Tag: Photography

Weekly Update – Sketches, Film Photography and a 10K Race

A hectic week but an interesting one.

I went to see a local production of Singer, a play by Peter Flannery. It was phenomenal but it kept me up at night, which meant that the following morning I headed straight to my local cafe. I sketched the barista but something didn’t work in terms of getting her face right – she turned out sadder than she is. Sketching tired is rough.

Sketch on Stillman and Birn pocket Beta

Here’s the rather messy pencil and pen sketch. I can tell just by the line quality that I was very, very tired.

A day later I went to sketch at the nearby park and you can see the difference in the line quality in this sketch:

Sketch on a Pith Kabosu sketchbook

Initial sketch:

Later that week the film photographs that I’d had developed were returned to me. Here are a few of my favourites:

The local community cat that I feed twice a day coming to say hi

I love the atmosphere that the film gives this simple photo:

Ramat Hanadiv rose garden

All of these photos are unedited. I’ll likely clean them up later on.

Bridge over water at a nature reserve near Haifa

There was a fire on the roof of a nearby hotel. I took this photo a day after the fire, and you can see the damage:

Cat failing to hunt a crow:

A stall at the local farmer’s market:

A stall at the local farmer’s market. You can see the see in the background.

I was supposed to run at a 10k night race on Wednesday, but I wasn’t feeling too good and I was apprehensive about dealing with the crowds so I ran the distance by myself a few hours before the official race start. It was a good decision as I was really struggling during the first 3k – but I did manage to finish, and finish strong.

I finished reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie (a powerful narrative, but not as punchy as “With the Old Breed”), read “Death of a Nurse” by M.C. Beaton as a palate cleanser, and I’ve now started “The Shattering Peace”, John Scalzi’s long awaited sequel to his Old Man’s War series.

I’ve been overwhelmed with the responses to my Pelikan Hubs post. Thank you all for your kindness and for the thought and effort you put into your comments. I read them all, I just wasn’t able to respond to all of them this week.

Speaking of the Hubs, all of my pre-hubs inked pens have been written dry, which means that I currently have a 100% Pelikan rotation, plus some Platinum Preppy’s that I use for sketching.

Have a great week!

Weekly Update: Mars Yard 3.0

My Tom Sachs Nikecraft Mars Yard 3.0 sneakers arrived! I worked so hard to earn these and they were so expensive that for a moment I wondered if I’d ever wear them. But then I saw the bottom of the box:

Perfection.

The box is so well designed:

Box lid
Box side

There are even hidden ten bullets:

There are two sets of sockliners that come with these shoes, one made of cork and one made of mesh:

And here are the shoes themselves:

Mars Yard 3.0

Yes, I am wearing them, and yes, they are very comfortable. They aren’t in any way loud or attention grabbing, but that’s part of why I like them so much.

Not a poser.

I’m nearing the end of reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie. It’s a powerful narrative, but I think that “With the Old Breed” packed more punch. I also went to the Pelikan Hubs 2025 and you can read all about that here. I’ve now only got Pelikans inked up (and one Platinum Preppy), which is an interesting experience.

I sketched a new barista at my favourite cafe. The customers kept cutting off the view so I gave up on sketching the rest of the counter at some point. I was using my arttoolkit palette, which is ultra portable and contains a different set of paints than what I’m used to using. The notebook is a Stillman and Birn pocket Beta:

I went to develop film last week, and also went to an artist’s open house and splurged on a new painting. Have good art on your walls. It makes a difference.

Have a great week!

Nikecraft ISRU Summer Camp

Yesterday was the last day of Tom Sachs and Nikecraft’s I.S.R.U Summer Camp challenge. Since the 17th of August you could download the ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization) app and participate in a series of “rituals” to earn points towards getting the chance to purchase Sachs’s coveted Mars Yard 3.0 Nike sneakers.

Tape waiting for the Out and Back ritual

So what’s the deal with the shoes? You can see a film about the Mars Yard shoes here, but for me personally they are just cool shoes with an interesting design story. I downloaded the app out of curiosity and even though I participated in all the “rituals” and am currently in the 95th percentile of people on the ISRU app’s leaderboard, I doubt that I will get the chance to purchase them.

