We went to Michigan City for a week with the family

We went to Michigan City for a week with the family. Of course, Michigan City is in Indiana, not Michigan. It is also a place for a Hawaii like vacation 60 miles from chicago. Weird.
This is what sunsets look like - the Chicago skyline from a straight line distance of about 40 miles.

I have moved my website to .mac and my blog to blogspot

Please let me know if something stops working. All went smoothly, I think. The biggest glitch was when I discovered that .mac does not accept FTP connections. The switch from a black background to white is intentional.

Downtown at last

After a week of dealing with the Social Security Administration and the IRS, we spent a great day downtown. Click on the picture to see a slideshow.

Master Class

We walked down to Ravinia to observe a Master Class at the Steans Institute for Young Artists.
It was a very interesting experience. The young artists were all, by normal human standards, outstanding musicians. They have won many competitions and appeared as soloists with major orchestras.
The class instructor demolished them (without malice). They are very brave to play a piece in front of an audience of a hundred people, and then have a very competent musician demolish their playing, including their posture, and their facial expression, and their technique, bar by bar, while the audience watched. It takes a lot of character to reach to top rungs of the music profession.
In the organizations in which I worked I was never given a performance appraisal in front of hundreds of my family and co-workers as well as total total strangers.

I've moved to SmugMug

After battling Flickr's format for a long time, I decided to consolidate my pictures on SmugMug. Moving the pictures across seemed to be a daunting task - until I found SmuggLr. This neat little tool copied all my pictures from Flickr to Smugmug in one fell swoop.
Now, all I need to do is find something that will move my Pbase pictures across, fix all links from my blogs to images on Flickr and Pbase, and clean up my home page. Don't hold your breath.

I went to a Workshop last week

01-Class Pics.jpg
Originally uploaded by chmoss

Last week I participated in a photographic workshop - "A Day In Our Life ." The workshop focussed on documentary photography, and was lead by B.D. Colen. I had a great time doing nothing but thinking, talking, and doing photography for a week.
Our main project was to find and document a day in the life of a family or individual in the local area - this put me way out of my comfort zone - I am not used to approaching total strangers and photographing them for a day, close up! I did do it, and the result of my day's work shooting 850 pictures and another half days work editing them down to 20 for the final story is now posted here.
As a side story, I took pictures of the class itself.

My first pencil drawing

I starting drawing lessons last week. I have not drawn anything since maybe 3rd grade. At the first class we were tasked to draw a skeleton in charcoal. Not my favorite subject. Yesterday our task was a pencil drawing of a face. This is supposed to be Jacob!

Surreal Israel

Originally uploaded by chmoss

I looked over my Israel trip pictures and noticed many of them had a surreal air - so I have selected a set that I call Surreal Israel

Israel trip record

We went to Israel in April - and it took me this long to finish editing my pictures. Click on the image above for the whole spiel.

Last night we attended the first performance of August:Osage County

We have a preview subscription at Steppenwolf. I enjoy the preview series for a few reasons:

• I do not need to have my opinions informed by professional critical reactions
• The actors are really up - the play's success depends on their reviews
• As a bonus, it costs less!

August:Osage County by Tracy Letts had only one flaw - I was not prepared for a 3 1/2 hour performance (including two intermissions). For the rest, it was a fine experience. The plot was well crafted, the dialog both believable and powerful, believable casting and performances well suited to the play.

This was one of those experiences that really made feel the privilege of living in Chicago, the greatest English language theater city in the world. Despite its length, and the unattractiveness of the protagonists, I and my family were engrossed. When we found out the length of the play, were all tempted to leave at the second intermission. We did not do so.

Last year we had a subscription at the Goodman Theater. I wanted to switch because I did not enjoy the plays that much - they were professional, polished, etc, etc - but never engaged me. Also, on a more basic level - I like the restaurants around Steppenwolf better. So far, we have won on both counts.

Last week we saw the Puppetmaster of Lodz at Writer's Theater - memorable performance, great theme, script needs work.

