The Blork Blog

Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn is one of the beautiful properties under threat from the wildfires raging along the central California coast. According to this article, the inn was evacuated on Sunday, and the fire was so close that a burning log rolled into one of the rustic cabins, although it was quickly extinguished by fire fighters.

Loyal readers of this blog will remember Deetjen’s. That’s the place where Martine and I stayed during our trip to California in 2004. It was my second time at Deetjen’s and Martine’s first. The reason it was so special (besides the obvious — that Deetjen’s is a gorgeous, laid-back inn in a stunningly beautiful location) was revealed in this blog post. (Check item number 5.)

One of the beds in the room where we stayed. (Photo courtesy JLT on Flickr.)

I hope they get the fires out soon, and I hope Deetjen’s and other places in Big Sur, such as the Henry Miller Library, along the coast are saved.

Via Giulia, one of my favorite streets in Rome, turns 500 this year.

According to this New York Times article, via Giulia is named after Pope Julius II, who commissioned the street as part of a plan to square off the streets around the Vatican. That’s fairly odd, as it’s not all that close to Chez Pope; in fact it’s on the other side of the Tiber river.

Mind you, it’s not that far either. In fact, I took this photo on the morning Martine and I walked from our apartment on Campo dei Fiori to the Vatican, by way of Via Giulia. Its north-west terminus is about half a kilometer from the Piazza San Pietro.

So happy birthday Via Giulia. At 500 you’re older than any city in North America, but by Roman standards you’re still a spring chicken.

That’s why Martine and I finally drank that other bottle of 2001 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Sante Lancerio.

We had it with a nice two-inch thick strip loin steak, done Florentine style. Sorry, no pictures.

Happy St-Jean Baptiste day!

I took this photo during the St-Jean Baptiste Day parade some time in the early 90s – possibly 1990 – and it had languished in my archives of transparencies for many years. I found it about eight months ago, and promptly scanned it. I’ve been waiting since then, for the fête nationale, as that’s such a perfect time to show it on the Monday Morning Photo Blog.

This photo was taken during the period – unfortunately very brief – when I was doing “street photography” and not feeling all self conscious and/or cynical about it. I wish that phase had lasted. A few other nice shots from that era include “Bud” and “Street Sleeper.”

Oh well. That was then. Strangely, the fact that photography is now so much easier and accessible makes it seem less interesting to me.

But hey! Happy St-Jean!

Unless you’ve been living on the moon, you’re aware that we’ve recently seen the end of a five year battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to secure the Presidential nomination for the U.S. Democrats. (OK, it was actually about 16 months, but it felt like five years.) Although the campaign itself was excruciating and felt endless, it was in theory an amazing and historically significant race. The U.S. has had neither a black President nor a female one, so those who were looking forward to something really different could see it as a winning scenario, no matter who won.

But oh, that campaign. After all the sniping, with each side taking swipes at the others’ experience, judgment, and credibility, Obama has emerged the winner. The burning question that immediately arose is whether he will offer Clinton the opportunity to run with him as Vice Presidential candidate.

A lot of people think that would be a great idea, that together they’re be a juggernaut of difference and change. However, hope is fading for those who think so, as Obama immediately distanced himself from Clinton as soon as he clinched the nomination. And frankly, I can’t say I blame him.

After all, they both – although Obama in particular – campaigned on the idea of keeping things “real,” of not just playing the same old Washington political games. While most of us saw through the bull and recognized that virtually everything each of them said was 20% “real” and 80% campaignspeak, the fact remains that in the midst of all this “keeping it real” they spent a year and a half tearing strips off each other. Clinton’s campaign was particularly guilty of this, to the point that Democratic party members are reportedly concerned she has provide a goldmine of anti-Obama ammunition to the Republicans.

So now what? If Obama offers the Vice Presidential candidate position to Clinton, it won’t say “I’m burying the hatchet” or “we’ve made up and now we’re a great team.” It will say “I’m swallowing bile for the sake of getting votes.” Clinton, if she accepts, will be shouting “I’ll hold my nose and put up with him; anything to get me closer to that Oval Office!”

