Little Flutters

Since I’ve moved back to Sydney, I haven’t been able to find a perfect yoga class. I was feeling lethargic, out of shape and unmotivated.

Out of habit, I subscribed to Yoga Journal as soon as I had a steady address. Just doing that little thing made a huge difference to my home practice.

As I read, I practiced. And after I was done with the magazine, I still kept it around as a reminder to myself.

Surround yourself with the things you love and you want to do more often. In that same frame of mind, go around your house and omit things you feel no longer serve you.

I know as a fact that if I buy a pack of ice cream, I will justify eating one a day. So I choose not to buy them.

It’s the little things like this that make up a life.

This was an easy stop motion video because I didn’t use a tripod, the summer storyline was simple but effective and it came together in an hour. Here’s how:

Most of the images were shot when I was bumping around in a car or on a beach. It was a great project to have on a short vacation.

Firstly, I set my camera to continuous shooting. Google your camera brand and type with “user manual” and figure out how to do this, if you don’t already know how to.

I put all the images into Lightroom and then did a batch export at something like 900 px wide. There was a lot of heavy vignetting and vibrance in Lightroom, cause hey, that’s how I roll.

That stopped Final Cut Pro from crashing when I added all the images. Even then, I found that I had to 50 images at a time otherwise my mac would freeze up. Consider yourself warned.

I played around with the image duration and settled on a twentieth of a second for each still. To edit image durations in Final Cut go to:

Final Cut Pro > User Preferences > Editing. Look out for the “Still duration field” and have a play around with what looks best for you.

I then played around with music options and settled on a beauty by LadyHawke. To add music, just drag and drop into the timeline.

Final Cut Pro has some great title options so I normally spend an hour going through them. I then exported the final product to Vimeo.

This would be a great, simple, easy project if you’re going to have an interesting day or week trip. Let me know how you go!

“Jobs has a great native sense of design and a knack for hiring geniuses, but above all, what he has is a willingness to be a pain in the neck about what matters most to him.”

- ”How Apple Does It, Oct. 16, 2005″

Taken from the Times.

Starting a flickr page so I’m motivated to create more images. –  Noticing that my goals and my life aren’t all that different. –  Making my Sydney to-dos list. – I’m grateful that all my friends in D.C are safe after a hurricane and earthquake. Phew. – Getting a dining table. Using said dining table as a study. – Meeting the Wiggles! – Mind Maps – Discovering the best Persian Restaurant in the World. – Spring! Even if it means I have a perpetually blocked nose. – Creating Lightroom Presets.-  Panadol. Keeping Tash’s fever down since 1/8/2011. I had bronchitis. It was not pretty.  

I don’t often blog about my work, but this is too good not to show you.

I jumped at the chance to work with the Wiggles for Australian Cyclist Magazine.

We rolled up to Hot Potato Studios in the western suburbs of Sydney. Murray walked past us and I nonchalantly said hi.

I was such a silent fan boy.

I even got to pose with them at the end of the shoot! It’s at the last couple of seconds of the vid.

In the first or second year of being in Australia, my Dad took us out to see the Wiggles at Martin Place.

It was kinda awesome. I sang along, I’ll admit that.

Then afterwords, the Wiggles changed into normal clothes and walked straight past us.

Dad said ” How cool, man. This is what I like about Australia. You can be on stage then jump off and everyone respects your privacy.” I was six at the time and didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. It makes sense now.

Of course, I was way too embarrassed to tell Anthony or Jeff any of this when I saw them 19 years later. I just stood there with a dumb happy look on my face as I shook their hands.

If you like this behind the scenes photography shit, you should check out the studio commercial blog. I man it, and it’s pretty hot.

Going through my books, I find a postcard of Jim Morrison in my T.S Eliot collected poems. What a cliche.

I studied one of T.S Eliot’s more well-known poems, the Hollow Men for my final literature essay way back when.

What’s most interesting is, I remember having to scour through tens of books on T.S Eliot, looking for a vague reference to the Hollow Men. Now, a half second google search and I find the majority of my research on wiki. Would it have meant more to me if I didn’t work at all for it? No. I cherish the essay because I can remember the hours in the library.

I’m not normally one to think about “the good old days” but in this case, I’m glad I got to spend time in a library without the omnipresent computer in front of me. Cause God knows, I’m in front of my computer all the time now.

Reading the Hollow Men again, I could picture where I lived during university, taste the pasta bianco (I couldn’t bring myself to survie on ramen noodles), feel the effect T.S Eliot’s words had on me, resting heavy on my chest. It still feels that way. The last paragraph sends a shiver down my spine every time.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.