My name is William Petruzzo
I am an artist and a creative explorer.
I began my journey as a child admiring my father’s photography. I took a liking to illustration and cinema, and later to graphic design. My medium has always been visual, until recently when I began experimenting with music.
In my view, art is uniquely human, and that is how I define it: as that which is created by a human with intention. I believe there is a great deal to learn about ourselves and those around us if we give ourselves to the discipline of bringing things to life every day. Even when it’s ugly, art is love and love brings life.
I believe a happy life is one with people you love, and passions you have the freedom to pursue. I create for myself, and for my livelihood. If you are interested in commissioning my services, you can do so through the Petruzzo Photography collective. You can also find me on Mastodon.
September: All Kinds of Different
Last month I was experimenting with randomization a bit, attempting to introduce a more subtle imperfection in timing and velocity, and while I liked the results, I wasn’t done with that sound. This month I wanted to try push the boundaries further in what I...
August: The Shape of the Universe
With an encroaching schedule that needs to keep food on my table, music is becoming harder and harder to focus on. I knew this when I started though—that’s the point. One year of creating outside my comfort zone; create more, come hell or high water. Create more, even...
July: A Tangle of Rats
This has been a frustrating month for musical creativity. I had two false starts–meaning, I put substantial time into something that I later felt just wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. This is how creativity goes though, sometimes it comes naturally,...
June: What We Heard Was Untrue
May was a magical month for my music project. Paul was effectively done by the end of the first week, and then I spent three more weeks listening to it and tweaking it until it was published on May 26th. I’d become comfortable with the relative doneness I was feeling...
May: Paul
This month came together quickly. In fact, this month’s song last got meaningful changes on May 5th. Almost three weeks ago. Part of the reason it came together so quickly was because I had clear intentions for this month’s track. I had two primary goals, first, write...
April: We Belong, A Rendition
In February of this year, I worked on a rendition of the Paul Simon song, Kodachrome. It was fun reworking something that I already loved, and I started going a little nuts with it. I began renditions of at least four different songs before I decided things were...Books I’ve Been Reading
![Flatland [Review]](https://www.williampetruzzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/flatland-cover-400x250.jpg)
Flatland [Review]
Can you imagine what it’d be like to live in two dimensions instead of three? Probably kind of. Of course, that imagination is contaminated with all kinds of three dimensional thinking, you still get the idea. How about four dimensions though? I’ll bet that’s almost...
Why Photographers Need to Know The Language of Visual Art: A Review of Perception & Imaging
Perception and Imaging: Photography–A Way of Seeing is a book of the sort that all photographers should read. Especially aspiring photographers. Perception and Imaging is basically an academic text book, but I’m not being smug when I say that aspiring...![Ego Is The Enemy [Review]](https://www.williampetruzzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ego-is-the-enemy-book-cover-353x250.jpg)
Ego Is The Enemy [Review]
Ego Is The Enemy, by Ryan Holiday, reminded me a little bit of the daily devotional books I used to read as a christian. Short chapters, succinct messages. If you’re looking for them, you’ll probably find applications for nearly every chapter, every day....More from the Blog
360 Aerial Panorama Stitched from Images Captured with a GoPro, Tied to A Kite; Or, Ermahgerd Kite Picture!
I spent Memorial Day weekend in a place where my phone didn’t work, on purpose. I got a tan, or a “sunburn”. I pulled six ticks from body parts ranging in offensiveness. No one else got any ticks because I was apparently very mean to someone recently, or something.
Anyway, It was my Brother in Law and Sister’s farm down in Virginia. Having grown up in the suburb of a city, I really have a warped perspective of what a ‘small town’ is. I didn’t really notice that until I went to their farm for the first time. It also makes some sense of why it’s so difficult for the various political sensibilities in our country to understand each other. But I don’t really know anything about all that. At some point I will contradict that last statement–I am probably bullshitting you.
The TL;DR version of this post is that I’ve spent the last week creating this birdseye panorama of the Farm. If you’re interested in how it came into existence, I’ll get into that.
54 images.
Except for the givens–shooting rusty things with guns, smoking, sitting on the porch, riding the four wheeler–The the Farm is always sort of a different kind of excitement. Last time we blew up a propane tank.
