Okay so the guy can cook right? At this point in my investigation I’ve got no way of going to one of his restaurants, so I ordered a cookbook of his off of Amazon and found a few podcasts he’d done for Chanel 4 preparing dishes. My God if this wasn’t an eye opener. For starters cooking is not easy. Well cooking is easy, but cooking perfectly is not. Having a podcast of my own I really found myself enjoying Gordon’s teaching style. Its inspirational in the way he presents his energy, encouragement, standards of perfection and he has fun with the whole thing. I get the impression he really loves to share his passion. I became inspired — I wanted to bring these qualities to my own craft of photography and filmmaking down to how I even produce my own podcast. I’m no Gordon Ramsay, but he keeps me striving to make things better all the time.

This year my fiancé and I decided to go to London for my 40th birthday which also happened to be Thanksgiving day. We decided we had to go to at least one Gordon Ramsay restaurant to celebrate the week (we had plans to go to several). Well London is by far the most expensive city I’ve ever been to and we don’t make tons of money so we only made it to one. And one of the cheaper ones at that. But its what we could afford and it impressed me enough to do this post.

We picked the Foxtrot Oscar for Sunday dinner. Its a smaller 3 course kind of place but it really sounded good. Plus I love the name. Foxtrot Oscar is the intellectual way of saying, “Fuck off”. Very Gordon, very irreverent and very compelling.

We jumped on the Tube and headed to Sloane Square and walked through the cold and fog excitedly down to Royal Hospital Road and made our way to the restaurant. I was buzzing. I’ve never in my life been this excited to eat somewhere. After a 10 minute walk we arrived. The place is tiny but had a warm, modern class to it that never felt too crowded or tight. Low lighting, quiet contemporary music and beautiful black and white photographs make a lovely decor.

At this point I have to make an important comment. Say what you want about Ramsay but the service was absolutely outstanding. I’ve never in my life had better service than I did at one of Ramsay’s smaller “grills”. The hungarian waiter was friendly, polite, knowledgeable and honest when we asked for recommendations. My fiancé saw some tables enjoying Sunday roast and asked if it was possible to get despite not being on the menu. The waiter explained that you needed to order the roast when you made your reservation due to limited kitchen size. He then offered that if we waited a few minutes he would take another tables order to see if someone had changed their mind to order something else. After 2 minutes he returned to tell us we were in luck. There were 2 roasts not chosen at the large group who had just placed their orders.

Well we couldn’t both get the same thing! How can you try 2 dishes if you get 2 of the same… so I decided to get the beef onglet (hanger steak). The waiter said this was best cooked medium rare and I took his suggestion.

Everything was perfect. Much like the service, the food was prepared to the same tight standards that you can tell the place was put together with. Both the roast and the onglet were fairly conventional in recipe. Nothing fancy or pretentious — and they were cooked and seasoned to absolute perfection. And for the record they made the biggest home made chips I’ve ever had — simply delicious.

We went on to enjoy some wonderful deserts (apple crumble and gingerbread) along with a recommended hungarian desert wine from the waiters home country. All were absolutely divine.

Now describing food in a blog post is probably horribly ineffective — especially considering I’m neither a writer nor a food critic. However I’ve wanted to experience a Ramsay restaurant first hand for years now. It was like Christmas Eve for me to go to this place and it didn’t disappoint.

On another note — I read Gordon’s book last year for the first time and the man is a complete inspiration. He came from a challenging background and is one of the few chefs that have turned cooking into celebrity. And he’s done it on pure talent. There aren’t many people of his stature that actually deliver any goods but he does in spades. I mean 13 Michelin stars?!? 20 years ago many would have thought that to be impossible and today it damn near still is.

Gordon — thank you. You are an inspiration.

About 3 years ago I passed this place late at night on my way to go do some long exposure photographs of Battersea Power Station in the rain. At the time I was completely broke but wondered what eating there would be like. I finally found out and it didn’t disappoint. Next trip to the UK I’ll be saving to have a meal at Maze or Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

But for this weekend? Gordon’s “Bolognaise” recipe for the colder weather…

This is one of those days where I really love my job. I got to do an interview of Jean Paul Gaultier at the Dallas Museum of Art press preview for the exhibition opening — The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier — From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.

I filmed this with my Zacuto rig with my Canon 5D mk ii. The whole thing was shot and edited in one day.

The interview part was great. I was asked just to get him to film a “welcome” statement. I went over this with Jean Paul briefly — he insisted we film it in front of the cowboy outfits he had made just for the Dallas show. This was 1 take — he was on!

Wonderful person and one of the greats. I wish all artists were this easy to work with.

DMA Director Olivier Meslay (my awesome boss) gave him a marker and asked him to “sign” the pedestal. He took that to town just like everything else.

This is a commercial I filmed and edited for the DMA’s Jean Paul Gailtier exhibition. If you’re in the southwest area you’ll probably catch this on TV over the coming weeks. Its got a pretty big network distribution.

I’m working on a blog post for the museum on a behind the scenes of making the ad. Stay tuned.

Some jamming with the most ambient of reverb pedals. I’m running my Strat through the Strymon Brigadier (another favorite) into the WET then direct into the computer via the MOTU Ultralite. I’m recording in Logic using the Amplitube Fender Twin simulator. I’ve got two virtual twins set up in stereo to really show off how wonderful Brian Neunaber’s stereo pedal really sounds.

Another Dave Evans cover — this guy is one of the greatest finger style guitarists ever. My version is no where close to Dave’s but its a great tune and fun to play. Used to play this on acoustic gigs with my friend Wes about 15 years ago. We’d both do solo sets and duets at the end. I did this in my solo set.

