Lazy Photography: The Impatient Woman's Guide

Engine, Engine, Number 3195....

It would be too much to say that when it comes to photography, I do everything wrong; but I certainly have my shortcuts and bad habits. The main one is this: I'm a drive-by photographer. I seldom drive to a place, park, get out, find the perfect vantage point, choose my camera settings and line up my shot. No, no. Instead, I drive past the desired photographic subject with the car windows open. If there's a red light and I can stop, great. But even if I can't, I'll probably still try for the picture. Keeping my eyes on the road, mostly, and definitely not the viewfinder, I'll point the camera out the window at what I hope is the right moment, press the button, and drive away.

Okay, so it's less than ideal. It's impossible, for example, to edit the photo above so that both engines are in the shot, and the two cars (mine's interior, another's exterior) don't frame it. On the other hand, the only way to get a better picture would be to get off work earlier, find a place to park, and wait for the train to come by. I'm not sure there is a good place to try for the photo, at least, not without being delayed for twenty minutes on the wrong side of the tracks!

I pass it every day, but I can't get there.

Here's another shot I've been trying for off and on for a couple of weeks. This building is at David-Monthan Air Force Base. I've always thought it was an aircraft hanger, but really, I've no idea. It's visible from Alvernon Road near Golf Links, but as far as I know the general public can't get anywhere near the building. So I slow down a little, glance at the side mirror, point and hope! The result isn't very good, but otherwise I would have no photo of it at all.

Power House!

Sometimes I try to do it right, though. This shot of the power station was taken at a red light, but it's probably the best I've got of the structure. Even so, I took time at lunch the next day, and went to see whether I could take a better photo by approaching the building properly, stopping, maybe even getting out of the car.

Sail on, oh Ship of Watts!

This was the result. Obviously I didn't get out of the car, but it wouldn't have helped much. By driving in front of the building I was actually too close to get the whole thing in frame. I kind of like the fact that it looks like a steamship, though, perhaps as seen through a porthole.

My boss tells me that it looks entirely different at light, brightly lit and almost magical. I expect I'll have an opportunity to see this as the nights (and my hours) get longer toward year's end. Then maybe I'll take the time to photograph it right.

Meanwhile, I wrote the announcement entry several hours ago for the next Round Robin Photo Challenge. Becky came up with "Other Settings" as the topic. The idea is to try out settings on the camera that one hasn't used before. Ah, heck. I haven't tried half of them. This should be interesting!

Karen

More of These, Less of Those

Sunset on the Weekend Assignments? No way!

Weekend Assignment #177: Are you happy with the Weekend Assignments as they are? Do you have suggestions on improving them? Should we continue the Weekend Assignments, or try something new? Remember, the reason I do the Weekend Assignments is so you'll have something fun to write about over the weekend. It's dependent on you guys, basically. I want to know where you are with it.

Dear John,

You know me. I'll do any Weekend Assignment you throw at us. Cerebral or silly (or both at once), completely germane to my life and interests or completely irrelevant, I'll still write at length about it on a Thursday night. I'll make it work. But I do have some suggestions:

1. X vs. Y questions = Z annoying assignments. You've done several assignments with the format X or Y: if you could only keep one, which would you give up forever? (Alternate: which is better?) The "which would you give up" ones are typically nonsense questions, as the choices are unrelated and a real world scenario pitting one against the other would be difficult to imagine. Frankly, these assignments strike me as more convoluted than whimsical. Plus they're predicated on giving up something, and getting nothing in return, which strikes me as unfair, even for a thought experiment! Accordingly, I respectfully request that you NOT ask readers to choose between the following:

1. Bananas or opposable thumbs
2. Chicken or pianos
3. Numbers or the color blue
   
4. Phones or horses
5. Aardvarks or lemmings
   

The "which is better" ones (e.g. cake or pie) typically involve natural rivals. Those assignments work a whole lot better. Or pose a question that offers to give the reader something instead of taking it away, e.g. "Which would you rather have, flying cars or cheap, pollution-free fuel for conventional cars?"

2. Captions capture. One of the most successful Weekend Assignments you ever did was a "caption this photo" one. (I personally didn't like that particular assignment, and yet I got a really good entry out of it. Go figure.) Given your general creativity and technical excellence in taking and altering photos, this is something you could throw in once in a while to keep things interesting.

3. Open the suggestion box. From time to time you've solicited assignment ideas from the peanut gallery, especially when you were going to be out of town. Why not solicit them a few times a year, and use more than three of the suggestions? You could keep a file of them, and I know people will appreciate seeing their assignment ideas get used. The initial work would be more than coming up with an idea yourself, but it would even out over time, and result in more diversity.

4. Ruing reruns. It's tough not to repeat yourself after three years, but please try to make the variation different enough that it doesn't seem like the same assignment as last Christmas / Fourth of July / Pluterday.

