WIP.CRACKER

I Got into the APA Something Personal Show

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:17:00 +0000

I'm pleased and excited to note that these two images were selected for the APA Something Personal Show.

Last year I didn't get in. I talked to Thomas Broening about that, and he asked me how many images I submitted. I told him "One." He laughed.

This year I submitted eight.

There is an opening/holiday party on December 11th.

(Complete series)

Dyson Vacuums Ad

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:40:00 +0000

In May, I volunteered at the San Francisco Portfolio Night. Portfolio Night is an around-the-world event that matches graduating art directors with established art directors. I volunteered to help because I thought I might be able to hook up with some budding art directors who need some of their ideas photographed.

I did in fact hook up with some. Cliff Seto is the first one that I've worked with. Cliff had an idea about shooting messes as crime scenes to advertise vacuum cleaners. We pulled this production off in a couple days - Cliff was in a hurry to get his portfolio finished so he could graduate, and I was in NYC when we started talking about it. I got a friend to loan me his house, stopped by my local pet groomer to pull dog hair from their vacuum cleaner, and Cliff got a plant. Darcy Rogers via NAOPA volunteered to assist and was super helpful.

I think the three of us got these pictures to about 90%. We really needed a stylist to go all the way, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure one, due to the compressed timeline (and styling budget of zero).

It was easier and harder than working without an art director. On the one hand, I had to interpret what Cliff was going for; on the other, in those moments when things stopped flowing, I could look to him for some guidance. Happily, Cliff is a good communicator, and I've learned some things to help that along (eg, asking for photographic examples, offering quick sketches).

The whole thing was a good experience - I like working on other peoples ideas. Next week I'll start shooting something with another art director from Portfolio Night.

Busyness

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:57:00 +0000

All my mid- to long-term projects seem to keep getting interrupted by booking or by weddings and birthdays. Oh and self-promotion. I've been looking at Flickr, but haven't really been able to address any of that 'new photography' stuff.

I did manage to work this out today, with a stylist named Colleen Hartman.

Not only does Flickr make you smell better, it also makes you more attractive!

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:36:00 +0000

In an earlier post I wrote of my five year plan and how an assessment of Flickr, among other things, might be useful.

I signed up for Flickr around that time and uploaded my portfolio. Along the way, my photostream has sucked up the Animal Model Kits project and the Capsules thing I'm working on.

I found the upload process pretty annoying, at first. There is a tremendous volume of crap (photos, comments, tags, private/public 'special icon' comments) you can associate with your photos. Figuring out which colorspace to use has been annoying, and it's clear this is not for professionals; then again, some of the stuff that IS for professionals is usually way more poorly designed and implemented (eg, DPP at first). But you get used to it, and just because it's irritating doesn't mean it's useless.

Is it just another popularity contest? And if so, am I a snob?

Over the four months I've had a couple favorites and group invitations. I get a little sense of 'oh you picked me!' but then I look at the rest of the photos in the group and meh.

But I haven't really participated. What I've done is kind of like going to a party full of photo fans, and standing against the wall clutching your photo album. Except the party is at the Superdome and there are 84743965432564356748237 people there.

I used to hang out at this website called photosig, which is like Flickr only cruddier, and with a sort of economy, in that you must critique photographs to accumulate points so you can upload your own photographs. Most of the critiques were as follows "Beutiful cat, come chrck out my photos".

The system requires users to critique 10 photos for every photo I wanted to upload. I'd just finished a project in school, with eight photos in it, so I needed to critique 80 photos. I tried to select photos without cats, and that were at least trying to be artful; I also tried to be more, uh, critical, and gently point out aspects of the photograph that I thought were working and those that were not.

This was 4-and-a-half years ago; I was still in school, didn't have much of a style, hadn't learned much about lighting, and my ideas were really important to me. Actually, they still are...I guess what I mean to say is that I was really invested in the ideas. To make matters worse, I was secretly-yet-actively trying to get someone, anyone to tell me whether or not I was a photographer.

Into this swamp I put my precious new project. The first critique came in at about the 10 minute mark, and was fair, if not completely blown away by my insightful genius as I wanted.