And ultimately, running together will destroy the credibility of both. Think about it. How could Clinton legitimately support Obama and his ideas after spending the past year or more trying to slay them? How could Obama legitimately embrace Clinton as a running mate knowing (and knowing she knows and we know) the things she said about him?

Talk about awkward!

On the other hand, the answer is easy; by putting on a show of mutual support (emphasis on “show”) and by shouting out a bunch of well-timed, five second sound bytes, it would probably work, at least on some level. (U.S.ers are notorious for their short political memories, especially when sentiment enters the equation.)

But the cost of that false camaraderie is the loss of the thing we wanted most from both of them; something different. Something real. A break from the old Washington political games.

You can argue that I have a small sense of history; that I’m not thinking of the historical significance of having a President and Vice President team that cross ethnic and gender barriers. Maybe so, and I admit that I have more concern for what happens over the next few years than for someone’s legacy and their place in the history books.

I am concerned that a Democratic administration in which the two principals not only dislike each other, but have a public history of disliking each other, would be a poor and ineffective team. It would be a Presidency mired in conflict and back stabbing. We would all suffer.

The sad thing about it is that Hillary Clinton would, I think, have made a fine President or Vice President. But that campaign, that mud-slinging, attack dog campaign, ruined it. It ruined her. The style of that campaign was Hillary Clinton’s one big error in judgment. It was her Monica.

There’s a new hotel/condo building in downtown Montreal, on the corner of Boul. René Lévesque and rue de la Montagne. It has got to be the shiniest building I’ve ever seen. It’s like the whole thing is made of glass and 18/10 stainless steel. I look at it every time I’m sitting on a certain terrace bending my elbow after a long day’s work.

It’s a beautiful sight. I love the stepped balconies and roofs, and the way it shimmers against a blue sky in the afternoon. Unfortunately, from my vantage point on the terrace, the IBM/Marathon building looms up from behind, but at least that older building is also rather silvery too, so it makes for an interesting frame.

A pint or two later in the day, when the sun is getting low in the sky, the steely surface reflects ol’ sol’s dying colors, taking on a nice golden sheen. It’s a beautiful transformation to watch as you sit there, feeling the white hot heat of day slip into the bronzy heat of evening.

No Photoshop tricks here, folks. That’s how it really looks. (Photos taken 90 minutes apart.)

No doubt the condos in that building are outrageously priced, and I have no idea what it adds to the city’s architectural culture from an academic point of view. But it’s a fine looking façade from my chair on the terrace, and I find it hard to pull my eyes away from it.

My current digital camera lacks the “panorama assist” feature that I enjoyed so much with my previous one. The feature helps you line up successive shots so it is easier for panorama stitching software to get good results without awkward overlaps or misaligned edges. It’s not strictly necessary to have the assist feature, but it helps.

One afternoon when Martine and I were in Paris last week, we took in the view from the roof of the Galleries La Fayette shopping center. The sky was low, with purple, threatening clouds, which always makes for dramatic photographs. So I took five shots, hoping to stitch them into a seamless panorama.

No dice. Because of the angle of view (wide angle lens, pointing downward) there was too much distortion for the stitching software to handle. After several attempts using different software, I got a few that were reasonably good, but not great.

So I tried something different. I added white borders to each image so they look like printed snapshots, and stuck them together on a large canvas, including a bit of drop shadow. I lined up the horizons, but didn’t care if the rest of it was out of whack. OK, it’s not the continuous panorama I was hoping for, but I really like the result.

Here it is (click the photo to see it bigger, or click here to see it huge [2000×913]):

I’ve always believed that if you can’t solve a problem, you embrace it; it’s a sentiment along the lines of the old chestnut “when God sends you lemons, make lemonade.” Instead of settling for a substandard panorama, I shifted my desire to something else; a montage, inspired in no small way by Toast’s excellent (although stylistically different) montages, which he refers to as “panography.”

By contrast, below are the failed attempts. At first glance, the top one looks alright, and they do provide the very cool effect of a continuous image. But if you look at the larger versions (click the photos), you see the mistakes. For example, in the top one there’s a misalignment on the right side of the angled roof of the Opera.

I suppose with a fair bit of Photoshopping I could have fixed some of those mistakes. But on the other hand, I got something completely different, which I like (the montage). I suppose there’s a lesson in there somewhere.