
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3148443

R2R0: Anacardiumphilia, the artist’s exhibition catalog

…and my first book, “LA1980: a photo memoir”  
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/555505

LA1980: a photo memoir

Yes, that is a shameless plug for me. But these are concrete objects that they can hold in their hands. Let the Dalai Lama sweat the metaphysical crap, we’re here to solve other problems.

23rd Type Psalm

 

Three Rulers of a bygone age.

The Type is my Serif; I shall not Script.
He maketh me to lie down in green ligatures:
He leadeth me beside the still italics.
He restoreth my Didot:
He leadeth me in the paragraphs of righteousness for Bodoni’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Helvetica,
I will fear no Avenir: For thou art with me;
Thy Haberule will copycast, they justify me.
Thou preparest a colophon before me in the presence of Comic Sans;
Thou rules are half-pointest, but I toil not; My flimsy runneth over.

Surely Caslon and Baskerville shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Fonts forever.

Recalling the LA Riots: Twenty Years Later

It took the LA Riots to make me realize that this was home, not a place I’d moved to.  I was enraged by the cowardice of the police, judiciary, and everybody else who set the stage for the 1992 LA Riots.

A short list includes:

• The four LAPD cops who walked free after their trial was moved from LA to Pretoria out in furthest Ventura County.
• Darryl Gates, who would snarl when the City Hall poodles would timidly suggest he wasn’t doing such a great job. Please remember that Gates at one point had requested a submarine for the LAPD. He already had armored vehicles with rams on them, so why not.
•  The aforementioned City Council
• The looters who burned down Esowon, LA’s oldest black-owned bookstore.
• And all the rest of the looters who got into the act by cleaning out Samy’s Camera on La Brea. Hello, opportunistic white people.

Day One of the riots started late in the afternoon. The verdicts were read out, and my first thought was “Holy shit, we’re in for it now.” Having lived through college riots at Ohio University in 1970, with a subsequent National Guard occupation, I was not optimistic. There was smoke that night, but the main action was south of the 10 Freeway. White people were not overly affected.

Day Two dawned, and I was due to take a Quark class in Westwood. Feeling famously cheap, not wanting to pay for UCLA parking, I rode my bike 8 miles from the Fairfax to the Wilshire/Westwood office building. At 3:30 the instructor said “time to go home, it’s getting bad out there”. From the windows, the north-bound 405 was a glittering parking lot.

The White Zombie Apocalypse greeted me out on the street. Traffic was gridlocked on Wilshire, in both directions. All the white people in their cars had the windows rolled up, and they all had late-stage rigor mortis; lockjawed, stiff-armed, and frozen in place.

I got on my bike, whistle in mouth, blasting, and sliced lanes eastbound to Beverly Hills. Nothing moved. Crossed Santa Monica, which was also totally zombiefied, and raced onwards towards my office on Wilshire & San Vicente, a mile west of LACMA.

The traffic began to open up. I began to see Latino day-workers, stranded at bus-stops as the RTD buses thundered past them. At my office building, I could see smoke, and chaotic traffic. Terry, the black building manager, and Richard, the Ghanaian night desk man, hustled me into the lobby.

“What the fuck are you doing out there?” I told them, and they shook their heads.

Richard was getting a primer on American race politics. Terry was disgusted beyond measure at the looters. One looter had been slip-cuffed in front of the building, but the cops got a call and left him. He saw Terry and said “Help a brother up, will ya?”

Terry scornfully told him “I’m. Not. Your. Brother.” And walked back into the building. Down the street, looters cleaned out Adry’s Discount. Cameras, washers, everything. Somebody got shot in front of the Jewish Center.

Upstairs, the agency was empty. I looked out my window, and counted over 15 columns of smoke. I saw San Vicente being used as a race-track. I rode home to my apartment in the Fairfax.

I watched TV, flipping through all the free channels, watching ashen-faced, overpaid LA newsreaders trying to make sense of it all. Their million-dollar paycheck bubbles were nothing to Koreans protecting their property by any means necessary.

In the midst of all this stupidity, I saw Huell Howser on PBS. With only a sound-guy and camera-man, on Hollywood Blvd, in front of Sears.  Huell walked right up to the entrance, as looters swarmed like roaches, carrying everything, and asked The Big Question.

“Whatcha doin’ that for?”

They were stuck for an answer. He had the biggest balls in the city, making  all of the rest look like the hollowed-out cowards they were. For this alone, he has my undying respect and affection.

That night I slept on the floor the smoke was so bad. I could hear gunshots. My then-girlfriend up in Fresno wanted me to come up. I would, but at dawn, when the curfew was lifted.

I drove to Fresno at dawn. Descending into the San Joaquin Valley down the Grapevine, I saw the Nat’l Guard convoys heading up the mountain. I was thrilled.

When I got to Fresno, the local bobble-head news-readers cheerfully reported events exactly backwards, with the coda of “we don’t have riots up here yet!” Out in ruburbian Madera County, the riots were as distant as in a Tolstoy novel.

I couldn’t wait to get back, and returned late Sunday night. And I’ve been here since.