About 15 minutes into it, however, a critique appeared that went something like this: Why are you posting these stupid pictures this is not an art site maybe you should go to artsig. You are a terrible person and you're wasting your time and everyone else's. I hate these pictures. Also, the light falloff on the right is annoying.

I was stunned. And then angry. I went and looked at his pictures. I wish I could say that they were awesome and he was right - but they were all humdrum pictures of his kids playing sports and some mall-level portraits of the same. I couldn't understand why he was critiquing them in the first place, much less why his critique was so hateful.

In the end, I sat on it for awhile, then, using the site's guidelines for critiquing, contacted an administrator and asked her if she would delete his comment, which she did. If I had to do it again, I would have left his comment there, but at the time, I need to do something, lash out with all the emotion I was feeling about it, and dashing off an email seemed to fit the bill (I guess.).

These days, I can handle criticism. In fact, I could handle it back then. But there's criticism, and then there's jackassery. In any case, I'm kinda glad Flickr has neither an economy, nor a culture, of critiquing. It's just for sharing photos and for being popular. Or not popular.

Play vs Work

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:11:00 +0000

I've mentioned play vs work before, and talked about easy vs hard as well. In the few non-booked hours I've had recently I've been working on this photo.

These are roughs, as I'm not yet done.

It's not really where I want it yet. For example, I like the highlight situation on the left, and I sort of like it on the right, but I wanted to see what it looked like with more symmetry.

And so. Now with more symmetry. And yet, it's still not where I want it to be. But it's annoying because my worktime on this picture is so fractured.

When it gets frustrating like this, the voice that often gets loudest starts going "You can't get stumped like this on a job you have to be able to perform you won't be able to step away everything will be depending on you you can't choke like this".

And that's somewhat true. But there are some significant differences. I won't be alone, and it won't all be depending on me. And I will also be different, and I know this from my own experience. That little voice is always trying to protect me in this way, but it's very short-sighted and way too skeptical.

Thankfully, another voice says "What you need is a piece of plex that's two feet longer than this, and two short C-stands to rig it in an arc above the subject." And I realize that the next opportunity I have to get to Tap, I'll get that piece of plex and finish this photo.

Portfolio Revamp

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:40:00 +0000

In anticipation of a trip to NYC (tomorrow!), I've redone my portfolio, over the last two weeks.

I say I've redone it, but it was really a group effort. I'm grateful that people are willing and interesting in giving feedback, since it seems it's impossible for a photographer to judge his own work with much accuracy.

Big thanks to Jamie Kripke, Thomas Broening, James Thomas, and Lisa Wiseman. Each of them helped me out in unique, invaluable ways.

And most of them said, about the first edit, that there were too many similar images. It's made me realize that, while I like to think/work in series, that recently my series have been really narrowly focussed. While the Octopus series is pretty variable within itself, the Smoke and the Bike Trophy series are very similar.

So I removed all but the best from each series. This has left my book pretty skinny, but at this early phase, I think I'm better off showing a smaller, tighter set of images, than a repetitious one.

Add to that all the printing, cutting, scoring, case-acquiring, promo material collecting, target acquisition and location, and it's been a busy couple of weeks.

So, we'll see how it goes!

Vote for me in the PIX Digital Imaging Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:54:00 +0000

I submitted to the Personal Work section of the PIX Digital Imaging Contest.

If you can figure out how to locate my images on the contest site, that is. The link below used to get to my images, but somehow, their site moves pictures around, perhaps randomly. Thanks PDN!

Stop by and vote for me if you have a chance!

That stuff's on my portfolio site as well of course.

Animal Model Kits

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:46:00 +0000

(Warning: dead animals and animal parts herein. I wrote before that this project might offend some people, and I'm convinced.)

I'm mainly done with this Animal Model Kits project. I've been booked a whole lot between when I started it a couple months ago and when I finished it last week.

They're specimens, if you're wondering. I got them from an online supply house, so you could get yourself a set, if you're inclined.

