A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

I’ve recently posted a bunch of photos to my Flickr and Picasa accounts that I haven’t attached to any blog posts. I know a lot of people who read Naids’s Nonsense v2.0 rely on it to see new photos, so I thought I would just add some links here to those photo sets. Keep in mind that you can subscribe to my Flickr feed or my Google Picasa feed so you get updates when I post new photos.

• Red Wine Night
• Holiday Season Night Out
• The Cupcake Factory
• A Dinner Party
• Wilkie Outlaw Wing Night 2007

I was up around 7:30 this morning and read a bit of news on the net before jumping in the shower. Ryan was gone to work by 5:30 and Connie and I watched some sports highlights while we had our morning coffee. Let me tell you, the ESPN version of Sportscenter is the way to go as opposed to TSN’s version. Here you get 25 minutes of NBA highlights followed by 5 minutes of the “other” sports - the way it should be. In the Canadian version you get 25 minutes of hockey highlights (and to be more precise, that’s 25 minutes of Leafs highlights) followed by 5 minutes of the “other” sports.

We needed to stop by the NBC studio to pick up The Tonight Show tickets so we headed out at about 9:00. The traffic was decent and we rolled into Burbank and Studio City in good time. When I went in to get the tickets all they could give me were stand-by ones. The deal was that you show up at 3:30 and you’d know if you were getting in by 4:30. Since we didn’t want to hang around this area of the city all day and then end up not getting in, we decided it was best to do some schedule shifting.

We decided to go to the Getty Center today, and try The Tonight Show another day. Since we had no idea how to get to the Getty Center we tried to call Ryan at the office to get us directions off of the internet. We needed to find a pay phone since neither of them have a cell phone. I’m serious.

We couldn’t get a hold of him so we just asked a guy at a gas station and he filled us in on where we needed to be. We were now on our way to see some art. For those who don’t know what the Getty Center is, here’s a blurb from their site.

The Getty Center presents the Getty’s collection of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present against a backdrop of dramatic architecture, tranquil gardens, and breathtaking views.

Connie and I were most interested in the photography exhibits they had. The first one we saw was Sigmar Polke: Photographs, 1968-1972. His work was known to be experimental and I honestly didn’t care for them. Below is a picture of Connie enjoying old Sigmar’s photos. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to be taking pictures in this exhibit, but I managed to sneak a few in….before I was told it was forbidden and sternly reprimanded.

Another photography exhibit was The Old Order and the New: P.H. Emerson and Photography 1885-1895. His pieces focused on images of, “the isolated region of East Anglia in England during the late 19th century, a time when traditional life and work along the Norfolk Broads were increasingly threatened by advances in modern technology.” I did like his work, but there were a lot of his pieces, and they all seemed to become very similar near the end.

The photography exhibit I enjoyed the most was A Place in the Sun: Photographs of Los Angeles by John Humble. From the Getty site.

John Humble (American, b. 1944) has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for 30 years. During this time he has created a strong body of photographs inspired by architecture and its surrounding natural environment, often focusing on the incongruities and ironic juxtapositions of the Southern Californian landscape. This two-gallery exhibition features approximately 35 color photographs, many of which were acquired by the Getty Museum in January 2006, with the generous assistance of the Getty Museum Photographs Council, which also underwrote the accompanying publication. Both the exhibition and book celebrate Humble’s distinct view of Los Angeles. From the concrete channels of the Los Angeles River to brightly colored commercial buildings, his photographs of the built environment capture that which is instantly recognizable yet very often overlooked.

We made our way through many of the other exhibits, but you have to understand that the Getty Center is huge, and you could spend a lot of time in there. We saw a ton of paintings and sculptures, along with a really neat look at the process they used to determine whether a so-called 15th century cabinet was the real-deal. The centre also has an incredible garden to walk through.

We decided to head back home shortly after 3:00. Traffic was brutal at some places, but cleared up and let us actually go above 20 km/hour. When we got back, Ryan had also just arrived from the office. We had some dinner and watched basketball before heading to the hot-tub for a dip. Connie didn’t join us since she needed to go buy a dress for a show we are seeing tomorrow called The Magic Castle. From what I hear it is supposed to be awesome. Check back for details on Thursday.

I’ve also posted some picture from the day here. There aren’t many, and I’m a little disappointed I didn’t have my big camera with me at the time (since I thought we were going to be at The Tonight Show today), but there were still some decent shots.

It was about two and a half years ago that I started to dabble in photography. I had always had an interest in it, but just never had the equipment, or took the time to learn about it. It was at this time that I took the plunge and spent some money on equipment and workshops, learning the details of the art from trained professionals. I can’t stress how much I learned from working closely with those in the industry. It let me learn things about my hobby that I would never have learned from books, or the internet.

One of my projects in an Intermediate Portrait Photography class required the students to spend some time with a subject to take shots of them in various poses. One of my friends was in a local Guelph band and it turned out they were looking for someone to take photos for them. It worked out great for both of us. Free photos for them, and great practice for me.

I took in a number of their shows, letting me fire off a lot of shots. I managed to get some decent ones out of the many I took. I found it difficult get really good shots at the shows since lighting was an issue. It wasn’t until the band and I arranged a session at a local studio that I finally got some pretty strong shots. After firing off around 500 photos, there was a number that I was really pleased with. I burned the photos for the band on a DVD and handed them over. It was up to the band to use them as they wished. I figured they would end up on their website and on their upcoming CD. Cool!

I don’t know about anyone else, but every once in a while I Google myself - that is I do Google search on ‘Hemant Naidu’ just to see what pops up. I Googled myself this afternoon and saw the usual - my name at the University of Saskatchewan Alumni page, a few websites I used to run, and a whole bunch of information on other guys named ‘Hemant Naidu’. But today I noticed one extra - Not There benefit CD Against Wal-Mart’. After clicking on the link I saw that the CD was done as a protest against the building of a Wal-Mart in Guelph, Ontario (it’s a long story, and I’m not going to get into it here) - and I was on the credits for the CD, under ‘Artist Photos’.

Since I still do hold the city of Guelph close to my heart, and do support the effort of the CD, I decided to purchase one online for a cool 25 bucks. Plus, I think it will be pretty cool to see my photos, and name on its insert! I’m not sure what photos they used, so the suspense of its arrival is killing me. I personally think this is pretty cool, even though it was only a benefit CD put on by local Guelph artists. But hey, I can’t expect to be on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine yet!

You can check out the website for this benefit CD here.