Your Daily Insight as told by F.M. Young

(This is the best we could do for F.M. Young)

It isn't the incompetent who destroy and organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest on their achievements who are forever clogging things up.

Wheels Up: BikeNYC.org Helps You Celebrate Bike Month

May is Bike Month, and while it might be more than half over, there's still plenty of cycling goodness left to go around. We recommend Transportation Alternative's BikeNYC.org, which is brimming with useful information about city cycling, including a daily calendar of bike-related events.

Today, for example was Bike to Work Day, and this weekend you can check out the NYC Bike Expo at Penn Pavilion, the Brooklyn Bike Jumble in Park Slop and lots more. The site also offers some handy tips and tempting deals for NYC's bike-lovers, as well as an interactive map to help you safely pedal your way around the city and a link to Transportation Alternative's directory of bike-friendly businesses.

Of course you can also get your Bike Month fix right here at 3rd Ward. Sign up for our Basic Bicycle Mechanics class to get to know your ride, then get to know it even better in Intermediate Bicycle Mechanics. Or learn to build your own Badass Bike Light!

-- John Ruscher

Watch This Now: MTV Brings Back "Art Breaks" With Help From MoMA PS1 and Creative Time

MTV Art Breaks, old and new, with stills from videos by Jean Michel Basquiat and Rashaad Newsome.

Back in the 80's, when MTV was still airing these things called "music videos," the fledgling rebel cable network decided to take things one step further with "Art Breaks," a series of short video art pieces by the likes of Keith Haring, Richard Prince and Jean Michel Basquiat. The aim was to "bring visual art to viewers who tuned in to MTV for the art of music videos."

Now MTV has revived "Art Breaks," inviting NYC contemporary art authorities MoMA PS1 and Creative Time to curate new videos by artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Rashaad Newsome and Jani Ruscica. You can follow "Art Breaks" on Tumblr and watch both the new segments as well as some of the '80s classics.

"This collaboration allows a younger generation of artists to experiment beyond the walls of the museum and onto the screens of a broad, international audience," says MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach, while MTV President Stephen Friedman adds that "creative expression and experimentation are at the core of MTV's DNA." (We will keep our mouths shut on that one, but we do condone this particular project.)

"Art Breaks" will likely get the most exposure online, but we most certainly love imagining "Jersey Shore" viewers being inadverntently turned on to contemporary art in between all of the drama, fights and binge drinking (followed by the binge drinking, drama and fights.)

Meanwhile, watch videos by Mickalene Thomas and Richard Prince below and head to Artbreaks.mtv.com for more.

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight as told by Donna Summer (R.I.P.)

I'm just an ordinary person that did some extraordinary things.

Q&A: 3rd Ward's Max Kelly On The Flavor of Food Photography

All photos by Max Kelly

With 3rd Ward's Culinary Incubator on the horizon, food has been on our minds quite a bit (read: nonstop--someone make us something now.) Anyhow, as we yearn for that mouth-watering future, we've been busy feasting our eyes on the food photography of 3rd Ward member Max Kelly. We caught up with him to find out more about how it all began.

You can check out some of Kelly's delicious shots both below and on his new website--but first, our Q&A:

3rd Ward's John Ruscher: So how did you get into food photography?

Max Kelly: I've always known that I wanted to work in a field in which I could physically see my accomplishments at the end of a day's work. Before food photography, I worked as a camera operator on commercial film sets, and realized that while I enjoy video, still photography is where my true passion lies.

The thing I love most about photography is that it's a gateway to any other subject matter that you find you're passionate about. I'm fascinated by the mechanics of cameras, the ways in which light can interact differently with a subject, and the effects of composition on a viewer—and it's a privilege to explore my other interests through this lens.

JR: Where's the passion for food come from?

MK: I grew up in Brooklyn, in a very food-minded family that cooked and traveled often—so I had the benefit of being exposed to many different flavors and cultures at an early age. Food is a vast topic, and one which is universally shared. I'm captivated by the fact that there are infinite possibilities and variations for any dish, and that two people from different parts of the world can look at the same ingredient in totally different ways.

JR: Does food photography require a different approach from shooting other subjects?

MK: Still life photography is more focused on creating an environment than other types of photography. Sometimes, this means rearranging or adding props to a real-life location, while in other instances, "locations" are fabricated from scratch. Creating environments and choosing props that impart visual cues about a dish is a large part of food photography.

Beyond that, there is of course the factor of having a small window of time to photograph the food before the ingredients wilt, dry or otherwise lose their fresh appearance. For this reason, communicating well with your team and having a clear vision of the final product before beginning to shoot is essential.

JR: Did anything at 3rd Ward influence your work in particular?

