Last winter, I almost bought the Canon 5D Mark II. I bought this camera instead. $13 on ebay, sweet leather case included. It was a way of purposefully limiting myself gear-wise, and rediscovering film. Plus, I had a strong hunch that Canon would be coming out with the poor man’s version of the 5D before long, and that proved to be true.

The Argus C3 has a lot of history behind it. You can read about it here. Most importantly, it seems to be responsible for 35mm becoming the dominant film format. In other words, defining photography as most of us know it; including digital.

I’ll talk a little more about how the camera works in later posts, and get some sample images up. For now, I will say that it’s really fun to use and figure out.

Austin’s White Denim live at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill on April 2nd.

The Bottom of the Hill is one of SF’s best rock clubs. They get a lot of top-shelf acts coming through, and it’s an intimate space. Great place to see music. I have gotten to know Lynne a little bit, who handles promotion and serves up a mean vodka tonic. She is a very nice person, as is a couple of the other people that work there. As far as the posters, it went over well. She only asked that I give her a couple copies, and I hooked the band up as well with a couple as well. Good vibes all around, so that was positive. Music-wise, it was definitely a rocking show… but loud as all hell, at least up front. If I had known they sold earplugs at the bar I would have bought a set for sure.

Look for a Great Lake Swimmers poster I did for the same venue coming soon… which just happened to be on the next night! I’m hoping to do more as time goes on with this great venue.

We checked out an opening for artist / ad guy Mike Shine (of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners) at the Yerba Buena Folk Art center last night. Pretty cool, he recreated his Bolinas surf shack inside the gallery. His art is a mashup of old mexican movie posters, norse art, and beaux arts re-revival… if that makes any sense. See Unnecessary Umlaut for more pics. Take a peek at Shine’s own site, too.

We caught Mister Ward live at the Palace of Fine Arts. He was there supporting his new album, which is solid and consistent with his other stuff. Great show. He’s a better guitarist than he gets credit for, and damn good at piano too. Also, the sound engineering in this hall was nearly perfect, up there with the best I have ever seen…err, heard. It was like sitting in front of a high quality stereo. And the window projection up there in the right was fun, it changed subtly with the mood of the songs. My favorite was the sunset that moved into dusk with fireflies flitting about… this accompanying a solo song with mellow acoustic slide, heavy on the reverb. Nice work. Check out his official site for tour dates, and catch him if he comes to town.

TV on the Radio played live at the Warfield, here in San Francisco on Sunday night. Good stuff, and the opening act, The Dirtbombs, wasn’t bad, either. Some more photos here.

If you aren’t familiar with Wright’s work, it’s worth investigating, regardless of what field of art or design you are involved with. Wright’s work was so far ahead of it’s time, and at the same time, timeless. The Hanna house (and others) look as though they could have been designed and built today, and featured in Dwell magazine as contemporary architecture. Historical photos of these houses with old Studebakers parked in the carports throws one off a bit; the Hanna house was designed and built in 1936. As with all of Wrights designs, the house was so well thought out, right down to every detail; even the direction that visible screw-heads are pointed in! Which happens to be horizontal, matching the sightlines of the house. The Hanna house is a concept house based on a hexagon, and proportions that come from that. The floorplan renderings alone are a work of art.

Perhaps I’ll add more information to this post later; I could go on and on about details of the house and of Wright. But maybe a look at the photos of the Hanna house and some cursory research can explain much more.

Update, Sep. 28:
Charles sent over a couple historical photos of the Hanna house; the landscape was a lot more open then, and it shows the somewhat out of place looking period cars in the carport.

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UPDATE, Aug. 16:
The ‘empty’ spots you’ll see on the map are areas with little or no data service. Also, AirMe is a little flukey when driving in and out of service areas, it will keep trying to upload and apparently not realize it has already uploaded a photo successfully. I had the same photo uploaded about 15 times without knowing it!

UPDATE 2, Aug. 22:
The author of the AirMe app has released an update to fix the duplicate uploads. Works much more smoothly now. Also, I’ve learned that if you are in an area with no town nearby, AirMe will just put in “United States” as the area. Given that you are in the U.S. of course.