I went to a black metal show and all I got was this lousy hearing loss.

Blogger likes to shove
all of my photos and text
into the middle.

It makes me feel like everything I write is a haiku, though I must admit it looks pretty good.

Went to San Francisco this past weekend to catch a black metal show. Got to see my old favorites Ash Borer and Fell Voices. I even bought some Ash Borer merchandise because I felt bad for those many times I got into their shows without paying. Velnias was there too, in all their candle lit glory. The band pictured is Lycus.
It was crushingly loud experience and I came away fully satisfied.

GOOD TIMES ALL AROUND AND I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY BUT THIS;
Those two dudes gathered around the Ms. Pac Man table look damn incongruous don't they just?

SUPER HAPPY SACCHARIN FUN ZONE ULTRA MUSTACHE HOUR

Portraits of severe looking old men do not mix well with action shots of kids playing. But that is what I took photos of today so DEAL.

I'm teaching a photography class at a charter school in Tahoe. We don't have cameras (I brought my own today) so the class invariably devolves into art/PE. And that's fine. Each day has a specific country that we focus on, so after viewing and discussing shots of New Zealand we went outside and I told the kids to find things for me to take photos of, the catch being that they have to direct me. Lots of loaded questions on my part.
These kids are rad. Hard to get kindergarteners to sit still for more than five photos, but whatever.
I think we'll turn a classroom into a camera obscura next week.

The old dude was at a rest area I stopped at. Chugged a carbonated caffeine drink, turned around and saw his majestic hair sculpture.
Had to ask.

Things Have Looked Like This For Awhile

Recent photos.
Snap shots really. I realized that recently.
A few weeks ago I started working with my favorite professor again, long distance.
It felt a little uncomfortable and strange developing a concept and going through the motions of working on images, seeing how they feel.

I realized that No Not Though is mostly snap shot type photography.
Which is fine.
But it's good to struggle for the work to satisfy me.

I edited some of these in the messed-with-so-that-it-looks-like-faded-slides way.
Because I hadn't done that before and some of the photos looked old to me.
So there.

9-09-2011 Gold Country Fair

These are all from various events and times at the GOLD COUNTRY FAIR in Auburn. I was their official photographer! Badge and errythang. Though a tall, hairy man with camera equipment strapped to him doesn't exactly blend in at the fair. Quite challenging to get the candid stuff that I'm always after.

Pretty fun though. Got me out of the house a lot. I also took a bunch of audio samples there that I am going to combine with the photographs to make an audio slideshow. Kinda a hybrid between video and still imagery. I think it helps your mind imagine the scene, to fill it out better. I'll finish that sometime this week.

Some Time Ago: The Beastmaster Fears No Balloon

These photos are from a birthday party. A birthday party for THE BEASTMASTER.

I drank cheap beer form a RED PLASTIC CUP because alcohol is NOT ALLOWED at that park. It was STYLIN.

Then I JAMMED my thumb playing TWO HAND TOUCH FOOTBALL. Which is why I haven't taken ANY photos since then.

7-28-2011 Zero History

Howdy!

I have been keeping myself from shooting digital recently. This is do to the fact that I shot 9 gigabytes of photos in a single day. My computer hated it. My workflow hated it. I was beginning to hate myself. So I took a step back, loaded some slide film into my Canon E-Lan, and took a full three weeks to finish off it's 36 exposures. Really took my time with the roll and with each exposure, examining the elements of the frame. And I am excited to get it processed. Apparently I'll have to send it all the damn way to San Francisco as absolutely nobody nearby does E6 chemicals anymore.

SO. These photos are from a small teen theater group called Breakfast Club Productions (if my memory serves). My parents non-profit The Sugar Plump Faries gave them a grant so they could do their production of Eurydice. The second I heard that they were going to perform it in an auto garage I wanted to take photos of 'em. The play was really impressive and great. GREAT. I still have to get these photos to them, but I'm sick to my ass of creating and maintaining an online presence...

SPEAKING (HYPOCRITICALLY) OF WHICH. Recently I got invited to get in on Google+. And it's fun as hell. It's built from the ground up to function however you want to use it. That may sound like a foolishly oblique and damnably vague thing to say, but it really is an impressive networking setup. Look me up if you're on there.

6-12-2011 Drinking Like A Fish and Eating Like A Bird

Is a fine way to have a good time in the Bay Area.

Brendan graduated UCSC. I didn't make it to the graduation because I believe he finished school, don't need or want to spend a few hours listening to faux inspirational speeches by whoever they suckered into speeching it up. My absence at the graduation ritual was made up for by the fact that I showed up with a case of decent beer that afternoon. We later burnt that van during our extreme revelries.

Next day was Kirsten's birthday celebration. Back to Palo Alto. Great music, excellent food and even better people.

6-8-2011 Some Buildings Look Like Tents If It's Early Enough

Getting up early is weird. IT'S WEIRD. All the shadows are pointed the wrong way and I'm all "NO! Shadows what the hell are you doing?! SOMEBODY IS TRICKING YOU!" But they just keep on doing their wrongfaced business.

