I stumbled on Mark Hogencamp while reading one of my favourite film news sites: Twitchfilm.net. I hadn't heard anything about Hogencamp before until the write up about the film of his work premiering at SXSW:

Meet Mark Hogancamp. In April of 2000, Mark was attacked outside a bar in New York State and literally beaten to death by a group of five men. Though Mark would be revived by paramedics he would spend nine days in a coma and awake brain damaged and so badly battered that his own mother didn't even recognize him. The beating was so severe that his entire memory was in tatters.

Okay, that got me.

Hogencamp makes films and photographs dioramas he creates using Barbie dolls and scale WWII props to make up a world he calls MARWENCOL, a combination of his name and the names of two women in his life. Because he doesn't remember a lot, he has created this fantasy world to create his own stories.

PHOTO THEORY from marwencol on Vimeo.

All I know is that I'm not one of them though I know one who is.

New York Times: Essay: Too Many Angles on Suffering?

One of my talented musician friends Adriane Lake let me know that they are featuring her tune "Jacques Cousteau" (and my picture of her) on CBC's Radio 3 website as the track of the day. It's a cool song, good album and you should give it a listen to on that page.

After seven hours on my feet trying to transfer what little knowledge I have to several groups of eager newbie Strobists I'm again awed at those of you who teach for a living. I'm still tired one day after the Vancouver Strobist newbie meet and also pretty energized. 19 students*, 5 models and four helpers. With that kind of activity either you shut down because of the whirlwind noise or you party it up.

I needed that.

I'm still moving, selling a home and have bits of my life scattered through three locations. I hadn't planned to have a big photo meet at the same time as I was changing my life around; it just happened that way. And you know what? It was a welcome break.

A group of the more experienced Vancouver Strobists will be holding a newbie intro session in the studios of the Vancouver Photo Workshops this Saturday. There'll be nearly thirty of us taking over the place and hopefully making a good impression on the nice people there. It will be an all-day affair with models, lighting and cheap cheap pizza. Ah good times.

It's a strange feeling getting ready a house for someone else to move into. Do you want it? It's been hardly lived in. A little more than a year, actually. The people who built it did not waste any expense on the nice things and for the amount of space, the layout really made it feel spacious. Anyway, I'll let the agent do the rest of the pitching.