8-5-2010 Self Titled

Mostly running on autopilot recently. Work is scheduling me a lot more, which is good, because what the hell else do I have to do? A bit stressful though. I've an aversion to things that I don't know how to do. Thus far this job is either; things I know how to do changed drastically or, tasks I have no familiarity with. Ah well. It's good for me to be thrown out of my comfort zone.

Jessica, beautiful girl that she is, bought me Starcraft 2 as a surprise, totally unexpected. Had major issues installing/patching it. With it running and the increased hours at work, I have been a lazy boy.

Stupid carpal tunnel.

The photographs I took today, still working on the complicated "Nature is a blind malignant force that wants to eat your children," project. I'm conceptualizing a rad way to display these. We shall see what happens.

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).

7-19-2010 More Natural Distortion

"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are deep valleys with wood that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs."
Opening paragraph of H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

This seems to be my general theme for this project that has emerged from No Not Thought. Began with that shot from Nevada City, when the manzanita bush took on a more powerful presence than the sun. An unhealthy desire for life from a numbingly simple plant. There is also a mixture happening here; a confusion of the nature's mindless hunger with the familiar and sinister feel you get when looking at human objects being overtaken with plant or rot.

These photographs are meant to be bizarre and grotesque, and I believe more are forthcoming. As an additional note, these were all taken within 200 ft of my house in Newcastle. Might try to find some of the places Clark Ashton Smith (a local Lovecraft contemporary) wrote of and shoot them as well, I know he wrote of Bowman, and that is right up the road...

7-9-2010 Nintendo, Beer, and Movies in Arcata; a Return to Form

Leaving Fort Bragg we opted to take Highway 1 north instead of Highway 20 back to Willits and the 101 North. There was some debate as to whether this saved us time, though this debate was rendered unimportant by the general superior scenery of Highway 1. Our ultimate destination was Arcata and we arrived without incident.

A strange sensation overtook me as I entered the house I had lived in for two years. A type of not quite nostalgia, or maybe confused deja vu. Regardless, things soon returned to normal; video games, endless movies, and beer. I'm not one to care about my reputation or worry to significantly about what I say, but there is some other type of comfort here, a truly high level of familiarity.

There is a playground in this neighborhood, little sister Julia insisted that we venture out. By the time we left the house, it was extremely late. Dark. Damn near impossible to focus. The trick I learned as a concert photographer of focusing on the shiny metal parts of drum kits and guitars was mostly useless, there wasn't enough light to cause such reflections off of the playground equipment. So I decided to increase my flash exposure compensation to it's maximum level and do some camera tossing.

7-8-2010 Fort Bragg; Bicycles vs Vomit

The foul mood left in my mind by Cabo San Lucas was soon washed away on the first day of another trip. Many, many reasons for this shift in mentality. Traveling north with my good old friend Roxane, to see another older friend Nathan visiting from Idaho, toward other friends and excellent places in Humboldt County. Yesterday we camped with Nathan and his family in Fort Bragg, one of the most beautiful damn places on the face of the Earth. The place is a combination of the steep coasts of Norway, the hills of Ireland, and the redwoods of the Pacific Northwest. In short, my favorite places wedged into one.

All the photographs are from areas around the campground. Nathan gave Roxane a piggyback ride and proceeded to ride a bike. In order to get a focused image of this clearly miraculous spectacle I had to sprint next to the bike and leap through the air while shooting. Useful maneuver really. Guess there used to be a dock or marina at the beach there, given all the ironworks and wooden posts protruding from the beach there. It's a very black beach, surrounded by sandstone cliffs. I implored Nathan to throw a chunk of said cliffs at a spot designated by me in order to better understand thrill of slinging dirt clods at hard surfaces. It only kind of worked.

I've never camped quite the way the Nathans family does. I don't recall that much vodka, beer or tequila with my parents at Crater Lake or Mount Lassen. Perhaps my surprise at the high concentration of such fluids at Fort Bragg is what explains the generally vomit themed course of my night.

Arbus and Reflection

Diane Arbus said about photography "The process itself has a kind of exactitude, a kind of scrutiny that we're not normally subject to. I mean that we don't subject each other to. We're nicer to each other than the intervention of the camera is going to make us. It's a little bit cold, a little bit harsh."

Now I may take issue with her claim that humans need cameras in order to subject each other to harsh scrutiny or cold exactitude or any combination therein, but that intervention is something I felt today.

Earlier, while walking around some ravines with my father and our neighbors, Carl and Frank; Frank kept ending up at the end of the group. So did I. There were dappled shadows caused by the oak trees and small inclines that I couldn't help but be drawn to compositionally when Frank walked slowly down them in his straw hat. But I wasn't talking to him. I didn't ask him if he minded his picture taken. I was running about, climbing trees and scurrying up gravel hillsides to find my preferred vantage point. I wonder if I missed the larger human element by shutting up and talking with my lens.

I felt that coldness. It was a documentary feel, as if I wasn't truly there taking the picture. Almost a feeling of being inside the camera, an invisible being responsible only for examining light and aiming for the most interesting frame.