wall detail -- koreatown

I took an early morning walk around the block the other day. The blocks here in Koreatown are quite large, and they’re crammed with apartment complexes. At first glance there isn’t much to see — just building next to building next to building…

But if you start to look closer, any number of interesting things begin to emerge…

This photo is available as cards or prints

This post might be better titled bites and chunks, but oh well…

First off, my site photomontana graphics will be launched in the next few days. Like I mentioned earlier, it will be a site where I sell stuff. It will be pretty basic and bare bones at first, and I will gradually flesh it out as I go along. It won’t be my main hangout, but I’ll update it with new releases and information regularly. Look for it live right here on Saturday morning. The link will be active then.

I read a book years ago called “Wanderer’ by Sterling Hayden. A great and honest book, and in it he said that if you can somehow catapult yourself into waters over your head, one way or another you will learn how to swim. Well, I’ve been in deep water for some time now, having managed to do just that — take the plunge. So far I’ve been mostly treading water, lately I’ve been doing some tentative dog-paddling, and sooner or later, if I keep my wits about me, will be swimming like a dolphin. Despite the risks of spreading myself too thin, I’m going to add more blogging to my plate. I don’t want to have all my eggs in one basket as the saying goes. Several baskets makes more sense regardless of how busy I may get.

A year or so back I started a blog called adventures with a two dollar camera. It’s been on the back burner for months now, but I’m bringing it back to life. It will be about working with film cameras, mostly inexpensive ones. There’s a whole world of photography out there being done with vintage cameras, Holga’s, Diana’s, and others. The image quality ranges from pretty bad to quite good, but the expressive qualities of some of this work is stunning. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, nothing is, but I’m more interested in the creative and expressive aspects of photography rather than the technical and how-to and am fascinated with the work being done with these cameras. I will explore and blog about this subculture. I think it’s worth some serious attention.

In a nutshell, I will have the photomontana graphics site, and I will have three blogs. This one will remain my home base and won’t change much. I will breath some life into buzztail, my enviro blog. Activism is too important to me to let it slide into oblivion. And I am bringing adventures with a two dollar camera back to life today. Will it all be more than I can do? No. I’m eliminating the word ‘can’t’ from my vocabulary and I’ll just get out there and do it. I need to. If I’m to get anywhere with this way of life I’ve chosen I need to give it everything I have. No excuses.

It’s easy enough to say I’m not ready… they’re not good enough yet… it’ll never work… I might fall flat on my face. But if I wait until I think I’m ready I’ll never do it, if I worry that they’re not good enough I’ll never get around to it, the only way I can be sure they won’t work is if I don’t do it. I’ve fallen flat on my face before, many times, and it’ll happen again. ‘Good enough’ will come with the doing. My new motto may just be

…to boldly go where you’re uncomfortable going…

I need to do that now, I can’t afford to wait until I feel ready. I never will… I need to put it out there now.

So I will. Check it out, and pass the word.