Natural selection is really just a roll of the dice some times, as is the likelihood that I’ve referenced a scientific theory correctly.
Sitting on the porch based activities. That’s Jef & Rivka, Felipe took the photo.
Anyway, this time at the Farm, my Brother in Law pulled out one of those big kites you see at the beach. After flying it for a while–by which, of course, I mean sitting on the parked four wheeler it was tied to–I realized that once the kite was in the air, there was some pretty serious force. Like… maybe enough to lift a baby…
This photo commemorates that we reeled the kite all the way in, instead of just cutting the line and sitting on the porch some more. That’s Sean holding the kite.
But not a baby, because of the legal ramifications. And I really like all the babies I know. Anyway, a GoPro Camera is way lighter than a baby so we sent that up instead.
Jef, who makes music–but not enough–sampled the wicked sound the string made when the wind really caught the kite.
When we got the camera back down we found that it whipped around pretty violently up there. The footage was pretty much worthless, so far as video is concerned; except for the self-indulgent abstract project I’ll probably fuss around with. What we did end up with though were 54 frames which, together, I was able to stitch into a birdseye panorama you saw above. I’m pretty proud of it, and it took forever. You can see all the images I used at the bottom of the post, in case for some reason that is interesting to you.
Also possibly interesting to you is the progression the image went through before it landed at the final stage seen above. It’s an animated gif.
So, that was the farm.
A Word About the Blog
On April 23rd, I said this:
So, I’m going to try and write about what I want to write about, but I’ll try and keep it entertaining. Twice a week.
Ah, I was so young back then. Life is super busy and twice a week isn’t realistic. I’m going to aim for once a week from now on–or whenever I have something worth sharing.
See you guys next week. No I won’t, this is a blog.
How to make Doritos Dust Seasoning and eat delicious things
Credit where it’s due: I didn’t come up with the doritos dust recipe, Vegan Richa did. Well, actually I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s definitely where I first learned about it.
Anyway, yeah, you can make your own Doritos dust and put it on everything. I’ll say that again, you can make your own Doritos dust and put it on everything. The taste is like the classic Doritos chips. Cheesy and a little spicy. Whatever, it’s Doritos. The point is, you can make everything taste like them and that’s really all any of us really wants. Turns out the Doritos dust is gluten free, I think; So that’s cool if you’re into that.
Pre-Integration Doritos Dust
There’s one pretty weird ingredient in there; I’d never heard of it before: Nutritional Yeast. Apparently it’s pretty good for you, actually. It’s a complete protein, that has a lot of vitamins, especially B-Complex vitamins. It’s also low in fat and sodium, and has no dairy, sugar or gluten. Don’t get me wrong though, it sounds like I’m well informed, but I just rephrased wikipedia.
This is Nutritional Yeast. It looks like really bad dandruff.
Anyway, the stuff is kind of flaky-powdery. It tastes like cheese. Actually, remarkably like cheese. I found it at MOM’s organic market, which is conveniently located right next to Aldi and the Liquor store–the more frequent stops of the kind of person who plans to make everything taste like Doritos.
Here’s the other stuff you need:
1/2 Cup Nutritional Yeast
2 tbsp Onion Powder
2 tbsp Garlic Powder
2 tbsp Paprika
1 tbsp Cayenne
1 tbsp Salt
1 tbsp Sea Salt
~
Basically, you just put this stuff in the food processor and let it run until it’s a really fine powder. Careful not to try and smell it right away or you’ll inhale a bunch of Doritos soul. Also, it doesn’t really smell like anything. So, you know, learn from my mistakes.
Doritos Dust ingredients looking pretty in the food processor.
Doritos Dust closer to achieving its full potential.
I bought a shaker from the dollar store specifically to make it easier for things to taste like Doritos.
Doritos Dust works best on dry food, or oily food. Burgers, tacos, pizza, chips, french fries, crappy steak, pasta, and fried chicken all make great candidates for The Dust. Watery foods, like vegetables, don’t work great unless you add a little butter or something.
If you’re the kind of person who finds recipes online and then actually makes them, then you can probably stop reading. But more likely, you really really need me to spell it out for you. So, here’s a very specific idea that will be delicious.