Post Modern Art Will Never Be The Same

This catalog is my most recent project — the reclusive and enigmatic artist R2R0:

R2R0 makes incisive, metaphysical, commentary-driven installation art in near-total darkness; moving from critiquing fashion and society à la Audubon to take on the towering populist anti-hero that is Lady Gaga; a tragic figure whom the artist sees as a spurned lover whose grief turns to ironic rage. Fitness, fashion, politics, culture, and its mores are dissected by R2R0, known for his detailed, rather disturbing sculpturally narrative installations.

View and buy the catalog here.

Nikon Film Scanner: Replacement Auditions

In June 2011, my Nikon LS-9000 scanner was damaged due to my hasty clumsiness. That saga is related previously. This post deals with the education I got when was hunting for an interim replacement.

When the 9000 was drydocked, I learned that Nikon had stopped making scanners as of December 2010. Period.

Why should they? The profit center is digital. Why screw around with building semi-large, delicate and expensive machines for the 500 who might buy them in one year, compared to the year’s US camera sales. I’m not counting their electron microscopes and industrial optics in this graph:

2010 Nikon camera sales in proportion to the discontinued LS 9000 Coolscan ED

In short order I began to research my remaining options:

1. A Nikon LS 8000 or 9000
2. An Imacon Flextite
3. An Epson 700 or 750

Prices for Nikon LS-8000s ranged from $1600-2500, while the 9000s ranged from $2500-4000. Imacons start at $2,800 [SCSI connections] used, to  their lofty current plateaus of $15,000.

The Epson 700 is the same as the 750. Yes, it will scan film. But the results are softer than either 9000 or 8000 Nikon Coolscan. Its OK for FPO placement. The scanner sweeps the platen, and you have to break out each frame—because its a flatbed scanner.

Long story short, I became a serial scanner buyer. I’d buy one, find out the vendor had not properly packed the machine, shipped it the slow way, which results in a jarred, misaligned machine expiring on your watch. Which would then be shipped back. And refunds would be extracted.

SCANNER 1: A tortuous trip through eBay Dispute Resolution

This Nikon LS-8000 came from a squirrel in Oregon, $1800. It was improperly packed, and expired less than 24 hrs after arriving. Contacted the vendor, who then began to weasel out by the following tactics:

1. Asked me to file a claim with USPS. USPS damage claims have an automatic 21-day lead-in period, are subject to examination by postal inspectors, and would run out the ebay Buyer Protection plan, which is only 45 days. Nice.
2. Tried to have me send it to Nikon to be fixed, and pay for the repair.
3. Tried to have me let his wife “pick up the machine when she was in LA”, in an email outside the ebay mail interface. Wrong, and wrong again. Releasing the machine invited mischief. Better to have a neutral 3rd party (ie USPS) handle the delivery.
4. Machine packed and shipped, insured, with USPS, then notified him.
5. Squawks and indignation from Oregon. I requested my refund. He refused. Tried to have me accept a 50% refund.
6. I filed a complaint through the ebay Dispute Resolution. He chose to fight it.

Bad moves. All those emails are being read by gimlet-eyed lawyers who are working to a checklist of Shit You Shouldn’t Do. Six weeks after this all began, I was refunded my $1800, less the Paypal fee. Couldn’t leave bad feedback because being a dewy-eyed optimist, I’d posted before actually working the machine. Never again.

Scanner 2: LS 9000, on styrofoam sheets

While Scanner 1 was sucking air and life out of my wallet, this LS 9000 arrived, and stayed less than 24 hours. It arrived double-boxed, but with 2″ styrofoam sheets as the padding. Good idea, but not scanner-worthy.

Contacted the vendor, and we amiably agreed that I would send it back, he would refund my money, and call it a day. He did, I got my $2500 back. He got good feedback.

Scanner 3: Summer-stock headliner

Finally, the winner. Somebody in St Louis was selling an LS-8000. The hook was that it had recently been serviced by Nikon Repair, and had a 6-month warranty. Buy-It-Now was $2700. I hit it. Now I could go back to work.

Conclusion

When my 9000 came back from Nikon Repair, I unplugged the 8000 I’d bought. As a precaution, I shipped it to Nikon Repair to have it tuned, and extend the 6-month repair warranty for resale. When it returned, I plugged it in, tested it, and then listed it. Sold it for $2200, free shipping. The market had slipped from its peak in the summer. Such is life.

Nothing is forever. Everything is constantly changing, Take care of stuff, and postpone fright-intervals like these.

Precision Camera Repair craftsmanship to die for.

Don’t ever, ever send *anything* to Precision Camera Repair of Enfield CT. Unless  you want to have it destroyed, spend 3 months chasing them, and finally getting their attention and satisfaction by a stiff complaint to the Better Business Bureau. This happened to me, full details after the jump.

PRELUDE TO DISASTER
June 5, 2011
I was scanning 35mm negs with my beloved Nikon LS9000. Carelessly, I didn’t fully close and snap-shut the neg carrier. I realized my error when it tractored into the scanner, then wouldn’t come back out. There was that horrifying mini-grinding sound that meant trouble, lots of it. I shut down the scanner, and hoped I’d been hallucinating. I wasn’t. It was good and stuck.

