Wednesday night was kind of fun because Reagan and I were working at the ASH Footwear party in SoHo. I shoot these types of events fairly often. I have to admit that they aren’t my favorite thing to shoot. But the fact that Reagan and some of her salon friends were there, made it a lot of fun. I shot several images of Reagan working her magic.

Spraying it up

The party was hosted by Solange Knowles. Here is a shot of Reagan and her friends from the salon with Ms. Knowles.

Reagan wrote about the event on Hairdresser on Fire, if you want to check it out.

I’m pretty excited to get the weekend started. I haven’t seen Piper for too long. I hope that she remembers me, hehe. I wish that it could be a little bit more of a chill weekend. Alas, it is booked to the gills. Reagan is throwing a bridal shower on Sunday. So, I will be helping her set it up on Saturday/Sunday and doing the photography. Sunday morning (fathers day) I have a race in CP. Then Sunday eve, we will be taking down the shower venue. Despite the busyness that this weekend brings, I’m glad to be able to spend some time hanging out with Reagan and PJ, again.

Have a great weekend!

The first art show that we hit yesterday was The Armory. It was massive. Almost too huge. I was exhausted by the time that we left. The shot above is overlooking half of one of the two piers that contained the show. Again– massive. Anyway, a few of my favorite shots from the armory include the one directly below, and the one with the hanging dollar bills.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the names of the artists for these two shots. I wasn’t even particularly fond of the pieces, but I thought that the setup of the display lent themselves to an interesting shot. Especially the one above, the way that those two gallerists happened to be standing right there conversing.

After The Armory show, we headed a bit further downtown to hit Scope. Below are some of my favorite paintings from the show.

Andy Denzler is the artist who painted the work above. The artist who did the one below is quickly becoming one of my favorite painters. Her name is Anna Borowy. I first saw some of her work a few months ago on a press release from a gallery show that she was doing in Berlin. It was very, very cool to finally see some of it in person.

And finally, I really enjoyed this piece by Victor Rodriguez called “Two Masks.” I love the concept and work. Two more shows today.

And when it is cold like this, Reagan wears her huge hairy hat. She has been playing a fun little game where he tries to do outfit posts each day leading up to her b-day. It has been kind of fun shooting some of them for her, for the 3 days this month that she has been in town. Ok, I guess a few more than 3 (barely). We shot the image above* walking home, after parking the car Saturday. Best part about the image: Reagan is still rocking her “Visitor” badge from Piper’s house.

Alas, I will begin bachelor life again tomorrow. Reagan will be headed to the midwest to meet the new baby of one of her close friends. I feel like she just got back from her last trip. On the bright side, I am booked so deep this week that it should fly by. I’m actually starting to feel tired just from writing about it. I’ll be shooting a few projects that I’m pretty excited about though.

*As an uninteresting side note, I snapped the shot above with our new (old) 5D. I picked it up off of CL, intending to give it to Reagan for her B-day. I learned from her that same day that she actually wanted something completely different. Since I had scored the 5D for such a great price, I decided to keep it for a back-up body/walk around cam. I have only used it handful of times (as ZT perceptively noticed when I posted this shot), but I really like it.

Monday, I hit 3 men’s fashion trade shows. My favorite was Capsule. The photo above is of my new jacket that I picked up while I was there. Not really. It was just a sample that happened to be my size. Since it was basically the coolest thing that I had ever laid eyes on, I had to get a photo of me wearing it (thanks, Sam for snapping it).

Saturday night I spent running around town shooting nachos with one of my friends who is writing an article for Antenna Magazine. The ones below are from Pinche Taqueria on Mott St.

The shot below is looking out the window at the Project trade show in SoHo.

And finally– a shot from the bathroom at Project. Why someone had struck out 150 and scribed 138, is beyond me. But I don’t really need to know the significance, to appreciate the hands-on care that went into packaging these toilet seat covers.

Today, I woke up to freezing rain. This sucks for two reasons. A– It’s freezing rain; B– I had to postpone for the third time an editorial shoot that I have been trying to do (and looking forward to) for a month, now.

I hope Reagan comes home soon.

Have a great week.

So, yeah. These images are from a new series that I’m working on called “nerdp*rn.” That’s not really what I shot them for. But, until reading the previous sentence, the first sentence is pretty believable, right?

Shooting from the hip, flying by night, whatever you want to call it. That’s what I have been up to. Actually it would have been nice if there would have been a little more flying by night going on over the past few days. We have been trying to get Reagan on a plane so that she can go visit some family before she starts her new job. Unfortunately, snow happened. Because of all of the craziness, I have been canceling, rescheduling, then canceling just about everything on my calendar, since Monday. Reagan is booked again for a flight leaving tomorrow afternoon. Let’s hope that the stars align for this one, because I’m not sure if either of our nerves could handle a repeat of yesterday.

A few things that I did manage to accomplish:

1. I bought Reagan a new camera in anticipation of her voyage. It is a compact. She likes ones that she can take around with her in her purse. It is a pretty good one. I was tempted to just get her a G12, because I’m so loyal to Canon. Instead, I ultimately ended up going with a Samsung TL500, which also shoots RAW, was $100 more affordable, and has a Shneidler lens (that opens to f/1:1.8). I hope it works out for her.

2. I updated my Linux operating system. About a year ago I put together a little Linux box running on Ubuntu, so that I could back up all of my images. After I got all of the drives installed and setup the OS, I haven’t even had it hooked up to a monitor. The only times I have had to restart it, is when the power went out (when Reagan blew a breaker with her blowdryer). Everything is running swimmingly. I just unloaded about 300 GBs of images onto a brand new virgin drive on the Linux machine overnight. So, that is my plug for open source everything.