Part of my wall in the ISRU app.

I’m writing about this challenge and this app because after a month and a half of participation I think the rituals and habits that I garnered from the experience are worth sharing.

There are six daily rituals in the app, and they were revealed week-by-week. If you plan on participating, I’d suggest adding all the rituals gradually and in the same order that they were added in the app: you are building a set of disciplines after all.

The rituals are:

  • Ten Free Throws – shoot 10 free throws at something. I settled on a small box and a crumpled piece of paper as a ball, and I use an orange and a black sharpie to keep score on the box. This seems silly but it’s a lot of fun and a quick palette cleanser in the middle of the day.
  • Output Before Input – if there’s only one ritual/habit that you should take from this it’s this one. When you wake up, don’t reach for your phone. Create something instead. I started out this ritual by journaling, but now I’m sketching in the morning and it’s the best way to start the day.
  • Out and Back – another great habit – run for 20 minutes, and mark the halfway point. I run for more than 20 minutes usually, and there are rest days when I walk, but this has been a great reminder to get out there and move.
  • Wall Drawing – tire out your arms with push ups, and then draw a line on a “wall” (either a real one or a piece of paper). Stop when your line touches a previous line or when you lift your pencil up from the wall or when you reach the end. Mark your stopping point with a red X. This is a way to get push ups and some interesting artwork done.
  • Read Before Bed – read a physical book before bed instead of staring at a screen. Excellent ritual, and one that I really needed.
  • Medicine Ball – create your own medicine ball out of cans, bubble wrap and duck tape (I used the one in the gym), and perform 5 daily exercises with it.

Apart from these there was a one time “Choose Your Ritual” challenge where you had to create a 1 minute or less movie about your ritual and upload it to the app. This was a tough challenge, but it got me to learn iMovie and how to edit videos on my phone, so I really appreciate it.

Even though the challenge has ended I’ve decided to continue doing these daily rituals and updating the app. These are just good habits to have and the ISRU app is a pretty great habit tracker for these.

There are also some great films that were uploaded to the app as part of the challenge. My favourite is How to Learn How to Surf.

How about you? Did you participate in the challenge? Are you interested in any of these rituals?

Weekly Update: Impressionism, Cal Newport and Inkvent End

Inkvent

I’m finally done with reviewing the Diamine Inkvent 2024 Black Edition calendar and it’s been exhausting. I haven’t been able to get a proper buffer for the even this year, which meant that I was chasing every post every day.

On the plus side, it was nice to dust off 25 bears and sketch them. My sketching and my blogging had been in a rut recently and this event kickstarted them, so I am grateful for that. I also got some lovely comments from people, which is always wonderful to read.

Wild sunset today

Cal Newport

The latest episode of Cal Newport’s Deep Questions podcast was excellent, and in the final segment Cal discussed his new approach to making a quarterly plan. It’s worth listening to, but basically his idea of pillars and foundations and focusing on a certain pillar at a time really resonated with me. My next quarter will be focused on craft as a pillar, as I want to earn a professional certification and work towards a deeper understanding and more hands on experience with certain more obscure aspects of my job.

Reading

I finished reading the HBR “Dealing with Difficult People” book, and started reading Paul Auster’s “The New York Trilogy”. So far it’s a very Paul Auster book, for good and for bad.

Impressionism

I went to see an Impressionist exhibition, celebrating 150 years to the movement, at the local art museum. The exhibition itself was nice enough, but a bit thin in terms of the artwork on display. There was also a nice print exhibition, and an excellent retrospective exhibition dedicated to Moi Ver. It was wonderful seeing a master photographer at work, and his design work is also worth seeing.

Ci-Contre Moi Ver
Ci-Contre Moi Ver

I went to the museum store later and went a little wild, purchasing a handmade ceramic cup made by a local artist, three postcards (which I wrote on and will give away), and a Leuchtturm1917 A5 dotted notebook that I didn’t need but I wanted anyway. I bought a Leuchtturm notebook the last time I was in that store, and it’s now my work daily driver notebook, so I assume I’ll find use for this notebook soon enough. The paper isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for me for daily fountain pen use.