I worked with a stylist, Suzanne Bryan, who was great. I could see I had reached my limit in arranging the parts, so it was time to call in a professional. Suzanne did a great job styling the animal parts, and I liked collaborating some.
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It was nice to have someone else around while I was disassembling these animals. It was pretty creepy, not only cutting them open, but just having them around. But cutting them open is worse.

While prepping them, I returned to ideas I come back to periodically, about death and life and our disconnection to each. Cutting through muscle and bone, though bloodless, made me realize how infrequently I come into contact with such things, when everything is killed, cleaned, prepared cooked, sealed, packaged and delivered to me, all nice and tidy.

I thought this might have a lot to do with entitlement, not entirely, no, but partly. If I had to kill and clean a chicken, I might have a much better sense of its sacrifice, and therefore feel more grateful while I ate it. And really, that applies to food, clothes, everything. We're so disconnected from the origin of our goods it's easy to float off into some Star Trek wonderland where things just...appear.
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The project grew out of a story I read about David Lynch and his Christmas presents one year. If I remember correctly, he obtained animals like chickens and rats, disassembled, labelled, and froze them, then packaged them up, with instructions for reassembly. I thought that was pretty freaky.

Visually, I wanted to try this top-down technique; I'd seen Hunter Freeman and Dwight Eschlimann use it well.
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I'm kinda thinking about Joel Peter-Witkin, but then...naaaaaah. I think his stuff is way more disturbing...

Glorious Five Year Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:01:00 +0000

Over the past five years, I've sought the advice of far more established professionals, listened to industry experts, talked with buyers and art directors, and read various magazines, websites, and blogs.

With respect to a path toward advertising photography, the general consensus I took was roughly:

Make lots of photographs
Shoot the kind of stuff you want to get paid to shoot
Develop and hone your style
Enter contests
Refine your list of potential buyers
Market to those buyers with postcards, emails, phone calls, personal visits, and whatever else you can think of
Go through editorial to get a name
When you get a job, don't screw it up too badly

This has been my general plan for a couple years, and I'm executing it as well as possible.

So.

Maybe I've been reading too much A Photo Editor, but recently I've been noticing a couple of things:

That list of items above, as a framework, has a lot more detail that needs to be filled in.
There's some possibility that the above framework might not work for me. Or for me now. Or any more at all.

From that point-of-view, I find myself wondering: are the following items opportunities or threats?

"Everybody is a photographer"

Magazine evolution/death

The long tail

Microstock

Stock

Online distribution

Online advertising

File sharing
"Free the net"
Orphan works legislation
Internet audiences and their characteristics
Increasing work-for-hire arrangements
Licensing arrangement degradation
Intellectual property ignorance
Social networking sites
Blogging
Diversification
Specialization
IM
Texting
The Economy
China

All I know at the moment is that I can't truly predict the future status of any of these items, but I can gather data and try to establish a productive attitude toward all of them.

How to Be A Photographer

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:45:00 +0000

I booked some long assisting projects recently and haven't been able to work on my own stuff. When those long projects ended, I found myself frustrated and irritable, and feeling like an imposter photographer.

I thought to myself, "I need to get inspired, get motivated, get to the point where I feel like a photographer, so I can make some pictures."

And you know, I can do all the little things that I find inspiring:

walking around downtown
looking at work from photographers that are around my level
listening to albums from artists I admire
reading
looking at stuff

but I'm beginning to see that this stuff usually has no immediate effect.

Then: I don't get to make photographs when I feel like a photographer, I get to feel like a photographer when I make photographs.

Which is what more advanced photographers have been telling me all along: keep making pictures.

Anybody Else?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:33:00 +0000

Dear Photographer/Designer/Ad Agency,

Do you know how big my monitor is? I think you don't, since, when I access your website, you expand my browser window to full screen, leaving this little tiny content area surrounded by a vast field of grey/black/white.

I wish, if you're going to presume to take over my browser that way, that you'd be more accurate about it. For future reference, you have 1920x1200 pixels to work with. Your content usually occupies about a third of that.

Thanks!

