I had an incredible (and unusual) experience tonight at Davies Symphony Hall, where I went to see the San Francisco Symphony play Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 (one of my favorite pieces of orchestral music). I’ve seen it performed live a few times; each time, it’s moved me to tears.
Mahler’s 9th symphony ends in adagio—in the softest of fragmented whimpers—and as the last few notes whispered into existence, I suddenly had a moment of incredible clarity. All of my senses converged into absolute sharpness; I could see, vividly, every detail of the orchestra—the position of every stand, chair, instrument, player—and hear every tiny little creak of audience members trying not to move in their seats. Every bit of my brain was oscillating in perfect harmony, and I finally truly understood the meaning of the word, clarity.
It only lasted a few seconds, but was a moment I will remember for a lifetime. Thank you, MTT and the members of the San Francisco Symphony, for the wonderful performance.
As a side note, I now wonder if some people are able to achieve this sort of clarity during their normal, day-to-day lives. I can only imagine…
I finally watched the commencement speech Steve Jobs gave to Stanford’s graduation class of 2005—it was an excellent speech and is worth 15 minutes of your time. Watch it now! :)
Pam and I went to her company’s holiday party tonight, and for the first time in my life, I was introduced as someone’s husband. It felt perfectly natural (awww — feel the love…).
As a photographer, I am constantly asked for free images. Every day, I respond to upwards of 5 requests for free imagery from a diverse array of entities including individuals, non-profits / conservation organizations, companies, buildings, and other organizations.
Some photographers get angry when they are asked for free work, but I do not. If the request is ridiculous, I find great humor in the situation, but if it is a serious request by someone who has really thought things out, I will reply honestly.
The most recent request was to “borrow” images for some sort of company event, and compensation was to have my name visible next to the prints. Dave, a good friend (and successful artist himself), wrote commentary about the situation after I mentioned it.
If they pick up/drop off, you’re visibly credited w/your contact info and there’s a lot of traffic it could be good exposure.
In theory, I agree with his statement, but I’ve had enormous prints mounted in the lobbies of some of the biggest buildings in San Francisco for months, and do you know how many leads they generated? Zero. Even with my name, a biography, and postcards placed somewhere near the prints, they generated no leads. (read more »)
I slept 12 hours last night and woke up to a calm day overlooking a mangrove forest in Papua New Guinea. I walked outside and took a seat on the elevated patio with a cup of instant coffee and a book (well, a Kindle), and immediately felt a slowing of the heart rate and a deep, relaxed and complete breathing that was surprisingly — and depressingly — novel.
It occurs to me that a good life goal is to put myself in a situation in which I am able to feel like this regularly. The last few months have been such a whirlwind of activity that I forgot what it means to relax.
I had pretty much forgotten what it was like to miss someone so much. It’s nice to have that part of me back again. (more, if you login here and look into the past)
When is everyone from the white/western anti-shark-finning crowd going to realize that their efforts are going to amount to exactly NOTHING if they continue to be racist?
Obviously, it’s just the bad apples that are like this — you know, the sheltered urban folk who have never actually been out to see what they are fighting against. Do a bunch of fundraisers, and you’re going to save the world.
When someone talks about “the Japanese” or “the Chinese,” I’ve already tuned out before they finish the sentence. No amount of educating the western world is going to change what is going on out there (concerning shark-finning, I mean)1, and alienating the target audience by being dimwitted and racist is common.
Obviously, voting with your wallet works. But in this case, their wallets are getting bitter, and ours, smaller. ↩
On far too many nights, the last thing that goes through my head as it sinks into my pillow is, “You’re STUPID. It’s SO LATE.” Believe me — I’d much rather be on a more normal schedule for someone so far past college age. I feel better when I go to sleep early and get up with the sun in the morning (although I suppose it doesn’t matter as much in this cave I live in now).
Still, late evenings do present the ideal working environment. North America is sound asleep, and Asia and Australia have finished their work days, leaving me only European correspondence to contend with. I receive nearly no email between midnight and my bedtime, which is normally between 3-3:30am. No email. No IM conversations. No phone calls. No distractions.
Tonight, I’m listening Renée Fleming and doing pre-press work in CMYK land. Du bist die Ruh’ just came on, and it’s five and a half minutes of pure inspiration. Tomorrow when I wake up to 50 morning emails, I know that I will regret yet another late night. But for now, it’s just fine.
Since I moved into my new cave, I’ve been obsessed with light and the position of the sun. For a period of a week, I spent an hour a day browsing light therapy and 5500°K lighting products. I even bought some, and have asked a designer to look into huge light panels for the wall (preferably LED to avoid any further baking from heat given off by generating light).
