Parasol Records posted some disappointing news today. They’re closing up their mail order business on December 17. I’ve bought a number of records through the mail order over the past few years, though I must admit that my number of orders has been waning ever since moving away from Champaign-Urbana. It’s still one of the first places I look when trying to find a record online though. It’s going to be really sad to see it go. At least the label is sticking around; it would be a really sad day if that went away as well.

I remember the first time I discovered Parasol when I was a junior in college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. The other record store I used to go to, Green Street Records (I think that was the name anyway), had closed down the previous year and I was lost without a place to go shop for music. I finally had an apartment with room enough to keep more than just a handful of CDs so I wanted to find a shop to browse through music. I searched around and found Parasol. The website (which has remained essentially unchanged since then), almost made it seem like they didn’t have a shop open to customers, but I found a paragraph on the About page that said they welcomed walk-in customers. I called just to verify and they confirmed that, yes, they love when people stop into the store.

It was a cloudy autumn day. I hopped on my bike and headed over to Parasol, knowing just the address. The address will forever be burned into my brain: 303 W Griggs Street, Urbana. Where the hell is 303 W Griggs Street in Urbana? Seriously, where is it? I biked by where I thought it should be around 5 times before I finally saw the tiny Parasol sign in the lawn near the building. It was a nondescript one-story red building with 2 big windows in front. I parked my bike in the driveway and walked in cautiously, still not quite sure I was in the right place.

I walked in and a woman (who turned out to be Angie Heaton) was packing some records for the mail order on the left side of the building and some other folks were on computers on the right side of the building. I couldn’t help thinking that I had seen the woman that was packing records somewhere before. It turns out she was one of the opening acts at a show I was at a week or two before that (I think at the Cowboy Monkey in downtown Champaign). She welcomed me in and showed me where the CDs were. They were amazingly organized. All of the new CDs in alphabetical order on shelves that reached from the floor to above my head, and there were tons of 7 inch records for next to nothing. I have no idea what I picked out that day, it might have been The Like Young’s first CD (which Parasol put out), but that isn’t important anyway. I biked home one CD richer and about $10 poorer.

The important part was that I found a new record store and I went back to dozens of times. I went back and bought the rest of the Like Young albums, all of the Wolfie LPs and 7 inches, all of the Field Mice reissues, Low’s Lifetime of Temporary Relief, a ton of Swedish pop, and countless other albums and singles. They were always there, just a short bike ride away. Or to some people it was a shipment away. I went in one weekend and Angie was spouting off all of the countries she was shipping records to. I don’t remember what they were offhand, but I think they were some countries in eastern Europe. Soon it won’t be a bike ride or shipment away though. It’s a sad day. Parasol was one of the best parts of Champaign-Urbana. I even head over there when taking a trip down to Champaign-Urbana. I guess that won’t be the case anymore.

I never really got to know anyone at Parasol but it was a great part of my life when I lived in Champaign-Urbana. I wish the best for Angie and Roy in whatever they do in the future, and to Parasol Records in general. I hope they continue to release great records.

I love demo versions of songs. I love hearing songs in a state of being completely unpolished. They just feel so much better in their raw state. Of course some songs definitely benefit from mastering; I’m sure there are a lot of pop artists that would be horrible without someone great in the studio mixing their music.

I’m a huge fan of Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good to Me, City Center, Flashpapr, Lovesick, solo, other stuff), and pretty much pick up anything he puts out. I also follow the blog for his band City Center where he and Ryan Howard post songs all the time. Most of the songs are one-off songs that go nowhere, or early demos of songs that end up on a 7” or 12” record. One in particular, “Obvious” ended up on the most recent album, Redeemer. It also ended up on a solo album of Fred’s. Listen below. And then go buy some music.

City Center – Obvious [from blog]
Here is the demo version of Obvious from the blog. I think this is probably my favorite version. This was posted to the blog sometime in 2009, so it’s the oldest version of the song available.

City Center – Obvious [from album Redeemer]
And the song from the album. A little more cleaned up, and still really great. The entire album is really great, and I think this is my favorite song from it.

Fred Thomas – Obvious [from album Night Times]
Fred also put this song on a solo album, which is available for download free from the City Center blog, so go download it and have a listen. This is quite a bit more cleaned up, and just Fred so it’s a little more restrained.

It’s that time of year again, but not for trick-or-treating, or giving thanks, or even celebrating Christmas. No, it’s time for the annual Arlington Heights Village Hall Photography Contest (apparently this is an annual thing now – I somehow missed the news on this last year).