Unplugging the scanner, I unscrewed the housing from the main chassis, hoping that I could somehow free the trapped carrier. Of course there was an intervening frame with dainties like chips, wiring and other arcane necessary shit. In for a dime, in for a dollar—I gently inserted a screwdriver on a horizontal angle to push close the carrier. Powered up, released the carrier, but not out of the woods yet.

I pulled a test scan, and the results were grim—intense pepper-grain, skewed colors, all wrong. It had to be fixed.

Going online I discovered that the Nikon LS 9000 was no longer being made by Nikon. The machine I’d bought new in 2008 for $2200 was now going for $3000-4000, used. Used LS 8000 scanners were going for $1800-2800, used. My head felt like it was trapped in a vise. I had a big shoot coming up in less than 3 weeks.

And here is where the train jumped the tracks and went straight into the cornfield.

Precision Camera Repair: combined website screenshots

June 13, 201
Instead of being smart, and sending it off to Nikon Repair in Melville NY, I sent it to Precision Camera Repair, to their “facility” in El Paso, Texas. El Paso is known as a hotbed of optical technology, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Three weeks after sending the scanner, with multiple queries to PCR as to its status, I found out from a secretary that the scanner was coming back, and they couldn’t fix it, sorry.

On 7/1/11 a box arrived. Inside, my scanner was wrapped in a single layer of bubble wrap. The original box from Nikon I’d gotten the scanner originally was replaced by a tired 3rd generation Chinese retread. No Nikon padding. The front plate was fully askew on the chassis.

LS9000 scanner: faceplate on dented scanner housing

I went from stunned silence to apoplectic rage in 1/10 second. Shaking with fury, I called the number on the waybill, and vented, with considerable profanity, at the incompetent stupidity of it all. And mainly at myself. I’d fallen for a bullshit website with crappy stock photography—BECAUSE I WANTED TO BELIEVE IT.

Now I wanted blood.

TWO LAPS AROUND THE TRACK IN A CLOWN CAR
I wanted blood, and since UPS was the carrier, I filed a damage claim. Not until I hadn’t heard from them, and unclear on ITEM RETURNED TO SENDER did I realize that the scanner had gone back to PCR. UPS did not ever tell me that it had gone back to them. More fury at their opaque website, until I reached a competent manager at the LA hub facility who spelled it out for me.

Now I was back dealing with PCR. Since the beginning of this debacle, I’d learned via the interwebs that PCR had a horrific reputation for breaking and destroying customers’ cameras, that they’d laid off 300+ senior repair techs at their Enfield CT location, and that the Texas location was little more than a tilt-up warehouse in an I-park somewhere.

After several calls and emails, I got a manager at PCR to agree have the Nikon Repair Facility in Melville, NY, to repair the scanner, gratis, in writing. The scanner went back, and returned sometime in September.

The first clue that it did not go to Nikon was it came back in the same shitty box, more bubble wrap. By this time, I’d had way more experience with scanners than I’d ever had before, and wasn’t too surprised. I knew that it wasn’t packed properly, and it wasn’t going to work.

Sure enough, plugged it in, and it died 10 seconds in. Another weary email to Raphael, PCR mgr, which got no answer. That did it. I then filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, outlining my considerable grievances against PCR.

On their complaint form, what did I want? I wanted their head on a platter. Barring that, I wanted them to either pay for the complete repair, plus all shipping costs associated with this disaster, or $4000. Send!

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Within 48 hours, I got a call from PCR. The customer service rep read from my complaint, and was all, “gee! sorry, what could they do?”

“How’ ’bout fix my scanner, and have it so  the faceplate was actually aligned with the scanner?”

She said they’d be happy to do that. I was having none of it. I didn’t trust her company, that they’d already destroyed my machine twice, and that I wanted to send it to Nikon, and they would pay for it. She agreed, and that PCR would pay for the repair and shipping, to send them the paperwork.

At this point I asked her point-blank that if they had sent it to Nikon to get fixed, why were the following troubling facts evident:

• it came back in the same box it went out in
• there was no double-boxing
• there was no Nikon paperwork
• why was the face-plate still askew
• why did the machine not work

“Oh, that’s easy to explain…” came across the phone line. An elaborate excuse followed, involving paperwork opened and closed, blah-blah-blah.

It was all lies and horse-shit. They’d never sent it to Nikon. The same hacks “worked” on it like before.

I then sent it off to Nikon, as I should have on that fateful June day. The total cost for sending was $110, which included insurance for a declared value of $4000, which is what it would cost to buy a used LS 9000 on ebay.

Three weeks later it came back, beautifully double-boxed, blown-foam-bagged padding. I plugged it in, it worked. I faxed the USPS and Nikon bills to PCR, and they paid up, to the tune of $694.00.

In the meantime, I was getting a real fine education on the hows and whys of buying a replacement scanner while my LS 9000 was meandering across the country.