MK: I found 3rd Ward's classes and coworking space to be a great help when I first struck out on my own as a freelancer. The Branding Your Vision class for photographers drove home the point that it's essential that your work have a unique and consistent look. It helped me create a style that was my own, and not rooted in what I thought was "popular" and "marketable". 

The Business of Photography class gave me insight into how publications hire photographers, as well as the most effective ways to get my work into the hands of photo editors and creative directors.

...and now for some of Kelly's gorgeous attempts to make you eat your laptop:

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight as told by Aldous Huxley

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.

Commercial Photographer, Douglas Lyle Thompson Leaves The Ads Behind

Courtesy: DouglasLyleThompson.comAfter photographer Douglas Lyle Thompson graduated from college on the West Coast, he made the cross country trek to NYC, where he's since made a living shooting commercial work for brands like Puma, Philip Lim, Monocle and the Ace Hotel. These projects share a similar color palette and sense of place, environments typically ultra-bright, washed out. And while we most certainly back those making a living via commercial work, we tend to find ourselves more excited by a photographer's "side" projects. As in, the work produced without a client breathing down their neck.

And typical us, we've officially fallen for the quietude of Thompson's expansive landscapes. The images simply feel more accomplished, or maybe the most timeless out of all his work. Either way: To the aspiring photographer the work seems a bit more attainable than, say, landing a shoot with Puma. 

Here, we've assembled a miniature gallery of Thompson's work, which you can view more of on his personal blog, chronicling his adventures from coast-to-coast and to these far-off places.

Feeling moved to grab your SLR? Great. Jump into one of 3rd Ward's several photography classes and start capturing a space of your own.

All Images Courtesy: DouglasLyleThompson.com

Sheer Engineering Genius: Melvin The Machine Lets You Send a Postcard, Rube Goldberg-style

Some people send a postcard the easy way (as in, the regular way). They write their message, the address, throw on a stamp and pop it in the mailbox. Other people get a little more into it. They build a transportable Rube Goldberg machine designed to stamp and write a message on a postcard and they take it to the park and let it loose.

Let us tell you what we're talking about here.

Two years ago, the Eindhoven-based design studio HEYHEYHEY built a big, expensive machine that took photos and video of its own performance; a four-minute spectacle involving pyrotechnics and printmaking that is quite literally jaw-dropping. (Upon watching, tell us if your jaw doesn't physically drop and you don't gasp like a little, excited child).

Well now they've bested themselves and made a traveling version--which they've deemed Melvin Light. The entire contraption fits into two suitcases that you position side by side, unpack, make a few adjustments to and start it up. After all the bells and whistles go off and some loop-de-loops between suitcases, a metal ball triggers a bent ruler to snap a rubber stamp with your message against a postcard, followed by a plastic thumb that affixes the stamp.

After it's first run in Eindhoven back in April, Melvin traveled to Milan for three successful runs. Here's what "Melvin" had to say about his trip there:

"Melvin here. Wasn't really feeling run 3 but finished it nonetheless. Not many peoples around these parts. I counted just 1! By the way, did you know this is the first time I've ever been to Milano?"

Want Melvin to make a pitstop in your hometown? Contact HEYHEYHEY to put in a request (or follow his whereabouts on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.)

Your Daily Insight as told by Yoko Ono

The cynicism that you have is not your real soul.

Kickstarter Pick: Seta--The Eco-Friendly iPhone Dock Saver

Does this scenario sound familiar?

"You grab your docked iPhone and attempt to rush out the door only to realize the dock is still attached and you've been dragging the cord along behind you.  You desperately (and somewhat violently) shake your phone, waiting for the dock to release and subsequently soar across the room until it crashes into a wall.  But what did you expect?  The dock is made of lightweight plastic and you bought it for $10 on Amazon. "

So what do you do? You certainly don't buy another cheap plastic dock from some unknown online seller. You could buy a more expensive aluminum dock that's heavy enough to stay put when you pull up to release your phone, however "it takes 319 days to retrieve aluminum from the ground and refine" it to the point that it can be used in products like docking stations. So now there are two problems, a plastic dock that's being tossed into landfills and an aluminum dock with an unforgivably giant carbon footprint.

Luckily there's a solution--and it comes from gecko feet (no joke.) For $5 (!) you can support the Kickstarter campaign for Seta, the "eco-friendly" alternative to your current dock made from "a specially developed reusable piece of foam inspired by the biomimicry of the non-residue leaving adhesive microstructure found on gecko feet."

Seta is basically a "ridiculously strong" sticker that you can attach to the bottom of your dock--or even the phone itself--and it won't leave behind a sticky residue. Seta uses 100% recycled and compostable labels and packaging that's "embedded with 50-75 wildflower seeds," so when you toss out the box you're also growing some pretty flowers. And did we mention it's only $5?!