Author: admin

I have a collection of the Best of Photojournalism books from the early to mid 1980’s which taught me how to see things as a photographer. How to expose film to get a feeling, capture a moment, and use the darkroom as a tool to make an image snap. As a young dreamy photographer, I would peruse image after image from revolutionary Nicaragua, Jewish immigrants in South Beach, and crack heads in New York City. That grainy portrait, the dark shadows and poppy highlights. Creative darkroom work made those images even better. I mean really really powerful. Those books made me dream of the day I would run around the world with an Nikon F3HP, a pocket full of Tri-X, and a few Nikkor primes.

Alas, those days are gone. Everything…youthful naivety, the desire to be a war correspondent and that pocket full of Tri-X. Film, sure it still around, but digital is king. I still use it but 99.9% of all of my jobs are purely from my Canon digital bodies.

I shot this bike rack with my Leica and a 1970s Summilux 35mm lens. I had to do a little “dodging and burning” in photoshop but nothing more. Well, a little tweaking in levels but really, its the film. The film was not able to resolve the shadows and expose the highlights properly. Sure I could have exposed a little differently but shooting a stop under really made this graphic snap. Digital would have captured this scene completely different. Even if I were to have dropped my exposure a few stops under, I don’t think it would have recorded this type of feeling. Digital has taken the magic out of photography.

I don’t think my photo above is something that special but it shows where and how I sometimes look at the world. In reality, I don’t think this image would have looked the way it does if it was shot digitally. Digital has way too much resolution and I would have had a great exposure with plenty detail in the shadow areas.

I shot this image this afternoon from my lanai err…balcony today and I kinda got the same shadow effect but the digital file just recorded too much. I completely played with this image to make a darker shadow but it wouldn’t budge. Its interesting but what snaps more?

Had a interesting job on the Big Island at a geothermal plant. It uses geothermal energy to produce electrical energy. A bit controversial as some native Hawaiian groups are upset their god Pele is being used as a source for energy and thus, taken advantage of…but its also controversial as the power plant sits atop an active volcanic area and the active rift zone. Earthquakes and possible lava flows could disrupt or even destroy the plant. The plant is very stable yet in a way, very unstable.

Well, at least my toes are protected. As we got access to shoot the plant, we were made to wear these steel-toe slip ons as well as other protective gear…helmets, googles, etc. But the toe protection was a really cool thing. I’d buy them.

FASCINATING!

I watched Monday’s edition of Democracy Now on Olelo Ch 54 and the entire episode was dedicated to the food industry and how, funny, “Bacon as a weapon of Mass Destruction.”

No, not bacon… but all bacon consists of is fat, salt and sugar. Kinda sounds like what all fast food is, no? Actually sounds like what all food we eat consist of…

So the program discusses how the food industry is processing food and we are getting fatter and so forth.

You can listen to the Democracy Now podcast off of Itunes for free or go to their website at www.democracynow.org.

The show is linked here.

What struck me is their description of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets (yes! our preserved friend!) as…

highly addictive product, pumped full of all sorts of flavorings and chemicals that you would then dip in this fat- and sugar-, salt-laden sauce. And on average, a Chicken McNugget has twice as much fat as a McDonald’s hamburger.

Ouch. And they don’t begin to discuss the preservatives that keep our little friend alive.

After toss and turn night of deep thoughts of MrMcfriend, I couldn’t help but wonder what I am going to have in that zip lock a year from now. Two years…might I have a heirloom to pass on to my grandchildren? Might future explorers find McNuggets buried in archeological sites?

People will dig up old New York and find undigested McNuggets in the skeletal remains of someone in Harlem?

Its already August…the McNugget is still going strong. To recap, I found this escapee behind the flatscreen in May and it was from a batch of McNuggets I brought home one evening after a fun night of carousing around town.

Read my last few post to get more of the info on how he (maybe she) escaped. I took a look at the zip lock where I placed it and still no change. I decided to get radical with it. I took it out and gave it a good squeeze. The outer crust began to crumble…quiet nicely, as if it was still fresh. The cooking oil oozed onto my fingers coating them waxily (is that a word?) and I had to wipe my hands.

So after a few squeezes, I decided to dissect the bugger and tried to snap it in half. I figured it would go as the crust was cracking and crumbling but it wouldn’t break. I had to get a pair of scissors and actually cut it in half, with lots of force. I mean I really had to squeeze those scissors to make that Mcdud snap in half. Now I got a McTwo.

The mystery chicken meat seems dark and greasy. Bits of fat glisten and from the looks of it, still seems edible. It did not give any distinct odor other than a lightly stale smell from being in a zip lock since May but that’s it. No obvious fungus or any type of organic material has formed either.

Now this is whats bothering me. After a week, bananas bruise and begin to rot. I’ve found tomatoes in the bottom of the crisper that have rotten through and through. I’ve had milk convert to yogurt and papayas brewing themselves into alcohol. But McNothing on the McNugget. The McNugget is not growing fungus or mold. This is really odd and to think we eat this stuff…its really scary. Might this not digest in our belly?

A quick search online lead me to a few sources on what McNuggets really are…whether this stuff is true or not I don’t know. I am just quickly noting a few things…

This one article noted McNuggets are actually 56% corn…which does make sense in a way as the nugget is coated in batter. It also notes the meat is pulverized chicken and all these other nasty bits of industrial might. What is odd is that this article note the McNugget does have traces of tertiary butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ) which is a petroleum product used for stabilizing various foods etc…”thus retarding development of rancidity…increasing shelf life.

Article can be found here…

Rense

Seems that preservative can be found in lots of other food products so its probably very difficult to stop ingesting this stuff. Could it be bad? Well, obesity increases around the world as globalization takes hold. People stop eating home grown stuff for packaged stuff. No one has time to sit down and cook any longer so we let big business feed us.

Does big business have our best interest in heart? Doubt it…just look at how long this McNugget has lasted.

Lets see what happens in a few more weeks now that I’ve McCut the McNugget.