I never, EVER tire of going to New York…
I didn’t get a chance to really shoot much while I was there. I was way too busy meeting with clients and such and I was only there for two full days. Shoulda planned a longer visit.
On the plus side, two of the clients I was meeting were brides, and I’m very excited to be shooting one of them next month! Bonus visits to the city! 
Can’t wait to go back.
Here’s a mixture of 35mm and Holga shots:
Some models make me exclaim “holy shit!”. Every time I work with them, I can’t believe what I’m getting.
Kari is one of those models.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, but there’s more to modeling than just being pretty. There’s professionalism, there’s reliability, there’s flexibility, there’s passion, there’s creativity, there’s versatility, there’s hard work, but above all, there’s the way they move.
Photography is of course all about the STILL image, but you can tell you how well a model moves by looking at their work. The better they know how to move, the less a photographer has to do. With an exceptional model, you just point, shoot and occasionally suggest something.
The last time I shot with Kari, it was in a cemetery and I kept asking her to look really sad. This time, it was all about looking really cool and man could she pull it off! Kari has all the qualities I mentioned above in spades, plus she’s ultra nice. The complete package.
I hope I get to work with her many, many more times.
I feel like a rock star.
I know that X96 is just a local radio station, I know that a sizable portion of the audience must have been crew and actors, but people I didn’t know went out of their way to shake my hand, give me a hug and tell me what an awesome job I’d done on my short film called Coming Soon.
I just feel like a total rock star.
Let me back up a bit.
X96 is a Salt Lake City-based radio station. I went to their film festival with no expectations other than an opportunity for a night out. I think there were 23 films in total and the rules required that the films run no longer than five minutes, including credits.
The pre-show is over, all the theater seats are filled, the lights come down and the films start playing. Just three or four films into the festival, my film begins… And now my heart is pounding, I’m shaking in my seat, trying to control my breathing.
Is the audience gonna like it? Will they get it? Will they laugh in the right places?
The first joke comes along…
The audience roars.
I can’t believe it. Forget that I can’t believe it, I’ve never even heard such a large audience laugh to one of MY films! The film manages to offer perfect timing for the laughter to die off just before the next joke rolls around. The audience roars again.
This went on throughout the whole film. What a joy it was to hear so many people laugh! But once it was over, I could breathe normally again, I was no longer shaking and I could just enjoy the rest of the show.
So all the films are done and it’s time to announce the nominees. There were only six categories. Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Drama, Best Comedy and of course, Best Picture.
Ready?
We got nominated for Best Actor, Best Drama AND Best Comedy as well as Best Picture.
We won… Best Actor and Best Drama and shoulda won Best Comedy if you consider the audience’s reaction to our film compared to the contender (basically the other film’s cast and crew cheered louder than we did when the nominees were announced).
When Bijan got called up for Best Actor, I cheered like a maniac. I was so excited for him and he’d done such a terrific job. When I got called up for Best Drama, I hesitated, thinking they’d made a mistake… I don’t know what I sounded like up there on the stage, but I’m told I did fine. Even got a few more laughs.
And the suspense when they got around to announcing Best Picture was excruciating… I remember the auditorium fell silent, Bill Allred proclaimed, “And the winner is…………”. A loooong pause… Someone behind us yelled out “COMING SOON!!”
Sadly, the X96 film festival announced, big surprise, that the film called X96 (I believe the word to describe that title is “pandering”) would win for Best Picture…
To their credit, the film titled X96 was something to behold. Good photography and great effects.
I don’t feel cheated in the least and frankly, I feel like this is a huge win for me. Gauging by the audience’s reaction to my film while it was playing and even afterwards, given that we were nominated for so much…
Well…
I feel like a rock star.
I just read this news article about Jimmy Kimmel declaring today a National Unfriend Day, essentially asking us to unfriend those people on our facebook lists that aren’t real friends.
