When I noticed that my shoot was scheduled for 9/11, my gears started turning. What could I do to commemorate that?”

I’m not sure how well the paper airplanes came out, but I like the photo anyway.

War, war, POW, oil. Drill, prisoner, America, terrorism. Maverick, 9/11, terrorism, al Qaeda, patriot, and don’t forget POW. Noun, verb, terrorism. Noun, verb, POW. Hero, independent, POW, oil, America, oil, maverick.

That about sums it up.

Last night was McCain’s big night — his big chance to even the score. And what did he do? Nothing. What did he say? Nothing. He spent the duration of his speech telling people (lest they forget) that he was once a POW. He even opened his mouth and said point blank that he was a maverick! (You CAN’T do that!!)

But the one thing McCain did NOT do was offer us any idea at all of what his policies would be. Sure, he pandered to the base — anti-abortion, drill for oil, blah blah blah — but in spite of his promises that he would free us from foreign oil, fix education, keep America safe, and fix our economic woes, he did not offer the tiniest clue as to how he meant to do that.

McCain-Palin is looking like an even bigger ideologue than Bush-Cheney was. Both Palin (on Wednesday) and McCain (on Thursday) have offered huge promises for oil companies and anti-abortionists, but in stead of policy, he only discussed ideology. Apparently that’s what’s really important to him. I fear his administration wouldn’t be the same as the last eight years, it would be worse.

The only hint he gave at how anything might get accomplished was perhaps the most chilling indication of all: he instructed people to volunteer for things. So let me get this straight. You want us to elect you to fix our problems, but your plan for fixing our problems is to tell us to get off our asses and fix it ourselves? Then what do we need you for, eh McCain?

Poor people should quit whining and go help other people? What will that accomplish? Probably make them feel better about themselves and stop worrying about being poor, right? So instead of fixing the economy, you think we just need to re-frame it? I’m way too scared to let this asshole become my next President.

Thanks to Mort Snerd for compiling this list of things we know about John McCain, complete with references:

1. He graduated at the bottom of his class at the naval academy. Some reports state that he wouldn’t have graduated at all if not for his father, the decorated admiral.
2. He crashed five planes.
3. He broke both his arms, not from abuse by Viet Cong but failing to hold them in when he ejected after being down.
4. He received special treatment in POW camps due to his father’s position.
5. He gave military and other information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment not afforded other prisoners.
6. He made 32 propaganda films/tapes for the Viet Cong.
7. He was given access to dignitaries and international reporters.
8. He was kept away from other prisoners much of the time (which makes verification conveniently tough).
9. He was given the nickname “Songbird” because he so freely gave out information.
10. He snubbed the villager that saved his life after the crash, but maintained a life-long relationship with one of his captors.
11. He was not promoted after being released, which is often the case.
12. He went to great lengths to have his military and POW records sealed.
13. He also fought to seal the records of other MIA/POW’s and prevent their families from investigating and trying to recover their loved ones.
14. He continues to hedge against benefits for GI’s, even though he is the recipient of those benefits.

So, is he really the great patriot people are making him out to be? Is he really a hero, or just some jackass capitalizing on his former POW status?

Day 1 of the Republican National Convention was canceled due to the hurricane, and then later un-canceled, and mostly a clusterfuck, so I just didn’t bother to watch. And a dramatic Cubs game last night was more important to me than listening to a bunch of wing-nuts talk. But the real meat happens on days three and four.

I can’t help noticing that the Republican party seems horribly out of touch. I heard talk like making people earn a meeting with the United States, and exerting our strength and power. These people are talking as if the U.S. is still the world leader and the lone superpower, holding all the cards in world economy. Haven’t these people been paying attention? We’re broke, unemployed, falling apart, and in debt up to our eyeballs. Exactly what muscle is it that they think we’re going to flex? And even if we did have it, and used it, what would it accomplish?

The speakers look and sound as insincere as a grade-schooler reciting the Gettysburg Address, and that is made more evident by the lack of interest and lack of response in the audience. (Not to mention the lack of attendance.) When they say that John McCain supports women, you can almost see the pain in their eyes over the lie escaping their lips. And I’m not even sure what to say when I see a black man speak about a color-blind society and the camera shows a crowd full of white men in cowboy hats who are not even paying attention to the “colored” man who is speaking. How sad.

Drill, baby, drill. Can’t we stop lying? Can’t we stop pretending that this party cares about the American people, and start being honest about the fact that this is the party of Big Oil?

Maverick, maverick, maverick. Blah, blah, blah. The funny thing about being a Maverick is that you can’t claim to be a Maverick. A real rebel never tells people “hey, I’m a rebel” — they just know.

POW, POW, POW. Blah, blah, blah. This is a bit like playing the race card. It’s like the Seinfeld episode where every time Elaine tries to break up with the boyfriend, he brings up a tragedy and plays the victim card. It’s as if he knows nobody likes him, and he’s trumpeting his POW experience to make it faux pas for anyone to actually say it.

And Sarah Palin. Hmmm… More of the same. Name calling, mud slinging, attack politics. She spent most of her time repeating the same mantra: maverick, maverick, maveric, POW, POW, POW. I heard no substance in her speech. (But there were plenty of LIES.) After all the media, I expected (feared?) that I might hear her talk and take a liking to her, but all that happened is that she set herself out clearly as another brain-dead right-winger who repeats party talking points with no sense of reasoning or logic — another wing-nut who allows ideology to trump logic and common sense.

I suppose I should be excited. I suppose this should give me hope that Obama-Biden is a sure thing. But I can’t help fearing that this means there’s a 50-50 shot at four more years just like the last eight. I’d have been far more encouraged if I thought there was a ray of hope on both sides.

I downloaded Chrome, Google’s new web browser, today and gave it a short test drive. There’s not much to say about it, but here’s what I found:

• No menu bar They’ve taken the application-ness out of the application, and turned it into a direct-to-web browsing experience. This change also leaves more screen real estate for the actual web sites to be viewed without scrolling.
• Less clutter Not only is there no menu bar, but there’s also no status bar, no search box, and with the exception of the start page, there’s no favorites toolbar. It’s a sleek, experience-centric design that reminds me of browsing on the iPhone.
• One box In true Google fashion, everything can be done from one text input box: navigating, searching, opening a bookmark, etc.
• Incognito browsing This is the first time I’ve seen such a straightforward way of surfing the web without leaving a trail. While most web browsers offer cleanup after the fact, Chrome’s incognito window never creates a trail to begin with. I think this is something that most people want, but which might scare managers and parents who want to know what their employees or children are doing online. This may be the one controversial feature of Chrome.
• Fast, attractive rendering Being built on top of Apple’s WebKit browser framework, Chrome loads pages super-fast, and renders them beautifully.

After messing around in Chrome for a few minutes, my experience is basically positive. To a certain extent, I miss the extensibility of Firefox, but at the same time I’m tempted to prefer not having it, due to the incredible performance bloat that occurs once you install a bunch of add-ons. Still, I’d like to be able to hide ads the way Adblock lets me in Firefox. Still, it supports Flash, so apparently there is some extensibility in place already.

I think I’m going to spend the next week or so using Chrome as my main browser and get an idea of how I really feel about it.

One of the many amazing photos I managed to create last night. When the photographer and the model are on the same page mentally, it seems like everything just works. Talent is great, and looks help too, but for me there is nothing more valuable than someone who understands my vision.

My photo shoot last night caused me to miss the entire broadcast of the DNC wrap-up. But when I checked Google Reader afterwards and saw the buzz, I decided to watch the replay on C-SPAN and see what everyone s talking about.

And so it was that I was up until 2:00am watching a rerun of a political broadcast on C-SPAN. (Is there any single sentence that could make me sound like more of a nerd?) But it certainly was worth it.

Barack Obama is a demi-god. There can be no other explanation. The man is incredible. And what better place to give that speech than in a sporting arena in front of 80,000 people, because he certainly hit the ball out of the park.

When he described all the ills of the past eight years and then looked dead into the camera and shouted “Enough!”, I got chills. Finally, someone wants to fix our broken country. (And finally someone is willing to scold the men who are ruining it!)

He pulled no punches, yet made no insults. He attacked like a prizefighter, but never hit below the belt. And he finally gave me the one thing I’ve always felt was missing — substance.

My biggest complaint about Obama was that I never felt like I knew what he stood for, but last night he laid out a very clear, very firm position on every single issue that is important to Americans. And I agreed with him on every last detail of it.

It was a beautiful thing. I can’t help but be excited about the next 70 days, and then the next 4-8 years for our country. Now, where do I get one of those Obama t-shirts?

It seems the Democratic Party has woken up, and they’re pissed.

Always a heroic (and tragically under-heard) voice, Dennis Kucinich ripped into the current administration with his “Wake up, America” speech.

A guy I’ve secretly been a big fan of — Mark Warner — made a challenging speech about what this country could be, and should be doing.

And Hillary really knocked one out of the park. “No way, no how, no McCain.” I’ve never been very fond of her, but I found myself quite inspired by her speech. (And from what I could see, her husband looked mighty proud of his wife.) I kinda liked her orange suit, too. ;-)

I think this finally puts to bed all the talk about the Democrats being too soft, and afraid to attack, because they did exactly that tonight. Far better than the boredom of yesterday.

I turned on the DNC last night while I was painting. After the first night, I came away with a number of impressions on the Democratic party and on their candidate.

Nancy Pelosi

First, I have a hard time viewing Pelosi’s big speech as anything more than a token gesture toward the first ever woman Speaker of the House. She is far from what I’d call a team player, and at this point I feel she’s more of a pawn to the lobbyists and someone who might be more comfortable playing for the red team. Her speech was boring, robotic, and insincere, and that took the all the wind out of the few good things she said.

