So, yeah. The photo of my torn up comp about sums up the state of things lately. One step forward… you know the rest. When Reagan was out of town, I decided to surprise her by installing a power outlet in the bathroom (this was partially self-dealing, since I was tired of her blowdrying her hair in the bedroom). Anyway, I had the power switched on and off about 20 times that night. One of the hard drives in my Linux tower (backup comp) did not like that. I broke down yesterday and decided to try to recover the data, since everything that I have shot this year was backed up on there. I was pretty stoked that when I hooked the drive (the one hanging out of the side of the case above) up to a windows machine all of the data showed up and was uncorrupted. As a safety precaution, I copied it all to an external HD. And blah blah blah. In the process I unhooked one of the other Hard Drives in my main Windows tower, and had to totally redo my itunes and lightroom when I reconnected it. It was a bit painful.

All of that energy sucking boring crap is just getting me primed for the craziness that the next several weeks entail. Tomorrow, one of Reagan’s friends is coming to stay with us through the weekend. The following week, Reagan’s parents, aunt and brother are coming out for Piper’s birthday. Three days later, we depart for Europe. Upon arriving back in NYC, I have 3 days to catch up on work before shoving off for a “man” trip out west (backpacking, shooting guns, fishing, riding quads, etc..). Then, wedding season.

I’m sure all of that will be some seriously good times. But, I’m not going to lie, my armpits got a little bit sweaty just typing it all out. I didn’t even mention the interspersed races and photo gigs. Deep breath and positive thoughts. Happy Wednesday.

This time featuring NAS. If you saw “Fight for your right revisited,” then you probably recognize this track from the dance-off scene, which disturbingly ends in a pissing contest. Anyway, I think this track is pretty cool. I’m not particularly a fan of NAS. To be completely honest, I was a bit disappointed with the whole hotsauce album. But, I have been a fan of the B-boys for so long that I kinda just like whatever they do, even if they are pretty old and obviously not really trying anymore. For a good time, listen to “Too Many Rappers” (below).

Too Many Rappers [new reactionaries version] (featuring NAS) by Beastie Boys
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First of all, the weather was basically heaven. This fact makes it sting a bit more that I was feeling under the weather for the entire weekend (and still am today). But I’ll take the beautiful weather, sick or not. We went kind of crazy with the photos this weekend. I’m not really sure why. Above: walking to our car to go visit PJ on Saturday. Below: Piper got her hair did.

Sunday was, of course, mothers’ day. So I started off the day taking Reagan to the Donut Plant, on the LES. They have some seriously crazy donuts there. Reagan, was going nuts. I won’t say how many she ordered (and ate, hehe).

Walking back to the car, Reagan saw these rubber bouncy horse-like things hanging from a Chinatown bodega awning and asked if we could get one for Piper.

We picked the green one. Piper was pretty stoked about her little horse. I think that she is still getting used to it. But she definitely appreciates both the practical fun aspect, as well as the humor.

After she had a chance to give her green pony a ride or two, we packed up and headed outside.

And just when you thought this post couldn’t get any more photo-heavy, here is one more fave from the weekend (ps, plenty more over here).

These are shots of just a few of the awesome mothers who have been a part of my life.

Happy Mothers’ Day!

Thursday, I was super busy. I started off early, shooting the Fall 2011 Adidas Outdoor stuff at the Adidas showroom on Houston. Later in the day, I made my way over to the Opera Gallery to shoot the opening of Saber’s exhibit.

Even later, I went to the opening of a new Sunglasses Hut in SoHo, to say hi to my favorite Bumbys. I did’t get evaluated this time. Because, let’s face it, I’m not going to do any better than I did last time. Hehe

Then I finished off the night with a late dinner in the East Village with some friends. Friday, I woke with a respiratory infection, and could barely breathe. I basically didn’t get out of bed all day long. Luckily, I’m feeling a bit better today. So, I’m not so nervous about going to see Piper (I’ll just wear a mask). Of course this crap hits me during the most beautiful stretch of weather that we have had this year. I’m so pissed about it. I’m hoping to shake it off by Monday and get serious about running again. I hate feeling like a sickly little slacker. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Yesterday was the official launch of Tommy Hilfiger’s “Prep World” Collection. To celebrate, they had a soiree in Gansevoort Plaza, inside of a little popup house, followed by a housewarming party at the Standard. The collection is awesome. The party was fantastic. Today’s photo hunt is a scene of Mr. Hilfiger, himself chatting with a party guest. There are 5 differences. I made two of the differences fairly subtle (in my opinion). You may have to click on the images and enlarge them. Go!

