i like to tell stories

9th ave – from days previous.

2006.

true love = pennsylvania.

watch us mock ourselves in a VIDEO that is too long, too small to see the targets and too large to download.

nate 66/100 (for like the 4th time) – jonathan 91/100 (2nd time)

the pr was crazy nice, i got into the building smoothly, i had time to set up, the subject was very nice, they gave us lunch, the client was happy, the client paid on time, my job has its good days. now, i just need to make what the CFO of CBS makes. that would be good too.

maybe i just need an acronym?

my dad is big on acronyms, in fact much of what he does involves some that are pretty out there (military related, the military is big on acronyms), he recently created this one for some of what he does:

SIDZ
Sustainable Industrial Development Zone

now why is this interesting? it’s his name, SID, so SIDZ as his idea and his project and his name…

acronyms.

interrogation room, wichita police department.

i got my first job ever from a blind drop off. if i hadn’t shot that job, i never would of gotten another. that was 11 years ago. i haven’t gotten a single shoot from a blind drop since, yet for some reason, i keep trying, i don’t know if this is good or bad anymore. the longer i have done this job, the less i understand about how it works.

i have been in the city too long. i miss cars, i miss the road. i spend days in my dark little windowless studio (hole), so to be in the car (hole with windows that moves around), going somewhere special or no where in particular becomes total banal joy.

ride along

i never understood how pictures of any level or kind could ever mean so little to people that they would leave them behind on some bar wall for some idiot to photograph. i appreciate them, but as much as part of me wants to not care, pin mine to the wall and leave, i just want the picure for myself, even if i just stick it in a box and never look at it again for years, i want it….. i wish they weren’t so important sometimes, quality of course, plays no part, but it’s MINE, i WANT it….

the best part of machines/pictures like these, other then random girls posing with you, is that if you find the right kind of machine, it brings back the ancient art of actual B+W chemicals, ahhhh, smell the fixer…

thanks to a friend, (oconnor rules), i got a chance to make a few big ass prints. i asked my brother what he wanted of all my pics, he wanted one of the shells…. not my first choice, but for him, sure….. 48×72, awesome. i got myself a carlin, wtc, bull rider and one from maryland. i only unrolled the “bad” copies that had a tear or crease, i was too scared to unroll the perfect copies, they are simply being stored till i have the $ and wall space to do them right…. i didn’t even have space to unroll them here, i had to go a friends studio….

and the other night.

cover of the post. for maybe the first time, Getty got my name on it, not just theirs. so absurd, it pretty much came down to me trying to leave Getty after 4 months and maybe 5 sales just to get my name on my own fucking picture.

random pair or just what was in front of me at the moment.

WITH OUT YOU

june 14, 2006

WITH OUT YOU

june 15, 2006

somewhere in ny in the rain.

see in sight and sound:

GO – HERE – VIDEO

go get lost in the woods and dream of homes you cannot afford, but don’t stay in a tent, find your own haven, ride in a canoe for hours, sunburn your feet, drive a rented prius, see if the dog can swim (or just sink), shoot your gun at little frisbees in the sky, drive a rhino in the rain, eat good food, look at all the motorcycles, revisit a place that once was hopeful and filled your head with dreams, but yet the place itself is just as sad as it was 14 years ago, ride an amusement, take some snaps. go home only because you have to.

i used to sit on carnival rides for hours, well, maybe not hours, but i used to ride the zipper and round up like 3-4 times in a row. now i get scared on the ferris wheel and sick on the scrambler….

in the fall of 1993, i got to go to the eddie adams workshop. i was only 20.

it was so amazing to be able to experience it all, just because someone somewhere thought the page of 20 slides i submitted were interesting. i remember thinking how cool it was that just 20 pictures i took got me to experience it all. if you don’t know what it is, go find out, or better yet, try to go…..

my team leader was bill frakes, sports illu photographer, my photo editor was tom kennedy, then director of photo at the geographic. a few times during the weekend, i got to talk one on one with the best in the business in the usual meetings and a few times outside of these…. i had never been so terrified and full of hope for my photography at the same time before or even since, i wish i could start it all over. i was humiliated beyond belief and full of pride, the 2 day picture struggle meant something, and to me, that’s all that mattered in the end, i was different then i was just 4 days earlier.

our assignment, the monticello raceway. we got dropped off for a few hours on two days to make some images and go back to all the lectures in between. somehow, i didn’t know it at the time, but we got judged on our images made those days, the award was an assignment for a major magazine. i was one of the last ones called, i won an assignment for a magazine that would later never assign it. now i ended up working for this magazine for a few years anyway many years later, after earning my way in the hard way.

now by chance, 14 years later, i was at the raceway again.

as usual, me being me, i put the select images from the workshop in a special place, now i cannot find that special place after an hour of looking, but here is a fast scan of an old cibachrome print, remember those? anyway, here’s one i made and one bill frakes shot of me that weekend…. i miss who i was so much.

going home is never as fun as leaving it.

bugs outside and in. outside at night was alive with noise. i found a tick in the bed, (prolly off the dog). just like my apt in nyc. altho here it makes sense and i shrugged it off, in nyc, it keeps me paranoid in the dark for hours.

i try, but i just cannot find a reason to feel good in harlem.

going to sullivan county again this weekend. shoot my gun (no comp this time, just joy), jump in a river and daydream of the barn i want to buy.

home depot parking lot – john & cindy’s living room.