photos | fire leaves

iphone series | day nine

photos | tarry giannakos

Tarry Giannakos is a friend who's taken up 
street photography in the past year. 

These are a few of my favourites.

photos | langton at dusk

iphone series | day eight

photos | red leaves

iphone series | day seven

photos | pink girl

iphone series | day six

photos | blinds

iphone series | day five

photos | window, yellow room

iphone series | day four

photos | city hall

iphone series | day three

photos | chair | regent college

iphone series | day two

new david robinson sculpture

installed today at lookout gallery, regent college

photos | foot bridge | whistler

iphone series | day one

walter tandy murch | paintings

Metronome (1946)

The Circle (1948)

The Clock (1950)

The Bulb (1951)

Carburetor (1957)

The Lightbulb (1965)

These works are by Canadian painter Walter Tandy Murch, father of acclaimed film editor Walter Scott Murch. The son talks about the father and his work Michael Ondaatje's book "The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art Of Editing Film" on pages 230 to 234.

walter murch | i begin to despair

It's very difficult for me to see films when I'm working. I get too easily depressed. If they're bad, I begin to despair for filmmaking in general. It seems proof that it's impossible to make a film. You're always plagued by the question: Can we do this? So to watch a film that doesn't work is dispiriting, in a large sense.

When I watch a bad film, I often see it doing things that the film I'm working on is doing. It's like being a hypochondirac listening to medical discussions on the radio: Yes! I've got a rash right there too! That cough I had two days ago, it's proof! But this is a kind of madness, and it leads me to make wrong equations: Since such-and-such a technique is in a film that doesn't work, it means that if we're using a similar technique, our film won't work either.

On the other hand, if I see a film that I love, I think: I can use those techniques -- and I become like a magpie. It's like that crazy period in Victorian architecture when they ransacked the world -- These pineapples from southern India are marvellous, let's put them here! So when I'm working on a film, I like to see documentaries, and I like to see theatre.


from The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
by Michael Ondaatje

photos | memento mori, river road

photos | tower cinema | sacramento

photos | gas | ashland

photos | pharmacy liquor

photos | oswald west

photos | cannon beach

joe's lamp

iced tea #1

iced tea #2

photos | flag, border crossing

photos | walkway, horseshoe bay

posters | montreux jazz festival

more

charles dickens | on declining an invitation from a friend

‘It is only half an hour’ — ‘It is only an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day. Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.

ruschka | every week, alone, for two or three days

We went back to Culver City and looked at photographs of the small, concrete-block house that Ruscha has owned for forty years in the California High Desert, near Joshua Tree National Monument. he designed it himself, with blueprints provided by his friend Frank Gehry in 1976. The property has an outdoor painting studio, a wind-powered generator, solar panels for heating, and plenty of wildlife, including rattlesnakes. Ruscha tries to go there every week, alone, for two or three days; he paints, takes long walks, watches baseball on TV (the Dodgers or the Red Sox), does maintenance work on the house, and reads. I have periods when I feel frustrated living in Los Angeles, when the traffic bothers me and I hate the place. But then I feel differently and I want to come back."

from "Ed Ruscha's L.A." by Calvin Tomkins

The New Yorker, July 1, 2013

photos | dedward evill

photos | flags

photos | tent meeting, richmond