Yashica released a cool little camera called the EZ F521. It’s been released in Japan and I ordered one from Japan Exposures, this is a review of the camera and additionally of the Digital Holga concept. The Yashica F521 has been labeled the Digital Holga. I think this makes sense on some levels and is preposterous nonsense in other ways. The Holga camera is a simple 120 medium format camera produced in China. You can set the negative size to 6×4.5 or 6×7. The body is plastic as is the lens (the Woca version I use has a glass lens) and comes in variations with or without a flash and now different colors. There’s no way to focus with any precision, the lens has three positions, two aperatures, and a fixed shutter speed. Of course you can modify the Holga to do bulb exposure and extra shutter clicks can build up an exposure so you can get cool abstract layers overlaid in one image. Basically the Holga is a cheap and fun way to get into medium format photography. The bodies originally cost about 20 dollars, although since they’ve achieved cult status and been prduced in various colors, you might pay between 50-100 USD for a new body (maybe with a flash) which is a lot for some pressed plastic.

The Holga Concept

The Holga concept is to just focus on taking pictures with a cheap camera where you need to focus on the subect, as the performance of the camera sucks. The term Digitla Holga has been thrown around a lot since the rise of digital camera technology, but in my mind the only thing that comes close is sticking a medium format back on a Holga or Woca body. I know you can put a Holga lens on a DSLR, and no, I see no fucking point in putting a 2 cent lens on my Sony A900 body. And no, I don’t want a Lens Baby either. Why? Because the Holga look is a combination of substandard manufacturing and horrible body design coupled with cheap plastic.  It’s insane to put actual time or money into trying to replicate the look in any other way.

The look of images from the Holga/Woca is characterized as unique, as it comes from light leaks and nearly impossible to determine exposure and focus issues. The image to the left was taken in a coffee shop in Zurich with my Woca. You can see scrach marks from the Woca body and it has a very darky and grungy feel to it. Why try to replicate this look in any other way? Sticking a shitty plastic medium formant lens on your Nikon D3 is not being creative. Additionally, trying to replicate the Holga look in Photoshop using PS actions and filters with programmed algorithms using repeated patterns accomplishes nothing short of making your images look like over processed crap. So in this sense, the Yashica F521 is nothing like a Holga. It doesn’t have light leaks and I think it’s safe to say that pictures from one will look closely like those of another, with little variation from camera to camera. However, the substandard lens and funky exposure properties are retained in the F521 design.

The F521 is too well-built to be a Holga. I’m pretty confident my Holga/Woca would explode if dropped on the ground. Holgas are made from cheap plastic with poor fracture toughness, alowing brittle cracks to propagate easily through the body. The F521 actually has build quality on par with my Ricoh GRD and Canon G10. It’s built like a little tank and sort of resembles a miniature Fuji GA645. The finish on the body looks and feels like anodized aluminum and the faux leather on the grip looks well affixed to the body.

Creative Short-Cut

Anyways, what does it mean to be a Holga? The philosophy behind Holga is that you just shoot, without trying to perfect exposure or focus. Resolution is shit because the lens is crap. The point is just to have fun, and if a cool picture is the results, then sweet. Some will say that these limitations make you more creative, like choosing to use a 50mm instead of a 24-70 zoom. I think this is bullshit, limiting your ability to create an image doesn’t improve creativity, it simply limits your options. Want to be creative? Take up painting and challenge yourself to create something in a completely different way from your normal routine. Photography is the easiest “art form” ever developed, the creative part comes from realizing the non-intuitive attributes of a subject. With a crappy camera like the F521 or Holga you just focus on the subject, not on focus or exposure because you have very little control over either one. So you could say these cameras make you more visually aware, but it’s not a short-cut to overdosing on creative expression.

Shooting with the F521

Here are the basic details, the Yashica F521 is light, sized to the palm of your hand, runs on three AAA batteries and takes SD cards. A 1 Gig SD card gives you like 180 images if you use the 12 megapixels interpolated image setting. The normal image size is 5 megapixels. I figure it can’t hurt, so I use the 12 megapixel setting. Look, it’s a toy camera, but the F521 actually has decent control over parameters. You can set the exposure compensation, white balance, image size, there’s macro capability (the lens has two focus positions), onboard flash, and some color modes. The automatic white balance is really horrible, so I set that myself.