So if you have a fancy photograph of Arlington Heights that you think would look nice inside the fancy village hall, then submit it. You have until 29 December 2011 at 5pm (note that at least at the time of writing this, the date on the VAH site says 2010, but they actually mean 2011). The contest is also open to non-residents, so if you’re a good photographer then make your way to Arlington Heights, have a bit to eat, and take some photos.

My favorite part about this contest is the rules state that you really only give license to the village to print your image for display in the village hall. And it’s free.

You can submit up to 3 photos, so find your best ones, put them on a CD, fill out the entry form, and send it in.

More information on the Village Website

This article consists of my gripes over the Daily Herald paywall, and a link to a way to bypass it. If you’re just here to see how to bypass it, scroll down.

My Gripes

At the time of writing this I don’t own a smart phone or an iPad (there is no market for other tablets) so I don’t know the joys of being able to pick up a little electronic device and read the news from anywhere at any time. This is probably why I still prefer to read the news on actual printed paper. I don’t subscribe to any papers though since between work, classes, hobbies, and other obligations there isn’t time to sit down and scan through an entire newspaper. So instead I follow local news outlets on Twitter. When an interesting sounding story comes up I click on it. I used to do this a lot with the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper, until they set up a paywall with a limit of 15 free pageviews in a calendar month. Now I hardly ever go to the site. I imagine many other people have adopted the same tactic. It’s easier to avoid than fight or give in.

I don’t have a problem with paying for news. I would love to pay the Daily Herald for their reporting, I really would. I would pay the Chicago Tribune or Sun Times too. I think that these newspapers are great and definitely deserve the revenue. However, the Daily Herald thought a bit too much of itself when it established the paywall. You either subscribe to the DH digital edition or you don’t. No tiered approach. No desktop only, or iPhone only, or iPad only, or any combination of these. It’s all or nothing. And then they decided to screw the print subscribers (to put it mildly) by charging them $1 per week to view the digital edition (See Subscription Options). I’m sure there’s some reasoning here, probably to have numbers to tout at advertisers, but there has to be a better way of doing this. If I subscribe to the print edition I shouldn’t have to pay you extra to view the same material on the computer. This is akin to having to pay for both a CD and mp3s of that CD. Even the New York Times gives print subscribers free access to all of their online content. All of it, for free. They also have tiered digital subscriptions, and their lowest priced subscription, which consists of smart phone and desktop access, is cheaper than the Daily Herald plan. Hubris overflows at the Daily Herald.

Let’s back up a little bit. I follow local news feeds, including the Daily Herald, on Twitter. This way, even if the story doesn’t look interesting enough to click the link, I at least know it happened. I really like to be informed (which again is why I would love to pay for news, just not at premium DH prices). The past couple times that I’ve clicked on a story link through Twitter though, the Daily Herald has loaded and then come up with an onscreen pop-up saying the article is for digital subscribers only. That’s fine, but why did you link to it on Twitter? You’re broadcasting to the entire world that which only a limited number of people are able to access. And no, I’m not going to pay $2.99 just to view this article, but thanks for the offer.

The Daily Herald has a right, or an opportunity at least, to make a profit by selling online subscriptions, just not at the price they are charging. Here’s an idea: create a basic plan that costs somewhere between $5-10 per month. I’ll pay that. I’ll tell everyone I know to pay that. Also, stop screwing your print subscribers.

Off topic, but interesting: the Daily Herald iPad app is getting rave reviews.

Bypassing the Paywall

Someone found a way to bypass the paywall by editing your hosts file. Feel free to give it a try

I guess I’m probably considered a heavy bandwidth user. This 150GB cap from AT&T may be an issue.

Arlington Heights, circa 1940. My building is there, in the downtown area.

More aerial photos of Cook County from the same survey here

This thought came into my head during a photo walk this evening. When comparing actual surface area of film, do you get more from a roll of medium format or 35mm? I was shooting Ilford Delta 3200, a fairly expensive film. B&H sells a 36 shot roll of 35mm for $7.07 and a 120 roll for $4.69.

Clearly the 120 rolls is cheaper, but can only yield between 4 and 16 shots depending on the frame size. So the photos can come out to between $1/shot and roughly $0.29/shot. The figure for a 6×6 camera (12 shots) is $0.39/shot.

The 35mm on the other hand yields somewhere between 36 and 39 shots (unless you have a half frame or panoramic camera of some sort, but those are few and far between), so the cost per shot is about $0.20.

That makes each shot only about half the cost of a medium format shot. Not a far cry since you get better detail out of medium format, but these numbers still don’t answer the original question.