It’s a good thing I’m located right in the middle of everything here in San Francisco. I’m driven out of the house by hunger nearly every day, and luckily, summer days are long,and it’s almost always still light when I venture out. I’m glad that I’m getting a good dose of natural light every day, even if I am not getting much of it when I sit here in front of my computer.
Plus, I’m isolated here, and it’s really the only time I get to see people. I guess people watching is better than nothing.
My personalized Google homepage has adapted to my new obsession, and the entire right-hand column is now full of statistics on celestial bodies and time. Since I can’t tell where the sun is from inside here, I guess I’ll have to rely on the interwebs.
So… yeah, I love my new place. But it has its drawbacks.
My father just sent over a photo of my grandmother from when she was in her teens or early twenties, back when Taiwan was still occupied by Japan. Because my Dad is young among his siblings, I never knew Grandma as anything other than an old woman. We also didn’t share a common language, as she didn’t speak Mandarin — and I barely do.
I have regrets that I didn’t attend her funeral last week in Taiwan. I’m not sure that it was the right decision to lead the Bahamas expedition instead.
I was in the Bahamas last week, and want to comment on a few articles that popped up over the past few days about a tiger shark eating a dead body in Bahamian waters. Check out these three news articles, below:
Mr. Archer explained what happened when the search team tried to retrieve the bodies from the water on Sunday.
“We were able to bring back the three out of the four bodies. The shark literally took the body right out of the C.I.D. diver’s hand. They had to leave the water and come out and sit on the boat for a while to wait for it to leave,” he said.
This is totally bogus, but it does sound pretty cool to have a shark take a body away from a rescue diver. I don’t know who the C.I.D. are, but they weren’t the ones that recovered the bodies, and the shark didn’t take the body “right out of the C.I.D. diver’s hand.” (read more »)
I attended two 1st year Korean “Tol” baby birthday parties over the weekend, which were both a lot of fun. I’ll post photos, soon. Parties and gatherings are great, but they are tough to schedule at the moment because I’m swamped trying to both catch up with life stuff and get the 2nd issue of Wetpixel Quarterly out the door. It’s 3:30am, and I just finished what I had to do today.
Earlier today, I was thinking a bit about the social-networking applications that I use (Twitter and Facebook, mostly). (read more »)
Eric Cheng and Jim Watt in Kona, 2002 (the beginning, for me!)
Jim Watt, underwater photographer and good friend, passed away two days ago. We’ve had lots of adventures together over the past six years. I spent a week diving and teaching with Jim barely a month ago, and it’s hard to believe he’s gone… (read more »)
There is a Taiwanese-American family of 4 behind me at the airport food court. They are like we were, except that the sister is older than the brother. The little kids are playing and bobbing around, speaking perfect English to each other and making strange noises, and the parents tune them out when that happens. Parents are speaking mixed Mandarin and English to them. Daughter is named Jocelyn, but it sounds funny. JOH-SEH-LEEN. Now the mom is theatening Joshua in English because he is under the table, and he is ignoring her. It’s reminds me of when Mom said BULL-SHIT way back during the transition to American-hood, and instead of being serious, it was really funny to us kids.
I board for Dallas and West Palm Beach in 40 mins. I’m tired, but at least I was upgraded.
I have a circle of a few friends who frequently shuttle me to and from the airport. Ironically, these folks are also the most transient (geographically) of all my friends, and I often drive them to the airport as well. When our schedules overlap (often, only by a day or two at a time), we look upon these airport experiences as an opportunity to spend time with each other. (read more »)
“If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them.
“A study in this week’s edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean’s megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%(1). Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone(2).
“You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from eating shark’s fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of respectable newspapers.” [full article]
An e-mail forward arrived my inbox yesterday, sent from Jeff Padilla, an old friend from middle school and high school. Brian Freeman, one of the four or five soldiers reported to have been killed in a raid in Iraq, was actually ambushed, kidnapped and executed. Brian went to my high school, but I don’t think I ever really had a conversation with him back then. I did, however, recognize a younger version of his face when I saw the military portrait I found on a tribute website.
Among the trail of recipients in the e-mail were 21 other names from Torrey Pines, all from our class. I haven’t seen nor spoken with most of the folks on the list, but even seeing their names in print brings back fond memories from the past — memories from before growing up and being thrust into Real Life…
It continues to bother me that upon finding out that I am an underwater photographer, a large percentage of people I meet for the first time ask, “so, how do you make money?” In my own twisted fantasy-land, I always look them straight in the eye and reply, “none of you goddamn business,” but in real life, I’m not allowed to be that rude. Instead, I reply with a vague answer. Those who are perceptive pick on the cue and don’t follow up, but many continue to follow up with more specific questions, forcing me to go into the complicated topic of How I Make Money. (read more »)
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