5. Where is the love? Other people have commented that AOL isn't linking to you on the People Connection pages any more. That seems unfair and unhelpful. It pretty much guarantees that people will only find By the Way via other bloggers who know about you already (and possibly from Whatever). There really should be a modicum of corporate support here.

6. Simple for summer. I gather from what others have said that at certain times of the year. many people don't have hours to spend responding to a thought-provoking assignment. That's probably when you should break out the really easy ones, e.g. "What's in your pocket? If you don't have a pocket, what would be in your pocket if you had one?"

7. Keep up the good work. Despite all of the above, you're still doing a great job with the Weekend Assignments and Monday Photo Shoots. Don't get discouraged, and don't stop assigning them! I'd go into withdrawal, and you wouldn't want that!

Regards and thanks,

Karen

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Today's Monsoon Update: A Backwards Day


As you've probably gathered by now, a typical day during Tucson's monsoon starts with a sunny morning, followed by a buildup of clouds and then rain in the late afternoon or evening. So this morning on the way to work, when I saw the Santa Catalina Mountains almost completely hidden by clouds, I was certain that we were getting an early start on the festivities, building toward a noontime storm. Imagine my surprise when I came out for lunch and saw this instead:


The Catalinas still had clouds over them, but mostly only thin ones, and none obscuring the mountains themselves. The sky overhead in the city was blue.


Going back to work after lunch, I saw even less cloudage. Lots of dirt still in the streets, though, washed there by the recent storms. But today there was no storm at all, not in the city anyway. You've already seen how the day ended, with thin pink clouds and a pretty sunset.

Karen

Why I Can't Tell You It's Overrated

Weekend Assignment #176: Tell us of one piece of culture -- book, movie, album, painting, play, architectural "masterpiece," whatever -- that you think is wildly overrated. Note I said to focus on an object, not the artist: for example, explain why Sgt. Pepper's is overrated, not The Beatles, or The Godfather, not Francis Ford Coppola.

Extra Credit: Have you ever changed your mind about how good a book, movie, etc., was? You know, you read a book once, hate it, come back to it several years later and find out it wasn't so bad after all.

This is going to be one of those Weekend Assignment entries in which I explain, earnestly and at great length, why I can't comply with the assigned parameters, and therefore must tweak it to suit myself. Still, I think it's going to be a bit more interesting than me picking some bit of literature or pop culture and running it down from a position of ignorance. Because that's what the alternative would be.

Here's why I can't honestly tell you something is overrated:

1. If I think something is overrated, I generally avoid it, because I've concluded that whatever-it-is holds little or no appeal for me. Therefore I don't watch it, read it, or listen to it. Therefore I don't have an informed opinion about it. Therefore I can't tell you, with any authority whatsoever, that the thing is overrated! Some of the many artistic works that fall in this category:

1. Scalzi's example: The Catcher in the Rye. I think I got up to about page five of this book, my senior year in high school. I found it boring and annoying, so I went back to reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
2. The Godfather. It seems a travesty to me that it's now ranked ahead of Casablanca on the AFI list of greatest films. But what do I know? I've never seen it!
3. Titanic. This is also higher on the AFI list than seems reasonable. Again, I've not seen it.
4. Remembrance of Things Past. The fact that Harlan Ellison once ordered me to read it very nearly ensures that I'll never bother.
5. American Idol. It doesn't appeal to me, so I've only ever watched a couple minutes at the end when it runs over into the House MD time slot. Maybe there's a legitimate qualitative reason why people seem to care more about this show than they ever did Star Search or Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. But if so, I'll never know what it is.

2. A lot of the stuff I consider deeply flawed (and therefore don't rate highly) is rightfully thought of as flawed by the culture at large. Some examples:

1. Star Wars. It's a great film in many ways, with fun dialogue, iconic characters and groundbreaking effects (original and upgrades). But few people (I hope) think that there's nothing silly, juvenile, stilted or derivative in the film and its sequels. I'd say it's overrated only by the most willfully blind hardcore fan.
2. Survivor, Big Brother, and other reality shows. They've been wildly popular in their time, but they play on the most negative aspects of human behavior. Karen does not approve - and therefore did not watch. But all along, there has been far more negative criticism of such shows than kudos, so there's little chance that they're overrated.
3. Enterprise (or Star Trek: Enterprise). Somebody somewhere probably liked this show a lot, but overall it got iffy reviews and poor ratings compared to its predecessors. Scott Bakula played the least likable lead character of his career, and the whole thing was a bit of a downer. It got a bit better at the end, but it was too little, too late. It wasn't overrated: the critics and the public got it right.

