I've decided that I am a great portrait photographer, perhaps the greatest. Everyone wants to know my many secrets, but it is all very simple, really: just take good pictures and then convert them to black and white to give them that "timeless" feel. If you can shoot young people as subjects then do so. There is less post that needs to be done to unblemished skin.
Well, not timeless, but somewhere in the twentieth century. Anybody can use a cell phone to create art. It takes a middle-aged man with expendable income to waste thousands of dollars on cameras to capture the life of a four year old child. I have done both. In fact, one of my favorite pictures of the boy was taken with an iPhone.
So, there is that.
I kid, of course. The girl in the pictures above and below is a local. Allison. I see her here and there, mostly at the pub. She stands out as she is one of the few young women that will brave the venture into such a place. She brings an air of buoyancy that is often lacking there otherwise. She has an interest in photography and so I have offered my erudition.
I am nerdin' it so hard around my house lately, since getting my server set up. It is shameful, truly, the things I allow to make me happy. I become tickled at accessing it remotely, even from my phone, and pretending to manage a database of importance. In the hallways of my mind I keep hearing,
Go to Defcon Two…
Somebody should probably kick my ass.
A friend came over last night and we re-made the six qts. of beef stew. This time he carefully walked me through each step, making sure that I was grasping all of the concepts. He was once a chef at The Girl and The Fig here in beautiful Sonoma, so he has lots of tangential information to offer on cooking while actually doing so. The end-result was superb, even better this morning when I had another bowl. Nothing needed to be thrown away as it had last time in its failed entirety.
He encouraged me to make the dish again soon, though I question how much beef stew a man my age should consume. There is a sensible upper limit and I am already well past it. I am sure that if looked at closely anyone would see a delicious chunk of braised beef floating past the horizon of my eyeball.
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