My first outing with the F521 was a short trip from Zurich to Basel.  I took the camera along and shot a bunch of abstract motion images in the Zurich and Basel train stations. This is the type of imagery I like producing with this type of camera. I’ve done the same in Tokyo with my Ricoh GRD (GRD Frozen Motion Photography). Basically I walk around shooting while I’m walking and the long shutter speeds due to the low light of the Bahnhof produces the blurred abstract images I see in my head as I’m moving through the night. The F521 scans the sensor from top to bottom (I believe) when taking pictures, so if you’re moving the camera you can get a wavy line patterns due to the sensor scan rate.

Due to it’s small size the F521 is a very non-treatening camera and can be useful for creative street photography. It fits in any bag and the lens has a rubber cap, so it’s very compact to take around and you can throw in a coat pocket without worrying that you might be damaging the front element.

Picture Output

Picture quality is as you would expect from a digital Holga, absolutely horrible, but that’s part of the charm and experience. I mainly use these types of cameras to produce abstract images, more akin to my Artcast paintings than a traditional photo image. You end up with pictures with unpredictable exposure, focus issues, and eventaully with non-intuitive results, which is exactly in line with the Holga spirit. Concerning digital workflow, I download the images from the SD card directly into Adobe Lightroom for organizing and processing. The F521 image hold up well to processing, including exposure compensation, shadow adjustments, clarity, etc. Shooting with the F521 is a nice balance to shooting with the A900, and I’m planning to shoot with the 521 and my Elnichrom BxRi lights as soon as I get a photodiode to trigger the Skyports from the on-board flash. Maybe I’ll take off the lens and figure out a way to mount a Mamiya 150 f/3.5 portrait lens to it.

Is It Worth It?

The EZ F521 is cheap and definitely worth a look. It’s available for the international market via Japan Exposures and costs 9,990 Yen (about 100 USD). A few years ago Japan Exposures was selling the Fuji Natura S camera with the fixed 24mm f1.9 lens, I hesitated and then they stopped producing them. It’s my biggest purchasing regret of my camera buying life. So I bought the F521 without really thinking about it and so far I’m loving it. Does it live up to the name Digital Holga? Yes, I’m of the opinion that it totally does.

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This is a review of the Sessions with Joey L DVD Tutorial, including a break-down of the DVD content and how I feel it applies to my photographic directions and how it might be useful to other people.

Back in the fall of 2007 I was spending my days in a Tokyo dorm room playing around with Photoshop, and decided it was time to pick up some sort of tutorial DVD.  Yes, you can learn and be inspired without needing to buy these things, but I break my brain trying to figure out stuff like applying Altair Optistruct optimization strategies to fatigued composite structures with barley a manual to work with.  So with Photoshop I was looking for a way to relax and get a grounding in photo processing, so I bought the JoeyL Photoshop Tutorial DVD by photographer Joey Lawrence.  It was well received by some, ridiculed by others, and I found it to be a good buy.  However, I’m able to pull a great deal of knowledge from anything, due to my training in figuring out ball-busting simulation programs like Nastran.  However, for my purposes, what was lacking from the Photoshop Tutorial DVD was the connection between lighting and shot setup and Photoshop processing.  So when Mr. Lawrence released his Sessions with JoeyL DVD, I watched the trailer, and then decided to drop 200 USD on the DVD.

First some background on me

Here’s my situation.  I’ve mainly focused on learning photography and lighting during the last two years.  This was mainly in my spare time while finishing my Doctor of Science degree at ETH Zurich  I read Strobist in between experiments, and sometimes sketched out lighting diagrams at the SPIE Smart Materials conferences.  Since starting a normal job I’ve had time to develop a lighting and processing look that I like, which fits with what I see in my head.  To this end I finished with taking only self-portraits and started organizing model shoots.  The last piece is nearly in place and that is making a strong link between vision and reality.  Taking the image in my head and easily making it a tangible medium people can hold in their hands or see for themselves.  I sketch out shoot ideas, design lighting concepts, network, and do my own Photoshop.  Foe me it’s all part of the process of Arience, the integration of Art and Science in my life.  In my view, everyone is a poet and an engineer.  I attended a Strobist seminar and picked up the Sessions DVD to get a better perspective on how other photographers work, see the process of concept to photo in other people.

