PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • Making ideas happen

    Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, written by Scott Belsky, keeps the principle that an idea and the belief in that a central, well conceived idea is the core of making things happen. The book is broken down into three sections with practical tips and anecdotes to organizing and executing, connecting with others (he calls it building a community) and leadership. The tone is confident and some times cerebral, but grounded with enough stories to visualize what he’s talking about. Those stories can apply to individuals, teams in a corporate environment or non-corporate environment.

    Organization and Execution
    In the first section, Belsky suggests that when you have an idea, keep focused on it and create actionable steps to build momentum and confidence. Prioritization and identifying what’s essential is key in the beginning. It’s easy to keep adding to the idea, but you’ve got to be critical and keep to what matters.

    Community
    Don’t be afraid to partner with others. Know yourself, particularly if you’re a Dreamer (someone who can think up ideas), a Doer (someone who can execute) or an Incrementalist (someone who can do both–these are rare, he says, and he compares them to polymaths). Share ideas with others to get feedback and refine the idea. Let people in to build something bigger than just an executed plan.

    Leadership
    Know what really motivates people when it comes to doing things–play and recognition. If someone is doing something that doesn’t feel like work, that the task or project engages someone enough, they’ll do amazing work. Recognition for hard work also motivates people. Be sure to know what skills compliment each other, and know when to have a devil’s advocate to restrain a project from overreaching.

  • Rock Gods – Forty Years of Rock Photography

    Rock Gods: Forty Years of Rock Photography by Robert M. Knight is a diverse collection of photos that span his entire career. He’s taken pictures of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck and many more.

    He focuses on lead guitarists, and his body of work shows that, especially with his live concert shots. Knight excels at the live concert photography. He says his approach is like a journalist or someone doing a documentary, where looking at the photos afterward they come to life in a more visceral way.

    In Rock Gods, he tells stories about some of his memorable shoots. Greeting Led Zeppelin in Hawaii as they walk off they plane carrying the master reels to Led Zeppelin II. Meeting Jeff Beck for the first time, after years of trying. And as he’s known for, being the last photographer to shoot Stevie Ray Vaughn.

    After paging through the book, I wanted more. More of his old concert shots, more of his more recent work. For photographers, viewing Knight’s work can tell a lot about composition and lighting–what worked, what moment created that visceral feeling you get from a concert photo.

  • Digital Masters by Nancy Brown

    Digital Masters: People Photography: Capturing Lifestyle for Art & Stock (A Lark Photography Book) by Nancy Brown is perfect for the Mom With A Camera crowd, who own a digital SLR and want to get into the portrait business. The tone of the book isn’t overly technical, and what technical aspects are mentioned are basic so that one can have a working understanding of equipment. Her tip of having a reflector for outdoor, sunny portraits will help a lot of people. For the most part, she focuses on the process and how to approach the shoots. The sample shots look like stock photos (which is one area she specializes in) of children or people in their 50s, 60s or 70s.

  • Catfish

    Catfisha movie about the Facebook age and tells a story about identity, truth, love, art and perhaps mental illness. It’s shot in a documentary style and works best if you know nothing of the plot. The suspense builds, peaking on a horse farm in Michigan, and then the twist arrives, bringing a cautionary and emotional denouement too soon. Too soon because, depending on your point of view, it’s either a pitiful story or cynical fable or plain stupid hoax.

  • A Day in the Future

    As I rise and stretch, I notice I’m sore. Not from tending the fields though. I have no fields. Some unseen person does all the field-tending for me. Sometimes I forget that there’s any field-tending going on at all.

    Lyrically written.

  • Curation is the new search

    Google has been much maligned of late, due to its increasingly spammy and gamed results. Paul Kedrosky makes a point that curation of web content will be on the rise.

    The answer, of course, is that we won’t — do them all by hand, that is. Instead, the re-rise of curation is partly about crowd curation — not one people, but lots of people, whether consciously (lists, etc.) or unconsciously (tweets, etc) — and partly about hand curation (JetSetter, etc.).

  • Risk Everything

    A user, riskeverything, on Reddit, responded to a thread, entitled “What small decision did you make that altered the entire course of your life?” with the story of his handle.  It spans three continents and involves London’s Big Ben clock tower.

    I go to London and on first day I went to big ben. I want to get the standard tourist shot – me and BB (cheezy but I am an australian and it is the other side of the world!). Was about to ask this guy to take my photo and he lay down on the grass and shut his eyes.

