Bookman's Top Ten Movies

I was challenged by a friend to list my top ten movies and for each one to write one sentence explaining or showing why it's on my list.  I accept that challenge.

1.   Casablanca (1942).  This movie hits all my buttons—great script, love story, characters, cinematography, acting, musical score, plus that one great moment that pushes this movie over the top for me.

2.   Chinatown (1974).  Great story, acting, dialogue, cinematography, art direction, costuming—plus Jack Nicholson, whose characterization of Jake Gittes gives me the same high I get from watching Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon .

3.   North by Northwest (1959).  Cary Grant's character and performance and Ernest Lehman's script make this movie fun and exhilarating.

4.   The Maltese Falcon (1941).  Humphrey Bogart.

5.   West Side Story (1961).  This was the first serious movie I saw at the theater when I was a kid (age 7) and is the movie that has influenced me the most as a moviegoer.

6.   The Godfather (1972).  I love watching the transformation of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) through all three "Godfather" movies, and this is the best of the three.

7.   Annie Hall (1977).  Woody Allen has lost my vote as a father and a human being, gained my sympathy as a sick man, and I still laugh at every joke but one in this movie because I see Alvy Singer and not Allen on the screen.

8.   Rear Window (1954).  Over the years, this movie has steadily moved up in my esteem, mostly due to the acting of Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, and Wendell Corey.

9.   It Happened One Night (1934).  I never get tired of watching this movie.

10. The Philadelphia Story (1940).  Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn are hilarious and give standout performances, supported by a first-rate script and a motley crew of nutjobs.

Journaling 101: What to Write When You Balk at the Blank Page

My travel journal, separate from my everyday journal, just before writing the inaugural entry on 20 October 2012.

A page from the inaugural entry in my travel journal.

A recent volume from my everyday
journal, a "document" in more
than three dozen volumes
stretching back to 1994.

Why would you sit down to journal if you had nothing in mind to write about?  Well, if you owned a fountain pen you would look for excuses to use it: you might indeed sit down to journal with nothing to say just yet.  You might sit down with one thing in mind and then, at the last minute, decide not to write about it.  No need to get up, though.  Here are some ideas for journaling when you want to write but you have misplaced your mojo.

1. Lists.  Write a list of your favorite movies or TV shows or books or all three.  Begin a "Bucket List."  Write a list of your favorite places to visit, places to live, questions you would ask a deceased progenitor or famous person in history, favorite works of music, favorite inventions, favorite designs, etc., etc., etc.  

2.  Freewriting.  Write nonstop for twenty minutes.  Write about anything.  Write about one thing or start with one thing and move from topic to topic.  Just write, don't come up for air, keep your eyes on your paper and keep your pen moving at all times.  If you cannot think of anything to say, write " I cannot think of anything to say" and keep writing it until you do have something to say.  If you get stuck in the middle, repeat the last word you wrote and keep writing it until you can move forward.  The key is to write nonstop: keep your pen moving for twenty minutes. 

3.  A Letter You Will Never Send.  This is your opportunity to unload, to vent from both head and heart, and to be completely candid with someone.  Choose any recipient, maybe a friend who let you down.

4.  Audio Snippet.  Listen to twenty seconds of a TV or radio newscast or podcast or TED Talk and then write about what you heard or what you think you heard.

5.  News Headlines.  Find a newspaper, preferably with salacious headlines, like the San Francisco Chronicle.  ("Male genitals found near railroad tracks.")  If you only have a traditional newspaper, no matter.  In either case, pick a headline but do not read the story.  Instead, make up your own story to fit the headline.

6.  Rewrite a Classic.  Take a familiar children's story and rewrite it in your own words.  Or rewrite the ending.  Or tell it from the viewpoint of a different character.

7.  Transcriptions.  Copy verses from the Holy Bible, paragraphs from a favorite novel, lines from a favorite play, or stanzas from a favorite poem.  Write carefully and work on your penmanship.  For poems, pick one by a classic poet your grandparents' generation studied in school.  Choose a poem with a good cadence (e.g., Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Wordsworth's Daffodils).  Read a stanza and really read it.  Then copy it.  Then move to the next stanza.  You'll have something to write, and over time, using classic poetry, the rhythm of your sentences will improve.