The Sessions content is broken down as follows

Lighting Theory

The Vision

Lighting Theory – The Basics

Lighting Theory – Advanced Technique

The Necessary Tools

Modifiers

Photoshoots

Forbes Assignment

Monty Are I CD Artwork

Thrillogy Advertisement Shoot

Model Test Shoot

Strange Familiar

Business

Business Lecture

Trust

Misc Q&A

Travel

Travel Lecture

Ethiopia: Behind the Scenes

Photoshop

Compositing

Using Color Curves

Strange Familiar – Swapping Skies

Experimenting with Blending Modes

Black and White Conversion

Tonal Colorizing

Fixing Blown Highlights

There’s something that always floats around in my head, namely that photography isn’t difficult, and it gets easier every year.  Images which took a full production studio to create 20 years ago can now be done in a bedroom quicker and with fewer resources.  The thing that interests me is the process and approach a person takes to the whole idea of photography from concept to lighting to final image, and I think this has been well communicated in the Sessions DVD.

Lighting Theory: Joey explains his philosophy and how he sets up lighting.  Then he moves on to modifiers and how the ones he uses to define the character of his images.  If you know nothing of lights and modifiers this is a great video, if you know everything already you probably won’t buy this DVD anyways.  I fall in the middle, and found this to be a very interesting section.  It didn’t totally revolutionize my ideas on lighting, but did make me think a bit more outside of the Strobist softbox.

Photoshoots: Joey presents a walk-through, behind-the-scenes videos of different shoots including bands, a plastic surgeon, and a model test shoot.  Throughout Joey gives explanations of lighting and concept, and you can draw a direct link between how he works and his previously described Lighting Vision.  Also interesting here is seeing the photographer-model interaction.  This is an important, I think the most important part of a shoot.  I try to make an emotional connection with models and explain what I’m trying to create in a shoot, and it’s interesting to see the way Joey works in these different situations, working with a TFP model versus a highly successful surgeon versus a band releasing a new CD.  All in all, very cool to see.

Business: Joey describes how he grew and developed as a photographer, the value of a portfolio, how he gets jobs, basically a discussion on how he works as a businessman.  Again, this is great to see, and would be interesting for anyone contemplating a business (even outside photography), because he focuses on the personal drive and interaction which are needed, as opposed to just having a slick portfolio online somewhere.  He also has a video on Trust and how important it is for business as well as directing shoots, again, very cool stuff to hear about.

Travel: Focus is on Ethiopia, and a lot about how he understands the culture of his subjects before blasting them with a Profoto strobe.  You don’t need to be planning a trip to Africa to get a lot out of these videos, they focus on the human connection between photographer and subject, a topic often missed and usually never even brought up in internet forum discussions (well, the ones I read at least).  The Travel section is great for looking at the human side of photography, and focusing less on the technical side.  It’s also a great motivational video if you’re the type who always thinks of traveling but hasn’t jumped on the plane yet.

Photoshop: Here are presented a few popular techniques, many things people are always asking about on the internet.  Yes, you can also find internet videos on the basic techniques, but it’s the application of those techniques in the larger puzzle which is of value here.  If you want to buy the DVD just for Photoshop, you’re better off looking at something else (I recommend Skin Photoshop the book).  The Photoshop section fits in very well with the rest of the DVD, bringing the vision full circle to the post processing stage.  This was something I found lacking in his Photoshop DVD Tutorial, because there a strong connection wasn’t made between lighting and post-processing.  Here however, you can see how the images from the Strange Familiar shoot are processed, including a new sky, and in this way you get a feeling for the whole process from start to finish.

Why I Liked It

What I like is seeing concept development in other people, and seeing how they think and work.  I like understanding their philosophy of creation and ideas or their approach to concept development and how it’s realized in a final form – be it a picture or an elegant toaster.  In this way, I think the Sessions DVD is fantastic, and I recommend it instead of taking a workshop (if you have to choose).  Sessions gives you a feeling for the whole process from lighting philosophy, through shoot execution, the business approach to final Photoshop editing, and throughout out you get a feeling for the human connection as a main driver of the process.

Is it worth the Money?