    I turned to the nearest person. It was a girl reading a paper and asked her to take my photo.

    That was the easy part.

  • Dan Wells – Mr. Monster

    The second book of the I Am Not a Serial Killer series, Mr. Monster, begins shortly after the first.  John Wayne Clever still harbors feelings of a sociopath after killing the demon, Mr. Crowley.  John’s life seems to be copacetic for the moment, and improving with the growth of his relationship with Brooke as a high school girlfriend.  Yet, mysterious bodies begin to appear in random, public places, and John believes a second killer is amongst the town.  The last third of the book is between John and the killer with a unique twist that provides believable, psychological suspense.  There, John also battles his own inner demons.  The books subplots of John’s sister’s boyfriend, and Brooke tie in very well in the book’s final act.

  • Favorite 2010 albums

    2010 was a great year for music with great releases from many artists and bands and across genres. I didn’t get to listen to everything that the kids at Stereogum, Pitchfork or your local newspaper get to sample, but I managed to pick 6 albums as my favorites. Not necessarily the best, but albums that I’ll most likely keep queuing up on my iPhone. Without further ado.

    1. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More: The whole album is a revival of the soul.  From beginning to end, the raucous and swirling combination of bluegrass, folk and rock cover the entire spectrum of emotion.  The album is immediately accessible to the casual listener.  As for individual songs, Little Lion Man was the radio hit, but Awake My Soul, The Cave and Timshel highlight the band’s range.  Seeing Mumford live is a must with the songs possessing more intensity as a crowd of 3,000 sings along.
    2. The National – High Violet:  Dark, brooding and complex, The National created a challenging listen.  Modern themes of anxiety, paranoia and alienation aren’t easy sells.  It may take several spins to fully appreciate Terrible Love, Anyone’s Ghost or Runaway.  Lemonworld is the most upbeat track while Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks serves as the album’s cathartic closer.
    3. The Head and the Heart – The Head and the Heart:  They possess a unique blend of folk and full band singer songwriter acoustics.  Ghosts, Lost in My Mind, Sounds Like Hallelujah and Heaven Go Easy on Me stand out in their debut.
    4. Sleigh Bells – Treats: Noise pop, fuzz-distortion rock, whatever you want to call it, Treats is a loud, thumping amalgam of noise and dreamy, sugary vocals.  At 32 minutes, it’s the proper length to get your blood going without causing aural exhaustion.  Tell ‘Em begins the assault, Infinity Guitars throttles and the one, two, three of Rachel, Rill Rill and Crown on the Ground provide the hooks.
    5. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record: Broken Social Scene continue to do what they do best, create instrumental driven songs that you can tap your toes, bob your head or sway side to side to. Texico Bitches, Meet Me In the Basement and Water in Hell are standouts.
    6. Bruno Mars – Doo-Wops & Hooligans:  The best pop album of the year features a ukulele prominently.  From the thrashing Grenade, soon-to-be-played-at-every-wedding Just the Way You Are, Marry You, Count on Me… it’s an enjoyable confection without any filler or hollow tracks.  (I’m looking at you, Black Eyed Peas.)

    Some other thoughts:

    Arcade Fire deserve a mention as The Suburbs was a good album, but I think it felt too long.  They deserve props for what they were trying to do.  Kanye and his Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy proves he’s a premiere artist with a vision and ego.  Taylor Swift’s Speak Now blended growing introspection, song craft and tabloid media into pop culture.  Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor made a punk rock concept album using the Civil War as an allegory to modern life.

  • Disney, masters of theme park operations

    Disney has theme park logistics down to a nimble operation that monitors all aspects of a park. They use a combination of weather reports, historical records, airline and hotel reservations to predict park capacity, but once the Magic Kindom opens, ride queues, cash registers at in park restaurants, foot traffic in particular areas are all monitored from a command center. From central command, more boats can be deployed if the queue reaches a certain thresh hold. Or:

    Another option involves dispatching Captain Jack Sparrow or Goofy or one of their pals to the queue to entertain people as they wait. “It’s about being nimble and quickly noticing that, ‘Hey, let’s make sure there is some relief out there for those people,’ ” said Phil Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, the flagship Disney World park.

    And sometimes, they even throw parades.

    What if Fantasyland is swamped with people but adjacent Tomorrowland has plenty of elbow room? The operations center can route a miniparade called “Move it! Shake it! Celebrate It!” into the less-populated pocket to siphon guests in that direction.

    It seems like a fun way to earn more dollars.