8.   Quotations.  Usually shorter and more cherry-picked than transcriptions, you can cull them from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, from a favorite work of literature or inspirational book, from your family's oral history, from websites dedicated to quotations (but beware of phonies!), even bathroom walls and other havens for graffiti.

9.  Travel Journal.  Write in detail about a recent out-of-town trip.  If you are on such a trip right now, start keeping detailed notes about where you go and what you do so you can write about the trip effectively later on.

10. Journal Your Journaling. How would you rate your journaling these days on subject matter, frequency, coherence, legibility?  Are you satisfied?  Are you getting better at it?  Are you unsure of what does and does not belong in a journal?  Are you lost?

11. People Who Influenced You in Childhood.  Use a broad definition of childhood, if necessary.

12. Weather Report.  If you can, go beyond a simple listing of the temperatures and one-word summaries of the conditions (e.g., "55 degrees and rainy").

13. The Five Senses and Mindfulness.  Go outdoors and find a place to sit.  If the weather is an obstacle, stay indoors and sit by a window with a view.  Indoors or out, have something to snack on or something other than plain water to drink nearby.  Now use all five of your senses to take in the scene and your surroundings.  If you are outdoors and a breeze comes along, feel it, smell it, hear it—concentrate your attention and actually listen to it, see its effects.  If you are indoors, your surroundings include the room you are in, the fact of your looking out a window, and everything you can see through that window.  If there is nothing else to smell or taste, bring your snack or drink into play.  Stay there for twenty minutes and be in the moment for all twenty.  Then go back inside (or close the curtains), do not look out on the scene, and write about your experience referring to all five senses.

14. Current Events.

15. Research Topics.

16. Prompts:

• If I were president, I would …
• I remember when I was ___ years old, I …
• Whatever happened to …
• When ______ and I go to ______, I want to …
• It pisses me off when …
• I wish I could …
• The opening line of a book, play, or poem

These are just a few ideas.  Make a list of your own ideas, your own prompts, and see where that takes you.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Is a Great Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S8.

As a smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is, well, a phone.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  It does have incredible sound quality which is especially noticeable when I am on speakerphone.  But what makes this device (and successor models, I'm sure) outstanding is the camera.

I took "Kenneth Avenue at Night" and all the other photos in this post with my Galaxy S8.  The lens is unbelievably good, diminished only somewhat by the lack of an optical zoom.

"Kenneth Avenue at Night" in Carmichael CA

Taking a good photo on full automatic requires a brief amount of time for set-up and the tap of only one button in "Photo" mode.  For instance, if you want to document a moment, the set-up should only take a few seconds, maybe several seconds.

If you strive to make a great photo or at least the best photo you can make, there's a lot to consider and perhaps more buttons to tap.

Barnes & Noble Kitchen in Folsom CA

• "PRO" MODE.  Do you want to stay on full automatic or switch to the "Pro" mode and modify the exposure, the color, or the white balance?
• VANTAGE POINT.  Should you stand where you are?  Should you move closer?  (As I counsel later, do not use the zoom function on this camera.)  Do you need to crouch, stand on a bench, climb a tree, lie on your stomach, or walk a hundred feet to the right?
• HANDLING.  Does your vantage point hamper your handling of the camera so that you have to trigger the exposure with a voice command?  Is there anything nearby that you can use to immobilize the camera—a pole, tree, fence post, building, hood or roof of a car, large boulder, etc.?
• COMPOSITION AND FRAMING.  Can you fill the frame with your subject(s)?  Do you want to apply the "rule of thirds"?  Is anything unsightly in the foreground?  Is the background complimentary or does it clash with the subject(s)?  Do you need to change position to get an acceptable background?
• LIGHT.  What kind of light do you have?  "Auto" white balance should handle most kinds of light to give you a photo with the proper colors and warmth/coolness.  But ask yourself two more questions.  How much light is there? What direction is it coming from?  Indoors, find a way to use the available lighting.  Indoor flash photography with most simple cameras is rubbish.  The road to Hell is paved with these images.
• PHOTO PROCESSING.  What, if anything, are you already planning to do to this photo in your processing app after the shot?  Are any problems in the scene the kind that might be fixable afterward?  

