an eye in the world » blog

The Wilderness of Winter

Grant — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:43:38 +0000

I came across a wonderful little blog by a commercial photographer the other day–what I love about it is that he gives us little glimpses of his life, not the nitty-gritty of a shoot or his lighting techniques or equipment reviews. He simply bears just a little bit of his soul as he writes about what it is like to be him: a photographer, father, and artist.

See it here: http://thomasbroening.blogspot.com/

I mention it because I should aspire to such blog writing feats. Or maybe I could at least just update this more than once every two months.

I do want to say that CPE Unit 2 (of 4) was finished last week. That means I’m halfway done with my CPE residency! It’s 1) incredible exciting that I’ve made it this far 2) motivating to think I’m not going to have this program in 6 months, so I’d better use the time wisely in units 3 and 4. It will be back to the “real world” all too soon. Though after this, seminary is going to be like cruising in a convertable on a mid-summer’s day.

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new blog home

Grant — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:17:17 +0000

Well, after several weeks, I this blog finally has a new look and a new home. For now, grantkinney.com will host just this blog. Over the next year, I hope to develop the website to hold both portfolios of my projects and insights into what I’ve learned about photography and the creative process.

I can’t promise I’ll be updating frequently, since I’ve started a very emotionally intense full-time+ residency doing hospital chaplaincy work in San Francisco (more on this in another post). But I will at least be posting some photographs fairly often, as I spend my early mornings before work processing the several thousand pictures I took this past summer.

For those who are interested in blogging themselves and would like to know some details, this website uses Hostican for web hosting, Wordpress for the blogging software and interface, and the Just Simple Wordpress theme with a significantly modified CSS stylesheet.

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editing your blogger template with CSS

Grant — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:15:00 +0000

If you’ve ever tried to customize your blogger page template, you might have run into something called CSS, or “cascading style sheets.” I don’t know very much about these, although now I know more than I when I first started this blog.

I want to point you to a video tutorial on CSS, at Sitepoint. When I first tried to tweak the look of my blog (widening the main text column and the header, for example), I just used a whole lot of trial and error as I edited the template. I wish I would have seen this video first, it would have gone much more quickly.

It runs about 17 minutes, and if you want the additional videos in the series, you have to pay, but the first one is free. It’s a great overview, explaining both the “why” and the “how” of CSS, nice and slowly. You definitely need a very basic understanding of web coding in html if this is going to be useful to you, however.

CSS Video Tutorial

There’s also an overview video of AJAX here, the technology behind most of the fancy web applications that keep popping up.

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forgiveness

Grant — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:23:00 +0000

A fellow classmate in my “Mind, Habit, Change, and Conversion” class this past semester did a project on forgiveness. He wanted to expand the paradigm of forgiveness from a way of responding to major transgressions and additionally frame forgiveness as a mindset that we cultivate day-to-day. Ideally, we would all practice forgiveness moment to moment in our lives, forgiving everyone from the driver that cuts us off to the spouse that betrays us.

I find his idea similar to Buddhist notions of mindfulness or the Christian ideal of praying constantly in every moment. Obviously you could take this in the wrong direction and become everyone’s metaphorical doormat, but I find some wisdom in what he was doing.

This is even more interesting when you consider his context: as an independent lawyer who often takes on cases involving tenant rights. He says that one of the common expectations that clients have is that he will be a “tool of vengeance” by helping them win lots of money from people who have committed transgressions against them. These expectations seem to go somewhat beyond the system’s intent, which is to compensate people for damage and harm done to them.

I hope that today you will practice forgiveness and forgive me, as it’s been so long since I posted anything on this blog!

It is now summer, and while I actually do have one more paper to finish by the end of this week before my semester is officially over, I’m looking forward to the free time this summer holds. In addition to much more frequent blog updates, I’m expanding my posting scope, so it’s not just my supposed deep thoughts and photographs, but lots of random stuff I run across that you might find interesting, everything from YouTube videos I like to tips on making cheap photo equipment. It will be a little more rough around the edges and stream of consciousness, which will hopefully make it a little more personal too.

So, if you’re willing to give me a fresh start, check back every couple of days for some random interestingness in my small corner of the web.

Much love,
G

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an update

Grant — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:32:00 +0000

well friends,

I missed my self imposed deadline to start updating in the middle of January. Life happens, I guess. I’m back in grad school full time now so things are very busy. Admittedly, updating this blog every other day is an ambitious goal, one I probably won’t be able to meet. But I’ll keep trying, nevertheless. Robin and I haven’t even gotten all of the New Year’s cards out yet, and it’s halfway through February!

Though I haven’t updated in a while, I have been thinking about the purpose of this blog: here are my thoughts so far:

Sharing my photographs
Keeping in touch with friends and family
Expressing my thoughts about life as I am living it
Sharing random internet material I think is worth experiencing
Reflecting on the process of making art, both my creative process and the technical aspects of photography

I’m unsure at this point how much privacy should be a concern. I like to be open with the world, but I don’t want the information here to someday be used against me. At this point, I can’t think of a way it would be, but I’m playing it safe for now. So, if I sound a little vague as to the specifics, shoot me an email and I’d be happy to fill in the details.

The photograph above was taken on Valentine’s day from somewhere near the Emeryville/Berkeley border along the SF Bay shoreline. I’ve been wanting to explore shooting some long exposure black and whites (after seeing the work of these two photographers, Michael Kenna and Brian Chapman) and this seemed like a good place. I noticed the ruins of the pier while riding my bike one day and vowed to return as soon as I could.

The softness of the water comes from a 30 second exposure time. I had to wait until just the right time after sunset so that the exposure would be right for this shutter speed. Click on the picture to see some other pictures from this shoot.

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welcome friends, new and old

Grant — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 08:46:00 +0000

For those who’ve found this site from the New Year’s cards we sent out, thanks for looking! This blog has not quite gone live yet, but check back later (probably around mid-January), when my hope is that I’ll be posting at least every other day.

My intention for this blog is primarily as a platform to share my photographs and thoughts about seminary, living in Oakland, CA, and finding my identity as I search for a vocation in life. Robin’s blog can be found at http://www.xanga.com/rkinney, but she hasn’t been updating recently. Given her job and how hard she works at teaching and getting through to her students, I can’t blame her–she’s very busy. Leave a comment on her blog, and she might be inclined to post more often if she knows others are reading.

We miss all of you! Moving to California has been quite an adventure, and we’ve left too many friends behind. I hope this will be a way for you to keep apprised of what I’ve been thinking about and what Robin and I have been doing (should you be interested, that is). Please feel free to leave comments on the posts, even if just to say hi, so I know who’s reading. Also, if you have a blog, let me know about it, and you’re welcome to link to this one.

Blessings,
Grant

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