Self-promotion Heart Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:44:00 +0000

I just hit the button on my first email promotion. As I rolled up to that, my heart was pounding, my palms were sweating, my whole body felt light and there was a buzzing in my head.

Maybe, just maybe it was that third cup of coffee this morning.

More likely, it was terror. I checked the thing 39486120463476 times, but there could still be some atrocious mistake. I sent it to seven of my peers, but it could still somehow have some totally inappropriate career-ending aspect to it that nobody saw. Everybody uses email as a self-promotion tool now and it's totally valid but I have been getting spam for over a decade and I know how annoying it is.

And now, five minutes after the heart-stopping eternity of watching the "processing" message proceed, my body remains light but my heartbeat has returned to normal, and I just had a fit of relieved laughing.

Wait! There's a reply! Already! It must be a portofolio call-in, or some kind of positive feedback, or a scathing flame...oh, no, it's just an out-of-office message.

Sitting on the other side of it now, I realize that, whenever some promotional email is annoying me, that I never give any thought to the sender. I realize now that, in my head, they just click a button and send 3048693748612374632 emails, then go back to watching TV. My experience is nothing like that, so maybe theirs isn't either.

Sympathy for the devil.

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:31:00 +0000

Timothy Archibald writes a brief paragraph on "getting it" and it makes me think all morning. About why I make photographs. About what they mean. About what my photographs say about me. And whether I want people to know.

Which is not really the best state from which to make new photographs, but it's ok for editing.

Today is a day for making photographs, however. And I do wonder, during the creation phase, "What does this photograph (or series of photographs) mean?". It's not usually very productive. Photography is not helped so much by thinking about meaning. It's better aided by looking. So at best I keep on, shelve the interrogation for the time being, keep looking and seeing. At worst I degenerate into some Rivers Cuomo level paralysis of self-reflection for a bit.

This current project promises to be rather sick, and possibly offensive, which is fine, provided there's some point to all that, some reason for crossing the line. Right now I can't see the reason but I'm hoping it will become evident. My little brain always wants to know beforehand but my finicky mistress is always coy.

Bullish on Smoke

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:22:00 +0000

Although I guess Goatish is more like it. I like goats. There's something simultaneously creepy and alluring about them for me. They stand there, munching, staring at me with their devil eyes, and I am curious to know what's going on in their goat heads.

These smoke pictures are getting there, ever-so-slowly. I have a direction now, which is nice. I don't know how to output them though. Online at a manageable size, they don't look great. Printed they don't look great. Maybe I'll have to get all Jeff Wall on them.

It's strangely exciting, messing around with shooting the smoke. I can kind of encourage it in a certain direction, but really it does what it wants. Kind of like goats.

Mythology

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Remember this: if you are a photographer, you are always busy, and you never fuck up.

I know plenty of people who are willing to tell the truth about how much they've been working, or tell stories of their scrub moves. I know a few people who are actually busy all the time, and they're all willing to relate tales of ignominy.

But at gatherings it's always "ohgodI'vebeensobusyneveradullmomenthahaha". When people ask me, and I say something like, "Nope...been pretty slow...did a test...when was that? last week...", they edge away, as if it's contagious.

What's the upside of these myths? I guess if you repeat something often enough, it'll come true, maybe? There's something to that, but I don't think it works by lying to everyone all the time. I know the downside, for sure: it makes me think: "Man, everybody's busy but me, what the hell?", and yet I'm skeptical, so it's like being surrounded by a bunch of people in Superman costumes.

Anyways. I dropped an Octobank on a rental car! Which rental car was meant to be in the shot!

We were on a hill in Pacific Heights. It was fairly windy. The photographer liked to use an Octobank, 12-15' up, on a high roller. We set everything up, positioned the car, were starting to work with the subject. I turned away, but heard the photographer shouting, "Light, light, light, light, light, light...", so I looked around, wondering what he was going on about. The high roller had a sickening kind of list to it, like something over at the Mystery Spot, and I watched as the Octobank seemed to float down to the ground.

