This is an interesting thought experiment and it involves statistics and some figuring, so I welcome any of my smart friends or anybody who cares to think about it to chime in here.

Assume that sentient civilizations with the ability to transmit some form of radiant communications signals (radio, light, whatever) started appearing in our galaxy as early as 4.5 billion years ago (when the Earth was forming), and assume that they continue to appear (each on its own evolutionary trajectory) for another 4.5 billion years.  Further assume that over this timespan of 9 billion years a total of one million different intelligent civilizations begin transmitting radiant communications. After a random time period of 100 to 1000 years each civilization stops transmitting radiant signals, either because they move on to a better technology that does not require radiant communication (pretty much necessary for interstellar communications) or the civilization dies out.  Finally given that our galaxy's diameter is about 100,000 light years, assume that any of these civilizations when transmitting would be at some random distance from us which does not exceed 100,000 light years (yes I know that's a little big since we aren't at the very edge of the galaxy, but bear with me.)

Now, here we are, smack-dab in the middle of that timescale, halfway between year 1 and year 9 billion.  We turn an array of radio telescopes to the sky and listen in all directions simultaneously, constantly, for a period of 1,000 years.

Is our sky silent?  Or is it noisy?  With a million civilizations out there at some point or another, all sending signals out at different times, what are the chances we would hear none of them at all even if we listen for 1000 years?

I threw together a crude simulation last night to try and answer this question, and I have a result which you might find surprising, but I'm curious to know what other people think first.  Care to venture a guess?  Or perhaps create your own sim and see what results you get?  I'll post my results tomorrow.

Well, I spent my spare time last week working hard on the photos from the dance recital.  All in all I was happy although many of the images were too blurry to use.  The problem was my shutter speed, it just wasn't fast enough, but I am still learning.  On Saturday I shot a play in a dark restaurant and got much better looking images by pushing up the shutter speed.  Gotta get to work on those images next.  All unpaid work of course, but I continue to hold out hope that good things will happen if I keep trying and keep talking to people about what I do.

Never heard back from the director of the dance recital, but I'm not too surprised.  I don't think anyone has ever called me back after an initial contact.  I have gotten e-mails from some people to say they really like the photos I took for them (for free) but sometimes not even that.  People are busy, and I think most don't realize the amount of effort that goes into making a good photo.  Anyway, as I promised the director of the dance recital, I put together a set of discs containing the best images from the show and have sent those off to her today along with a letter requesting her permission to post them on my business website.  For the amount of work put into this production, I hope that she at least calls me back, even if it is only to say "no".  Click these thumbnails to see the letter and the CD's (dancers faces are obscured):

The problem here is that (for both the recital shoot and the play shoot and probably just in general) the groups that put on these productions already have a photographer.  From what I've seen so far though, these "staff photographers" shoot posed shots backstage, as opposed to shots of the actual performance--I suspect because it's hella easier to get a really nice shot in a controlled environment than it is actually during the performance.

After I shot the play this past weekend, one of the actors' parents caught a glimpse of some of the photos on my camera and immediately asked if she could buy a CD of the pictures... so hopefully something will come of that.  I also talked to the people who ran the play--they pretty much immediately told me they had a staff photographer, but when I showed them a few of the pictures in-camera they seemed really impressed.  So I'll spend another week churning through those pictures and hopefully something will come of that.  We'll see.  No expectations.

Street photography isn't really my thing, but I try to do it from time to time.  The problem I have is that I am very shy about taking pictures of people without their permission, even though by and in large, I have a right to do so in public.  I find if you get permission, the subject changes and loses the look that drew you to the photo in the first place.

This is why I am always amazed (or cringing) when I see real street photographers at work.  I am just not as brave as these guys:

(video) Joel Meyerowitz On Street Photography

(video) WNYC Streetshots: Bruce Gilden

I picked this CD up last night with much anticipation and listened to it today on a long drive. 

It started strong, quickly soared to awesome, and then made a meteoric descent to absolutely awful and only recovered marginally after that point.  *sigh* Too bad.  I admit, that by track 3 I was beginning to wonder if we had another Ray of Light on our hands.  Things stumbled a little in the fourth track but came back strong for tracks five and six.

Then came track 7--the inexplicably named song Incredible.  The only incredible thing about this song is that it came from Madonna.  I'm sorry to say it is the worst song she's ever created.  Dischordant, screwy pacing, strange change-ups, and just an all around mess.  This one song utterly destroyed the mood and made it hard for the album to come back, which wasn't helped by the fact that the next 3 songs were mediocre at best.  I have no interest in hearing any of them again.  Madge, you can do better.

The mixing on tracks 9 and 10 was also pretty poor.  Madonna's voice was often drowned out or subdued against the music.  I understand it's supposed to be dance music but her voice is way too strong to be so downplayed.

Track 10 was the best of the mediocre songs, but Spanish Lesson is no La Isla Bonita... far more cheesy and contrived.  I may listen to Spanish Lesson again... I have a feeling it might grow on me.

Thankfully, the tail end of the album was saved by track 11 The Devil Wouldn't Recognize You, definitely an awesome number that I'll be putting on my new MP3 player whenever I can afford to buy one.

Track 12 Voices had a good sound but pretty silly lyrics.  I got the impression Madonna was trying to do a sort of "haunting" piece, like perhaps Frozen--but the lyrics were too weak for me to enjoy it.