3. Classics that I'm tempted to call "overrated" were products of their time. As a child of the late 20th Century, I lack the context to judge them fairly. No, really. I tend to feel that every book written before A Study in Scarlet is a waste of my time. The language has shifted, making the prose inaccessible. Times have changed in other ways, too, so that customs, clothing, transportation, communications etc. that the work's original audience took for granted are all a bit of a puzzle for us. Even some 20th Century works are hopelessly dated, with stylistic choices or sensibilities that seem shockingly backward. Is it all irrelevant now, but still being taught because it's "wildly overrated?" Let's take a quick survey:

1. Hamlet. I find most Shakespeare a tough slog, but none more so that this one. I find myself wanting to tell the hero to be less depressive and more proactive, and a lot nicer to his girlfriend. But if I were to read it again now, and with real comprehension despite the language, I would probably discover that people are right to consider it one of the greatest plays of all time. Meanwhile, I much prefer The Tempest, As You Like It or A Midsummer Night's Dream.
2. McTeague by Frank Norris. An uneducated brute of a man sets himself up as a dentist, but eventually it all falls apart. Things go from bad to worse for him and his horrible, greedy wife, leading to a horrible, hopeless end in the Mojave Desert. Blecch. Actually, if this is highly rated by anyone other than my American Realism course instructor circa 1978, then yes, it's wildly overrated. Same goes for several short stories by Stephen Crane.
3. The Awakening by Kate Chopin. A woman wanders listlessly through several hundred pages of no plot, and then drowns herself. At least that's how I remember this book. Same verdict as McTeague. Really, the theme of that entire American Realism course was, "Life sucks, and then you die." None of the characters take successful action to make things better. Phooey.
4. Madama Butterfly. I like one of the melodies, but I suffered through this opera back in 1974, absolutely hating it. Part of it was the language barrier, but mostly I was offended by the whole premise of this woman being utterly destroyed because some guy didn't treat her right. Where's your self-respect, woman? Is that a fair assessment on my part? Probably not. I might appreciate it more if I truly understood the language and cultural mores of Puccini's audience.
5. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Okay, so I haven't read them all, and there are certainly the seeds of some classic stories here. But many of these folk tales are rhymes or nonsense, or full of death and violence, and few have anything like a conventional plot as we know it today. Are they overrated? Dunno. Who is doing the rating?
   

Eh, that's enough. I could tell you why I dislike Hemingway's short stories about Nick Adams, or why Battlestar Gallactica just doesn't work for me, but that's all down to personal taste, isn't it?

Extra Credit: if I didn't like it the first time, I seldom give something another chance. John recently rented the first season (or Best of, or something) of Get Smart. I remembered most of the gags in the first episode, which I liked a lot when I was, let me think, about eight years old. When I saw the show again as an adult, I found it stupid and annoying, just not as good as it should be. When John played that first episode a couple of weeks ago, I was kind of thrilled with the old familiar jokes that made such an impression on me 42 years ago. But it's still not a good show!

Karen

Blochers + Kitchen = Disaster

Weekend Assignment #170: Share a useful tip for the kitchen. It can be about anything from cooking to cleaning, as long as it involves something in the kitchen (which, for the purposes of this assignment, includes the pantry and the table you eat at). Extra credit: You're ten and allowed to cook a meal. What do you cook?

Trust me: I am so not the person to advise you on how to make the most of your kitchen. Neither is John, really. There is a character in the movie Sibling Rivalry who sums up my culinary interests and competence perfectly: "I don't cook. I reheat." So for this topic, I can only serve as a negative example, demonstrating what not to do in the kitchen:



1. Don't put the sausage on medium heat with just a little water, and then leave the room for 10 minutes. Hey, this time it was only 90% my fault. Honest!


2. Don't start refinishing the kitchen cabinets, only to get discouraged and quit before finishing the very first one. (Sorry, John!)


3. Don't buy a quantity of dog food that turns out a week later, after the dog has eaten two cans of the stuff, to be laced with melamine. John and I are not at all convinced at this point that 10-year-old Tuffy is as healthy as ever. We're trying to work up the nerve for the long drive across town (and probably expensive tests) to learn the answer.


4. Don't use the kitchen table for storage. Unless you have to, of course.

On the extra credit, are you asking me to remember back 40 years, or to pretend I'm ten years old now? I think the answer varies, based on which way we go with it. When I was ten, I probably made Franco American spaghetti from a can and added oregano. I could also make tv dinners, or Kraft macaroni and cheese. If I were ten now, though, I would probably do what I do at age 50: throw something in the microwave. Sad but true!

Karen

Same Game, New Rules: How Do I Play This?

I could make a metaphorical connection between Tuesday's sunset (above) and the text of tonight's entry (below), but let's not.

