On Friday night Laura and I went up to the Cleveland Museum of Art - neither of us had been there since the renovation was completed. I'm not a big fan of the looks of the new building from the outside but it did add a considerable amount of space on the inside. The huge glass atrium(above) is pretty cool but gives me the same feeling as the newish lobby at the Akron Art Museum - tons of new space but not necessarily exhibition space - I guess these places are meant to be a show piece and bring people in for other events?
In high school photography class we made collages with cut-outs from magazines and glue sticks before we shot any photos - no one at the time would have thought of the way it could now be done in Photoshop. The above collage came about while I was trying to makes something entirely different - I kept heading down a different path and ended up with this Akron homage. 
"My name is Tim ...and I take photos of Akron."
Yesterday was a beautiful day in the former Rubber Capital, albeit still really cold. I'm not usually one to complain too much about the weather - but I am getting sick of the cold fingers on the camera at this point - especially on a day where standing in one place waiting for the sun/clouds is necessary. Anyways - I did my usual park at Cascade Locks and walk into and around downtown. I like doing it on Sundays when I can catch photos without much traffic. Nothing too groundbreaking for me here - just more Akron shots from different angles on a very pretty evening.
Last night I went to see David Giffels speak and read from his newly released book, 'The Hard Way on Purpose' at the Akron Public Library. It was the second time I have seen him read in person and it was fantastic. (As I've mentioned before - I had the honor of taking the author shot that appears on the back of the book jacket and in the promo material). David does a great job at his readings keeping things entertaining and added off-the-cuff remarks that really played to the hometown crowd. Even though the book is about living in the Rust Belt(particularly Akron) many of the themes will still be universal. I would really like to see a reading in another city to see which lines get the most laughs. After the reading there was a Q&A that got rolling really well - David kept the crowd laughing until the library had to shut it down to get to the signing - which made sense - I think it would have gone all night...
Walking The Ledges Trail at Virginia Kendall always feels like a walk through history for me - and I'm not talking about the geological history of the sharon conglomerate. I started hiking here as a little kid with my Dad, running cross country practices, a high school photography field trip, one of the first places I took my original digital camera, countless hikes with various friends, and on and on - there is a memory around every rock and turn. 
With the warmer weather I had to get out into the woods. I went in the evening on Friday and Saturday down in the Valley. I expected it to be muddy but I didn't think about the fact that the creeks and streams would be so swollen with melt water that they would be impassible in places. On Saturday I had to cut my hike short because I couldn't find a suitable place to cross Langes Run. On Friday evening I hiked farther because I had to find ways around what would normally be small ditches. It was still good to get out in the fresh, late-Winter air though...
'New Mustard Seed'
Apparently it is the 25th birthday of the "internet" today. Maybe you've heard of it? 
On Friday my friend Josh I and I headed down to Canton to take in the opening of 'Man Ray: A Surreal Vision' at the Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography. The show consisted of photogravures pulled from a limited edition book of Man Ray's work. I've never been a giant Man Ray fan but thought that maybe seeing his work in person might change my mind. To be honest it didn't. I more appreciate him in a historical way than on a simple aesthetic level. I'm well aware that his Rayograms(photograms) and solarizations were innovative at the time - but they are also some of the first techniques we learned in my high school photography class. Its just hard for it to feel fresh or exciting now. You have to know that they are "Man Ray's" to appreciate them. To me the analogy is when Radiohead switched to making records that to me sounded like a bunch of noises - people would say to me "but no one has ever done this before" - and I would say, "I can appreciate that - but it still sounds like a bunch of bleeps and bloops".
This is my film take on the photo shoot that broke out with my friends a few weekends ago. These are the kind of photos where the Rokkor 55mm f/1.7 shines - that 3d look it can give to portrait/people shots. I love it. I've written about this lens many times - the kit lens for a late 60's early 70s Minolta SRT-101 - not even Minolta's top of the line lens. No matter - nothing in my collection tops it(not even the 1000 dollar lens on my Canon 7D) - I think it almost defines my black and white film look. I used to try out the other lenses in the 50mm range in my Minolta collection but every time I did I regretted not having those shots with this...
I've never really captured Laura and I bottling any of our beers so today I was glad I was able to capture a few when we bottled our wine. The larger size of the wine bottles afforded me a little more time. I filled the bottles with our homemade Cabernet and Laura corked them with our new floor corker(courtesy of the Cleveland Brew Shop). Everything seemed to go pretty smooth for a couple of first time wine makers. We ended up with about 3/4 of a bottle at the end of bottling - so we figured we better test it out. It was pretty good even though it tasted fairly "green" - with some age its going to be pretty nice. They say to wait at least two months before drinking it - we'll see how we do. As a side note we got our black IPA in bottles on Saturday - which I'm very excited to try out when its finished carbonating. 