Blog : July 2007

Salt Creek Trail Conquered

Today I biked the entire length of the Salt Creek Bike Trail - round trip, including from my house to the trail and back. My bike computer is telling me a total of 22 miles. Analysis of the map at the link above and Google Maps tells me it's about 18 miles. I've been wondering if my bike computer is probably configured. I'll have to look into that.

Total trip: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Waste of Time

Wasting time is my favoritest! I just spent an hour and a half in the car sitting in traffic for no good reason. I had a good reason when I first got in the car this morning, but it was rendered moot by Chicago traffic.

I've been trying my hand at networking, and to network, you have to meet with people. So I had a breakfast meeting scheduled for this morning, something that was set up two weeks ago. It should have taken me 30 minutes to get where I needed to go. I mean, we're talking only 14 miles here. But instead, averaging a massive five miles an hour, it took me well over an hour to get about 3/4 of the way to my destination, only to have to cancel the meeting as the person I was meeting needed to get in to the office.

It's not their fault. It's this shitastic construction traffic that seems to be everywhere in Chicago.

Lesson learned, no more breakfast meetings unless it's in my bed.

Ducati Riders of Illinois

Did a photo shoot last night for the Ducati Riders of Illinois. That was fun! Hired two models and ended up shooting them on 17 different bikes. There are some samples already floating in my Photoblog, and I'm sure I'll be posting more in the days to come.

I still want to get back to editing the Gay Pride photos I took, I've just been rather swamped with the business side of things in this photography venture I'm pursuing.

For once, I'm enjoying my day job. Who knew that all it took was changing my day job to something I enjoy doing?

Insomniac

Last night was the suckiest suck suck in all the world of suck.

I went to bed a little after midnight, but didn't actually go to sleep until around 4:30am. Tossed, turned, watched TV, stared at the ceiling, surfed the Internet, watched TV, stared at the ceiling.

Ugh.

Pop Quiz, Part One

You are near some train tracks and there are five workers repairing the tracks. Unbeknownst to the workers, there is a train coming and you are the only one to see the train.

They cannot hear you, and you are not able to signal them. However, nearby there is a lever that will throw a switch in the tracks and allow the train to pass by the five men, but there is a worker on the side track (and he can't hear you either).

What do you do? Do you do nothing and allow five men to perish and save one man, or do you throw the lever, thereby saving five men and allowing only one to perish?

Email or E-mail?

Which one: e-mail or email?

Or is this just another case of to-may-to/to-mah-to?

bcj. Photography On-line

After too many weeks of nothing but a placeholder for my photography business web site, I no longer need to provide a disclaimer along with my business card for not having photo samples at the link on said cards.

bcj. Photography is open for business.

Zoo Walking

First of all, today is not Wednesday, despite my brain's desire to tell me that it is.

I was hoping to get another lengthy and quality bike ride by the lake in before turning the condo I'm condo-sitting back over to its rightful owner. But alas, the atmosphere had other plans when it blew in rainstorms and on-going drizzle.

The Lincoln Park Zoo here in Chicago was a bit of a disappointment for me. After 14 years of living in the vicinity of a city with a free zoo, I finally made it for a visit yesterday. Many of the animals did not appear healthy or happy, the enclosures were not easily viewed, and most of the enclosures were closed in with plexiglass or glass that was coated in a thick layer of children's and parent's finger and hand prints.

My camera made the trip with me, but I just wasn't feeling it, especially after the shots I got at the St. Louis Zoo where conditions were much more condusive to photographing the animals.

The good thing about yesterday was the amount of walking we ended up doing. Around 7.25 miles! This was our route up until we hailed a cab to dinner and walked the remaining 1/2 mile back to our starting point afterwards.

In other news, I'm very excited about the fact that I have a handful of ladies interested in joining me at future cruise nights. More fun photos to be created this summer!

No Harry Potter for You!

The plan was to catch Harry Potter at the IMAX theater where the last 20 minutes would be in 3D. What resulted was showing up only to find that the theater was full and oversold by 15 people. Nevermind that we bought our tickets a week ago.

