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.

5-3-2011 Robot Slaves Bring Me Sugar Candy

It must be subconscious. Whenever I do fashion photography, I end up doing skate photography soon after. All the other times it was within the same week, by chance. Not this time. I finished the HIGH FASHION photoshoot and thought to myself "Well what the hell am I gonna do now?" So I went to the skate park to see what I could see. Just what about fine clothing reminds me of juvenile delinquents? I've got to get to the bottom of this.

Anyway. There's Olivia! Up there! Olivia is the easiest person to take photos of, I just point my lens her way and tell her to wiggle. I know to stop when my buffer is full. Shooting with her at Ramona Lou is great fun. No stress or worries. It's basically hanging out with people I really dig, only there is a mild objective to our time together. Fantastic. Experimented with the presentation a bit. I think it worked out pretty damn well. It increases the efficiency of my workflow, decreases the raw amount of data to upload, and gives the viewer a better feeling for the outfits.

Meet up with Archie at the skate park. Taking photos at the skate park is how I met Archie in the first damn place! Huh. Think on that. So some guys were playing skate (horse with boards in lieu of balls) near the entrance. It was way too crowded to get anything worthwhile; also I ignored my telephoto when setting out for Ramona Lou. Maybe coulda gotten some good facial expressions if I had brought the tele. So I climbed the retaining wall and got some really extreme angle composites. The only ones that worked out were Archies. I'm not even being biased. I guess I was only there for about 20-30 minutes, makes sense that I didn't come away with much that works.

8-7-2010 Tosser

Been awhile! Too many legitimate excuses, no point in typing rationalizations. These photographs are older than some. From when Jessica was around a few weeks ago.

We went to a park in Auburn that I used to spend large chunks of time in during the summer. A type of day camp was setup there. We kids used to run that damn place. Chants for food that went unanswered resulted in widespread chaos and disarray. Marching en masse across the park yelling in semi-unison "OOOOOOOREO, WHOAAAAAAAO!" was a daily occurrence. We thought the combination of the winged monkeys from Oz and oreo cookies was something extremely clever to be looked forward to with relish.

So we walked about. There were still kids in the pool when we got there. A few birthday parties, some couples having picnic dinners. And me, wildly flinging my camera around in a bid to gather some interesting unanticipated images through the method of camera tossing. Fair amount of success. You can just see Jessicas head in the bottom left image. Top left image was taken on the back roads drive home, didn't realize that peacocks and deer were on such good terms.

7-21-2010 A Time for Jobs, Dogs, and Malign Plant Life

New job new job. In a photography studio. That makes sense right? Seems great. Better than that real estate gig I've been trying to get off the ground. Funky little studio tucked into a shopping center down in Roseville. Assisting the owner tomorrow during a photoshoot with a one year old babychild today.

Looking at a map of Roseville to get my bearings before plunging into the madness put me in mind of Kevin Flanagan, as his house and the city of roses aren't all that far apart. Called him and dropped by. These were all taken on his property. I've decided to work on the "hungry nature," project wherever I am, as nature is most places. Bet I could work on this project anywhere in the world. Quite a thought really.

Kevin is a complicated man. There he is, sitting in his bus. He repairs/makes/creates/rigs many things in his yard and workshop there. My mom calls him "quite the renaissance man," as a cute way to describe someone who never quite has enough time or material to realize his many ideas and dreams. Seems to be a good state of mind. Dog's name was Regan, Josh's dog. I was trying to take a picture of a bird scratching for bugs, but Regan's spittle served nicely as a substitute. Nice enough after she was stuck in the back of the truck with me on the way to pizza & other soul nourishing items (beer for all, cigarettes for Josh).

7-13-2010 Small Trips for Wide Angles

Today was today was today was a library and Kinkos day. Today was supposed to be a lets-go-talk-to-real-estate-agents-and-get-them-to-use-my-services day, but I wasn't ready. Had do design a brochure and get a price check on business card printing. Yet they still aren't printed. Huh. Bigger plans for tomorrow then.

I still have wide angle fever. In an effort to show my mother how much the 10mm can fit in a frame, I accidentally shot my entire ceiling. Decided that carrying lenses in cases on my belt is not stupid or nerdy, it's just damn useful. Used all of the lenses I brought with me when I went to the library. Tried to take a rad photo journalistic shot of some occurrence involving the fire department and a tacoma parked in an off ramp, but I was a few seconds late.

My lamp attracts bugs and those bugs attract spiders. Can't open my damn window because the screen is too old and scared to hold out the gnashing amalgamation of ferocious spiders and their victims. At least I got this cool photograph of a spider with my dog trotting around in the background for the trouble.