Your Daily Photo (I Think That's a Dalmatian Pit Bull Mix Edition)

Your Daily Photo (Invasion of Privacy, Possibly Edition)

Sitting in a window above a busy promenade probably means you don't have too great of an expectation of privacy when it comes to being photographed.

Your Daily Photo (Triceratops Edition)

Your Daily Photo (Dine Al Fresco Edition)

Take a chance and eat sushi at a place with a "B" from the health service, I dare you, I double dog dare you.

(I went a bit crazy with the saturation level on the reds in photoshop for this snap)

Your Daily Photo (20th Anniversary Edition)

The Third Street Promenade celebrates its 20th year this week.

Our local commies make it difficult for any but the biggest chains to take advantage of the prime location (that was an unintended consequence of their anti-business policies), plus they make getting in and out of the area as much of a chore as possible (somehow, they think that if it's hard to drive to a place, more will take public transport or bike into the area, instead it just means fewer people with real money to spend come).

It's successful, but it could be so much better if we had better leadership in this town.

Your Daily Photo (The Man Who Wasn't There, Or at Least His Upper Half Edition)

Stitched shot taken at the Promenade. People were walking by, and the Windows Live Gallery Panorama software decided to erase only part of one of the walkers.

And, yes the title is a reference to Antigonish by Hugh Mearns

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Your Daily Photo (Can You Really Call It a Phobia When It's Perfectly Reasonable to Be Afraid of These Entities? Edition)

Coulrophobia, I really don't think of it so much as a phobia as more coulrocommonsense.

(the 3rd St Promenade has an exceptionally kreepy kollection of klowns, however)

(also, goofing around with photoshop elements' collage maker)

Your Daily Photo (Some Might Consider the Juxtaposition of Certain Elements Within This Photo to Be a Kind of Political Statement Edition)

Your Sunday Vimeo Post (Shakes the Bellydancer Edition)

2009 05 02 3rd St Promenade (Between Santa Monica Blvd and Arizona Ave) from xwl on Vimeo.

I've uploaded my shakycam footage taken today around 6:30pm at the 3rd St Promenade. I was walking the whole time, I was holding the cam down at mid-chest level, and I was looking where I was going rather than seeing what I was shooting (mostly). It's only 2:55 long, so it shouldn't be too much of an ordeal, but I can't exactly recommend watching this beyond the curiosity factor. The on camera mic worked decently, didn't pick up too much wind noise, and did a good job of picking up ambient sound and whomever was closest speaking the loudest.

Also, it's overexposed, thought I needed to compensate for the overcast conditions and overdid the exposure compensation settings. Doesn't autofocus while shooting (which is probably a good thing), so I had the lens zoomed out, and focused it on a spot in the distance. The images look sharp enough, on a sunnier day, probably would look better. Uploading as is, no processing, if shakycam footage bothers you, don't watch this, but if you can handle the shakiness, there's a bellydancer in there somewhere, so enjoy.

Vimeo gives you one HD video a week for their free service, so I think I might take advantage of that, I'll try and find an interesting spot where I can use a tripod next time, so expect better next Sunday. The original video is 410MB, but by running it through handbrake (using the settings recommended by Vimeo), I reduced the file to 105MB with no readily apparent difference in quality. Vimeo limits you to 500MB a week, so instead of around 3 minutes of video, that would give me something closer to 12-15 minutes, while still keeping an HD feed.

I'll try and find something interesting each week to shoot, or maybe I'll do the ranting on video thing that's so popular with the kids today, wouldn't be that hard to turn my garage into a makeshift studio . . .