photography

In Praise Of The Coney Island

In Praise of the Coney Island

I’ll tell anyone who will listen: I’m a fan of the coney island hot dog.

You have chili dogs, and kraut, and brats, and Chicago style, and whatever NY happens to be bragging about, and all the rest – and I love those, too. But to me, the coney island is the hot dog style.

When I worked in downtown Jackson, Michigan, I had two coney islands across the street from my office. Every Friday, I’d hit up the Virginia Coney Island and, every week, order “the usual”: two coneys, fries, and a diet Coke.

I miss that. So I try to grab a coney for lunch wherever and whenever I can – even a Detroit-style coney, like the ones above from Lafayette Coney Island across from Campus Martius in downtown Detroit.


Around the Albion Neighborhood

Summer. Walks around the town. Noon sun staring down at all of us.

And gnomes watching our every move.

For the past few summers, I’ve made it a point to take long walks around Albion’s neighborhoods. The challenge is to find the photo-worthy in everyday life: yards, signs, porches, etc.

It just goes to show that no matter how “boring” you think your area is, there’s always something to find.


GḶI†ÇH

I first became aware of glitch art thanks to Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero album. There was something about the VCR-looking graphics that helped highlight the mystery and DIY philosophy of the album.

The way you go about glitch art is pretty cool: you open up a graphics file in a text editor, and hack away at the code. The image that comes out the other end is super random. Hence, glitch.

But now you can automate this stuff using apps. One that I find is really fun and creative is MOSH, a web app that lets you upload image files and glitch them. It’s not over the top and obnoxious, and has a kind of aesthetic to it.

I took a bunch of image files (above) and ran them through MOSH, keeping the aesthetic semi similar with each image. It’s easy to create a whole series of images that have the same look, but still get the glitch look. I really dig the Scanlines filter (giving you that old TV/VCR look), and the Bleach and InstaColor settings.

MOSH is a fun way to make some truly creepy and horror movie-style effects. I do wish the app spit out bigger image files, but the website says an iOS app is coming, so maybe that will help.