As a result, our friends got a refund and we walked out with a handful of rainchecks, also good for the IMAX theater.

Oh well, perhaps we won't catch Harry Potter on IMAX, but we'll get him eventually.

Lake Shore Craziness

A friend of mine is letting me condo-sit for him while he's out of the country. I say "letting" because it's really more for my own convenience of having a place to hang or crash in the city for a couple of weeks.

For the past three days I've wanted to ride my bike on the Lake Shore bike path, but Monday and Tuesday were boiling hot and topped with a nice helping of severe thunder storms. Today I finally had my chance.

It is simply nuts out there. Every man, woman and child for themselves. But it was fun and I got to see things I haven't seen before, go places I haven't gone before, and just get out and enjoy the beautiful weather that was today.

I started out at Belmont and headed south. My original plan was to get to Navy Pier, turn around and ride up to Foster Beach. I was having so much fun I just kept going past Navy Pier and ended up just a hair past McCormick Place when I decided I needed to start heading the other direction.

On the way back I took a different route, sticking to the lakeside the entire time, which took me around some marinas, around the Adler Planetarium, and ultimately around Northerly Island, which at one point in time was Miegs Field. I got to see a perspective of the city that I had only ever seen in Microsoft's Flight Simulator (Miegs Field was the default starting point for that flight simulator for many years).

Distance total today was a little over 21 miles. Not bad! Now I want to do it again.

Cruise Night Casting Call

I'm looking for a couple of pinup and rockabilly gals to walk around with me at the Cruise Night in Rolling Meadows on Friday, July 13 while I photograph you with the hot rods. You will receive a CD of the final edited images from the evening for use in your on-line portfolio, myspace account, match.com profile...wherever you need to promote yourself! I will also be providing a copy of the images to the car owners in exchange for letting us take pictures with their cars. I'm doing this to network with car owners and work with new models, all while building my pinup portfolio.

I am specifically looking for ladies that already look the part! You must have the look, the clothes, the hair, (and even the tats) and you don't require a hair & makeup artist and stylist to transform you. I will kindly request photos or snapshots to verify this.

The details for this particular cruise night are below, but I am open to hearing about other cruise nights you would like to check out with me:

Rolling Meadows - Meijer parking lot, corner of Golf Rd. & Algonquin, 6-9 PM, although we will likely arrive around 7pm and stay between 1-2 hours.

If interested, contact me via e-mail. Please include a real e-mail address and a phone number where we can get in touch super-quick. I'm not interested in playing e-mail tag.

Cheeseburger, No Onions

My lunch made me smile. Not the food, exactly, but the nice Chinese man that cooked my lunch and served it to me. You see, I've been craving a hamburger all week, and on my walk to find a hamburger at lunch yesterday I managed to pass by the one hamburger place in walking distance only to end up eating a chicken sandwich instead. Nevermind that I passed said hamburger place on the way back home realizing that I somehow missed it to begin with.

So today I wanted to stake my claim on that hamburger. In the process, I met Victor, the burger joint's owner, saw pictures of his kids, heard all about what his kids are doing for school and jobs, heard about his house in the suburbs and learned that he's had this burger joint for 20 years.

You go, Victor.

Cruise Nights of the Future

My plan is working. Remember how I said I wanted to photograph pinup girls with hot rods to network with car owners? Well, I met some good guys that night and have already been in touch with some of them since then about upcoming cruise nights with more cars, more people, and hopefully, more women. Of course, it will always be a good idea to bring some ladies along with me so that I'm guaranteed some models to photograph in front of the hot rods, but even better if I am able to network with other pinup girls that don't mind having their photo taken.

Are you a lady with a wardrobe right out of the 50's and a look to match? Get in touch, we'll make a cruise night of it.

True Colors

Every day I learn more about human nature when I wish I hadn't. It's true, you know. Ignorance is bliss.

It is interesting to see how the situations into which we are placed, or into which we place ourselves, allow us the opportunity to show our true colors. This is not necessarily an opportunity upon which we consciously choose to act, but instead the fact that we are in a particular situation requires that we show these colors, even though we may not realize we are doing so.

