Warren, Connecticut. Great dinner with friends. The room was pretty dark and just a few candles were lighting the table and the light on Anne’s plate was inviting me to try out the S100 in low light.

This is an incredible collection of machine-art and the Mad Max association is spot on.

[via core77]

Fascinating process. I never would have guessed the brush rolling the lip or how they get them off the forms. Gotta go out and get some balloons now, I have a whole new appreciation.

[via The Kid Should See This]

I have this “disease” and there’s a very fine line between hoarding lots of stuff looking for patterns and the kind of high end collecting these folks do. Each class of collecting (hooding and high end collecting) has its extremes.

What these folks do that I haven’t done yet is curate their collections; my various collections sit in boxes in the basement and at some point when I’m not looking my wife may dispose of them. The sad part is, I might not notice for a while. Matchbooks, postcards, stamps, cigar boxes, coins, political cartoons, boarding pass stubs, embossed napkins, sea shells, pasta and a lot more. Ugh.

Another form of this is scrapbooking which tends to be about personal history but can be less focused as well. I tend to collect paper ephemera so my collections are probably a hybrid of objects and scrapbooking minus the curation and scrapbook.

In a way, blogging and reblogging is a type of collecting and curating, it’s just not objects that are being curated, it’s ideas or videos about ideas (like collecting and collectors).

[via Boing Boing]

The iPhone 4S camera really is spectacular. I’m blown away by the clarity of the images I’m getting from it. This was taken today on a hike up Bear Mountain.

Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

“Buckets of blood and sweat.” (practice)

“Convergence of handmade and food” (a bit of luck but more like smarts)

This is an excellent video and Joel’s narration makes it even better. What he says about the satisfaction he derives from making things by hand is shared by many across multiple domains from splitting and stacking wood to peeling apples for pies (maybe with one of his paring knives) to making sculpture to making chairs, and more. People who make things that other people use have a very nice feedback system in that there is direct evidence of the pleasure others are getting from one’s work.

I used to collect hand made folding pocket knives (pre 9/11) and still have some nice ones but for the most part I’m content with a few well made “factory” folders for everyday use around the house and yard.

Of course, during our recent blackout, my wife and I stayed warm because I work three years ahead collecting, processing, drying, and stacking the firewood that is our main source of heat. I get real pleasure from doing that process, a similar kind to the pleasure Joel gets in seeing others use his knives in kitchens. And, I enjoy making fine art notecards out of my photography and have sold and given away thousands of them over the years. It’s fun to make these by hand.

The video is part of a series on hand made things at: Made by Hand.

[via Steve Splonskowski and Kottke]

Booths & Bodies: The life and work of Anthony Vizzari from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

A wonderful documentary by Phillip Bloom on Anthony Vizzari who collects vintage cameras and vintage photo booths.

[via Devour]

Wassaic, New York. We went to a great wedding on Saturday night and during dinner this ice water was just crying out to be photographed with dozens of small candles on the table behind it.

PetaPixel has a nice post on how to shoot water drops on a glass or acrylic surface so that objects placed underneath the surface seem to be contained in each drop. This would be a fun setup and shot to try with different objects and various kinds of lighting.

Los Angeles, California. Out to dinner with my mother and decided to see how well the Canon PowerShot S95 would do in Av mode, wide open at f/2 with something close up and a background in blur.

While it’s not a 5D or even an X100 it isn’t bad and this shot is my kick in the behind to use this camera for other things besides hiking landscapes shot mostly in P mode.