My Quiet Life

A few interesting things:

• I signed up for Capture Music City. It’s some thing the Tennessean appears to have built for submitting photos, which will be selected based on popular rankings and published in a book. I am generally very wary of these “SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS AND BE PUBLISHED!!!” offers, because it sounds cool, until you do a cursory value analysis. It’s not that I anticipate making large amounts of money (or any at all, in fact) from my pictures — it’s my hobby after all. But that doesn’t mean I want to be complicit in giving someone something for free — which is essentially what a lot of these offers are.

  They put out the call for free submissions in a “contest” and voila, they have a bunch of photographers sending them pictures to use, for free, in a book they can sell. Everyone wins. The only upside to you as a photographer is the publicity and name recognition — which, for a majority of these contests — is virtually nil. So, everyone wins except you. You just gave away your crap for free. The Tennessean, though, for better or worse is a ginormous publication, so they’ll at least have more exposure. So what the hell.

  So, I uploaded a bunch of crap. Go vote for all my crap. I tried to upload a selection of my pictures that were related to Nashville in some way (which is tricky if they are portraits or something). Go check it out and upload any pictures you might have. Oh, and also, when you participate in these contests, you need to be careful to read the fine print on the terms to make sure you’re not giving away ownership to your work or anything. In this case, their terms of service specify:

  You also hereby grant to us a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide right to copy, edit, adapt, distribute, perform, display, and/or use, the Materials, including any derivative works created from the Materials, in whole or in part, for use in the Capture Music City book, Capture Music City DVD, and promotion related to the Capture Music City project. In addition, you grant to us the royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide right to use your name, likeness, and biographical information in connection with the use of the Materials.

  “Non-exclusive” is the important part — it means they are reserving the right to do whatever they want with your picture, but they’re not trying to own it. Very important.

• nashvillest.com has launched — go check it out.

Some music blathering:

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My friend Cary Ann has a good write-up in the Scene:

Bluesy soul-country mamas with impeccable twangabilly tendencies can be a retrofitted drag, or they can be Cary Ann Hearst. Dust and Bones from 2006 recasts Americana as outsider folk and rock ’n’ roll, right down to the impressionistic precision of the backing band and Hearst’s untutored but lively guitar. The title track stomps its feet in an abandoned church and Hearst sings “Dresden Snow” like Wanda Jackson covering something winsome from John Cale’s Paris 1919. Only it’s not winsome—it’s twisted, brilliant and very alive, like most of Dust and Bones. As a pure vocalist, the Mississippi native bears comparison to Jackson or Nashville’s Kristi Rose, but there’s nothing particularly campy about Hearst’s songs or the way she delivers them. She’s a canny singer and songwriter with a knack for the telling details that color her concise narratives.

You should go see her play tonight at the End (10PM).

I wish I could think of a guy I believed in more whose name I could profane to indicate how awesome this is. Wait, I got it. Barack Hussein Obama!! Wait no. Well, maybe.

For years I’ve wanted for someone like rufus wainwright that I could lust after without my inconvenient aversion to homosexual intercourse getting in the way. Finally I’ve found it. He has a sister.

I have to admit being slightly bewildered and amazed at this song being used as a UFC fighter’s intro:

I mean, I’m not complaining. It was just .. unexpected.

Well, it’s Saturday morning, er, afternoon, I’m sick and I just woke up. That means two things: crappy pictures around my apartment for project365 and actual blogging. Time for a “what I’m listening to that you should be listening to if you want to be as cool as me” post. Warning, excessive youtube embedding below:

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I don’t know how I missed this, but it might be the best thing ever. Weezer AND the Muppets?!

Sondre Lerche looks like he’s about 12. Who knew? I [heart] Sondre Lerche.

See also this and this.