I feel like I have to stand up and say something here. Partly because I get to shamelessly plug my Facebook profile and invite you to add me as your friend, and partly because it’s such a benign issue that I feel safe in showing the strongly opinionated facet of my character.
At the time of this writing, I have four hundred and fourteen friends. That’s a stupidly high figure and it always makes me laugh to see the friend count climb. If anyone had that many friends, life would be one huge, relentless party.
And make no mistake. I used the word “relentless”. I could have used a word like “continuous”, but that sounds like fun.
“Relentless” sounds like hell.
But obviously, none of us can claim to have that many actual friends. Of course not! In fact, thanks to Facebook’s continuously (or relentlessly, depending on your perspective) updated functions, I’ve found myself needing to categorize a large portion of my “friends” into smaller groups.
The reason for this was initially very simple: I needed to be able to quickly see who was currently online in the chat window.
My personal record of online Facebook friends is currently at 46. That’s a lot of online people to chat to… And I don’t usually wanna talk to any of them.
Eventually, it became about organizing them in such a way as to be able to figure who I wanted or needed to talk to, just by glancing at my list.
If I need a heart to heart or just feel like chit chatting a little, I look to my A+ friends. I called them that because Facebook lists everything alphabetically, and nothing beats an A+, so they’re always at the top of my list of online friends.
Oh and because they’re real friends. I have sixteen of those in that group… SIXTEEN. Out of more than four hundred! And out of those sixteen, I’m very close to only six of them.
So I have six real, close friends out of four hundred and fourteen. Definitely sobering.
But if I need crew for an upcoming shoot, I have a Photography & Crew category. If I need to reach a model with a concept idea, I have a category for that. If I need to talk to one of my past or future clients, I have a category for that too.
And now we’re getting to the heart of the issue.
Because now Facebook sounds a lot like a networking tool. You have a few real friends, and the rest is whatever you want them to be.
So where’s the problem? In the article, Kimmel mentions Facebook cheapening friendship in its real sense… Sounds really stupid to me. If Facebook calling it “friends” is the issue, then this is a terminology issue. Would he feel better if we called them buddies instead?
“Hey when you get home, buddy me on Facebook” or “Why did you un-buddy me on Facebook ya jerk?!”
I understand and even agree to some extent with Kimmel’s rationale for this. That Facebook’s probably haphazard choice of calling everyone a “friend” is likely to give people a false sense of kinship when there isn’t one to begin with.
But as long as I can mentally separate Facebook’s definition of a friend from the REAL definition of one, I have no problem having over four hundred of them.
So uh… Add me on Facebook
I KNEW I’d forgotten something important!!
The following photo booth series of images embodies how we all were on this most awesome of road trips. It was supposed to be at the end of Part 2 but I forgot. We all had tons and tons of goofball fun!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Best. Road trip. Ever.
In case you already forgot from previous posts, the Diana F+ is the name of the camera that’s kinda like the Holga. It survived my Holga… It’s a film camera… Just…
Forget it, here’s some random snapshots
This HAS to have been a lab accident. I swear I didn’t shoot this lightning looking thing:
More to come soon. I’m working on catching up on the wedding sneak previews… I’ve been falling behind. It’s wedding season so yeah…
Like a good friend of mine would say;
Please hold!
I was rushing to finish that last blog post, so here’s a few more images. All but the first image were taken with an iPhone:
For Sale… In a ghost town…
Gabe found himself a cute one
The Salt Lake City Library’s east-facing facade after a Cowboy Junkies concert:
During the 4th of July fun, this grabbed my attention:
In no particular order and for no other reason other than the fact that I can, here are some things I wanna share on the blog.
Ready.
Steady.
Go!
My 8-year-old and I were talking about outer space not too long ago (he seems to have a real fascination for it) and he asked me the following question: “Dad, if there’s no air in space, how come thrusters work to keep the ship on track?”