Jesse Jackson Jr.
While not as bad as Pelosi, I didn’t find myself inspired by Jackson either. If Pelosi was a token to the women, Jackson was a token to the black voters — he was a convenient tie to MLK, and to Chicago. He spoke a little more passionately (only a little), but I think he might actually mean what he says. Still, he lacked the charisma to get people excited. Look, I understand that you’re all reading from a TelePrompTer, but if you’d bothered to look over the speech one time back at the hotel, you might have had a better idea of how to deliver it.

Ted Kennedy
If charisma was lacking for most of the speakers last night, it was made up in spades by the appearance of Ted Kennedy, battling with a terminal and incurable cancer. I listened to most of the night’s events from the next room while painting the walls, but Kennedy’s passion brought out to the front of the tv to pay my full attention. When he’s gone, he’s going to leave a gaping hole in the Democratic party, with some big shoes to fill.

Michelle Obama
If nothing else, it was worth watching the DNC last night just for the chance to learn about Michelle Obama. Even as much as I pay attention to politics — particularly during election season — I have to humbly admit that I knew very little about this woman. After last night, however, I really like her a lot.

I could tell from her speech that Michelle Obama is a truly impassioned woman. In spite of getting fouled up by the TelePrompTer once or twice, I got the impression that she not only read the speech beforehand, but believed in it and practiced it. She spoke with emotion, and the words she said were truly inspiring.

I was moved. As I listened to Mrs. Obama speak, I imagined a country full of patriotism and pride, a brilliant future within my reach. I imagined that this must have been what it was like half a century ago when John Kennedy ran. If “Hope” was the message, she delivered it loud and clear.

The South Side

At no point in the evening can I remember hearing a generic reference to Chicago. Every reference was made to “The South Side of Chicago.” Now perhaps I’m a bit biased, having grown up just a few blocks outside of the south side, but I think this was a really well-used distinction.

The south side is steeped in history, tradition, and reputation. Unlike the forest of skyscrapers and suits that fill the loop, the south side is, and always has been, an underprivileged blue-collar area. It’s a place where nobody is special, not even a hotshot lawyer with a degree from Harvard. On the south side, you can’t insulate yourself from everyone else and be a pretentious snob. Even from inside of a four-million dollar home in Hyde Park, you can still hear the car alarms and the gunshots at night, and you still see the homeless people and the drug dealers around you. Every day.

The Hope I See
The prospect of Barack Obama as president is an exciting one. And it’s important to note that it is exciting regardless of policies, regardless of position, regardless of “the issues.” Barack, and his family, represent real people. If he is elected, he will pave the way for all of us to dream big.

We grow up being told we can be anything we want to be, even President, if we set our minds to it. But as we grow up, we learn what a lie that is, as we watch rich sons of rich fathers exercise their entitlement. We watch the children of wealthy, influential parents fulfill their destiny to keep each other rich at the expense of everyone else.

But Barack Obama is a real person. The son of a single parent? That describes most of the people I grew up with, but it doesn’t describe sons of Presidents or sons of Admirals. A home in Hyde Park is worlds away from an enormous ranch in Crawford, Texas. A guy with a net worth of a few hundred thousand is a stark difference from an oil baron who owns his own baseball team.

Moreover, Barack is young and hip. His wife is young and hip. They’re charismatic, attractive, and exciting. They speak to where this country is and where it can go, rather than the legacy of Presidents we’ve had who just want to keep it the way it is.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m really excited about this candidate, and about what he could mean for our country.

Unlike snapshooters — those who take photos — when you make a photo you have control over your subject. This added control opens up a wealth of new possibilities.

Appearances
Perhaps the most obvious new option is your ability to choose the right look. If your goal is to visualize a hero, for instance, you’ll probably be looking for someone tall and muscular, with friendly facial features. By contrast, portraying a victim will be far easier for someone of a more diminutive stature.

Innocence can represented in a child’s smooth skin, experience in an old person’s wrinkles. Scars tend to make people more imposing. Long hair on a woman can seem matronly, while short hair is playful. Long hair on a man tends to be rebellious, and bald tends to be more intimidating.

Thinner people tend to have very strongly defined features; proper lighting can reveal a whole landscape of muscle, bone, tendons, and veins. Heavier people, on the other hand, tend to have a more smooth shape, with less features.

Special talents
Sometimes the features of the person aren’t as important as what they can do. Do you need someone who can juggle? Someone can can do the splits? Does your idea require someone with great strength, or excellent balance, or the ability to hold still for a long time? While these types of requirement are less common, they do come up when you start taking it upon yourself to make a photo.

Environment
Where you shoot is an equally important part of your subject as who you shoot. The environment has many implications on the feeling of a photo. Synthetic building materials (brick, concrete, steel) tend to make a cold and ominous feeling, whereas more natural settings (consisting of woods, water, grass, flowers) tend to feel more warm and welcome by comparison.

Environment can also create limitations. For instance, you don’t want to shoot tall people inside a typical home, because the space (or focal length of your lens) necessary to fit them into the shot will cause you to catch unwanted details like ceilings and light fixtures. Likewise, most beauty and glamour requires lenses with long focal lengths, which will have you wishing for more working space than what a typical home provides in any of its rooms.