He just had to be in the picture (A major disappointment)

© Joselito Briones

So I was taking this small gate of one of my neighbors, and this kid just sped through, which is just as well, the version without him had absolutely nothing going for it.

You'll just have to get used to these pics. I haven't been doing anything else lately but take pictures and scanning them, so if I don't write to you about them, I've got nothing else to write about.


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Oh yeah, major disappointment yesterday. I did this competition piece for a furniture design. I finished it yesterday, after about two weeks on picking on the details. Surprise, surprise, when I went to the DHL center they told me they don't have overnight delivery. HA! I shoved my entry in the bottom drawer.


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The serial scanner

© Joselito Briones

I think I've become a serial scanner. Encouraged by yesterday's photo, I decided to dig up other films. This one is the film version of a digital image that you've seen before, from the Malt Whiskey Society of Edinburg, in Scottland.

I went coo coo when I discovered that the lab where I took the film (in London, close to where we used to live) messed up the whole roll. It had more speckles and scratches than a silent movie, and I had to spend so much time to repair it. In the end though, it was worth it. I'm thinking of having it printed poster size. The film is in medium format, there's enough detail in it.


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P.S.
This is what the Flickr people has to say about the photo.


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Cross processing

© Joselito Briones

Something new today. I decided to have a roll of film cross processed, one I took same day as the Erlangen canal ones. It came out very greenish, but there's something about this screwed up colors that I like a lot. I'd almost say it's got a retro feel to it, like those 70's photos, but in green instead of magenta. Anyway, it's the best image of Erlangen that I've taken so far.





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Cheap shot

© Joselito Briones

Just to show that I'm not above the occasional sky shot (esp. when I don't have anything else to show you), but then I'm sure you know that already.


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Yet another old building

© Joselito Briones

This one's right next to the Asian grocery where I buy Thai vegies.


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Beetle

© Joselito Briones

It's the color that caught my eye.


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An old building

© Joselito Briones

An old building by the city center, in Erlangen.


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Jens' Paintings on the wall

© Joselito Briones

I guess I'm just tired of having to lift them up whenever I vacuum the floor, else I've finally decided to end the procrastinating, I finally hang Jens' paintings on the wall, in the living room. Let's see if they stay there.

There's plenty more pictures and paintings to hang and place, you're welcome to do the hammering for us if you want.


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A reunion of some sort

©Eric Olivarez

Oi Jimbo, I thought I'd share this with you, an email from Eric, after he and Cyntch (also a dear old friend) visited my mom in Carmona:

"finally squeezed this one to my sked..and im glad i did it with cyntch around...it felt like we're back in lsei days when we used to hang out in ur crib, except this time it's a bigger, better and more modern haus u have i almost felt like im in a resort of sorts ...took us a while to pinpoint d precise location, haus # has changed from d original 049 to something like 111xx...

©Eric Olivarez

so many changes in the neighborhood and yet ur mom has managed to stay all the same, still very accomodating and nice to talk with, i dont remember talking to her with much substance as now it made me feel really mature (translation: matanda na) now...felt a lil disappointed that she turns out to be mildly allergic to photo shoot, hehehe! anyways, here are a few pics we took of her and ur haus...definitely not as good angles as u would have done but i hope u like it even just for the effort, lolz! pls say thanks to ur mom again next time u talk...."

©Eric Olivarez

Isn't he just the greatest? He's the one in green polo shirt, Cyntch is the one in white t-shirt, and the one in "USA" t-shirt is my eldest brother, Kuya Toto, and that's our house in Carmona, in the bottom picture.





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More from the recent B/W batch

© Joselito Briones

I like the way that the tones came out on this one.


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Old school and proud of it

© Joselito Briones

I think I'll make it a point from now on to see movies shunned by US viewers. I finally got to see "Superman Returns", it received a lukewarm reception in the U.S. box office, but I really liked it. It's the old school (old sKool is not old school enough) way of doing a superhero movie, the way a superman movie should be. Explorations of internal motivations and angst were kept to a minimum, and the focus was kept on larger-than-superlife conflicts. Good wins over evil, good guy gets really really pretty girl (by the heart, if not as a partner, the other good guy gets that part), and evil's still bald and gets himself a not-so-evil consort (the always entertaining Parker Posey). And it's also a good thing that I didn't pay attention to write-ups about the movie, otherwise I'd have read the spoiler plot already about the superkid.

