revjim.net

Last night Jess and I stopped by "Art Six":http://www.myspace.com/artsixcoffee for a cup of coffee. This place has everything that I look for in a coffee house. First and foremost, it makes good coffee. It also has nice cozy places to sit, lots of tables, lots of corners to hide in with a book, and lots of open space to be social with whomever else happens to be there. There's always a friendly face behind the counter, art on the walls, and, fairly often, live music. If you've never been, give me a call and I'll personally take you there and buy you your first cup.

This time, pouring out from the back room, was the beautiful, soulful voice of "Arielle Silver":http://www.ariellesilver.com/ (on "MySpace":http://www.myspace.com/ariellesilver) accompanied by rich, fluid bass and percussion with subtlety and finesse, something sure to make the misses a very happy woman. I'd never heard of them before but I'm glad I found them there. The poetic lyrics, complicated melodies, and tight rhythm give them polished sound of "real musicians" yet leave them with enough of a raw edge to keep them interesting. Give them a listen, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. They are playing tonight at the "Standards and Pours":http://www.standardandpours.com/ coffee house and are currently "touring all over the US":http://www.ariellesilver.com/calendar.html. Find out when they'll be near you and check them out.

In this morning's dose of the world wide web, I learned that David Hobby, photographer for the Baltimore Sun and creator and author of "Strobist":http://strobist.com/, is feeling the pain of "putting in too much personal time for not nearly enough money":http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/strobists-next-phase.html, something I'm all too familiar with.

For the photographers in my readership, "Strobist":http://strobist.com/ is a website that encourages the use of small, inexpensive, off-camera flashes and simple light modifiers in a manual fashion to allow lit photography to become a often used tool in every photographers repertoire. David offers "well written instruction":http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html, provides a wide range of "well explained examples":http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/on-assignment.html, gives his opinion on a big selection of "related gear":http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/gear-articles-and-reviews.html and is holding a "lighting boot camp":http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/06/lighting-boot-camp-archive-page.html where he encourages his readers, assignment after assignment, to take the flashes off their cameras and make some incredible images. Check it out! It'll change the way you look at flash photography.

Unfortunately for this budding new blogger, David is learning that most people these days expect handouts and a free ride and are rarely willing to part with their own money, time, or resources when they don't have to. Despite thousands of new readers all scraping together equipment based on David's simple suggestions and millions of hits to his website from all parts of the world, he's making very little from his affiliate banners, product links, and advertising. Why? Because people are too lazy to be bothered to use a link from David's site to buy the products he recommends.

I make it a point to use links from David's site (or other sites like his that I support) even when purchasing products he didn't recommend because it's important to me to have such a valuable resource (and others like it) continue to exist. It's important to me that a place like Art Six exists that, even when it's a longer drive than other places for me, I still make the effort to get out there and I always leave a good tip. While I'm grateful that Arielle Silver was able to gain some exposure last night, it really made me sad to see so many people enjoying this music and yet so few willing to drop a few bucks in the tip jar or buy a CD. Jess and I bought a CD and a small tip, though it doesn't even cover their hotel room for the evening, let alone gas, food, equipment and a decent wage for the three of them.

If you don't support the things you love they will go away.