A Box of Matches

I like the cover concept of this book. This has been on my radar for a long time now. I'm starting to read it. Lately, I wanted to sellect short books that I could finish and feel accomplished. It's a slim volumn. Hearth and home, that has been the archetypal image of dwelling that goes back to the time of cave dwellers and the discovery of fire. The fire place is becoming rarer. I don't have a real wood fire place. Reading this book make you yearn for a fire place, a place to contemplate and meditate before the real world invades. It seems to be the perfect place to do the The morning page as assigned by Dorothea Brande in a book call 'Becoming a Writer'. I had an image of the narrator, diarist using a fountain pen and handwriting his thoughts on paper but I was a little dissappointed that Emmet wrote on a half open old laptop. He did this partly because he did not want to turn on the electric light. He is careful to keep the modern world at bay, waiting for the sun to rise. He makes coffee in darkness and fumbles around in dimness. The descriptions of blind navigation is amusing. [book:Becoming a Writer76788]

Vietnam A book of Changes

This image is a good example of how photographers have great eyes for story telling. It has a pop art feel to it because of the repeated imagery, like Andy Warhol's portrait of Chairman Mao. The other similarity is the iconography of the subject mater. Since it is a bust, it has that Roman classicism to it. It's interesting that I find capitalism in the way the art is presented. Warhol's pop method elevated our taste for consumerism and fame. He put it on the same level of art. It is a new art form. I like how each sucessive image is reveal and how the news paper wrapped around the bust seem to convey the passage of time and also to herald in the news of the day, the change of regime and the impact that it will have on the land. I do remember the requirement to have a picture of Ho Chi Ming on the wall of every house hold. This idea was borrowed from Chairman Mao. In the essay, Mitch mention how much change he saw on the subsequent trips Vietnam. These pictures were made over a long period of time during the 1990s. It is my favorite image of the whole book.

LC1

LC1 Circa J, originally uploaded by Duc N. Ly.

The camera is Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC1. What ever happened to the days of simple camera names like Leica M3, M4 etc. For simplicity's sake, I will call it the LC1. This camera has the Leica lens. There is a bit of troublesome dust spot which needs to be fixed. I did not see this problem until after the trip. I have to remember to be better prepared with equipments. The LC1 is light weigh and has manual switches and buttons to make adjusting the camera easier. It's like the old cameras, I don't have to dig through the manuals to find the functions. It has a 28mm lens for wide open shots of the landscape. Although, I think it does distorts the picture a bit.

I had the circuit board replaced for free by Panasonic because of the Sony Sensor problem. I'm enjoying the camera's shots much more now. It takes fantastic pictures, good color rendition in day light. However, there's a dust spot appearing in the sky shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvtf0sM9XqQ