Have a great week!

Long Time No See: Orlando Update

I recently returned from a three week trip to Orlando, Florida, which is why there have been no posts in a while now here.
The trip was one that my brother and I planned in 2019, and was originally meant to take place in April 2020. Walt Disney World had a Star Wars themed running race weekend in April, and in those heady days of fast passes you could (and should) have booked things 6 months in advance. We had everything planned to the day and to the hour: hotels, restaurants, tours, parties, and rides.

And then there was Covid.

The world, and the parks, shutdown, the races were cancelled, and we went into lockdown.

The Disney World parks eventually reopened, and even started gradually to return to their former glory. In November 2021 the races returned to Disney, with a tearful group of runners standing on the starting line after missing an entire season of races.

I was in the last, and hardest, parts of my chemo treatment at the time.

When I finished treatments my brother insisted on re-booking our planned Disney World trip. We didn’t plan on including a race weekend in it at first, as I didn’t even know if I could run, let alone run 5k and 10k in the Florida heat. We selected a date mostly based on the hurricane season and when the parks would be less busy. Then we realised that it fell on the Halloween season, and potentially a race. After that we expanded the trip to include both the Halloween and the Christmas season, and the Wine and Dine 5k and 10k races. We’d be in the parks in their 50th anniversary. We’d take a few days to see Universal Studios. It was going to be expensive, but a once in a lifetime trip, one that was three years in the making.

EPCOT

It was. It was exhilarating, joyous and intense. We covered all the parks, ran in the races, swam with dolphins, petted a rhino, ate a lot of good food, went to a lot of parties, and had a ton of fun. We walked 25,000 steps a day on average, with some days reaching 35-39,000 steps. We also had a hurricane hit the parks, in a season that is supposed to be hurricane free. But that was also part of the experience.

Christmas Tree in Magic Kingdom

I returned home to jet lag and some family and personal health issues. My dad will need to have an aorta valve replacement surgery in the very near future, and my lungs are only up to 74% capacity. I’m seeing a lung specialist tomorrow, to see if there’s anything that can be done to improve their recovery.

I have the Diamine Inkvent 2022 green advent calendar, and I intend to use it. My original plan was to post reviews of each colour on each day, filling a fountain pen and writing and drawing with it, as I have done in the past. That is still my intention, but as I don’t know what the future will bring, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that.

Diamine Inkvent Advent Calendar

This is the time of year when a lot of people feel a lot of things about their family. Whatever kind of family you have, please take the time to consider that they may not always be there, and you may not always be here for each other. Life has a tendency to be shorter than you planned, and it’s oftentimes more dicey. Try to be gentle, kind, open, and understanding if you can. Most people go through a certain amount of trauma in their lives, and that leaves scars, usually of the kind you can’t see.
Be gentle with each other. We are all there is in the end.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! May 2022 be better than 2021 in every possible way.

From the Yayoi Kusama exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Organising My Thoughts

Organising my thoughts and processes during these trying and turbulent times. Here are some calming photos to pass the time while I’m processing.

This Week’s Long Run: Clouds, Flowers and Ducklings

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, mostly because I’ve cut down on the number of photo stops during my long runs. But this morning’s dramatic cloud cover inspired me to take a few photos, and so here we are 🙂

These clouds passed over me as they made their way inland with a strong breeze, and though they look foreboding and there was rain inland, I was lucky and I didn’t get rained on during my run. It was cool to see the sky darken and then brighten back up again when they passed.

This is a Tamarisk of some kind, but I haven’t been able to nail the exact species yet.

Mama Mallard was taking the ducklings out for a stroll, which was nice to see. They kept running circles around her, with the wild energy of youth.

There was a congregation of Black-headed gulls chilling in the water. The tide and wind was pretty strong but they managed to maintain their position, which was impressive.

10K done, in perfect running weather. I don’t get a lot of those, so I try to cherish them when I do.