Uhhh… [Expletive]… I don’t know…
Two months later, when I finally had some time to research it, I discovered the principle of Reaction Mass. It’s basically material expelled by a rocket to provide thrust. What I struggled to understand was HOW that worked. And for that… Just… Just Google it, I’m not gonna make any sense if I try to explain it and I can’t find the link that made the most sense to me. I’m gonna have a hard enough time trying to explain Reaction Mass to an 8-year-old as it is.
Some questions:
Do dentists hate going to the dentist’s too?
If Justin Timberlake sang “I’m Bringing Sexy Back“, doesn’t that mean he still has it and isn’t sharing it with anyone? He didn’t sing “I BROUGHT Sexy Back”. Next time someone gets divorced, go sue Justin Timberlake.
Does a bear really poop in the woods? Isn’t it possible he sometimes poops in a lake? Or in an abandoned vacation home?
And now, some statements:
I had a great 4th of July. Went swimming at the Grand America, then hung out with a friend and her family. Thanks Lexi, for both of those! How was your 4th?
I was playing a game of soccer last night. We needed an “awesome goal” to call it a night. I SCORED THE AWESOME GOAL!!! YEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!! I bet someone will break both my legs on tomorrow’s game. Maybe that can be the “awesome injury” that ends the game.
I was at the dentist’s yesterday morning and couldn’t feel the left side of my mouth for almost five hours afterwards. When the feeling finally came back, it really rushed back, and all I could think of was “I can feel my lips!! I need to just grab someone and kiss them!!” I’m glad I didn’t. I’d rather stay out of jail.
This looks like my kinda funny movie: Vampires Suck
This is my kinda music: Zack Hemsey’s “Mind Heist”
On a related note (to the music thingy just above), Inception is gonna rock like no other. Thank you Hollywood, for allowing original stories to seep through. Yes, Iron Man 16.3 is great, but it’s nice to have something fresh every now and then.
And speaking of movies. Sin City 2, Machete and Predators. Robert Rodriguez is finally back! Let’s see if he’s still got the chops he used to.
Time to throw in some photography. I had the privilege of sharing a scouting expedition with my good friend Brittany who likes to goof around with her own camera. We headed down to Eureka, a creepy, half-ghost-town with lots of interesting stuff. I’ll have more (hopefully) when my roll of Diana shots are developed. Specifically from the breathtaking view atop the Tintic Standard Reduction Mill.
Blue cat, red bat, black cat, dead cat
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get some cheesecake with random strangers! Kind of a sharp turn from a dead black cat, I know…
I recently recovered a batch of old pictures that had gone missing. It was really very exciting! And it didn’t hit me until I started writing this blog post that all four pictures were snapped using the same camera; my late father’s Pentax ME Super:
“Super”…
There’s a word you don’t see in the description of any new electronics huh? And ME right in front of it too! “ME Super! ME good photographer! ME hungry!”
Anyway, but it’s strange to think of that Pentax as having been there to take pictures of everything from when I was so young until the end of its life (with me at least) in March of 2009 when someone broke into my house and stole it.
Man I miss that camera…
Here’s a few of the shots it was responsible for. Everybody say “awwwwwwwwwww”!!
And here’s my oldest, Gabriel:
I consider myself incredibly lucky; I have very few wedding horror stories to speak of. 99.99% of my brides are a joy to work with.
But every now and then I really just click with my couples. Working with them becomes effortless, talking to them when I’m not behind the camera is easy as pie and staying in touch (my Facebook account is where it’s at, baby!) is a breeze.
With Rob & Lyndsy, that’s exactly what happened. And what a wonderful pleasure it was to work with them.
Now, I can’t speak for other photographers, but I’m a STRONG believer in having a relationship with my clients beyond just the professional one. And I don’t do this as a ploy for future work (although that does tend to happen), I do it because I love people…
You read that right! Imagine that! A photographer who loves people!
Anyway, so without further ado, here’s their wedding day, beginning with my favorite image:
