Picture postcard: View from Centre Point along the gorge, Oregon

Picture postcard: Washington state, along the Hood river.

This is Cannon Beach, Oregon on a weekday morning. The mist is still out and there aren't too many people about. It's kind of cold and desolate, but there are other people out there. If you look towards the center of the photo you might notice some people on horseback.

These are tracks on the beach in Oregon from three wheeled bikes that people ride. It's pretty cold and windy there, so you can't really go in the water (there are some surfers in the upper left hand corner), so what they do is ride these reclining bikes around and around. I guess it's fun, but what I really liked was all of the interesting patterns they left in the sand.

VENUS

The pictures above were all taken at the Mermaid Day Parade in Coney Island, June 20th, 2009. I have a lot more, and I'll try to put them together in some kind of series, but at the same time, I think some of them lose their charm when you show what was really going on. We'll see.

Icing Cupcakes at Billy's Late-night

What I Remember

What I remember of my trip to paradise
was not so pleasant at all
I remember the dead guy
and the brains under the towel

I didn't see the fall


But I remember the girl




The flight was late
and customs was hours
just waiting, not even in queue

and the hotel just wasn't there
Sleeping in a U-Store-It with the rain coming down on a metal roof
Like living inside a drum

But on the first day she was there
She sat on the beach but never went in
She wasn't that type
She was delicate, but bent
and beautiful in her own way

And I asked to see her again
and she said yes
And I arrived and her friends
made it more than uncomfortable
But she smiled when we left
And she laughed at my jokes
And she seemed impressed
when I just gave away my American bags
to the fisherman that wanted to buy them

And then her brother fell

BrooklynWeGoHard

Nonsense

It said
In red
That I was not able
To view
The original
Message...

That I
Myself
Had sent

Geez, I guess I could make "hotel art". I put this up and then thought "ugggh, how pathetic is that"? I really need to get a grip. I seem to be slowly losing my edge.

Homeland Security

I find this image interesting because the latino-looking man with the "homeland security" t-shirt is giving me the same look that the apparent son of the American 'pork' family is (gimmee a break! - they're all wearing pink ponchos)... forgive me.

This is an interesting image. It's more paper grafitti, this time from New York.

The Leonard Nimoy/Spock character is a very large image. The others are about life-size, or even a little bigger in the case of the dog. These images are repeated throughout the neighborhood. I question what they're saying though, when they're grouped like this. It seems like they're just put up to be there. That there's no connection between any of the images. Perhaps I'm missing something.

LEGS

I'm not sure who this is, I'll look it up (or please enlighten me), but this is an artist's installation along the newly opened High Line in NYC. There are other installations along the way, but this one really grabbed be. Entering, it completely changes your sense of place, kind of like in the old days when you went to the movies and stepped through a black curtain to find a darkened room lit by a bright screen up front and shadows flickering along the walls. (That's a sensation that's lost to a lot of us). The blue makes it feel cool and dark, even though it might be warm outside of the tunnel - yet it glows with energy - an interesting juxtaposition. And it has a pattern to it that's the same all the way across, but gets broken up due to the beams that it has to cross.

BEAST

I am a beast
I am a monster
I am not fit for domicile

I should live in the woods
Or a field
Or atop a mountain

Eating birds, and rodents, and whatever comes my way

But I ask you this,
If I am such a beast

So... "unliveable"

Then why do other women find me so attractive?

I love this "art for art's sake" graffiti. I only find it in New York and Philly, although I'd imagine it's world-wide. It's just not as prominent near me, in south Jersey, or Baltimore, and certainly NOT in D.C. (where they try to keep everything spotless for the tourists)! I could easily imagine finding this is Paris, or Berlin, or even Denmark.

Philadelphia, there's just something wrong with this!

Sometimes your first image is your best image. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's what caught your eye in the first place. There's an immediacy to it that you lose in the following shots by trying to line things up and design the shot better. Sometimes a little bit of something 'off' gives just a bit of tension that makes it all fall together.

In this case, the main subject is juxtaposed against the flowers in front of it, but also connected to them by the colors. Beneath the flowers is earth. Beneath the gas pump is earth (and gasoline tanks). The sky is grey, and the pump is backlit, but it still pops out at you because of the bright colors. It's eye-catching advertising - who can argue.

But in the background the grey of the truck and the rust-colored red of the barn reflecft a more natural world. In the middle, electrical wires break up the grey of the sky.

It doesn't really make a comment on anything, it's just a reflection of the way things are, but I think that if you look at it closely and find those things on your own it should get you thinking.

I think this is an interesting pic regardless of the Obama connection. And I thought about photoshopping it to give it some desaturated/decrepit effect but I changed my mind. I think that it's good as it is, even though you can't actually get a sense of how decrepit it really is. You can see that the whites are reflecting the blue of the sky, and that it's real. And that reality is what gives it integrity.

I've done a lot of photos of mannequins. At Tyler one of my teachers told me "I've seen photos of mannequins before, but never ones that were done so lovingly". And she was right. It was a series of female mannequins and I'd been kind of enamored with their beauty, even though they weren't real. I shot them in soft light at dusk, and printed them so that they were soft with pastel colors. They almost looked like real women 'dressed' as mannequins. I avoided any reflections, and I think that eliminated a barrier, making it seem 'closer'.

A lot of my other ones are more about the reflection in the window than the mannequin itself, but I felt there was something kind of creepy about this kid. He seems angry at first glance, but then kind of lost. Kind of damaged. And I almost feel as if it appears there's a connection between him and the woman behind him (sister? mother?). It's as if she's watching over him, but at the same time if you look at her eyes it's like she's looking away from him. That's what makes the photo work. Well, that and that fact that these are implied interactions between stationary objects that infer emotion because they're designed to look like people.