I was too lazy to look back and see what number of giveaway this is. So, just pretend like “Madewell” is a number. This time, JNB is giving away a Madewell canvas zipper pouch. Imagine the things that could be kept inside: pencils; makeup; cards; a glock (probably). As if it weren’t cool enough on it’s own, I can personally vouch for the fact (and can provide signed statements of additional witnesses, upon request) that this zipper pouch spent an entire evening in the same room as the fabulous Alexa Chung. Ms. Chung, in case you hadn’t heard is holding down the cover of the June ’11 British Vogue (don’t feel bad if you hadn’t heard, it just came out yesterday).

To try your hand at this celebrity cootie covered versatile utilitarian little gem, leave a comment about the activity that you can’t wait to do, now that Mother Nature has finally blessed us with warmish weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

I’ll choose a winner at some point next week. Happy commenting.

As you may have heard, some big stuff has been happening in the news, lately. It has made it super fun for me to get to and from the building I work in. Apparently every network on the planet had the idea to do at least one broadcast per day, live from WTC. This evening I snapped a shot of one of my favorite setups. That is a CNN camera set up so that the 7 World Trade Center Jeff Koons sculpture is the backdrop. Very clever. Although, if Mr. Koons catches wind of it, he may try to collect some royalties. I guess that Mr. President himself is going to be onsite Thursday. With what a zoo the FiDi has been on the non-presidentvisitdays, I may have to work from home that day in an attempt to maintain sanity.

In equally mundane news, JNB giveaways return this week. Tomorrow morning, to be precise. Spoiler: it is Madewell swag. So, check in if you are interested. I’m also going to do my best to have a Tommy Hilfiger photo hunt lined up for Thurs. Oh, the excitement. Buenos Noches.

The reason that I’m sharing Santigold this week is because she teamed up with Beastie Boys on one of my favorite tracks from their new album, that was actually released today. That is not, however, the track that I’m sharing. I may or may not do a new Beastie Boys track next week. We shall see. Anyway, Santigold (formerly “Santogold“), only has one studio album, that I’m aware of. Titled Santogold, which was also formerly her stage name. Then, someone probably threatened to sue her or something, and she became Santigold. Now that the boring stories are out of the way, let’s talk about her music. It would be impossible to try to categorize all of her music in a single genre, the ones that I like the most are the ones with the old school rude boy flavor. So, the track I’m sharing today is “Shove it.” The opening line “Brooklyn we go hard,” is one of my favorite parts about this song. Spin it.

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Saturday, Piper and I had a nice little visit. She was a in a great mood, and played until she was all tuckered out and fell asleep on my lap. Reagan returned home late Saturday night. We woke up early Sunday and visited Piper. I suppose that I should mention, the weather was beautiful all weekend long. So, we took Piper outside. Unfortunately, we were only out there for about 10 minutes before the battery started to die on the vent. Such a bummer. So we took her back inside and plugged in the vent in one of her favorite little nooks, to mess around for a while. Reagan got most of the good pics on Sunday. Probably because Piper spent most of the time climbing around on me, hahaha.

“Oh, hey. Just hanging out on dad’s shoulders”

After a while, sitting on the shoulders wasn’t cutting it. She needed to stand on my shoulders (then head).

And, there was a little dancing with Reag.

I’m so glad that spring has finally showed up in NYC. I even went for a nice run on Saturday. It was the first time all year that I have broken the 10 mile threshold. It felt pretty good, even though I ended up with a blister. I hope that everyone else had a fantastic weekend.