Obviously I hold Madonna to a pretty high standard, let's face it--7 good songs on a 12-song album makes it a good album.  And this really is a good album--in fact if it had been an 11-song album minus Incredible, I probably would have enjoyed the later tracks more.

So here's what I recommend to people who buy this album and who loved Ray of Light and Confessions on a Dance Floor.  Listen to the tracks in this order:

2. 4 Minutes
3. Give It 2 Me
6. She's Not Me
5. Miles Away
1. Candy Shop
4. Heartbeat
11. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You

After that, stop and leave the other tracks until your next listen.  And I recommend just skipping Incredible forever.

Hard Candy is an awesome album.  It is almost another Ray of Light, and once again Madonna rocked my world.  Get the album and dance your ass off.

EDIT: After several more listens I have to say this album seems increasingly more kickass.  There's no hope for track 7, and track 10 doesn't stand up to a second listen, but track 8 Beat Goes On was much better than I originally thought.  On a second listen I enjoyed it much more and I think the first time through I was just so disappointed by Incredible that when the next song came on I was already soured on the experience.  So add track 8 to my list of good tracks above.  I'm going to be listening to this album constantly for awhile... and "4 Minutes" is frigging huge.

My canoe outing pictures were apparently a huge hit.  I asked my wife to deliver the following message to the teacher: "I'm glad you like the pictures, and I would appreciate it if you could put in a good word with the principal about me making them available to the parents on my business website."  No further news on that front.

I shot another dance recital (this time at Dartmouth Middle School) last nite.  I really need to carry more CF cards, things got tight toward the end of the program.  Apparently 8 Gb of storage isn't enough for an intense 2-hour shoot.  Shooting was so-so--the auditorium had no photographer's booth and was pretty much wall to tall audience.  In addition the stage was low and the sound and light crew sitting in front of the stage had their heads blocking the view of the dancers.  The light stands stood in front of the stage, as did the speakers and floor lights.  All in all trying to shoot in the room was a nightmare.  I spent a solid two hours squatting in the aisle between the front row of seats and trying to dodge the optical obstacle course between me and the dancers.

So a lot of my shots were not keepers, but I did get some really nice shots and I think after the post processing I'll have 100 to 200 decent photos.  After the show I talked to the producer and she seemed (a) very friendly, (b) somewhat receptive, and (c) really busy.   But I managed to explain to her that I have a business website and would be willing to host my photos of the event so that parents could buy prints, and that I would be willing to give her copies of the pictures for free.  She didn't commit either way but did take my card and said she would contact me on Monday.  Hopefully I'll hear from her and maybe get my first gallery of photos for sale up on the Sagewood Site.

Other work - I was asked to shoot some staff photos for my employer.  Technically, I guess you could say this is paid work, since I am salaried, but I'm not choosing to call it that.  It was an opportunity though to test my mobile studio set up.  I pretty much had a conference room set up with standing lights and reflectors in about a half hour and then shot sporadically over the next 3 hours.  It was actually a pretty small shoot considering the number of employees who had to be photographed (about 20 or so), but the good side of it was a lot of my coworkers got to see me working and the equipment I was working with and it helped (I hope) to drill home the idea that this isn't just intended to be a hobby.

I do have one coworker who has asked me to shoot some family portraits for her (she's trying to work out a date) and others who have hinted that they might be interested.  We'll see if any of that pans out.

So yesterday I was photographing a first communion ceremony and passing out business cards.  On Thursday I photographed a school canoe outing.  Two more unpaid engagements under my belt.  I've been joking with Patty that I'm rapidly becoming an unpaid success.

But I need the experience so I don't mind so much, and I've been pretty much on my own trying to figure this all out.  I have been taking scads more pictures than I have actually uploaded to flickr, mostly because the people depicted haven't given permission for me to upload them, so what I can upload is limited.  The experience shooting and working with subjects has been great.  Now I'd like to experience getting paid.

For the short term (maybe the next couple years, maybe longer) I have decided to sign up for a turnkey service which will allow me to put my photos in web galleries where people can order prints.  Since these galleries can be password-protected for security, I'm currently negotiating with a local school who has had me in to shoot four of their events to let me put these events up in secure galleries so that parents can buy prints.

I chose Exposure Manager to be my turnkey service after comparing and contrasting several such services.  Since I'm kind of not feeling well today and wasn't going out anywhere, I finally signed up and then went back to beef up my languishing Sagewood Studios website.  It's still unfinished of course, but it looks better than it did.  Assuming people start hiring me for portraits and other work, I will be able to get a better handle on pricing and so forth and put more information up there.

There's a link there to a "test gallery".  Ultimately there will be links to real galleries, but you can click the link if you want to see what a typical Sagewood Studios gallery will look like (the password for this gallery is "test"--obviously not secure at all... I just chose that password so I can demonstrate how the security works).  The turnkey service automatically watermarks my photos to keep people from just copying them off the website, and lets me decide what products will be available, and how they will be priced.  The service will process the orders and handle the printing and shipping direct to the customer.  After the printing and shipping is paid for, they take a percentage of my profit in exchange for providing the service (plus an annual fee) and cut me a check at the beginning of each month.

If it works out, I may contact other local schools and see if they have any interest in having me photograph their events.  We'll see.  As far as being hired outright I have at least one serious lead from a coworker who wants me to do a family portrait for her and is willing to pay.  That's something at least.  Start small and all that.

Anyway, I'm staying positive and I'm loving the shooting.