Having a great holiday and hope you are too.

Things haven’t actually been slow, just too busy to post here.  Spending more time playing on Facebook, and spent too much time this month cleaning up a hack attack on my server that completely shut down the photo gallery and messed up a lot of other things.  Law work and holiday preparations and Cal cheering and the supreme purpose of my life, i.e, holding Diego’s leash and gushing over at his ability to sniff and poop have also kept me away from here.

In years past I’d be all about heading down to UCSD for the Triton Invitational water polo tournament over the long weekend, but this year…meh.  The tournament that in 2006 included fourteen teams and 29 separate games will only host six teams playing a total of ten games this weekend.  None of the other UCs will be there, and with Cal coming down separately next month I’m just not seeing the attraction this year.  The fact that the tournament no longer includes bracket play leading to a spectacular final, but rather a pre-ordained final game between Air Force and La Verne doesn’t help.

Nothing against Air Force.  Nothing at all.

I’d just like a little suspense and drama with my beefcake.

So instead we might head up to Disney, or enjoy the San Clemente Village Farmer’s Market (emphasis on the local artists) on Sunday morning.  Or just paint a bathroom and run some wiring.  Or sit on the coach and watch Red State on VOD.  Or just do nothing at all.

Checked out a local photo place earlier this week. I’ve been looking for someone who can print in larger formats than my equipment can handle, and they came highly recommended. The guy I spoke with knew his stuff and made a great first impression, not just with his knowledge of the options and issues available, but also with the following notation on his price chart:

We never print on glossy because it’s evil!

Good to see a local business that respects standards. Just uploaded two images for printing; I’ll drop by next week and see if my initial reaction was justified.

I knew the photography exhibition at the San Diego County Fair was big, but had no idea it was this big.  4000 submitted photographs?  982 different photographers?  Wow.

Received an e-mail this morning providing the list of accepted entries: this photo from a February 2009 rugby match made it, this photo of Diego at last June’s vacation doesn’t seem to have made the cut.  Awards won’t be announced until June 11.

Randy and I took my Exhibition of Photography entries over to the Fair Grounds this evening.  I am now officially an Exhibitor for the 2010 San Diego County Fair.  It only took a few years of talking about it to actually get around to mounting up some prints and actually entering some shots.   Technically I guess I won’t know if my photos will actually be seen by anyone for a few weeks, but I still got Exhibitor passes and invitations to the Artists Reception when I dropped off the photos, so I’m an Exhibitor, even if I might end up being an unseen Exhibitor.

Yeah, it terrifies me that next month I could be at the Fair listening to other people discuss my work.  They’re good shots, but for nine years here I’ve been able to be a little bit of an Exhibitionist while not actually meeting very many of you.  People who don’t like what I do don’t tend to hang around, with the result being that the sites can serve as a bit of an ego boost with the occasional criticism easy to dismiss, if not outright delete.

On a mostly unrelated note, Diego was with us and got to go out on the Del Mar Racetrack due to the lack of adult supervision at the drop off site.  He looked every bit the thoroughbred out there, even if the chances of him being retired to stud range from slim to none.  Just thinking though, that maybe if we saddle him up with one of the bobbleheads and sneak them back out there we’ll have our photo entry for next year.

All kinds of things  running through my mind as I watch this.  Musings on how much of photography is being in the right place and the right time.  Recollections of kayaking out and snorkeling with the seals and sea lions and otters in Monterey Bay. Amazement at the shots Paul Nicklen got on this adventure.  And a bit of reconsideration about what was going on in Pongo’s mind when he’d bring me live geckos when we still lived in Togo.  Did he really think I was “useless” when I didn’t know what to do with his gift?

[via Towleroad]

While pulling up a link to our wedding reception photos for a friend, I stopped in to look at Bryson Kim’s recent work.  Now I’m just trembling in awe (again) at the man’s skills.  Check out his collection from last weekend’s Fireknife finals.  Incredible renditions of what I generally call polynesian or island torch dancing, captured in beautiful stills.  The image borrowed here is just one, don’t miss the other 258 from that day, or the 317 from Saturday.

Spinner treated me to dinner at the San Diego County Fair last night.  The artery clogging menu included courses deep-fried zucchini spears, Australian-style batter fried potatoes, and a foot-long hot dog on a stick.  We saw no deep-fried twinkies, last year’s delicacy of choice, and a quest for chocolate covered bacon (recommended by the Sparklett’s man) was unsuccessful.  If someone has managed to merge the two flavors-above-all, we couldn’t find him.

My camera died early for want of charged batteries, hence the lack of pixels in this post, but I couldn’t have done the sunset justice anyways.  We were a hundred or so feet above the ground on top of the ferris wheel, watching the sun set over the dog beach in Del Mar as all the lights of the fair started to pop on.  If my camera had been charged I would’ve offered the operator a fortune to stay up there for half an hour or so, but had to settle for a few short minutes and commit it all to memory.  Wonderful.

We also did the roller coaster and the sky way over the fair, and took in a lot of the exhibitions and vendors.  Too much shopping and too much walking, but certainly a great night.

I’d seen a few of these photos around, but too many of the kids blogging (and Facebooking and Tweeting, etc), never learned how to do anything but steal an image and repost it.  Credit an artist?  No.  Cite the site where the work was found?  OMG NO!  Just put a photo in context with an accurate caption?  Huh?

Enough with the rant.  Maybe it’s yet another sign that I’m doing too much family law, but Fallen Princesses rocks.  Thanks to Soliloqueer for blogging it old school.