Doritos Grilled Egg & Cheese Sandwich
You need:
Some Doritos Dust
2 slices of bread
Butter, or something like it
2 slices of cheese-food
1 Egg
Do these things:
~
Heat up a griddle to medium. If you’re not sure, less heat is better than too much. Butter the bread. You really don’t need much, but load it on there cause you’re having a rough week. Put one piece of bread, butter side down on the griddle. Place the cheese on top.
Dramatic Egg and Cheese Bread have fates that are inseparably intertwined.
Crack the egg on the griddle. Let it fry until the edges are getting a little crispy. Place the other piece of bread on the griddle butter side down, and place the egg on top. By this time, the first piece of bread should be good and brown and the cheese should look melty. Flip this piece of bread onto the egg, cheese side down.
~
Now, get a plate and put one solid coat of The Dust on the plate. When the sandwich looks sort of like the one above, take it off the griddle and put it on the plate of Dust. Take a lot more Dust and dump it on top so it looks like this:
You really need a lot of Dust to get the really authentic taste of loneliness.
Use you fingers to slide the sandwich around in the dust. Turn it over a couple of times and really get it in there good. Then, since you needed to read this recipe to make a sandwich, it will look nothing like this;
Have a nice nap!
Felipe proves it’s edible
Well, that’s it for this week. I’ll post again on Monday or Tuesday. I’m thinking it will probably be a look at some of my recent endeavors to learn 3D modeling and animation. I’ve got a long weekend to play with it!
Writing Blogs is Good for the Brain, So I’m Doing it Again
A spot of history
From November 27th, 2007 through about March 2011, I posted to this blog with a religious zeal. If you were to go back and read through all 1,209 that were published, you’d understand the pun closing the last sentence, and you’d know that by the beginning of 2011 I was kicking and screaming to keep a personal endeavor alive that was just begging me to let it die.
The day before my first post, it snowed a whole bunch. It might’ve started on a boredom inspired whim.
By January 2011, my most engaging posts were wondering what happened to eBay, what makes a dog leash a dog leash, and how totally racist Star Wars is–which is apparently something everyone already knows about.
With the exception of a little nothing here and a little nothing there, I finally let it fizzle out.
Later, in early 2012, I attempted a reboot of my website with a more photo centric, look-at-how-unpretentious-I-am, theme. This didn’t work. I was mostly interested in recapturing the nostalgic aspect of something I’d done for so long. I even renamed it ‘Show & Tell’. Not that it mattered, I was the only one here. Pretty hipster, actually.
Unpretentious
At the beginning of this year, my mother passed away. She was nothing short of incredible. Best mom ever. Totally a ‘candle that burns brighter…’ kind of thing. Whatever, the point is she was unbelievably great and we all loved her a lot. We miss her, but we’re getting by alright.
Mom holding up grandchild number three, so that he can see grandchildren numbers five and six. There are a lot of layers of love in this photo.
Right now
In the weeks and months following my mother’s passing, lots of things have oscillated in and out of perspective. I briefly considered growing a rat-tale, like some kind of genetic protest of my receding hairline. But as I’ve gotten my bearings, I find myself here again.
In those first years writing here on this site, I learned a lot about myself and the nature of discipline, grace, patience, commitment and embarrassment. I may have learned some other things too, like how to love reading books. It was all an accident though. The kind of learning that takes place while you’re not trying to learn anything and then one day you just realize you’re wonderful and assume you must’ve been born that way. This time, it will be different. This time I’m going to do it on purpose.
So here’s the plan
I’m going to use this space, and a deadline-driven posting schedule, to help me pursue those interests of mine that otherwise have no outlet. Some of it will probably be cringe-worthy.
In defiance of the little I know of Search Engine Optimization, this website will be about whatever I feel like committing my mind and time to. It’s hard to say what that will be exactly. But, here are some things I’m currently interested in.
– Art, especially visual art
– Music
– Food
– Drug policy reform
– Writing
– What-if’s
– My opinions on everything
So, I guess in conclusion, this website is for me. But, I guess I also kind of need you for that. So, I’m going to try and write about what I want to write about, but I’ll try and keep it entertaining. Twice a week.
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