My First Drawing Lesson

My First Drawing Lesson
Originally uploaded by chmoss

So, today I started drawing lessons, courtesy of a gift certificate Hilda bought for me at a charity auction. Our first assignment - draw this skeleton. Hmmm,,,

The first bird I saw on our new(ish) bird feeder

The first bird I saw on our new(ish) bird feeder
Originally uploaded by chmoss

This the first bird I saw on our new, patented, squirrel-proof bird feeder - after about a month of adjusting and waiting!

Couples?

Couples?
Originally uploaded by chmoss

I have been busy with what people call "Life" so I have not been posting many pictures lately. I must do more to integrate "Life" with "Photography".

A 1950's lens in 2007

Abigail
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

My 35mm Summilux is off to Leica for 6-bit coding, so I am using a Canon 35mm f3.2 that was built in the early 1950s. Still looks very nice to me.

The Leica Freedom Train - A Journey to Freedom

A short video about the efforts of the E. Leitz Co. to help their Jewish employees.

Abigail in the park

abi 2x2
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

Abigail and I visited a park yesterday. We both had fun.

Jacob Reads Torah for the first time

Reading
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

My grandson, Jacob Bokor, read Torah at the Monday morning service at his school. This was his first time reading Torah as part of the service. He used ahis new "Yad" that we bought for him on our recent trip to Israel (Pics will be up soon).
We were all very proud of his performance.

Hopeful in Haifa

Our day began with a thunderstorm - a cloudburst, really. We set off North from Haifa to visit Acre (Acco), Rosh ha-Nikra, and a friend on the kibbutz Gesher ha-Ziv. We made only one wrong turn on the way.
I guess intelligent life without a GPS may actually be sustainable - but that is still an unproven hypothesis.
When we returned to Haifa we set off down the main drag of Carmel to find a kosher restaurant that served meat dishes. When we reached the end of apparent civilization and restaurants without finding anything other than coffee shops and fast food joints, mostly not kosher, we were, to put it mildly, surprised. We asked a doorman/guard at a hotel where we could find such a restaurant , and he directed us to an Argentinean steak house a short way off the main drag. There we had a very fine kosher steak meal, the size of which we justified by the few miles we walked to locate it and the subsequent walk home. The waitress informed us that they were the only kosher meat restaurant in Haifa. I suspect that this may have been a slight exaggeration, but close to true. Thus was shattered our illusion that eating kosher anywhere in Israel would be easy. It turns out that Haifa is just about the most secular of Israeli cities, and Carmel is the most secular area of Haifa.
Tomorrow morning we drive to Jerusalem, where there are more kosher restaurants.
This blog may pause for a while - we are going to a wedding tomorrow night, and I will need to find another wireless network access point for my phone

Digital Data Damnation

So, tonight I dumped the contents of my 2GB SD card containing two days shooting to my Epson 2000 - or at least I tried to do so. After about half the card was transferred, I got a disk full message. I checked the space available. Plenty. Pop the card back in the M8 and find that a couple of images are corrupt. Delete them. Try to copy again. Same thing - disk full. Try to copy a few at a time. Some give the same error message. Fortunately, most copy successfully. None of the lost images were very important.
Lesson learned. Use smaller cards and save to the hard drive more often. I have 2 1GB cards with me. I will stick with them for the rest of the trip.
I have used Compact Flash cards for several years with no problem - now I get a failure of an SD card within three weeks. I hope that this is not an omen.

We are in Israel

We arrived in Israel Thursday April 6 after a flight that was uneventful, except for a moment after we checked in when Delta agent demonstrated his concern for customers by jumping over the counter and beating up a passeger who groused a little too much about a late flight.
We spent a couple of days in Herzliya with my old friend Peter, and are now in Haifa with Hilda's family.
It is wonderful to be travelling without touring. We are just hanging out with friends and family - no serious sightseeing yet.
My new Leica M8 digital camera is behaving wondefully, despite my misgivings about travelling with a new camera.
I am posting this from my mobile phone - I have not remembered how to upload pictures to the blog from the phone. I forgot to research it before I left. I will try to find out.