Aaron Paul Vogel

UPDATE: I've removed the Flickr SSP feed as I'm switching over to a more controllable environment for putting my photographs online: Photoshelter

Well, there it is. I've managed to get Slide Show Pro to load images from my Flickr account. These happen to be tagged with "Portfolio". Some cool things: 1) you'll notice that if you click on an image not only does it pause the slide show, but it links back to that image in Flickr, allowing you to make comments or add notes. 2) This was SOOOOO easy. I wrote maybe 10 lines of code and let iViewMedia Pro, Picture Sync and Mars Edit do all the heavy lifting. Some not so cool things: 1) you'll notice that I only have 10 images in my slideshow. Not my fault. It seems that Flickr limits the number of images you can load via RSS to 10. That's lame, and is really going to limit the usefulness of this technique. For now I'm going to leave it up, but don't be surprised if I edit it to load differently in the future.

Today I joined my friend Daryl Peveto at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., to record an interview with VII photographer Joachim Ladefoged. The VII photography agency held a seminar at ACC this weekend; which I did not attend after blowing a wad on Southern Short Course last weekend. I was, however, more than happy to drive down to meet Daryl and Joachim for the interview. I highly recommend you use the link above and take a look at his work. One of his primary focuses was Albania and the war in Kosovo. A few years ago he became a father and has since ceased his coverage of war, but has moved on to topics and stories no less interesting, including bodybuilders, mental hospitals, sex workers and a personal essay on his childhood in Denmark.

To gear up for the interview I decided to bring two means of recording so I could adapt to wherever we might be situated. I packed my messenger bag with both my portable setup - Microtrack, a few cables, and two wireless lavaliere kits - and my less portable setup - my laptop, Firebox, lots of cables including an extension cord, two dynamic mics, super-claps rigged as tabletop mic stands, and a small external hard drive. The reason for this was mostly education-driven. I had been considering the Firebox as a portable studio piece; something I could take with me to use for multichannel recording in a semi-controlled environment. The interview with Joachim seemed like just the place I might want to use such a device. It would allow for the use of dynamic mics over the lavalieres and should have drastically improved the sound quality.