Is $200, $250, $300 too much for a photography DVD?  Maybe yes, possibly no.  I paid $200 for my copy, and I’m ok with that. The Zach Arias DVD is $250, the Strobist $135, and new ones come out all the time from places like Lighting-Essentials, Scott Kelby (how many remixed Photoshop books can we release this year?) and David Honl (to name a very few).  But not all are coming from a working commercial photographer who shoots stuff I find interesting. This isn’t the same as a working educator who also takes nice photos.  There is a significant difference here.  It’s easy to say, “you need to do this, this and this” to make cool pictures, it’s another thing to be a working photographer at this level and showing the whole process.

I consider it the difference between learning Physics from a tenured professor who hasn’t written a new publication in 2 years versus a Richard Feynman (even after he was at the top of his field, you can find some of his lectures on the net).  Maybe this sounds harsh, but my main critique of 90% of the photography/Photoshop learning material I see for free from internet sources as well as some professional educators is the lack of vision, and for me that makes all the difference.  The Sessions DVD is a tutorial with Vision and Heart.  But maybe that’s just me?  I got so bored with McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries I didn’t get half-way through it, but I love re-reading Michael Grecco’s Dramatic Portrait.  It’s just what gets me off.

I’ve also reviewed and still like the JoeyL Behind the Scenes Photoshop DVD, the reason being that the focus isn’t placed on minute details of levels and curve operations, but because it focuses on process and development.  This is the same philosophy I use in engineering research, so maybe that’s why I like it.  The details can always be ironed out, but if you don’t have that overall big picture (that thing you’re reaching for) in your head, then you won’t have a clue about which details need to be fine-tuned.  This is one thing I wasn’t getting from reading Strobist or attending a seminar – but I just learn differently than other people, and so do you.  I don’t need someone to make me creative, I do that on my own, sometimes vie induced boredom.  It’s just cool to see how other people are creative in the scope of their vision.

Brass Tacs

The Sessions DVD isn’t some blue pill to take with a whiskey chaser, promising you everlasting creative abilities as well as the drive to bring your vision into the world.  It’s just another piece in the puzzle. Seek your knowledge in the way you know will be most effective for your own personal learning style.  I get Photoshop technique inspiration by actually painting, I get lighting inspiration when I’m listening to a Web Monday talk or a smart materials presentation.  No two people learn the same way, so find out what works for you and exploit it to make your own visions a reality.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Web Monday Zurich is a meeting setup on Amazee.com to enable interaction between people in the web community around Zurich.  Startups have a chance to present their ideas and get feedback, everyone has a chance to mingle and network, feed your brain and your innovation side in social atmosphere, how can you not go?

I wanted to attend my first Web Monday at the end of August, companies like MAGMAG Magazines were presenting, and being a photographer looking for new ways to present visual content, I was eager to see what was up.  But that Monday I had just flown back from shooting a wedding in Rome, had picked up some sort of sickness, and took down the wrong address.  So I ended up looking for Feldstrasse 113, a fictions address just different enough from Feldstrasse 133 to make me think I was going out of my mind.

Web Monday #10 was held in the Amazee office at the Technopark in Zurich (I was there before for a booster party), and my mind was sharp, so it was problem to find and attend. I could have stayed home and played with my new Octabox, but I was itching to infuse my mind with something new.

Two companies presented, GetYourGuide.com and StreamForge.

GetYourGuide.com

So, there’s like a thousand travel website on the net, you can book a flight, book a hotel, book a car, book a train…but what about booking “an experience?”  GetYourGuide is a newly out of Beta website Startup which seeks to connect trip provides (suppliers) with people looking for travel experiences (customers).  The idea is you head to the website and and quickly search through destinations or activities and quickly find a cool experience, like a city tour, bike tour, etc.  I see a lot of potential for GetYourGuide, because I’ve been in a position to use it many times.  During the Spring I was in San Diego and L.A. for a few weeks.  In San Diego I was trying to book a kite boarding class, in L.A. I was searching for the best graffiti.  I ended up buying some Bratz dolls and shooting them on the streets of the cities.  So, in the end I didn’t learn to kite board, but did have a cool experience.  However, I didn’t end up kite boarding because by the time I found a school, I had run out of time and had to fly back to Zurich.  For a travel consumer such as myself, GetYourGuide can offer a lot of value, and I’ll use it to find a cool trip in the next city I visit.