As many of you know, for the past fourteen months I've been waiting for Tor Books to respond to my three chapters and synopsis for Heirs of Mâvarin, with a yes, and no, or a "Let us see the rest." I've sent a follow-up letter, and a friend has asked in person; but still there's been nary a peep, apart from word that Tor editor PNH was familiar with the submission.

About two weeks ago, Wil pointed me to a blog entry by A.C. Crispin, which essentially advised against doing what I've been doing. Crispin said that rather than wait for "months and months" to hear from a publisher or agent, without a word in reply, a writer should at some point count the non-response as a rejection, and go back to querying. I sorta meant to follow that advice, except that I really felt that I owed Tor at least a courtesy letter saying that I would now be submitting it elsewhere. And frankly, I dread revising the cover letter yet again. So I haven't done anything yet. Yes, I know: bad writer, no biscuit!

Then a few days ago, the friend offered to mention it to Patrick again, and advised that Tor is kind of a "special case" with respect to that particular piece of advice. He felt I probably shouldn't give up on Tor yet, and frankly I found this advice more appealing than its opposite.

Well, then. Tonight I got a bit of a shock in the form of new information from Tor itself. No, they haven't sent me anything - nothing that I've received, anyway. But Sara (no h) told me that John Scalzi mentioned in one of his blogs that the Tor website had been redesigned. Sara had checked it out, and found something that wasn't there the last time I looked. In place of the submission guidelines I followed back in February 2006 are new and very different ones. They say, in part:

Generally we respond to unsolicited submissions within 4-6 months. Unfortunately, your manuscripts and our replies sometimes go astray in transit. Because of the volume of submissions, it's not possible for us to track down any individual project; please don't call for a status report. If you have not heard back from us after six months, please resubmit.

Great. That tells me three things I didn't know before:

1. Their policy is not to respond to my follow-up letter (or my friend's personal contact) asking about the status of my individual submission. This is very definitely not what the guidelines used to say. It used to say that after the 4-6 months one could send a letter referencing the title, date of submission etc., and that it would be responded to promptly. I sent the letter after a year and nothing happened - and the new guidelines say that nothing is supposed to happen.
2. Either they rejected the proposal months ago and the reply never reached me, or it's still under consideration, but way outside the time window. I have no way of knowing which, but the former now seems more likely than the latter.
3. If I insist on hearing back from Tor, my only option at this point is to send a new package, which under the new guidelines will not be returned. I am to enclose a standard SASE for the reply only. I actually don't mind not getting all that paper back. The question is whether it's worth the effort and expense of submitting it again to this publisher, as opposed to, for example, DAW.
   

If I go with #3, am I a total fool? 'Cause that's the way I'm leaning on this. Meanwhile, I've got to get moving again on submitting to agents. This slush pile business is a whole lot of no fun.

Let me hasten to add, since I'm not big on burning bridges (and because I really believe this), that I don't blame Tor's editors and publisher for changing the guidelines in this way. Rather than leave someone like me hanging, waiting for a response that may never come, it's better to tell people up front that certain things aren't feasible and not to expect them. They even explain most of the whys and wherefores. But oh! It is discouraging!

Karen

The Second Year Begins

Adapted from tonight's posting on my LiveJournal: Today was the one year anniversary of my three chapters, synopsis and cover letter for Heirs of Mâvarin arriving on the slush pile at Tor Books in New York. I was reminded of this fact in a dream this morning, in which Patrick Nielsen Hayden got annoyed with me for temporarily storing ham and cheese in a Tor mailbox, and announced he would have nothing more to do with me. For months I've been fantasizing that I could mark this occasion with an anniversary card, something like the graphic on this entry. Actually sending such a thing would be unprofessional, though, so I'll post it online and leave it at that. I'm not really upset at the long wait; I once sold a logic problem to Dell two years after I submitted it. Having spent a few decades turning my derivative high school efforts into a rather decent first novel (she said modestly), I don't really mind waiting to get it published. On the other hand if this long wait ends in a form rejection slip, the depression that follows is likely to make this past week look like a Jolly Holiday by comparison. If that happens (and I kind of don't think it will at this point), I'll probably cry for days...and then send the manuscript to another publisher.

Karen

Karen's Fried Brain: a Recipe

Take one sleep-deprived human brain, female.
Add four hours of sleep.
Hit the snooze bar four times, but do not allow any additional sleep.
Add one Hershey's Kiss for breakfast.
Add one caffeine pill.
Add two ounces of diet cola, flat.
Fill with senseless numbers.
Place in ungreased frying pan.
Turn up the heat. Cook for 5 hours.
Add 1 chicken salad sandwich and 6 ounces of diet cola.
Increase heat. Cook for additional 6 hours.
Add two tablespoons of self-pity, and 1/4 cup guilt.
Mix thoroughly and pour into blog.
Season to taste. Serves two dozen.

(Alternate edit)

K.