Selfies can be snapped, let's face it.  You want eyes open, beaming faces, and the other thing visible and identifiable in the frame.  Scenic shots, however, should be set up properly and not snapped.  To get all or most of what you want in the frame and to exclude what you do not want, you might have to move around to find the best vantage point.  If you want the subject closer to you, remember: do not use the camera's zoom feature.  Instead, zoom with your feet: get as close as you need to, take the shot, and then, if necessary, crop it to suit your purpose.

U.S. 6 signpost in Delta UT.  U.S. 6 was the route Jack Kerouac took
from Cape Cod to Nevada on the trip that inspired On the Road.

James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park near Orick CA.

A rest area in central Wyoming was behind me when I took this photo.

"Morning Storm Clouds" as seen from White Rock Road outside
Rancho Cordova CA, converted from color to black and white
with high contrast in Photoshop Elements 14

Never use a digital zoom on any camera.  Unfortunately, the only zoom on the Galaxy S8 is digital.  Optical zooms maintain the full HD resolution available on a camera.  Digital zooms severely reduce the resolution of an image.  Think of VHS resolution on an old video compared to Blu-ray.  Therefore, to zoom, zoom with your feet by moving closer.  Get as close as you want, take the shot, and then crop.  You have 9 megapixels to work with for cropping.

Columns under the front archway into the Salt Lake City and County Building.

Panoramas require near-perfect execution. Find the "Panorama" mode.  A portrait-oriented panorama gives you more photo for the same amount of labor than a landscape one.  In the two photos below, the first was taken portrait and the second was landscape.  Look for something in the frame that will help keep the camera on a level plane throughout the shot, like the relatively clean  horizon line in the first photo below and the rough one in the next photo.  If you are going to pivot on your feet during the shot, do a dry run beforehand.

A 180° pano taken from The Strand at the foot of 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach CA

360° pano with added graphics showing William Ide Adobe State Historic Park in Red Bluff CA

Close-ups are sharp.  As with close-ups in any camera, however, the shallow depth of field creates a blurred background.  (The depth of field is the area in the image's third dimension that is in focus.)  The blurred background can be a happy artistic accident or a nuisance.  In either case, the depth of field cannot be increased with this camera except by moving farther away from the subject.  When operating more dynamic cameras, just remember: the higher the f-stop number, the greater the depth of field.  Happily, I have liked the blurred-background effect in my close-ups.

Flora at the same central Wyoming rest area as before.

This beauty is my Edison Collier Persimmon Swirl Acrylic fountain pen.
Notice that the image begins to blur at the ball of the clip.  Capped,
this pen is 150 mm (just under 6 inches) in length.

To perform excellent photo-processing on your phone, download this free app: Snapseed.  Every photo in this post except the columns was processed with Snapseed.  Regardless of which smartphone you own, Snapseed will make your photos better.  You can punch up every image with one tap of either "Pop" or "Accentuate" in the "Looks" folder.  The "Looks" folder has a few artsy one-tap presets too.  And in the "Tools" folder there are a couple dozen presets with multi-preset subfolders.  Every preset selection can be adjusted with the slide of a finger.

I have Photoshop Elements 14 on my desktop computer, but I routinely transfer old photos taken with other cameras to my phone so I can process them with Snapseed.  Occasionally I use both processors on a single photo—Snapseed for some jobs and PE 14 for others.  Here, for example, are two versions of the same photo.  The first is the unprocessed original.  The second was processed with both Snapseed and PE 14.

Townhouse on The Strand at 22nd
Street in Hermosa Beach CA

Same image but processed with Snapseed
("Looks"/"Pop"; "Tools/"Details"
/"Structure") and Photoshop
Elements 14 ("Filter"/"Brush Strokes"
/"Ink Outlines")