No, not the ground. The hood of the rented Mini Cooper. In the last 12 inches, it accelerated huge and crashed into the hood. I looked at the photographer. He turned on his heel and walked away. I ran over and started clearing up the mess, thinking "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...".

I go things re-situated but there was a twelve inch gash on the hood of the car. The photographer came back.

He asked, "Is there sand in the truck?".
I nodded.
He said, "All sandbags need to be on the lightstand."
I nodded some more.
"You will stand on the lightstand until we're done."
I nodded.

Later I offered to pay the damages on the hood, but he would have none of it. I apologized profusely and he wouldn't have much of that either.

I've been extremely fortunate to work with forgiving, generous photographers, who took chances with me, and suffered for it, and yet continued to push me along, help me, and even hire me.

And the thing about these myths, is that if we're all these Supermen and women, then there's no need for forgiveness, for humility, for tolerance, for help, for breathing or growing or living up.

In Context

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:01:00 +0000

I've gotten a bit tired of single objects on studio backgrounds.

After Picasso

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:17:00 +0000

I shot these this week, on both film and digital. These are from the digital captures.

The 4x5 transparencies look amazing, like little jewels. But what a pain-in-the-ass. I've haven't shot film much, only dabbled really, and this is the first time I've shot 4x5. It is: expensive, time-consuming, stressful. No wonder everyone is a photographer, post-digital.

I shot this one on film as well as digital to answer this little gremlin in my head. When I shoot stuff, this little gremlin always whispers "This'd look better on film.", so I put it to the test. I borrowed a view camera, Hunter donated some 4x5 film, I picked up some Fuji instant film, and got to work.

Digital went first, so I could noodle around without burning $3.50 a sheet for the Fujiroids. Once I got the digital, I switched to film. So aggravating, double-checking and triple-checking everything (focus, composition, shutter, f-stop, swings and tilts, strobes, dust, pulse-rate, biorhythms, etc), but the image on the ground glass is a little bit magical. And the polaroid, too.

And then the dropoff at the lab - and the nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something, for the rest of the day. But then, picking up the film and looking at the slides, little gems, and then the loupe, the startling detail and clarity...

The gremlin is right.

Guess This Thing is Coming Along

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Smoke's been done before, but I haven't seen anybody anthropomorphize it.

I Thought Photography Was the End

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:46:00 +0000

I thought that when I'd figured out the technical and creative aspects of photography, that'd be the end. The end of the struggle, the uphill climb, the fumbling through the dark. I'd reach a fine bright plateau on which I could smoothly accelerate to success, notoriety, and novelty-sized checks in large amounts.

As it turns out, photography's just the beginning. Now that I've turned myself into an adequate camera operator/lighting designer/idea generator/concept executor/retoucher/printer, it seems I need to add a thing or two to the batter. The hill ahead is Sales! Marketing! Taxes! Bookkeeping! Sustainability!

I want photography to be the end. I want to make photographs and then cash checks, so I can make more photographs (and buy sports cars).

But I can cry about it all I want...photography's just the beginning, and the business of it, well, that's probably just the beginning too.

Matter of fact, the end, at least the end in the way that I'm seduced into thinking about it, that's death, really.

When Is A Photo Done, Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:49:00 +0000

Lately I've been coming up against a new problem: when is a photo done? Last year, there was a problem with the same name, but the answer was "About ten minutes after I think it's done." This year the answer seems to be "About an hour before I think it's done."

Two years ago, I'd get to the point where I'd want to stop, which is not to be confused with having finished, and it would take a lot of effort to keep going, mainly because I didn't have a good set of options from which to choose. For example, were I to do this photo again today, I would include a rim light on his head and shoulders, to mimic the movie projector light better.

But that option didn't occur to me back then.

Working on this whiskey bottle, I got it to the point depicted on the left, then I spent an hour or so more fooling around with the smoke. I know I could have messed around with different backgrounds, made the whiskey amber instead of black, accented the cap instead of the label, etc, so I have more options now, and that's great, but it's still not easy to tell when a photo is done.

Ideally, I'll be working with an art director, or at least a stylist and an assistant, instead of on my own. It's much easier to decide with some additional input.

