So, Friday, I've got two hours til class, no assignment shot, and I'm futzing around on the kitchen table with my trusty Crown Graphic, some water glasses and my last six sheets of Polaroid type 79 film. It's getting dark faster than I can take pictures.

Did a not-very-successful Polaroid transfer. Got out the colored pencils and drew on it. Some water glasses, enhanced in analog and digital, an attempted rescue.

I spent six hours today trying to shoot product shots of a perfume bottle and then the processing machine ate half my film after I broke down the set. Then I came home and found a bill for a really really really large amount of money because my crappy student health insurance apparently DOESN'T COVER MEDICAL TESTS TO FIND OUT WHY YOU ARE IN ACUTE ABDOMINAL PAIN. Apparently I'm not going to die of cancer or appendicitis and my ovary did not actually explode back in July, it just felt like it. This did not, however, prevent them from charging an ungodly amount of money to find that out, nor did it mean anything to the insurance company, who enjoyed leaving me on hold for 45 minutes and then hanging up on me, twice, before finally informing me that I'm stupid and should have read my policy more thoroughly before experiencing an alleged "mysterious pain". Did I mention I'm having a really, really bad day? Anyway.

I'm trying to make myself feel better by looking at stuff for inspiration and working on my notebook. Some finds:

Eric Meyer wins my personal award for best Burning Man photos ever. The best lit ones, anyway. I looked at his bio and he went to Art Center. There is hope! Right?

Renee Rhyner represents some of my favorite photographers, notably Fredrik Brodén and Brent Humphreys. The navigation on the website leaves a lot to be desired, but there are some interesting images to be found.

Snapcity by emilie wilson valentine has always been one of my favorite photo sites. She hasn't updated it in years I think but the fact that she was able to post these interesting, intimate little snaps of her life regularly for over two years is pretty impressive. I used to carry my camera around with me everywhere, before I got spoiled on large format. I haven't printed off a 35mm negative in a really, really long time. I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

English illustrator Joe Magee was fired from his weekly gig at the ultraconservative Daily Telegraph for putting messages like "Thatcher Fucked Us" in braille in his illustrations. He's my hero today.

I think I feel a little better now, kinda.

We just got a new Canon D60 at school. I'm not supposed to use it because I'm not in the special digital photography class, but no way am I wasting 14 weeks on something I learned by reading a manual in an hour. So I uh "borrowed" it.

And I love it. I don't just love it, I WANT ONE. It was so easy. I can use it with strobe. I can use it like a real camera. My only complaint is the LCD display makes it hard to tell if my exposure's off depending on which way I tilt the thing, but that's what Photoshop is for, right? It was also great being able to go directly to compositing without having to retouch out all the dust and scratches and little hairs I invariably pick up from scanning film. Did I mention I love this camera?

Anyway. I had another photo-illustration assignment - "Why Businesses Fail". Lots of sinking ship/drowning businessman images for that one. I figured why not point out the fact that all these CEOs have just been going for the proverbial carrot - the perks, artificially inflated stock, creative accounting - without looking at the overall health of the company (or the law).

So, here he is. A businessman with blinders on. Shot digitally - five different images composited together so I didn't actually have to be handy and make person-sized horse blinders. Digital is a boon for people like me who aren't any good at actually making things. Also a boon for people like me whose student loan money is running out - I didn't have to pay for any film.

Back in food photography land again. This time a "food/travel" article - pick a restaurant, come back with a two page spread.

M and I went to Andersen's Danish Bakery on State Street in Santa Barbara, a popular breakfast destination for tourists. M went to high school with Charlotte, the younger Andersen, who is quite possibly the nicest waitress of all time. Anyway, a dear teacher once told me that if you're going to shoot food without a stylist, do dessert, so that's what we did. We asked Charlotte to bring us some good looking pastries and then proceeded to photograph and then eat about two week's worth of calories. It was really hard to get a roll of shots off before attacking everything with a fork, especially when I was holding my Hasselblad upside down, which made the image upside down and backwards.

So. Don't look at this if you're hungry. Better not look at this either.

Oh my god that place is good. The Danish meatballs are to die for, too. Better than my Danish grandma used to make, even.

I'm now doing a series of portraits of a fire dancing troupe called Saturnalia, starting with the same setup I used on the Burning Man photos. In fact, these kids were at Burning Man, I just couldn't convince them to walk the half mile to our camp on the edge of the playa to get their pictures taken.

I met them through my friend Lou, who caught the fire bug at Burning Man a few years back and founded the troupe shortly thereafter. Michael did music for a short video I did called "Fire Dancer" and Lou did the fire performance. It's about a 5MB Quicktime, you can watch it.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to get pictures of them actually involving fire, but for now you're gonna have to be happy with the daytime version.

We're still all still sitting around feeling scared. Maybe scared of the invisible terrorists with smallpox and dirty bombs, but also scared of speaking up. That, or maybe we just don't know what to say. It feels like nobody is listening when we say "What about Osama Bin Laden? Whatever happened to Afghanistan? What does Iraq have to do with this terrorism thing? And where did my civil liberties go?" I feel like we're all sitting around looking at each other waiting for somebody else to start the protests, we're waiting for somebody else to say something. Well, people are starting to protest. Speak up.

If everybody keeps on being complacent sheep resigned to the idea that Bush can do whatever he wants, we're going to war. We're going to send thousands of American men and women to Iraq to get killed because some greedy businessmen (one of whom happens to be the President of the United States of America) want to make some more money. We're going to let hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Iraqi people die because we want to make sure American corporations have access to Iraqi oil pipelines. We're going to become the enemy of the entire Muslim world and provoke further terrorist acts by fighting a bloody unilateral war against a nation that hasn't really done anything to provoke a war since the late eighties.

George Bush wants to convince us that Saddam Hussein is evil and must be overthrown. He says this is justification, expects us to nod and smile and be patriots and wave our little American flags as he sends tens of thousands of American teenagers to bomb the Iraqi people (again) so that we can ensure the continuous flow of our god-given right as Americans: $1-a-gallon gas.

Where is the outrage?

Why is everybody so fucking complacent?

Stop what you're doing right now. You're reading this, obviously you have some free time.

Find out who your congresspeople are and write them an email telling them you are against the invasion of Iraq. Can't think of what to say? "I vote and I am against an invasion of Iraq" is probably enough. This takes five minutes, they even give you a nice little web form. Ignore the credit card stuff at the end, you can send an email for free.

If you feel like sending a postcard, download this and mail it to the address you found on the Senate or House websites.

Are you reading this at work? Since you're already geeking on your employer's dime, take advantage of the fact you're not paying the phone bill and call your congressperson at 202-224-3121.

If you live in Texas (or even if you don't) sign the Voices for Peace Statement of Conscience for Peace. Five minutes. You don't even have to march anywhere. This is the least you can do.

See? That wasn't so hard. It was almost as easy as not voting in that last presidential election. Remember that one? The one between the two guys who were pretty equally uninteresting so it didn't matter who you voted for so you didn't?

Anyway. It's not hard to find out what else you can do to try and stop this war. Find out about the protests and peace vigils going on in your area. Get off the computer and spend five minutes to try and save the lives of a few thousand people you've never met.

Please?