feature find on the fly & video

while trying to coax her neighbor into giving her a kiss, a young girl gets a big bite instead - just liked this moment - nothing either of us expected, but funny and a nice moment regardless

these two 1-year-olds had a lot of fun exploring the space-ship-like structure on the playground, and watching all the other kids playing around them

came in a bit early yesterday - thankfully, cos i found out we had no art for page 3; hoops started at 6, and i didn't want to be late cos i was going to shoot video and wanted to get the opening stuff...so that meant feature hunting fast...thankfully it was warm and by then the sun had just started coming out after being grey all morning and most of the afternoon.... so i hit a playground - kinda of a cop-out i know, but i didn't have much time, and i needed something in the bag pretty quick - the first spot wouldn't let me shoot, cos it was an afterschool group, and they needed parents there to give permission - okay, back in the car, headed east, came across a group of neighborhood kids playing on the playground behind one of the elementary schools....this was lucky, cos i actually got a few frames i liked - i was just expecting something kind of whatever, but hopefully i could at least make it graphic, but there were actually some nice moments/opportunities....above are 2 of the frames i liked best

so, onto video...in trying to get the feature in before the game and making sure the vid card was formatted, had extra batteries, etc., i left my big card in the reader at work - which i realized as i was pulling up to the high school...meaning i had 2 256mb's to shoot the district finals - which for anyone who uses a D3 knows, at a reasonable quality setting only gets you about 70-some frames a piece...going back would mean missing the opening shots i wanted for video, so i  figured it was a good time to be more selective in my shooting, rely less on the motordrive and a hefty dose of chimping with a purpose!! talk about editing in the field!

 this wasn't my first video, but it was the first that was going to be anything more than just a short, raw clip...i wanted to do something more story-telling....granted it's still pretty rough looking, and i can already tell that the fact that our only video equipment right now is that of a Nikon coolpix is going to get frustrating, but it was my first video shot, edited and solo posted to the web (and on deadline with all the other deadline work, including getting my own stuff edited and in)

it's on our website - http:www.monroepublishing.com/multimedia/BedfordChamps.html

again, it's nothing great....but we're just getting started at all this (me especially)

while playing around with imovie last week, i found this video clip from an MPPA POY event 2 or 3 years ago, which will probably be entertaining only to me and a handful of others, but here it is anyway

http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf3x1Yr1uC8

you know, thinking back on learning how to post items to the web and all things digital, in general, it struck me - how strange is it that, given the technology we use to go out and pursue/create/relate our vision, what it all comes down to is a series of code - here i am out there in the midst of some human experience, no matter how big or small, and i'm witnessing it and reacting to it, and the people i'm documenting are living it, and what it all becomes is this (to my mind) complicated morass of letters, numbers, symbols - our whole human experience represented amid < >'s and " "'s

but, then i started thinking, well, what are we all really - i mean, when you get down to it, aren't WE just an intertwined network of DNA and RNA - helixes and double helixes...isn't everything just a system represented and built upon code? undoubtedly, i'm way overthinking things most likely...does that mean my code is running amok? getting lost inside of itself?

 i guess that's ultimately the beauty of it all - even if it IS all just code in its own fashion - biological or technical and man-made, it's still unique - it has to be in order to exist (cloning issues aside), and i guess that's all that's really important in the end....

thus ends my ramblings for the day

from my code to yours