The movie was shown in English in Roxy, in Nuremberg, and I'm really liking this small theather, because it's so small, not crowded (both times I was there, there were less than 10 people in the audience), and it's got a small-town appeal to it.

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More black and white photos

© Joselito Briones

I was able to take more photos yesterday, and had them developed last night. This time I made sure not to forget to presoak the film...


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Bad Chemistry

© Joselito Briones

Last night, I dug up an old bottle of Rodinal (after having read that it has like a gazillion years' shelf life), and decided to develop the Tmax 100 films that I exposed a couple of days ago when I went walking around Erlangen. It was a disaster (or so I thought). I pulled out the strip from the tank and what came out was this really really thick underdeveloped film. I scanned the negative and added a warm tone with photoshop, and here's the result. Could've been better, but I guess it's alright after all.


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Alyssa

© Joselito Briones

Remember I told you earlier that I've been posting photos in flickr? Turns out that the most popular so far among the photos I've posted is this one of Alyssa, one I took in New York.


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Wanted: Kansas

© Joselito Briones

If it's true, what everybody says about home being where one's heart is, then I'm currently, officially, homeless.


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Cavite

Promotional poster for the movie "Cavite"

Hey Jimbo, I came across the New York Times review for this movie... sounds promising... I hope it gets shown here eventually.

Did I tell you I'm from Cavite?










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The Day I Realized It's Not Much Fun Being...

© Joselito Briones

... Antisocial Here in Erlangen Where I Don't Know Anyone, As It Was in New York Where There Was All These People in The City Whom I Could've Been With and Interact With But Chose Not To, Nor Answer Any Phone Calls Even If My Closest Friends Were Calling and Scared Shit That Something Bad's Happened to Me And Who Are We Kidding They're My Closest Friends So They Forgive Me Eventually

Hmmm... all of the above was supposed to go to the title, I don't know why there's a limitation on the number of characters.


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A Day with the Girls

Promotional photo for "The Gilmore Girls"

I spent the whole day watching reruns of Gilmore Girls.





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Songs on a Rainy night in the Autobahn

© Joselito Briones

Nothing better than a long drive (Erlangen to Mannheim) to get reacquainted with classics.

After half an hour of listening to Ray Brown Trio's jazz versions of standards, I've decided to put on something that'd wake us up somehow. The first song in the complilation CD that I put on more than woke me up though, it made me hyper. The Knack's "My Sharona". I haven't heard the song for a while, but everytime I hear it again it never fails to lift up my mood. I don't even know what the song is about, all I know is it makes me want to bounce off my seat.

At the last hour of the drive, it started raining quite heavily, and having exhausted all the upbeat songs in the CD's that I brought, we agreed to play George Michael. Yes, every card-carrying friend of Dorothy has to have his CD on rotation, or the all-time favorite OST from "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", or of course, any of the tragic divas, else our membership is in danger of being revoked.

"The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command...my love "

-Ewan McColl

For this drive, we had "Songs from the Last Century". I've forgotten how much I loved his version of "Roxanne" and "Miss Sarajevo", and how pointless is his cover of "The First Time Ever I saw Your Face". I still think this song has one of the best words ever put to music, and nothing will ever surpass Roberta Flack's crisp voice in delivering it (Johnny Cash' version is too devastating).


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Don't you just love it?

© Joselito Briones

It's brag time!

Don't you just love it when you see something that is very similar to something you've thought of first a long time ago? Six years ago, when the Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) animation technology was still relatively new, I did this animation, simply called "Portraits", to show my work in portrait photography. A year later I did another one, "Portraits 2". It was something new then, and obviously not done before, that I had plenty of email inquiry about it. I did a search of the topic in Google groups and this came up. Trust Google to find proof that you're not just writing BS.



Screen capture from DG website

I was going through my email subscriptions when this popped up from the Dolce & Gabbana newsletter (and don't even ask me why I'm subscribing to D&G, they should just keep me informed automatically, considering the money I spend buying their stuff). The technology obviously has advanced since then, because it's so much more interactive, but still...

What do you think?

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