Japan it is. I’ve got to at least try. If I don’t, I’ll kick myself for it down the road. NYC is always there, but now the time is right for me to go to Japan. And yeah, I’ve become a little obsessive about this decision, but oh well. It’s a big decision. I’m allowed to obsess over it a bit.
But as I’m sure I’ve articulated before, the big question of the equation is how? I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out myself.
So tomorrow morning I’m getting all 4 of my wisdom teeth taken out. Golly, won’t that ever be fun… It was a sooner-or-later kind of thing, though, so at very least it’ll be good to get it out of the way. I’m assuming I’ll be way too out of it at this time tomorrow to really give a shit about posting, so there probably won’t be any more pointless ramblings by me again until Christmas eve or something.
Today I got in the mail some promotional material I had requested on the Imacon iXpress digital back. After reading the literature and watching the DVD they sent me, I must say that I am finally really starting to get excited about digital imaging technology. I first started playing around with digital back in about 1998, when I started playing with Photoshop 5. I thought it was nifty, but at that point I was still more interested in maintaining a “traditionalist” sort of working method. It wasn’t until my fall quarter of my sophomore year of college that the digital bug really started biting. It was about that time that I ordered my beloved Mac G4. A computer that, incidentally, I’m still paying off (d’oh!). Since then my interest has grown fairly steadily. My last three portfolios have been printed digitally, all of my color work is scanned and printed digitally, etc. So far, though, I haven’t really gotten too wild about digital capture. The quality just hasn’t been there, at least not in any remotely accessible form.
When I interend at the Capitol in DC, we shot 100% digital. I did all my assignments using a Nikon D1, and did all the editing, cataloging, printing, etc digitally. While I wasn’t all-too impressed with the image quality (being good enough for the federal government doesn’t mean much), that experience certainly did convince me of the joys that come along with a 100% digital workflow. Now, a digital workflow has just as many potential problems as wet processes, but there are some things that just become so streamlined with digital that it verges on absurd. Anyhow, digital began to grow on me more then.
Before I get any farther, I should state that I will always, always, ALWAYS shoot film. There are just some things that digital cannot now do and will likely never be able to do. Digital will never be able to do what Polaroid Type 55 does. Digital will never be able to do what Kodak Azo paper does. And I don’t mind that digital will never completely replace film. I rather like it. I like film. I like the traditional workflow, at least as far as B&W is concerned. Film will never go away completely. Sure, as digital gets more settled in and advanced, a lot of traditional products will go the way of the Dodo, but they’ll never go away completely. And so long as film is around, I’ll shoot with it. Meaning forever.
That said, though, I am finally to the point where I can’t wait to get to the point where I can adopt a 100% digital workflow for some things. I want my Contax 645, I want an Imacon back (they’re the best, IMO) to put on it, I want a dual-processor G5 with a huge fucking RAID storage system, I want dual 22″ LaCie BlueIon monitors, I want a GTI proofing station, I want a 12×18″ Wacom graphics tablet, I want an Epson 9600 wide-format printer, I want a Fujifilm Pictrography 4500 dye-transfer printer, etc. I tell you the things I could do with all that would blow the mind. And for those of you keeping track, all those things I mentioned, all together, would run you about $35,000. However, for comparison, just the digital back with 1/4 the resolution of the new Imacon back would have run you $25,000 five or so years ago. So it’s still a buttload of cash to go 100% digital, but even so it’s becoming far more doable. And you could do it for a lot less than that, too – I’m just saying that setup would be ideal.
Just now are prices dropping enough and quality going up enough with digital capture for it to really start getting my attention. Up until now the quality wasn’t high enough for my standards and the price of the technology was prohibitive to all but the elite few doing the highest-end work with top clients. And while it still isn’t cheap, the quality is now high enough and the price is low enough that I could go digital shooting with a high-end back on my MF camera while just shooting average freelance work for local clients. I could easily amortize the cost of the back within a year. Non-photographers may still balk at the price, but a 22 megapixel back for $8,000 sure looks nice to me.
Enough of that stuff for tonight. None of you (whoever you are) probably even give a shit. But then, this is my blog and I’ll say whatever I want! Yeah! Go me! Fuck you. Who asked you, anyway…
This moment of nonsense brought to you by the letters L, X, and the number 11.
At the moment I’m looking at info about teaching English in Japan through GEOS. More of a corporate sort of thing than other programs I’ve been investigating, but the benefits and pay look excellent. In the end I’m sure I’ll end up applying to every last program that I’m aware of.
As a bit of a momentary tangent, last night I had a dream in which I was teaching English somewhere in Japan (could’ve been anywhere in the country). It was a hilarious dream, but a while later I now realize that it bore a very strong resemblance to a few episodes of the anime GTO. Those of you familiar with Great Teacher Onizuka should understand why it was such a fun dream.
Back to reality. Or at least back to something resembling reality that is the closest approximation I can muster. I’m drinking an absurd amount of water right now. I can’t eat or drink anything in the 6 hours before the surgery tomorrow morning, and I have a tendency to get dehydrated if I can’t get enough of my beloved fluid (H20), so I figure I’ll take a proactive approach and get myself so well-hydrated tonight that it won’t matter tomorrow morning that I can’t have anything to drink.
OK, so I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about gear any more tonight, but it’s just what’s on my mind, so live with it. Before I go anywhere (Japan, etc), there are three things I need to invest in. This, of course, will only happen after I’ve finished paying off my G4. I will be buying a (used) Contax 645 with the 80mm f/2 and the vertical grip, a 12″ iBook, and a scanner. These are things that will be rather necessary for my personal well-being when I get to Japan. The camera because I’m only taking one camera and I can’t live without a camera, the iBook because I am NOT dragging my G4 tower, monitor, etc to Japan, and a scanner because I’m going to need to be able to scan my negatives somehow. With these tools, I can document and publish my everyday life in excruciating detail so all the world can see just how lame I am. Woohoo! If I need a printer (which I’m sure I will, eventuall), I’ll just buy some Epson deskjet sort of thing when I get there. Printers are bulky enough and cheap enough that I’m not hauling one accross the Pacific with me.
I bought chapstick today. It’s officially chapstick season. This morning when I got up and went to the bathroom, I noticed that at some point in the night my bottom lip had cracked (probably while yawning) and I had dried blood caked on my lip. Lovely, it was. But yeah. Chapstick. It’s that nifty new stuff from Blistex that’s marked at guys, too. Golly I’m glad they came out with something that wasn’t glossly, doesn’t smell all fruity, and isn’t glittery and shit. Chapstic for men. Now there’s a macho product if ever I saw one.
This is getting stupid. End entry one for the night.
Oh yeah, and that brochure thing I downloaded last night totally wasn’t worth it.