It looks to me now that the smoke picture is overdone.

Come to think of it, however, the smoke one might be underdone. There's a kind of rhythm to it, a kind of "not done...not done...not done...DONE...not done...not done...not done...DONE...". And a rhythm like that is exactly the sort of thing my intuition can easily pick up, so I get once again to the bottom line: listen to my intuition.

What

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:26:00 +0000

This bags project has been rolling around for a while, and I'm stuck between two emphases: the shopping spectrum, or what we need vs what we think we need. Both are pretty interesting but I don't think I can hit both of them and remain cohesive. This one's about spectrum.

780

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:22:00 +0000

780. 780 postcards to 780 art buyers. 780 times my photo will cross the desk of someone who might be interested. 780 seconds to make an impression. 780 opportunities to grab enough attention to interrupt the trip to the trash can. Another milestone in my new career, and from what I've read, from what I've heard, I can expect...nothing.

I'd love to start getting briefcases full of money, but everything points toward a long struggle before that happens. Over the next six weeks I'll be calling local buyers and setting up appointments to show my book. This usually results in more immediate results. But it's nerve-wracking. I fully expect to flub my lines embarrassingly the first couple of calls. But I'll keep doing it. At about half steam, ha ha. Anyways, feels good to be here. Yeah.

Control

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:54:00 +0000

I've been working on this firecrackers still-life stuff. I've wanted to show them smoking and such, so I've been fooling around with smoke.

The smoke stuff has started to take on a life of its own.

Most of my stuff lately has been so controlled, contrived, which I still like. I don't have much control over the smoke, though, so it's a lot more discovery, happy-accident kinda stuff. It's nice.

And in line with relinquishing control: no sixth of six Death Valley posts!

Death Valley at 140 mph, Part 5/6

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:20:00 +0000

Space

Regardless of all the fast driving, I had gone to Death Valley for the desolation.

And I got that. I got isolation and desolation and solitude and space. I got big blue skies, heat, and stillness, quiet.

Every December for many years now, I've undergone this hibernation thing. After experiencing it a bunch of time, it looks like I want to go down, hide out, lie fallow, sleep in a cave for a couple weeks in December. Which isn't all that bad, if I'm prepared for it.

But the obvious parts of the culture insist on gaiety, generosity, parties and festivities, so there's a kind of guilt that goes along with this hibernation urge. And really, I do want to participate in all the holiday stuff, especially now that I have an awesome, fun and sweet girlfriend.

So this trip was in a way an attempt to participate in this urge, not so much to prevent it as to accommodate it. To say, ok, you need this thing, let's go somewhere, somewhere deathly and get on with it, see what happens.

And not much happened. There was a kind of reset there, for me. A little going to ground. Not large. But enough.

Death Valley at 140 mph, Part 4/6

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Prideaux) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:47:00 +0000

Artists Road (and other uses)
I spent a lot of time driving around. I ran the same stretch of road several times in one day, trying to get to certain places at certain times. One place I found was Artists Road - a one lane road that winds through multi-colored canyons. There were green rocks and pink rocks amidst all the brown rocks, but frankly, it was all kind of a blur, especially the second time through.

Dantes View
Dantes View is at a peak at the southern end of the valley, and I wanted to be there at sundown. It was further away than I thought, so by the time I started the climb, the sun was quite near the horizon. Unfortunately, there were a Yaris and a Jetta on the road ahead of me, and no turnouts as far as I could see. At a wide turn I roared past them, but now all I could think was that when they got to the top they'd chew me out for passing them.

I got to the top in time for this.

Nobody said anything.

The Jet

On my way out, I had just descended the mountain on the western side of Death Valley, which empties into a second valley. The road through the mountains is pretty fast, and by the time it gets to the valley, turns straight, and continues straight about five miles until the next mountain. I hit about 140 mph on this straightaway, which was...stimulating. The car got very light feeling. I was coming back down to about 80 when I heard a gigantic noise off to my left, and a huge grey F18 fighter jet screamed by at about 100 feet, and maybe 300 mph. There is always somebody faster.