Tuesday, September 20, 2005

On Location in The Gulf


Here's how I worked on images I was shooting down in The Gulf. Conditions are basically 19th century, the only light cast by candles and hurricane lamps, so my rental car became my time machine back to the future. It was a glowing and humming and cooling cocoon. It was my rolling generator, converting gas to electricity. That red box on the floor is a DC inverter that plugged in to the lighter and provided me with two normal AC outlets. I was able to run my laptop off of it, and charge camera batteries and cell phones with it. It was the single most useful tool I had there.

That's a trackball I'm working with, and a CF-card reader rests on the seat next to my leg. I shot about 3GB of data each day. That glowing knob on the door handle is a Powermate, and I can't use Photoshop without one. On the dash is my cell phone, which worked decently when I first arrived and got progressively worse, strangely. It was my only lifeline out. Next to that are more CF cards waiting to be copied, and a notepad with all my shooting notes, the names and ages of people I shot, and phone numbers (including the infamous FEMA 800 Line Of Oblivion)

I was only able to get net access twice, in order to post what I posted. Once, when I drove three hours to a Jackson motel, and once when a nice National Guardsman let me borrow their connection. I already had images and words ready, and would set them all up to drop over a few days ahead.

On the stereo was usually Goodbye Babylon, a few tracks from which I posted here, so you could hear what we were hearing.

4 comments:

clayton cubitt said...

I wondered how you were getting all of those images to us. I appreciate your dedication, as that looks like a lot of cramped work with a lot on your mind.

posted by: bubblebobbled on 9/20/2005 6:18:02 PM

Kevin said...

That looks like a powerbook. You can minimize accessory clutter by using a PC card adapter for your memory cards and USB chargers for your cell phone and iPod (if you use a photo ipod).

Camera batteries still need 110 (at least mine do, so I can't help you there).

It might be useful for documentation purposes if you did GPS photo blogging. (sync a GPS and camera time, then run the photos through a program that will use the time stamps to pinpoint your location (and write that info to the exif file)

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/06/15/gps_photo.html

Dragonetta said...

Fascinating! Great photos! Which DC converter are you using, if you don't mind me asking?

Anonymous said...

brother pierre...i've lived in slidell for 27 years, and i've always seen him around. i'm glad to know he's ok and still here.
thanks so much for what you're doing. if only we could raise all of our voices to draw attention to the fact that the government totally screwed us.
sugarmagnolia from slidell