With my first full year in the books, I’ve decided to try a new direction with this site for 2010. Basically, my idea is this: I read a lot of books. This year i read Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence about three times and I’ve decided to use some of his writings as the captions of my pictures (despite the fact that there will be very little relationships between the two). The point is – there is stuff going on that we just need to pay more attention to and we need to better understand our rights as citizens and as human beings.

Additionally, at least the first three months of the year will feature my travel photography, not for any reason other than I have a bunch and some of it is good. I’m definitely not tired of messing with local hipsters and their worship of subpar music and ill fashion senses, I’m just going to go a different way for a while.

You can read more about it in my updated ‘about’ section here: 2010

Clowns.

Not only are they just a bad idea, but they also remind me how much I hate Stephen King.  That guy cant finish-a-book-his-way-out-of-a-paper-bag.  Let’s do 1000 pages of character development & then wrap it up in two pages with a giant spider or a bomb.  Suck it King.

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” – Jack Kerouac, On The Road.

This is why I read.

It’s also why I travel.

The itch is nagging me again.

A woman drowns in magazines in a Plaza bookstore.

Kate get’s pretty drunk during trivia, thank god for notebooks.  Dont know who Jeff is, but he better answer.

/ Contact
Feel free to Email me here.

/ About Lucas?
Being raised in small-town Kansas, I never had the chance to experience much of the world around me, outside of wheat fields and dirt roads. By the time I got through college, I began to become antsy and felt compelled to begin traveling the world as much as possible. Unfortunately, with a degree in Biology and student loans in tow, this proved difficult. Eventually I was lucky enough (depending on your point of view) to land a job that afforded me some extra spending money and put me on the road often. During the next few years, I lived/worked in various places around the world such as Beijing, Chile, Mexico, and Peru and it did nothing but fuel the fire of my desire to travel. Up until that point, I didn’t even own a camera, outside of an old Sony point-and-shoot that couldn’t focus, but at some point I accidentally took a good picture and my life was changed.

Fast forward a few years and I’ve turned into the ‘guy with the camera all the time’ and now, I’m ‘the guy with the camera and photography website.’

I currently live in Kansas City, MO where I use my computer nerd day job to save money to fund photography trips around the world.

/ Notes on captions (2010 posts)

Looking back on 2009, I realized that I logged more hours of travel time than at any other point of my life.  For the most part, I embrace travel as an opportunity to savagely read books, taking advantage of times when the phone and the computer are just not ‘there’.  This year, I logged nearly 400 books (and watched nearly 10 movies).  One of the books was Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology.

It was amazing (still is amazing, in fact).  Unfortunately, like most books of this nature, they were basically packed to the gills with information, to the point that someone with a feeble and simple mind such as mine could barely keep track of all the stuff going on.

After discussing American Ideology with several of my friends, I realized that many of the conversations were basically limited to something along the lines of “I can’t remember any exact quotes, but the book was amazing, to the point of frustration.”

Well, that’s not good, is it?

It’s when this idea began to form in my head.  It centers on a these points:

1. Some information is too important to ignore.
2. Someone has already done the leg-work on compiling facts and putting them together into one or two places.
3. Some information is too vast to put into a single place and expect people to remember t (mortals like myself).
4. It’s not that people are stupid (I suppose), but it’s that in this day of ‘quick headlines’ and ‘short blogger notes’, people have short attention spans and if information is presented in small doses over a period of time, they will actually remember more of that information than if asked to, gasp, read an entire book.
5. I still like to take pictures, but writing captions making fun of people, while fun, may not be the best use of my time.

So here’s what I’ve come up with.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been going through American Ideology with a pencil and highlighter and breaking it apart in a way that captures the essence of the book, with the facts and ideas, but putting it together into small doses, which I will present to ‘the interwebs’ on a daily basis, in conjunction with my pictures.

I should note, that if you’re attempting to tie the subject of the picture to the subject of the Zinn-blurb, you will probably get dizzy, as I am not attempting to do so.  I should also note, that this site is in no way affiliated with Howard Zinn or HarperCollins publishing.

I should also add this editor’s note in regards to plagiarism.  This site is not designed to make any money.  I have taken down my Etsy page (that was because no one wanted to buy my stuff, but that’s beside the point).  The purpose of this book is to educate and display my pictures.  I will quote all sources as necessary.  So please don’t sue me (HarperCollins, Dr. Zinn, people in out of focus pictures).

Below is a copy of a letter sent to HarperCollins, which I have yet to receive a response to.

Permissions Department, 22nd floor
HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022

Attn: Permissions Guidelines

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in regards to obtaining permission to use quoted material from one of your published books, Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (ISBN-13 978-0060921088).

I’ve recently begun compiling quotes and subsets of chapters from this amazing book for inclusion in an educational, not-for-profit photoblog featuring my photography and quotes from the above book.

My idea is to quote parts of this book as captions to my photographs in an attempt to educate and spread information about the topics covered in this book.  I will quote the author, title and publisher in the blog posting or the blog ‘tag lines.’

An average post will be between 100-300 words with posts happening once daily.

I reviewed your permissions guidelines (http://www.harpercollins.com/footer/permissions.aspx), and could find no mention to using quotes or portions of a book for non-paper-publishing purposes (aka – web/blogging etc), and I’m not familiar with your particular companies stance on this subject (not the official legal ramifications of these situations), however I wanted to aquire permission from you out of respect for the author and his works (and out of respect for not-getting-sued).

Please let me know of this possibility.
Sincerely
Lucas Hutmacher
www.lucashutmacher.com
xxxx xxxxxxxxx St.
Kansas City, MO 64109
xxx-xxx-xxxx
lucas@lucashutmacher.com

I guess we’ll see how it works.  I’m excited to try something like this & feel good about it.

/ Gear
Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP
Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF
Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Leica DLUX 4 10.1MP

/ Print/Usage
If you’re interested in purchasing a print or have any other inquiries including licensing photos or hiring me for a photo shoot, check out the print/usage page for more info.

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