Dream Catcher – Single Image Sundays

I put this montage together over the weekend. I shot the elements separately withHipstamatic, adjusted lighting in Noir, then assembled everything inPhotoforge2. Inspired by the work of the great Jerry Uelsmann.

If you like this, check out the full-size version at Flickr, and follow my iPhoneography board over at Pinterest.

What do you think? Are you into montages and/or collages, and what is your opinion on the difference? Have you ever heard of Jerry Uelsmann, or been influenced by another artist? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• Exhibition: ‘The Mind’s Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann’ at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (artblart.com)
• At the Peabody Essex: Photographer Jerry Uelsmann (enterprisenews.com)
• Hipstamatic’s Snap is a beautiful magazine worth having on the iPad(tuaw.com)
• Single Image Sundays: Momentary (rsmithing.com)

Cop Shoot Cop – Any Day Now

They don’t make lyrics like this anymore

One of these days, I’ll sell my soul—
And let ‘em find out what they bought…

I hate to be one of those “back in my day…” geezers, but when it comes to this band, I make no apologies. Cop Shoot Cop were an anomaly for any time, regardless of their existence for a brief part of the ’90s. These days, I enjoy plenty of modern music, but for my money, Cop Shoot Cop’s Release is one of the finest rock compositions ever laid to tape. It is truly one of those records I’d bring to the deserted island, along with a solar-powered playback device. And maybe a boat.

Any Day Now from Release

One of these days Mr. Opportunity gonna be knocking on my door
One of these days I’ll read the writing on the wall
One of these days I’ll be a spectator in an audience of whores
One of these days I’m gonna run until I fall

One of these days I’ll win the lottery and wake up a millionaire
One of these days I’m gonna get myself a job
One of these days They’re gonna stop the world and I won’t even care
One of these days I’m gonna finally believe in God

One of these days I’m gonna grow up to become the President
One of these days I’ll find the woman of my dreams
One of these days I’m gonna find these truths to be self-evident
One of these days I’ll blow my brains out on T.V.

One of these days
One of these days

One of these days I’m gonna get in shape, become an astronaut
One of these days My fears are gonna fall down the stairs
One of these days I’ll sell my soul and let them find out what they bought
One of these days I’m gonna shave off all my hair

One of these days I’m gonna learn to play and write myself a song
One of these days I’ll take my conscience out to lunch
One of these days I’m gonna buy the plans and build the atom bomb
One of these days I’ll have the guts to play my hunch

One of these days, one of these days…

Any day now, any day now…

What do you think? Have you ever heard of Cop Shoot Cop? OrFirewater? What’s another band from 1994 (or 2004) you’re still into? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• What I’ve Been Listening to Recently…(invitemetoapartythatmatters.wordpress.com)
• CopShootCop.com – Final Tribute (CopShootCop.com)
• Firewater – Three Legged Dog (Tod A.’s much more long-lived post-CSC project)
• Firewater – So This Is How It Feels (OK, maybe they do make lyrics like this sometimes)

The Eyes Have It – Single Image Sundays

Skull ring in macro view plus a shot of a flower I planted in my yard with a helpful model all work together in this composition. It’s really one of my favorite things in the world when vastly separate images meld for enhanced artistic impact through some editing. I’ve gotten into montages lately, and I’m pleased with how this one turned out. Check out the source images below, also over at Flickr.

Related articles

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• Focus Stacking (redsleddog.wordpress.com)
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Write As You Speak? Or While You Speak?

I call this one “Ghost Writer.”
It was shot via Hipstamatic with the Salvador 84 lens and Rock BW-11 film, then processed in TTV PS and Noir. If you like this, definitely follow the 
Pinterest board of my iPhoneography for more image fun with iPhone apps.

Although some people are much better at verbalizing than writing, it’s just impractical to write in the same way that you speak. Ever since I heard that advice in grade school, I never thought it made good sense.

Now, if by “write like you speak” you mean “write clearly and to the point,” then yes, that is good advice. For anyone who has ever actually transcribed an interview or their own speech (go ahead and try it sometime) it’s very clear that the spoken word differs greatly from the written.

Catch A Dragon By the Tale

The whole reason I’m writing about this today – or rather, speaking  – is that I am dictating this via Dragon Dictation, the mind-blowing, powerful speech-to-text transcriber iPhone app. I’ve  used it for other posts in the past but not for one like this in its entirety. So if this prose seems rambling, that’s why. Before posting, I will have gone in and cleaned up some punctuation, added links, and added some graphics, but the bulk of this text has come to you first via audio. And I think that’s pretty amazing.