That’s about it. The image at the top is just a cropped screenshot of myGMail inbox. Do you ever have those moments where there is so much going on in your brain simlutaneously, that you just kind of short circuit and everything becomes abstract? I was having one of those moments when I made the screengrab.

Let’s start with the part about being over the hump.  It is Wednesday (a.k.a. humpday). But this week, today is the equivalent of Thursday, since we are driving to VA on Friday instead of going to work. My sister and her family are on the east coast visiting my sister’s father-in-law and family. Since they live in Alaska (my sister’s fam), we can’t pass up an opportunity to visit them when they are within driving distance. I’m all kinds of excited about seeing them.

Next: Last night I shot some kind of stuff for a fun little editorial that I’m working on for SoJones. It is more stuff from our same designer friend who made the dress in Reagan’s bodega photos. Our friends (the Adams) were kind enough to be my go-to models again. It is especially important to mention what good sports they were about standing out in the cold while I fought with finicky strobes (notice the inconsistent lighting in the photos). Hopefully it will be the last time I have to deal with Canon’s line-of-sight IR triggers. I think that I’m going to use some “Christmas money” to buy a new pocket wizard setup before we go to VA.

And… one more

I have been thinking pretty long and hard about some resolutions for this year. The only ones that were coming quickly to mind were jokes. Like: Resolved, I’m going to get as fat as possible in 2011. That way, if I don’t achieve my goal, I’m stoked, because I won’t be fat. If I do get as fat as possible, I could say that I finally kept my resolution.

Then I started coming up with things like “demonstrate more patience.” How in the world can something like that be quantified, though? I mean, do I keep tally marks from month to month for each time I catch myself groaning about someone’s (possibly my own)  incompetence– then if December has less tally marks than January, I succeeded? What if I encounter more incompetence in January than in December?

Finally, it dawned on me. I have fallen out of some pretty good habits, and into some less than good ones. Reversing those items will be a win-win. Instead of grinding away with the tally marks all year long, I can knock out all of the hard work in just a few months, while I force myself to get back on track. After that I can coast through the rest of the year by just doing maintenance while I reap the benefits. So, down to brass tacks:

1. Get more rest. During the winter it is so easy to just get sucked into all night projects. I mean, it is dark for more than half of the time that I’m awake each day. I have fallen into the habit of burning away the night working on projects that I invent for myself. Then I wake up feeling like crap. After a few days, my productivity starts to wane and I eventually just have to waste half of a weekend catching up on sleep. This is not only totally unproductive, but it also pisses off Reagan.. bad.
2. Stop eating just to break up the monotony. Even when I was burning through 90000000 calories a day by running, I only ate one meal per day. Partly because it was all I had time for. Partly because that was the only time that I was really hungry. In reality, I’m still only hungry once per day. But I have fallen into a stupid habit of eating just for an excuse to get away from my desk. I find myself eating second dinner at times.
3. Stop spreading myself too thin. Sometimes I will overbook myself, because I have a hard time saying no. Sometimes I can pull it off. Most of the time, at least one job ends up suffering. I think that if I slow down enough to devote my whole attention to whatever I’m working on, the results will definitely reflect it.
4. Start running again. Hi, I used to be a runner. Then the temperature dropped and it was dark a lot, so I stopped. Completely. Reagan got me a Garmin 410 for Christmas that is still sitting safely in it’s packaging. Starting this week, I’m going to run at least once per week until I can catch the fever again and dive back in headlong (probably when the temps start getting above 50, again).
5. Start shaving. I just threw that one in because it will be so easy, hahahaha. Sorry Mr. Beardo (and Reagan). It’s the end of the beard as we know it.

And, that is kind of a lot to tackle. But, here we go. Hold me accountable, amigos.

The photo above is a bit anachronistic, if I were to order things according to the title of this post. But I really, really like it. So there it is (at the top). Friday night, I was running around like crazy person trying to get some stuff shot before galleries closed, etc.. The last thing I shot before getting the weekend started on Friday night, was an installation by the UK based artist Hush. He did a few outdoor pieces in LES, in connection with the pop-up exhibit that opened Friday night. The shot below is one of them.

The exhibit itself was in this seriously cool old church. The way that they had it lit, meshed perfectly with Hush’s work (below).

Now, for the coolest part. I was talking to the PR guy as I was about to leave. Asking him about prices, prints, etc.., when he mentioned that Hush had created 30 miniature works, to give out at the reception. So, look who came out of there with #1. Woot!

Saturday, I was able to escape the clutches of the office and instead spend the day gallivanting around Brooklyn. Factory Fresh had a huge block party next to the gallery. There were several artists working on 200 ft. section of wall. I wish that I could have stayed all evening, to watch it unfold. It was super cool.

I think that my favorite shots from the afternoon, are the ones that I got from the roof. There are plenty more images on Curated, if you want to take a look.

After having such a great Saturday, I am stuck in the office all day, today. Ah well. It’s about give and take.

Things have really picked up at my real job, which is awesome. The only down side is that I have had to hustle like crazy to fit in my fake jobs. Some cool stuff that I have shot this week, starting at the top: Tara Machperson at the Jonathan Levine Gallery.  I really dig her stuff. Wednesday night, I shot a brand called Deux Ex Machina from AU. They are just starting to foray into the US market and had a sort of pop-up display at Saturdays surf shop on Crosby (images below). They do everything from surfboards to custom cafe racer moto. How do I get job working for them?

I have some other cool stuff lined up for the rest of the week.  Here are some highlights:

• My sister Sarah arrives on Friday night.
• Two of my cousins are in town for the weekend.
• NYC Marathon (technically next week)