So let’s get to it. A 35mm frame is 24mm by 36mm, or 864 square mm. A 6×6 frame is actually 56mm by 56mm, or 3136 square mm.

So 864 square mm times 36 frames = 31104 square mm for 35mm film

And 3136 square mm times 12 frames = 37632 quare mm for 120 film

The surface area cost for 35mm then is $0.000227 per square mm, and is $0.000125 per square mm for 120 (Yeah, yeah, who cares about significant digits). This makes the total surface area cost of 120 roughly half of 35mm. So take your pick. Cost per frame is half for 35mm and cost per square mm of surface area is half for 120.

(This leaves out the fact that you may get a bad or missing frame every so often but maybe you need to learn to use your camera. This also leaves out the fact that most films don’t have such a price difference between 120 and 35mm. Maybe I’ll do a comparison of Tmax or Portra too.)

I’m pretty sure I have sidewalk rage.

Audio Graves Volume 5: Another great collection of archive material from Mike Downey. After releasing the first four volumes last year, he’s back with 4 more, this time spaced out a bit. Look for the next 3 in the coming weeks, it should be good stuff.

Black and white film was available in 220
35mm Delta 3200 came in 100 foot rolls

B&H has been out of their Tetenal C-41 Press Kit for way too long, which was starting to scare me a bit. I love these press kits because they can save me roughly $120 on film processing (figuring ~$8/roll times 16 medium format rolls and a few 35mm rolls).

Luckily it seems that Freestyle Photo has the cure. From what I can tell this is the same exact kit only rebranded as Unicolor. Granted the Tetenal kit isn’t really Tetenal anymore, it was Jobo, so maybe it was sold again. Whatever the case, it’s nice to have another place to buy it.

It also looks like Calumet has the Tetenal kit, but their stock is questionable, and I don’t feel like calling.

I’ve only found a handful of new albums that I’ve been able to sit through this year. For the most part I can’t make it through the first minute of the first song. Sometimes the second song does the album in. Either way, I’ve been particularly bored with new music in 2010.

However there does seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel: 2010 seems to be the year of reissues. One of my favorite labels, Polyvinyl Records is reissuing out of print LPs by both Braid and Cap’n Jazz.. I love both bands and am happy to be able to plop the records on my turntable.

The best news came last week though. Well it really came about a month ago but I didn’t hear about it until last week. Hardly Art is re-releasing 3 Carissa’s Wierd albums: Ugly but Honest, You Should Be at Home Here, and Songs about Leaving. All of these have been out of print for a few years, the first 2 nearly impossible to find aside from $100+ CDs on ebay. The label is also releasing a “best of” album, but that pales in comparison to the reissues. Best news of the year? So far.

This article is simultaneously posted at Chicago Photobloggers.org, and is part of a series of articles I have planned.

A few months ago this article probably would have turned out very differently, that’s because a few months ago I didn’t own a digital camera. Well, that’s not entirely true; I owned a 2 megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera that I bought back in 2002. I don’t count it since I haven’t used it since 2005 or 2006 in favor of a number of film cameras.

When I got that digital camera back in 2002 I loved it. I hadn’t really used film cameras aside from an old 110 format film when I was a child and a few single use cameras. I took tens of thousands of photos with that camera, mainly because I could. Just put a memory card in the camera, shoot for a few hours, put the photos on a computer, rinse, repeat. There were absolutely no limit to how many photos could be taken, and after the initial cost of the camera there really aren’t any other costs. I loved the instant gratification too. When I first started my photoblog I would often take photos one night and post one of them the next day. Add the fact that the camera had a full manual mode where I could set the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and I had a great camera to learn photography on. The only thing I really didn’t like about it at the time was that it lacked any way to set the depth of field on photographs. I certainly wasn’t about to spend money on a DSLR at the time though.

Luckily my brother-in-law gave me a Nikon N70 (35mm film SLR) that he no longer needed. This had everything that my point-and-shoot digital had and I could create depth of field in the photograph. I remember the first roll I took with that camera; I was obsessed with having something in a photo be out of focus. The only thing this camera really lacked was the instant gratification that I had with the digital. It really didn’t bother me though. I could go shooting and then drop the film off at the shop a few blocks away. Then a few hours later, and sometimes overnight, I would pick up the film and scan it in to my computer. All in all, the process wasn’t much longer than the previous process. Of course I did have to finish a roll of film before I took it to the shop, but I usually tried to finish any rolls before being done shooting for the day. Film really grew on me, and I started buying more 35mm film cameras. I started to think that I would never move back to digital again.