I took these photographs this morning. Last night on the way to work I noticed that the Newcastle Portugese Hall was all tented up for fumigation. I thought it would probably look nice with a glowing morning light behind it. The image I had in my mind also happened to be about 50 feet above Taylor Road. What I ended up taking was from the top of a 4 foot ladder in the bike lane on the side of the road. SOMEDAY I will be crazy famous and people will beg me to shut down their roads with cranes so I can take a photograph I want.

The rest of these are from the chunk of Newcastle that butts up against the railroad track. That conductor was positive he was going to kill me. I got out of his way and waved. I'm certain he appreciated both gestures.

I'll probably start doing this more often. It felt good.

6-6-2011 Bugs 'n Flowers 'n Stuff

I took all these out in my yard. Went out with my 300mm and monopod, looking for some birds. But there were no birds. There was one jay harassing the little yellow birds nesting in our fig tree but that was it. Sometimes our house at the top of the ridge is bird central, not today. So I pointed my lens down instead of up.

I'm thinking about giving these photographs actual titles, something I rarely do with any amount of seriousness. I once took a photo of a cup in front of a door and called it "Lethe Door For Liquor." For no reason. More recently I've been leaving photos untitled or giving them document style titles like "Newcastle Elementary Playground on 7-8-2010." But for these buggy plant photos I am thinking about stuff like "This Is A Photo About How Moths Are Mysterious," or "Sometimes Plants Look Like Cities and Insects Look Like People."
I think that would be fun.

5-26-2011 Roast Pig and Running Children

From two separate events. Open House at Franklin Elementary, and the Mesa Memorial.

I remember Open Houses as being messy and chaotic. An excuse to go play on the undersized kindergarten playground. Mess about on the big field at night calling each other dirty names. This open house was not much different than that. The teacher I went with had a type of scavenger hunt worksheet for her kids to do, simultaneously showing their parents the things they made and learned. Every year in her class they focus on a specific country, the bottom left image is a painting of some scene in India. Pretty cool idea really.
Top left is kids playing some variant of wall ball. I remember this game faintly, you have to throw a tennis ball at a the wall. Then when it bounces off the wall everybody tries to catch it. Only if you flub the catch, you have to touch the wall before they can hit the wall with the ball. If you fail in that they get to throw the ball at your butt, execution style against the wall. Very fun to watch, particularly when there are way too many kids playing.

Images on the right are from the Mesa Memorial, an event my Aunt and Uncle on my mom's side of the family do every Memorial Day weekend. That's Fernando up there, hacking away at a roast pig with an axe. It's a tradition. Behind Fernando is Sommer (of Ramona Lou fame) with her boyfriend Graham. Had a damn fine time with those two.
Bottom right image is what I feel to be the best street photography style photograph I've ever taken. Look at what is going on there! So many looks and types of body language. Everybody figuring out who to talk to, where to go. It fascinates me.
I don't even care that it wasn't taken on a street. I feel that street photography is simply about people in semi-public places. Interacting, or simply being. But there is always an expectation of allure in the "street" photo, being curious to find out what is really going on.
That is all.

5-20-2011 My Father is Now Older

Cute kids and old dudes. I guess.

05-13-2011 Midnight Ketchup Cravings at the Gates of Hell

SO. PHOTOS.

Last weekend my ride or die FRIEND Anthony and I went back to Humboldt to retrieve some belongings at our old house and help shut the place down. We had some glorious times there, I feel that we shut it down with a right proper rambunction, without messing up any of the things we had repaired/cleaned already.

Got to see all my old crusty lookin friends because I planned the trip around a show at THEBIGTREE. Which is a good name for the place as I forgot the address. Still working on finishing the edits on most of the concert stuff. Trying to decide what to do with my really disorganized photo presence online. AH WELL.

The photos of the clearly drunk and awesome guy on the top right and bottom are my good friend Ross. He is an engineer. He had just graduated. His department gave him a ring of power to wear on his pinky. His new found powers clearly went straight to his head.

Maaaaaaan. I feel like I had a ton of profound knowledges to drop all over about my experience and how it was good to reconnect with old friends and stomp around. Oh damn well.

5-6-2011 Eddie Adcock Brings the Noize

This here is Eddi Adcock. He apparently played his banjo as doctors were working on his brain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjX6ErmKY14. Damn. I think I remember them saying that the operation was about a year ago. While his triple bypass was more like five years ago. Given all the patching up this man has endured, and how skillfully he played last week, I have come to the conclusion that he is in fact a machine.

A banjo playing machine.

And while it is no small coincidence that all the good photos I took were of Eddie, mostly the reason I focused on him was the superior lighting on his wizened face. Most of the other players, his wife and my mothers dobro teacher among them, were positioned on parts of the stage with much worse lighting.

This show was at Constable Jacks in my hometown of Newcastle. Not sure if it was the spice of the gator burger lingering in my mouth, the delicious beer sloshing around in my brain and belly, or if I was simply in a good mood, but I officially fell in love with Newcastle that night.