one of the many reasons i want to visit the states is to someday partake in a great american road trip. kyle johnson and friends did just that, and photographed some beautiful landscapes. see the entire set at flickr.
united states
peter baker
i agonized for about 5 seconds over whether i had posted about peter baker before (i’m pretty sure i haven’t, but my tagging can be sporadic). even if i have – these photographs warrant a second look. and a third & fourth etc. i just love them, especially his images of iceland (what is with me and iceland?). i could hardly pick my top photos to feature, so please go over to his flickr and have a gander.
he also sums up his sentiments on film vs digital quite nicely:
If it didn’t look a million times better, I wouldn’t bother with it (film). Of course it’s subjective, but film looks more like what I saw when I made the photo. Plus, I like making decisions about what my photo will look like before I take it, rather than monkeying for hours on the computer to try and recreate what I saw. Photography is what I do to get away from the ‘puter, digital just makes for more sitting down time.
albert bierstadt
hey dorks, it’s art history time. if you’re not familiar with the classic frontier paintings by albert bierstadt – you will be now. you owe it to yourself to stare at these bad boys. that light! that detail! oh wow, i could just imagine a million reproductions hanging in thrift stores & seventies living rooms the world over and not getting a second glance (shame).
Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his large landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion. Though not the first artist to record these sites, Bierstadt was the foremost painter of these scenes for the remainder of the 19th century.
his work was criticized by contemporaries for being too large, with excessive light (actually known as “luminism”), dramatic colours & an exagerrated shift from foreground to background.
my doctor had an entire wall in her consulting room wallpapered with a picture of the yosemite valley, i found it strangely calming.
spanish moss
i decided to rent the first season of true blood and watched it pretty much in 2 days (the only way to watch a series, really). i absolutely love the southern / louisiana setting (obviously romanticised, this is television after all). anyhoos, who wouldn’t want to live in an old plantation home surrounded by giant live oak trees, sitting on the porch in just shorts & a vest, fanning yourself, drinking home-made lemonade and eating pecan pie?
flickr credits: christine / hoeysbasindrainageallia / blue cinderella / lanihuli /john pc
ps: i highly recommend watching true blood. it’s dark, gritty, funny and gory – with plenty of explicit sex scenes. the opening credits should give you some idea of what to expect:
100 abandoned houses
this site was featured heavily on the blogosphere a while back, but i keep returning to it because some of the houses are so awesome and i’m sad that they are wasting away! check out 100 abandoned houses. there is also a story at the NY Times about the pros & cons of people buying beautiful old houses in shitty locations. one woman bought an amazing old mansion in the middle of one of the most dangerous parts of NYC:
if you have an old house / apartment & you’re in the process of restoring it, be sure to check out Door Sixteen – Anna & her husband bought an 1890s Victorian rowhouse in Newburgh, NY a few years back (after moving out of Brooklyn) and they’ve slowly been restoring it since. she has some pretty rad before & afters in her flickr (the bathroom renovations are awesome)
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