For trip suppliers GetYourGuide is attractive, because it connects the local suppliers to the global customer directly.  It includes a very nice back-end with analytics software to help suppliers see how people are visiting their trip listings.  At the moment GetYourGuide is targeting popular destinations, and finding trip suppliers in those main cities.  This is nice strategy, as they can bring in revenue quickly, and then expand to targeting trip suppliers in broader destinations.  This is what interests me the most, because if you’re looking for a cattle driving experience in New Mexico and you live in Stuttgart, it’s not so easy to do.  I also had problems in the past contacting mountain guides in Bolivia when I flew down there.  I think if GetYourGuide expands into these areas and eventually targets specialty suppliers, they’ll set themselves apart from their competitors like Viator.com and have a web company offering a lot of value to their customers and suppliers.  I’m looking forward to a travel experience-enhanced future.

StreamForge

So, when Barack Obama was giving his inauguration speech, so many people tuned in that the video feed was unavailable, the internet was broken - overloaded, users were blocked, their experience ruined.  I didn’t watch the speech, but I do recall trying to watch the 2009 Leica webcast during the launch of their new cameras, the S2, X1, and M9.  Their servers were overloaded and I had to read about it on a forum, how disappointed I was.  How can we avoid this in the future?  By using Peer-to-Peer strategies like those employed in LimeWire and previously in Napster (and now many others).

Instead of downloading the video or audio content directly from a website, parts are downloaded from other people who are downloading the same content.  This removes the load from the main server, and enables people to maintain their enjoyment of the internet without overloading the system.  This isn’t a new idea (in principle) it was tried (and failed) in the past.  But StreamForge is using technology developed from the latest research at ETH Zurich, and like many technologies, the subsequent try is often far better than the first attempt.

Like (as far as I know) all Peer-to-Peer sharing platforms, StreamForge does require that their software be downloaded and installed by users, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to upload data and remove the load on the main server.  But this presents a potential problem, because many consumers are wary of installing random programs which are connected to the internet, even though it may not be any different than using a webpage.  Also, this is a technology which the main server companies need to adopt and trust in.  If these two barriers can be overcome, then StreamForge has a bright future.  There are other examples of companies with similar problems.  Flash was introduced something like many, many years ago, but it’s really only in the last few years that it’s gained wide acceptance, and nearly every web browser has it installed.

Brass Tacs

Web Monday #10 rocked, I love seeing how different technologies develop and how new companies launch and present themselves. It’s very inspiring, and makes you think in new ways (at least, it works for me). I had an excellent time at Web Monday #10, I’m sad I missed #9, and am looking forward to #11, which will include presentations by Prof. Manfred Vogel from FHNW, Joaquin Cuenca Abela from Panoramio and Andreas Hoffmann from UBS (there’s a contest in the works).

The next Web Monday is coming up on Nov. 30th, location to be announced.  Check out the Web Monday Zurich magazine on Amazee for further details.  Also, STARTWERK.CH was a German write-up on Web Monday #10.

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After a few years and various cups of coffee and a couple of things in between I’ve released my first book. It’s self-published – not official in the sense that someone has put up financial backing to get it into print. In the digital age, what is the point unless one has been approached already by a publisher? This is the value of the internet, the ability to side-step financial barriers to produce what you want and publish how you want. There was no specific reason for writing this book, I could have done it earlier if I were a motivated person. Basically I attended a wedding, too some pictures and started writing, thinking it would be a funny email to send out. Then I thought it would be a webpage and it just kept growing. After a while I decided that it needed some sort of form and turned it into a short story – a book, a literature-challenged novel, whatever you want to call it. I made it into a book, because this is the exact form which was required (as opposed to a blog post). I wrote it as a short-story because I wanted it to be simple and short, uncluttered and with a voice that is unpretentious and genuine (well, at least from my perspective). So here it is:

American Peyote Vol. 1

Wedding Trip

Revolt from the Singles Table

Other title iterations included:

Last Thoughts Before Being Born

Dissension from the Singles Table

Revolution of the Dateless Guest

Chapters Include:

I. Everything else is background noise, feel the beat and ride it as far as you can

II. It means not looking for a return on your emotional investment

III. Last Thoughts Before Being Born

IV. Elixir of the Gods

V. Carpe Noct

VI. Only a determined removal of the thin veils of society sets the soul free…a beast approaches

VII. The night is also mortal

VIII. Epilogue

Basically the story is about a guy attending a wedding, and all the random thoughts on Love and relationships which infest in his mind during the festive event. If I tell you all the details now your reading experience will be ruined. I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but a few very cool people said they like it.