Also fascinating is the ripple effect that a single person's decision can have, not only on their own course in life, but on the lives and decisions of those around them, be they family, friends or merely acquaintances. I continue to balance precariously on the fence between every man for himself and every self for the common good of man. I believe both hold true in the appropriate context, but is there a defined healthy ratio?

So what then? The ripples fade away, not as quickly as when a rock is thrown into a pond, but with time the human impact of the decision ripple effect travels on until the pain subsides and we move on with our lives.

Unfortunate, disappointing and telling - three terms that come to mind regarding my observations of a recent situation in which some of those close to me were impacted by the ripples resulting from someone else's decision. Am I jaded when I say that such things hardly surprise me anymore? Of course, disappointment is a form of a surprise. If we didn't set expections, we'd never be disappointed. Perhaps one day I will learn my lesson. Until then, I will continue to be let down.

It is for this reason that I value so highly the few relationships on which I know, without a doubt, I can rely. It saddens me that so much of my energy is wasted on those whom only disappoint.

Random Thought Time

Today is 7/7/7. Feeling lucky?

I'm going to see Belmont Burlesque perform at Martyr's tonight.

I'm condo-sitting a friend's place in the city. It's nice to have two places to crash, one that happens to be convenient to weekend happenings.

It's not so nice when I don't want to get angry as certain things, but when a name is mentioned, or a story related, I feel a boiling on the inside that starts without my permission. I like to think I'm getting better at controlling my own reactions, but the subconscious is strong and takes a lot of work to keep in check.

I'm working on building my photography business web site. Finally.

Good, Bad & Ugly

Sleep. I love it and I hate it.

Went to bed at 9:30pm last night - a Friday night, no less. I was utterly exhausted after a long week of working, playing and multiple bouts of insomnia. Not only that, but my body has decided to start waking up at the same time every night and morning, multiple times throughout the night.

Without fail, I have been waking up just two hours after I've fallen asleep. Then I'll wake up at least two or three times before my alarm goes off the next morning. And even then, I don't always get to wake up to my alarm because my body will wake me up as much as thirty minutes before the alarm is set to go off.

It doesn't make sense to feel completely exhausted, as though I got hit by a truck, right after I wake up. But that's how it is. I've never been a morning person, I'm definitely more productive once the sun goes down. But that's no reason for my body to hate me this much and not just let me catch a solid night of sleep.

And then there are the dreams. Oy! Last night's headliner was especially frustrating. It basically involved a sexual harrassment charge being brought against me from when I was in kindergarten. As it turns out, they were being leveled by a girl who, not only was still a kindergartener, but also had Down's Syndrome. Huh? She was claiming I had drawn a picture or written a note to her, when in fact I had not. At one point the mother even showed a note whose handwriting I had never seen and could not emulate.

It was ridiculous, my parents were involved, her mother and brother (who was also mentally handicapped in some fashion), the school's administrator, my lawyers, her lawyers...at one point I remember standing up and just going off on everybody how ridiculous the entire proceeding was, how there was no way I had harrassed this girl, that it's been over 25 years since I was in kindergarten.

More happened, but it's all random and irrelevant. Point is, I was mighty angry in that there dream. Woke up feeling like I was still supposed to be mad at somebody for something. Fortunately, this was not the case.

What does this have to do with the title? It was good that I went to bed at 9:30pm and slept until almost 8am. That's 10 1/2 hours of mostly sleep! It was bad that I woke up multiple times throughout the night, and that dream I had was just downright ugly.

Commenting is Slow, I Know

Comments on my site have pretty much ceased in recent weeks. It's ironic considering I removed the verification steps from commenting ever since I installed a rather effective comment spam blocker called Akismet after it was recommended to me by my friend Funkatron.

Then I decided to test commenting on my site myself (although I've done this in the past to respond to other comments). Lo and behold, it's slow as molasses! Unfortunately, I have no idea why.