This thought became more concrete when I bought a medium format film camera in 2008. Not only did this have everything that my 35mm cameras had, but the medium format negatives were roughly 4.5 times the size of a 35mm negative. Of course this comes at the expense of having only 10 shots per roll (my camera takes 6×7 sized negatives, results will vary from 4 to 16 shots based on camera) of film. By comparison, a roll of 35mm film can take 36 shots per roll, and a digital camera can take dozens or hundreds of photos per memory card.

In 2008 I also decided it would probably be cheaper to develop my own film. So I purchased some chemicals and supplies to develop film, furthering myself from digital even more. And just a few months ago a friend taught me how to develop color film. I enjoy developing film; it’s fun to control another step in the process. This extra control comes at the cost of waiting even longer between taking the photo and having it on the computer. I usually wait until I have about 6 or 8 rolls to develop before I bother mixing some chemicals to develop it; this can sometimes be weeks or months. This waiting period really makes digital cameras attractive; instant gratification is pretty nice.

And now after 2 years of developing my own film I have a digital camera and am enjoying the instant gratification. I can now take photos and see them on the computer the same day again. Only this time I also have depth of field and interchangeable lenses. Prior to owning the new DSLR I didn’t care for digital cameras at all. I’ve changed my tune quite a bit since then and now use my digital as much as, if not more than, my film cameras. I even bought a nice lens that I never would have thought about buying for my 35mm cameras. The only thing I worry about (constantly) is having a hard drive failure and losing all of my photos. Film is tangible, and I like tangible. If I have a hard drive failure I can just rescan the negatives. I’m attempting the calm my fears by backing up the photos on 3 different hard drives though.

So what is better, film or digital? I’m basing my decision on the fact that it’s not all about the end result, but the overall process. Photos aren’t my hobby, photography is. That includes all of the steps: finding a subject, taking the photo, developing the film, scanning the film, editing, and finally sharing the photo(s) that I like. Which is why film ultimately wins out over digital for me. That’s not to say I dislike my digital camera; I love it and it makes photography amazingly easy, but film is just more fun to use through the entire process.

I always assumed that the charm of iTunes, eMusic, and the rest of the online mp3 stores sprung up due to the fact that consumers really only liked the 1 or 2 songs they heard on the radio from an artist. I also assumed that this was due to the fact that major record labels actually put out albums with only 1 or 2 hit songs with a lot of filler. Any dedicated fan will go out and purchase the full album, but most people will simply purchase a couple songs and put them on their mp3 player.

iTunes LP is a fundamental shift in the way that iTunes has sold music in the past. Where before they sold single mp3s, they now plan on selling full albums with artwork, liner notes, videos, photos and other extras. The problem there is that if you’re clever enough to find Google and enter a few choice words into a search, it’s fairly simple to find album artwork, band photos and both music videos and concert videos; all for free. Now all we’re missing is the music and the liner notes. Oh, and the joy of handling a physical product and putting it on your record or CD player…

Are physical products really a thing of the past? Not according to the shelves of records and CDs that I have in my living room, and also not according to the many independent record labels that still put out LPs and CDs. Even Best Buy has started carrying LPs. I would much rather hold an LP in my hands and have a large copy of the artwork. Files on a computer are just so intangible. They get tossed into a folder within a folder within a folder and they get lost in the shuffle. A single click and they’re gone; a hard drive failure and they’re gone. If I do really want to put an LP on my mp3 player though, it’s fairly simple to make a digital copy. And if I’m too lazy for that, record labels often include a way to download the album as mp3s when you purchase it.

So if you buy the actual LP you get everything that iTunes LP gives you plus a physical product that you can hold in your hands, put on your record player, hang on your wall, or use to play frisbee with your friends. iTunes LP, while an interesting idea initially, seems completely useless in a market where physical products still exist.

During the month of August 2009 I am displaying 18 photos at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Arlington Heights, IL. The photos will be displayed on a wall near the checkout desk (by the Dunton Avenue entrance).

The library is located at:
500 North Dunton Avenue
Arlington Heights, IL 60004

Get directions from Google Maps

Come out and see the photos if you have time. I can also meet you at the library (I live just a few blocks away) and give more details on each photo if you’d like, just let me know ahead of time via e-mail (john@photoentropy.com) Note that I work weekdays during the day.

The hours for the library are:
Monday – Friday: 9am – 10pm
Saturday: 9am – 5:30pm
Sunday: 12pm – 5:30pm

And now for the sales pitch. I don’t have room in my small apartment to store these prints, so please purchase one. Prices start at $60 and include framing. For more information, go to http://www.photoentropy.com/ahml or send me an e-mail me at john@photoentropy.com.