The Milwaukee Strobist group on Flickr met at Z2 Photo on June, 23rd 2009… Here’s a time-lapse video of the event.

(This video is also available at blip.tv and at Vimeo and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.)

So when I heard about the Milwaukee Strobist group on Flickr I had this cunning idea… Invite them all out to Z2 Photo for the meetup! This was one way to ensure I’d be able to make it. :)

And come they did! We had at least one guy from Chicago, and I think a few from Madison… We had RSVP’s for about 15, and I’d guess we had about 30+ photographers there, as well as 5 models. (Here’s a group shot we did quickly at the end, some people had already left, but we got a good majority of the group.)

And hey, I even got a few shots that I was happy with… (Thanks to everyone who loaned me equipment. Someone gave me a SB-600 to use, and at least once there was a lens on my camera that weighed 3 times as the body itself, and probably cost 4 times what my camera did!)

I sort of felt like “well done lighting” plus “experienced models” made it easy to get above average shots… I know that when I’ve been left alone with lights and someone who needs a portrait, it’s a lot tougher, and good product photographer can be even more difficult. Walking into a situation where it’s all set and you just snap the shutter takes about 90% of the work out of it. :) (But hey, I’m not complaining, this was still a great experience, even if all you did was watch how other photographers do things, and I did ask a number of questions, and get some really good information in the process.)

I’m hoping at the next meetup there’s a bit more talk of “why” the lights are set up a specific way, and the many factors involved in getting a good portrait shot. Still, this was a really good experience, and a lot of fun.

Here is a video of my old pal Milt talking about how he got to know me…

Neat-O!

And hey, there’s also this cool “Sketchnote” card from world-famous Sketchnoter Mike Rohde, how cool is that!?

Anyway, I’ll try not to write too many more posts about the fact that I am totally ancient now. I mean, Dave Winer is way older than I am!

Yes, despite my own best efforts to completely ruin everything (unknowingly) things all worked out. Don’t worry folks, I had no idea… I mean, James came close to blowing things once or twice, but still, I had no idea. The award goes to The Doctor for the amazing acting she did throughout the whole thing.

And a big Thank You goes out to all of my friends and family that were there, making it the Best Birthday Ever, which is quite a change from last year’s Worst Birthday Ever.

I’ve been told that media from the event may start showing up at PeteIsOld.info

There seems to be a bug in UCView that prevents it from creating more than 150 still images. I’ll need to dig into that a bit more… It can also create video files, but I prefer stills. With the stills I typically use mencoder to combine them into a video file.

The Eee PC is a nice small solution for time lapse photography. It’s one device, and does everything. Quality? Well, not that great… and bugs? Hopefully I can get more than 150 images in the future…

This will be the first post of many exploring time lapse photography/video. It can be difficult. Just ask this guy.

We also put video content onto the jump drive. I had a sample someone had given me from a company they used to do business with, and while it worked fine on my Mac, Windows was a no-go. Windows XP was the test platform, without QuickTime installed. Now, granted, lots of Windows machines would have QuickTime if iTunes were installed, and iTunes is installed on a lot of Windows machines, but locked-down corporate PC’s may not fit in that category.

So, we wanted to create a video that would be playable on Windows without QuickTime installed. And, we’re a Mac shop, so we wanted to do this all on a Mac. We ended up exporting the video from Final Cut Pro, and then using MPEG Streamclip to create an AVI file, using the settings you see in the screen shot below.

It worked well, and testing with various Windows VM’s seemed successful, with the videos playing fine where QuickTime was not installed.

So for now, this is my solutions. Unless someone has a better one.

I also learned a lot about Iran which I hadn’t know, though honestly, my knowledge of Iran was pretty minimal, as I’ve lived in the U.S. my entire life, and well, you get a tainted view of other countries from here.

If you get a chance to see it, watch the DVD extras, as there’s some great stuff in there about the story behind, and the making of the film. I mean, if you’re into filmmaking that is…

Yes, I am still working on Balancing Act, my documentary about the work we do…

In this clip Davey von Bohlen talks about being a musician, and how that may change (or not change) in the future.

Davey is an old friend of mine, and probably the most (commercially) successful musician that I personally know. It was great to sit down with him and get an insight into his career thus far. Enjoy the clip!

Me? I’m not convinced he’s really a musician.

I mean, I guess I consider a musician to be someone who can play and instrument (or maybe sings) and who (may) writes songs. Perhaps I should say “original” songs.

From what I can tell, Girl Talk doesn’t play any instruments, and doesn’t sing, but just creates this audio collage out of other people’s work, with no original bits except how they are arranged.

I feel like my argument could be seen as thin, and could honestly go either way, but in seeing (part of) the film, and seeing people go nuts for Girl Talk, which bases (I believe) all of his work on the work of others, creating no original pieces of sound/music on his own, only taking from others… I’m conflicted on this.

And I know he claims “fair use” on his use of the material (that he does not compensate the original artists for) but hey, that’s the same claim the media outlet that stole my photo used. Fair use is only determined in court of law, but in my opinion, what he is doing is not fair use. Add to the fact he is making money off of the work of others, and not compensating them, and now I really don’t like it.

Don’t get me wrong, as far as music goes, it’s some cool shit, but how cool would it be if it used none of the original bits from others, and we just gave Girl Talk a room full of instruments and said “go nuts”? I get the feeling it wouldn’t be the same.

Maybe I’m just old, and this new digital world scares me. I mean, when I started playing music, you had to use actual guitars, not the sound of a guitar that some legendary musician recorded 20 years ago. You had to learn how to play, and you had to practice… a lot.

A few years ago when I started to get into making music again, I played with GarageBand, and it was fun to make songs, but it didn’t feel real. I mean, clicking and dragging samples around was easy, butI didn’t get the same satisfaction I did from actually playing a guitar.

On my most recent album, I ended up using drum loops, and it was my biggest disappointment. I wish I could have played the drums on every track. If I had, I think my sense of accomplishment would have been even higher. I did manage to record all the guitars, bass, vocals, and some of the cymbals, but being able to avoid canned drum tracks would have been huge for me.

But why bother when you can click a mouse and make music, and by make, I mean arrange the music other people have created into something new.

I want to compare it to someone who calls themselves a “photographer” but doesn’t shoot photos, and only arranges the photos other people have taken (in something like Photoshop) into a collage and then calls themselves a photographer. “Digital Artist” maybe, but photographer?

But wait! I’m supposed to be some big supporter of open culture, open everything, and Creative Commons, etc… Yeah, I am, but I’m also a strong believer in the rights of the creators. Those who make art/music/whatever should be able to decide how they are used (if they haven’t given up those rights.) While so much of the old depended on artists signing away their rights to corporations, I think we can get past that. Some believe the way to do so is to break down all those old ways, and open everything up (even if the owners of the old stuff don’t want it opened up) while other believe that we should move forward, and reward those who fully support being open, and do everything in their power to be open, yet still survive as artists…

And collage? I’m a big fan of collage. I used to do a lot of collage art years and years ago, and yes, I used sources I probably shouldn’t have (”fair use” right?) but I also didn’t publish to a worldwide audience, and didn’t make any money from my artwork. So I’m fine with collage being legitimate art, be it remix/mashup, whatever.

So going back to the question of “Is Girl Talk a musician?” My vote is no. I can’t even say Girl Talk is a composer, so maybe the term would be “re-composer” or “re-arranger” or something.

But he’s still taking the work of others without proper permission, building upon it, and not compensating them, all while profiting from them, and that my friends, is a load of crap…