With that in mind, I'm sorry commenting on my site is so slow. Hopefully this won't keep everyone silent and scare them away. If it helps, I promise I'll post some more photos of beautiful women.

W is for I Won!

For the first time in about a year, and for the third time since I bought new rollerblades a couple of years ago, I went rollerblading tonight. I was amazed at how quickly it came back to me, although I could tell that my balance needs some reminding.

Something completely random and funny happened to me yesterday. Unbeknownst to me, it started sometime last week when I submitted a support request to the folks over at DreamHost reporting that I was not able to access my site via the web. Of course, just like when you take your car to the shop, they couldn't get it to fail. I executed a quick Google Image Search for the Cookie Monster whom I envisioned would soon be gobbling the DreamHost logo, thanks to some quick Photoshop work on my part:

I sent a quick note back to DreamHost with a link to the above picture and said simply, "We'll just chalk it up to this guy."

A few minutes later I received a somewhat startled, but clearly laugh-motivated e-mail thanking me for the highlight of their day.

Fast forward a few days to yesterday when I received the following message:

Hey Brian,

Check out the blog.. you got 2nd place in the contest you inspired .. and now, do you want $120 credited to your DreamHost account, or would you like an iPod shuffle?

And if you want the shuffle, what color do you want and where should we send it?

Thanks for the entering! gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you!

Thanks!
Josh

The blog Josh is referring to is the DreamHost blog, and the specific entry he was referring to is called D is for Dreamhost and the winning entries are displayed in an entry called Photo Finish.

I was quite surprised. Not only had I inspired a contest, but I wont 2nd place in said contest. Of course, I couldn't help but think for a moment that I actually LOST an iPhone, but then again, how do you lose something you didn't even know you could win? I think that just makes me a greedy bastard.

In the end, I was nothing short of elated for having won something in complete ignorance and opted for the store credit. I already have a small mp3 player and hope to own a full-fledged iPod at some point in the future.

Thanks, DreamHost, you made my night.

Cruise Night

For the past year I have been thinking about ways to meet hot rod and classic car owners for the purpose of incorporating their cars into my photographs of pinup girls. Last week I stumbled upon a cruise night right here in my own town, not even a couple of miles away, so I put out the word for some ladies that would be interested in joining me to have their picture taken next to some fancy cars.

Tonight, I ventured out with Kim, Carrie & Ali who got all dolled up for my hairbrained idea. We arrived on the scene, happy to see that we had the right night and that the lot was packed full of cars. We started off on one end of the lot with the plan to walk up and down the aisles while I introduced myself to car owners and asked if they would mind if we took some pictures of the girls with their cars.

Everyone I met was very gracious, and by the end of the night we had people coming to us and offering their cars for photo ops.

The cars are fabulous. Beautiful. Fantastic. I'm sure there are more and better words to describe them, but the amount of work, the hours spent repairing, restoring or modifying, cleaning and polishing - it all shows in the spotless shine of the cars' chrome and paint. And I don't even want to think of the amount of money that goes into restoring and maintaining one of these vintage beauties.

Knowing this, I was very conscious of being polite and respectful of both the owners as well as their automobiles. The last thing I wanted was to be considered a hassle or nuisance. I was a guest and I believe that, for the most part, I was welcomed.

About that...

At one point a security guard caught up and asked what was up with the girls. I explained that I was building my photography portfolio and that we were just out to have a good time, see the cars and meet the owners. He explained to me that they had received some complaints about the way the girls were dressed and needed to look into what was going on. We were advised to carry on but to keep things low key. Not a problem at all, considering that we already were low key and there were no questionable poses in use. I mean, someone in shorts and a t-shirt would be showing more flesh than these girls were exhibiting.

Shortly after that we found that we were being watched by a small group of police officers. Not because they didn't want us there, but because I had three beautiful women posing with hot cars. One of the officers even ran up with his own camera and asked to take some photos!

I met some great guys tonight. I hope to see them all again at some point soon, and I really hope that they get in touch with me so I can share with them the photos in which their cars appear. It was a new experience for me, a bit intimidating, but it worked out and I'm glad I did it.