STB - LTU

I like the way airport codes come in 3 letter abbreviates.

STB - LTU could well be the flight that connects Santa Barbara, Venezuela to La Mole Airport in Saint Tropez of France..... Of course I lied the second part for anyone who wants to check on me coz LTU doesn't exist but LTT would have described the correct latter airport.

In my world however, STB - LTU would more aptly describe people with Short Term Brain - Long Term Use.

My latest peeve is with my residential neighbours......well since I live in a condominium, I don't get to choose who will be staying next to me, above or below me and the lift is a common area for alot of uncommon people to commonly commute.

I was approaching the lift one day when a girl who could not have been more than 5 was standing at the door, blocking people from entering and at the same time preventing the doors from closing. When another resident approached she just stared at him and didn't say a word. Which of course caused quite a shock with the fellow resident who could only hope the next lift would arrive soon less he wants to ride in an enclosed boxed with a psychotic 5 year old who may potentially kill him (hey....watch enough Korean horror movies and you know this Ju-on shit can catch on....)

Then a few minutes later two adults came towards the lift, the girl smiles and hold their hands as all 3 go into the lift.......

Wait a minute.....back up

pu kcab.....etunim a tiaw ......tfil eht otni og 3 lla sa dnah rieht dloh dna selims lrig eht ,tfil eht sdrawot emac stluda owt retal setunim wef a nehT

The two adults......i passed them just now....they were in the convenience store. The woman was telling the man that she does not want that particular loaf of bread, can he get another loaf with a longer expiry date.......

Like a virtual jigsaw puzzle or the pieces of information that comes to life before your eyes and forms an image before the eyes (kinda like Minority Report if you've watched it) the puzzle unfolds and it dawns upon me that the kid was a door stopper that these two adults had to produce so that they can take their own sweet time to buy bread while holding up the lift at a 31 floor condominium. If anything, I think their courtesy and brains have expired from the short term intended use......

Chaos in order

There is a sense of surrreal order in randomness.

To quote Douglas Hofstadter, "It
turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of
order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of
order"

I don't know who he is but feel free to wikipedia him here.

Anyway what he wrote is inertly creepy to think that the yin and yang of chaos or randomness against law and order, can be so well summarised in two lines.

Point is, I've started out on lomography. Its a lifestyle photography that actually focuses more on the essence of capture and not the technique of capture. It draws much fun from chaotic photography that we have since left behind in search for the holy grail of crisp cut clear photography.

Bar the new models that has switched to digital age, it was essentially film photography using overpriced plastic cameras with plastic lenses causing the picture to distort and be over saturated with colours and overexposed in many shots. To make things even more messy, the processing or cross processing as the lomography society would prefer to term it, uses the right chemicals on the left type of film (sorry, i mean wrong chemicals on the right type of film....er......right chemical on the wrong type of film...ahhh).

The results?

1. You separate the digital babies from the crop
I was amazed at how many people who do not know the existence or how to operate a film camera. They have no idea what a view finder is. And everyone is looking for the huge LCD screen to preview their pics before they shoot. Shit.....its as good as someday people will forget manual cars existed and automatic gear shifts were the ONLY types in production.

2. You separate the cool from the rigid
Rigid people like to have clear pictures. A little blurry and they call it a bad picture. There is no appreciation of colours and accidents and these people I hope will most likely die a little younger or die much more miserable when they cannot see that colours are a blend of many types and nothing should be as clear as they want it to be

3. Separate the anal from the rest
Anal people cannot stand the fact that they have no control over the outcome of their work. Like all digital cameras be it point and shoot or the digital SLR, everyone is so concerned of the outcome. Snap once, preview the pic. If its bad, delete and reshoot. If its bad, delete and reshoot. And it goes on. These are the people who will harp over and over again on details that they want to have control over. They cannot accept that sometimes things are out of their control.

actually the list can go on indefinitely but suffice for now.

Lomography is more than just photography. It is putting the fun into funtography. Anyone can pick up a digital camera and snap 5 frames a second with the new dSLR and hope that one shot in 50 will be a good one and post it on their facebook. Anyway can snap digitised photos and touch it up before print. Anyone can pick up a digital camera and take decent pictures with the 10 to 20 preset settings, inbuilt light meter, and facial/smile recognition software installed. But not everyone knows what they are doing. Its the chaos in the facade of order.

Lomography? Its not about the technique. Its a lifestyle. Nuff said.