What do you think? Have you ever used Dragon Dictation or similar software? What’s your experience been like? Do you write as you speak, and do you think that’s good advice or not? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• Thus Spake the Dragon: How Useful is Speech Recognition Software for Writers/Bloggers? (doingthewritething.wordpress.com)
• Nuance’s Dragon Drive! Hopes To Reshape In-Car Voice Systems(hothardware.com)
• Speak to Type: The Best Way to Blog (quickonlinetips.com)
• Free iPhone Apps (priconnects.wordpress.com)

Fast Food and Fast Lessons in Public Relations

The new PR reality of social media and brand engagement means accepting the fact that the audience can drive the conversation, and that the days of top-down, message-from-on-high broadcasting of positions are long, long gone for any organization looking to engage in the digital realm. Because the whole point is...

Engagement, not broadcasting.

Big difference. This point is certainly not lost on McDonald's, a long-standing brand and corporate giant by any measure, who has long been making strides in new media. And their realistic acceptance of this new truth is serving them well as they recently experienced and rose above what could have been a major PR/digital disaster for the history books, what with having a promotional hashtag hijacked for unintended (read: negative) purposes.

As summarized at Ragan.com:

The promoted hashtag #McDStories led to some unwelcome comments about McDonald's experiences and some plain old trash talk….The hashtag was part of a campaign to showcase the company's food suppliers. Initially, the campaign used the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, but it switched midstream to #McDStories. Soon after the changeover, the conversation started to change. The brand saw about 2,000 mostly negative comments in about two hours.

Crisis! Negative comments! Oh noes!

But Rick Wion, director of social media for McDonald's U.S.A. puts this in its proper perspective:

"There are a lot of people who are trying to make a name for themselves by trying to be funny on Twitter," he says. 

McDonald's switched the promoted tag back to #MeetTheFarmers within an hour of noticing the adverse reaction, and in about 15 minutes or so, the whole thing was over, Wion says. He notes that in the time people were using the #McDStories hashtag, people mentioned Egg McMuffins five times as much. 

"The rest of the conversation that took place that day, #MeetTheFarmers, there was 10 times more conversation about that, and it was almost all positive," he says. 

The whole incident showed that some hashtags can open brands up to a beating. "If anything, the lesson of #McDStories is that we can be an easy target for people who are uninformed."

Good for McDonald's, staying on top of their messaging, then monitoring and quickly adjusting to avert a complete and total fail on Twitter. The company took an important step by reacting appropriately, and seeing the whole of what was happening with sentiment and their foray into digital PR via public engagement.

And this has only helped the company, in my opinion. Just last night I participated in #Pinchat, a weekly Twitter chat session about Pinterest, which happened to feature the corporate tweeters from the company. I got a kudos for a photo I once took in a drive-thru (don't worry; my car was in park) and, more importantly, got a look at the approach of the brand in the new social media world of Pinterest.

Taken at my local McDonald's drive-thru. Please Note: the car was in "park." Friends don't let friends photograph and drive. Click for more like this at Pinterest.

@rsmithing That's a cool photo!Thanks for sharing!!

— McDonald's Corp. (@McDonaldsCorp) May 17, 2012

So let this be a lesson for any company, business, or individual participating in social media: you are part of the conversation, but only part. It goes both ways, and you need to be ready to deal with both the good and the bad. Respect to McDonald's for working to get it right.

What do you think? Can you name another company getting it right by addressing the good and the bad in social media? How would you have handled this? What about your company or favorite brands? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• An inside look into McDonald's Twitter, blogger strategy (Ragan.com)
• Looking for a Job in PR? Know Your Social Media. (rsmithing.com)
• How McDonald’s Came Back Bigger Than Ever (New York Times)
• Can McDonald's Turn Its Twitter #McFail Around? (triplepundit.com)
• McDonald's Twitter campaign backfires into McDisaster (theprbuzz.wordpress.com)
• Brand #Fail (Adweek)
• Prevent a Social Media Crisis with a Simple Game of Devil's Advocate | Social Media Today (milleniumnews.org)
• How to Talk About Social Media In Business: 5 Points, Video Interview (rsmithing.com)