I could have left it on my computer, like writing stuff in journals and then leaving them on a shelf somewhere, but that’s like writing a letter and not sending it, what would be the point? The emotions and revelations are then left to sit – lost – irrelevant. Which is not to say that Revolt from the Singles Table is in any way important or significant in any sense of the universe. It’s a self-published book through Lulu.com and is available online sofort (immediately). It’s a pocket edition, not very long (meant to be carried around and easily left on trains or coffee shop seats), some of you know the backstory – and others of you can no doubt guess at it. I could have made it longer, but in the self-publishing realm of reality I can make it as long or short as I like, and this is the exact length that the story needed at this point in time. Names have been changed, certain facts embellished, and it wasn’t written to be a historical document – so it is for sure a stretch to call it non-fiction, and therefore, it’s been released as a work of imagination with accompanied footnotes.

More books are sure to follow, but not being tied to publishing responsibilities I can’t say there’s any specific timeline. Some day I’ll be poor and anonymous, but until that time – I’ll keep publishing under the American Peyote framework. Now the fun begins in this grand experiment, developing and executing a marketing strategy.

Order Revolt from the Singles Table from LuLu.com

Preview from Issuu

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I’m a drawer, I doodle, I always have, and I intend to never stop.  I’ve drawn in class as long as I can remember.  On my progress reports my teachers would often write that I was a good student, but my only problem was that I drew during class.

Now, looking back after 31 years, the majority of which have been spend in class learning everything from reading English to writing Japanese, thinking about Algebra, Calulus, intermediate dynamics, biomaterials, engineering, chemistry, physics, everything inbetween, all culminating in a Doctor of Science title from ETH Zurich, I can tell you with aboslute certainty that doodling, and continuing to draw in class was one of the best decisions I’ve made in life.

Drawing in Science and Engineering classes forms the perfect Arience – mix of art and science. I talked about this notion of Arience at the 2009 Swiss StartUp conference (Idea Generation and Development). When half of your brain is bleeding – trying to understand the diffusion equation or the basics of colloids science, it just makes sense to exercise the creative centers and draw something.  My biggest critique of my engineering classes at Michigan State University (MSU) is that very few of the professors took time to understand this concept.  Teachers of all levels should take the time to understand their students, and to understand how their students learn.  In the end it makes you a better teacher.  Trying to apply a rigid I-know-it-all teaching philosophy to every student is harmful and highly counter-productive to learning.  And if you’re not interested in teaching, well, don’t become a Professor – just go to the private research sector.

By far the best drawing I produced at MSU was started during a Chemcical Engineering course on Colloids.  I wanted to learn about colloids science to better understand the application of 3D printing and rapid prototyping technology to the manufacture of 3D hydroxyapatite bone scaffolds.  The class started out fine but the lecture consisted of Dr. Ofoli runing through a black and white PowerPoint presentation for about an hour and a half during the evening.  Although the slides were prepared before class, he wouldn’t let us download them for class to takes notes with, “because then students wouldn’t come to class.”  So, basically I didn’t learn anything during class, all I was doing was trying to copy everything from the presentation before he flipped to a new slide.  The woman who sat behind me would draw Manga all night, and one night my brain had had enough and drew a giant screaming head inspired by Pink Floyd: The Wall.

My frustration culminated one night when my brain was about to explode and I drew a giant screaming head while listening to notions about colloids and chemical interactions.  I dropped the class soon after the first exam, not because I didn’t find the topics interesting, but because the learning technique was so completely opposite to my natual way of learning, it had simply become a huge waste of time to attend the lecture, and since I had the book, I could just learn whatever I needed.

To finish the screaming head sketch I scanned it and started some basic work in Photoshop.  Using my Wacom tablet I erased part of the head and then added an arm – drawn later on a separate night. I didn’t like the original shape of the head so I re-drew the head with my Wacom and then made the head more alien-like, with oriented pen strokes.  In the end, after writing Revolt from the Singles Table, I realized it was the perfect graphic to place opposite Chapter IV.

“Only a determined removal of the viels of society sets the soul free…a beast approaches.”

Sometimes art influences science, sometimes science inspires art.  Sometimes boredom sparks a new idea, sometimes you use analogies to develop new concpets in different fields.  Whatever the outcome, find out what works for you and exploit it.

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