My niece in New Zealand

My niece just wrote this message to family and friends: "The shoot is finished and it went great. The REI tech guys put together this blog. If you are so inclined take a look -- you'll see some familiar faces. Also check out the video links too they are pretty cool!"

As I think I mentioned last week, she has been on a commercial photo shoot in New Zealand, apparently for REI. The photographer is a guy named Steve. My niece (a fine photographer in her own right) is the Digital Asset Management person, which means she does file management on the photographs after they've been taken. As the blog says, "WOW! What a day. For those of you wondering why we have a Digital Asset Management person on the shoot we took 3341 images today!"

But the thing that impressed me the most was how elaborate the logistics of this shoot were. The tech guys write, "Many people have asked why we take a helicopter to these locations so I thought I’d take a moment to explain. We have a crew of 15 people that need to get to the top of the mountain fast with a lot of gear. We have multiple tents, camp stoves, sleeping bags, cameras, computers, food, water, backpacks, styling gear, shoes, trekking poles and all the new merch you can carry in every color. Many times the only other access is by trail that would take hours to get to. A helicopter is a very low impact, effective way to get get the crew up to the top quickly. We watch our time and plan our trips precisely in order to be as efficient as possible."

Needless to say, there are some spectacular photos on the blog. Here's one of my niece in her impromptu office on top of a mountain. What an adventure! This is an interesting peek into a large commercial photo shoot in action.

Pseudoscience-fiction

Last night I reread Michael Levy's introduction to the Wesleyan edition of A. Merritt's The Moon Pool (1919). Amongst other things, Levy writes at length about the ideas Merritt borrowed from Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists. As I've written elsewhere, it appears that Edgar Rice Burroughs may also have borrowed a few ideas from Theosophy in the world-building of Barsoom. I was reminded again by Levy's essay how closely science fiction has been related to the occult and -- a somewhat different category -- the crackpot all along. In fact, you could say that science fiction has been a great refuge for the crank and the autodidact who has problems with one or another aspect of consensus reality, or who simply has very strong and eccentric ideas about the true nature of the world.

( A few aimless observations ... )