M Y LIFE AT POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY

When I lived in Queens between the ages of 15 and 18, attending Flushing High School, I lived on a street called Kisenna Boulevard.  Today the co-op apartments on the street are inhabited by Chinese people.  When I went back to Flushing a couple of years ago to settle my mother’s affairs, I discovered that the neighborhood was a more interesting place with Chinese restaurants and shops, and now Main Street was teeming with people, like downtown Shanghai, I imagined.  When I was a boy I lived in what was primarily a Jewish neighborhood and  I spent a lot of time visiting my school mate Michael Miller’s apartment, also in the co-op. Michael’s father and mother were well-educated lefties and their home was filled with books and magazines.  What attracted me most was the pile of Popular Photography magazines, which I devoured.  I knew only a little bit about photography, but I had started taking pictures when I was 12. I became a surrogate member of the Miller family and hung out there many hours – and a good part of the time I spent reading those old copies of Popular Photography which, by hook or crook, taught me a lot about technical photography.  Little did I know that someday I would be an editor at Popular Photography.

OVER-AND-UNDER AND OUT

In the early 1980s, when I founded StereoGraphics Corporation, the first bit of revenue income we had came from a venture with Chris Condon of StereoVision International.  Chris was a pioneer in the projection of stereoscopic movies using a single 35mm projector.  He founded the company Century Precision Optics, which is now a part of Schneider; but he moved on from there, sold it, and created StereoVision International because he had a big hit with the ‘70s movie The Stewardesses.  The success of that film set him to work on perfecting a single film approach to stereoscopic projection and photographic techniques.  He settled on the above-and-below (also called over and under or over/under) format based on two two-perforation high subframes with the Scope 2.4:1 aspect ratio occupying the area of the academy aperture. 

LIVE-ACTION STEREOSCOPIC FEATURES

 

As reported in Daily Variety Jeffrey Katzenberg was recently heard decrying the lack of live-action stereoscopic features.  He exhorted the industry to correct this situation.  He was also quoted as musing about his motivation for going beyond the mandate of his own particular self interest, animation, by taking on the live-action cause.  But if there were more live action stereoscopic features in the theaters it will also be good for people who make feature-length animated films, like Katezenberg. 

Link to MacVideo Part 2

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=117128

Surrendering to the Flu

Monday and Tuesday I lay in bed,
Wishing I was very dead.
What I preferred to getting worse,
Was that final ride in a big black hearse.

Link to MacVideo Interview

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=116729

Yoda Beware

Yoda, a grungy puppet,

Demonstrates the worthlessness of charm and wisdom.

A shrill caricature of a wise man,

A shmata paper-maché piece of crap,

Who spouts cliché Eastern philosophy.

Yoda, I deplore your Lego lightsabre,

Your Jedi bullshit.

You punky poseur,

You mock the ephemeral nature of the path.

Of the dharma and the sanga.

You false squeaky voiced phony bodhisattva,

I stand before you naked.

I condemn you.

 

And you, corrupt puppeteer,

Remove your hand

To reveal the broken lifeless spirit of a doll

Without a spine.

3DTV: Chris Ward Responds

The following is a response to my series of pieces on 3D TV (I hate to call them blogs.  It’s an ugly word.) Chris is a distinguished stereographer and entrepreneur and the founder of Lightspeed Design.  They produce industrial videos and the Depth Q stereoscopic projector.  I’ll comment on his remarks in a later posting. 

Radio Flashback

One morning recently, on the way to high school, my son Noah and I listened to the song One Toke Over the Line.  It’s a toe-tapper from the ’60s, but despite its sweet sing-songy melody and seemingly ingenuous lyrics I wouldn’t discount it.  Driving the Honda on Riverside it brought back the ’60s for me. It’s an epoch that extended from, in my estimation, 1965 to 1972.  For a few moments I reflected on what it was like to be alive a little more than 40 years ago.

Summer Dogs

Summer sky without a cloud,
beheld through plum tree limbs set rocking
by my creaking hammock ride,
and on the brokenhearted lawn,
the barking dogs collide.