In focus

Sunday night, Amanda and I worked on a video together. One detriment of the Canon 5D Mk ii is its focusing. It does not auto focus in video mode. And it's so hard to tell on a tiny LCD screen if something is in focus. So sometimes I'll flip the camera into auto focus and take a photo to get a better focus approximation.

Anyway, here are some accidental focusing portraits.

Things I want to do this fall

Build a pinhole camera (Q bought me a kit for my birthday, so I really have no excuse)
Experiment with fresh pasta
Make pumpkin ice cream
Hold a film festival (Aaron and I won a certificate to rent out the Baghdad Theater for free, so we'll be having a screening in November)
Read Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" (I'm 25th in line out of nearly 1,200 people at the library!)
Hang the art I recently bought
Learn how to use a camera flash (I signed up for a class!)
Write at least one story I am seriously proud of
Finish my essays for my portfolio
Join a gym
Visit Amanda in Seattle
Bike at least 10 miles a week (This is low-balling it, but my hip has been crazy lately)

Summer 2010

Summer never really seemed to start in Portland. Last year's was so much different -- record hot heat, the river every weekend. This year the sky rained without stopping, and I stayed indoors. Still, I must have done plenty because I had more than enough footage for a video. So here it is, what I did during the summer of 2010:

Summer 2010 from Casey Parks on Vimeo.

Orcas Island

After Canada, Ev and I took the Washington State Ferry from Anacortes to Orcas Island. Supposedly you can see a bunch of whales there, but I've been twice now and only seen deer. We camped at Doe Bay -- the farthest place away from the ferry -- which was really pretty. Next time I think we'd stay at Moran State Park, though. Now that place was pretty. I spent a lot of time there, reading on a dock in the sunshine.

Vancouver

Ev and I went to Vancouver, BC, for her birthday.

Super nostalgia

I spent Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, working on a rap video for Tyree Harris' "Memory Lane," which will come out on his album REALmatic on Sept. 29. He and his friends wore some hilarious outfits for the shoot, such as




Other photos from the shoot are in this Flickr album

On the playground, where I spent most of my days

The birthplace of cool

Back when I was 13 and sporting the hopelessly uncool look that comes from tucking in your Mossimo t-shirts, having your mom curl your hair before school and spending your down-time writing short stories about pork chops or dead hamsters, my parents shipped me off to a camp called Creative Scholars.

The camp was two weeks long in sticky hot Lafayette, Louisiana. That's where I learned about Tom Waites and the Pixies. That's where I went to my first coffee shop (I ordered an Italian Cream Soda). Needless to say, for much of my teenage years, I thought there was no place in the world cooler than Lafayette. I don't think I've ever been back.

Still, I feel all nostalgic and loving when I see it referenced in the world, and so it was when I saw this little write-up about a Lafayette band on Stereogum:

Band to Watch: Givers

And the beet goes on

A year ago, before he left for Sudan, Ryan went around town spray-painting this stencil he had made. He sprayed a few backwards. He sprayed a few in the dark. He sprayed one outside my house.

I have no idea where he got this idea in his head to praise the beet instead of the beat. I don't know that I've ever even see him eat the root. But I can tell you that I have passed this fading stencil so many days and taken heart in knowing that he exists. It was a reminder: He was here, with me, and will be again.

He came home from Africa and Asia last week. Yesterday he began driving up the West Coast to return to Portland, and I, eager to see him, went outside and took this photo. It's not nearly as bright as it once was, and the fall/winter rains seem to have already started. I won't need the reminder of him -- I'll have the real thing -- but I wanted to keep some memory of this anyway.