This is from Dave Evans epic release, Sad Pig Dance from 1974

My version of Dave Evans’ Sad Pig Dance. I used to play this on solo gigs about 15 years ago. Never grows old — Dave is one of the greatest ever. I remember having a cassette of this track years ago and went on an all out hunt to find the record (this was long before the internet). After about 5 years I found Sad Pig Dance on vinyl at a used record store in Austin, TX. It was quite a day.

Dave is an unbelievable virtuoso — technically and creatively way beyond most of the British folk guitarists in the 60’s and 70’s. For whatever reason he only recorded 3 obscure records and spent most of the 70’s and 80’s repairing guitars in Belgium.

One of my dreams is to meet this guy one day, shake hands and tell him what a badass he is and how he changed most of how I looked at guitar with 3 obscure records in the 70’s… mostly with Sad Pig Dance.

For starters — last September I did my first podcast meetup in London. This was a major turning point for me because it was the first time I saw faces that went with the people watching the show. I really was taken back by this and realized this podcast isn’t about me talking into a camera once a week dishing random advice. This is about people who are all brought together with a common interest in making pictures. This realization led to some new ideas and we’ve now got Holga Projects well under way.

Holga Projects is a collaborative effort from all the folks who watch the podcast and to new people as well. We’re all passing the same cameras around and sharing images on the same roll of film. The response has been amazing. 10 more cameras will go out this week.

Then a few weeks ago I did a live video broadcast showing the development of the first roll of film back from a Holga Project group. This got me thinking about what could be done with live video and I’ve been working on some new ideas that can utilize this medium as well.

Well then this got me thinking that I really need a way to bring all of this stuff together. Sure I still produce a podcast each week or so, but my little project has turned into so much more than this. The only existing website at this point has been http://thepublicbroadcast.com — which is the umbrella for all of the podcasts I’ve been creating. Its about time for a redesign of that site but I think its important (and time now) for this show to have its own website.

I got the domain a few months ago and I’ve set it up for all of the communication for the Holga projects. Soon I will launch a full scale redesign of http://theartofphotography.tv

This will now be a central hub for the podcasts, holga projects, announcements, extra videos (living now only on YouTube), and finally a series of live Master Classes that I will be announcing as well. These will be multi-broadcast series curriculum shows that will allow us to get deeper into subjects of interest. They will be broadcast live as well as recorded for “non-live” viewing as well.

Anyway — its going to be an exciting fall for the Art of Photography. I thought originally I’d do 10 shows or so and be done with it. Little did I know where this would lead down the line… stay tuned!

This is more or less based on Richard Thompson’s arrangement but taken at a careless, irresponsible speed…

I just finished a paper for AAM this year on using HTML5 for museum tours so obviously I have a stand that web applications are actually more sensible to build for certain applications. I was really curious to see what was being said in this article.

Apparently this has been a debate at Mobile Northwest this year in Seattle. This brief article features quotes from app developers which is arguably biased. Also frustrating is that no examples or specifics are given to back up the opinions being stated. I’m not complaining about the difference of opinion, but I would be very interested in understanding experiences that other developers have had making designing apps a better solution.

“We’ve run into the limits of what HTML5 can and can’t do and it’s painful,” Woodbury said. He expects the standard to improve over time, though.

This statement is sort of accurate. HTML5 is an open standard that isn’t official yet, so yes there are support issues. But I wouldn’t say that it has “reached a limit”. This is a technology that is expanding not stopping. In fact, I’ve found that the HTML5 is actually more adapted to mobile browsers than desktops (thanks in part to the flavors of IE floating around).

Starbucks initiated a project to use HTML5 in hopes of making its Website work well across the many mobile browsers. “It worked but it taught us it was too hard,” said K.C. MacLaren, director of mobile and emerging technologies at Starbucks. Starbucks’ Website is relatively “high functioning,” with a lot of Javascript, making it hard to replicate, he said. It took too much work to transition the site to HTML5 and make it run well on the many browsers that run on mobile phones, he said.

So what was “too hard”?

It sounds like the issues were related to Javascript, not HTML (Javascript is problematic with phone processors, memory and browsers). I’d really be curious as to what is meant my “high functioning”. Starbucks has a wonderful website, but honestly there’s not much that’s unconventional from a technology standpoint. That’s not an insult, just an observation. If you are replicating UI features like the complex navigation my argument here is that this is probably not a good idea. Due to the fairly obvious screen size difference and the behavioral differences of using a mouse vs one’s fingers — replication of a desktop design is going to be a mess. Interpretation is completely different. Pulling up Starbucks’ website on my iPhone was a flat experience. It looks like the main site with features disabled.

Most of the experts think that HTML5 will advance enough to become widely used and when that does happen, it might create some significant changes in the market. Woodbury predicts that in 18 months the shift to HTML5 will boost Web application stores, which will then “take a serious bite out of the OS-driven app stores,” he said.

18 months is not a long time. I think this is an extremely interesting time to be developing in the web space. But what’s really interesting to me is the statement about web application stores. I think this is an interesting idea, but I’m not convinced that the model used by Apple and Android to sell applications will work with web based apps. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I just don’t see it this way. Google has an "app store" for its chrome browser and I have some frustrations here. Most of the apps are just websites. Why do I need to see it as an “app”? And why can’t I just go to the website either directly or from a bookmark? But look at the HTML5 Angry Birds and tell me that’s not impressive…

Interesting conversation though. Would love to have been at the conference to meet and talk to some of these folks.