February and March miscellany…

No posts for 6 weeks? Well, while it’s technically been the “off season” for weddings and portraits, that doesn’t mean that my cameras and I have just been sitting around and gathering dust while watching endless episodes of Life After People. In the last 6 weeks I’ve had a couple of fun shoots for Tribeza, headed off on a 2 week, 3800 mile road trip to San Francisco by way of Roswell, Flagstaff and Los Angeles, and had a few friends over to my new studio (now officially unveiled and open for business, BTW) to serve as lighting guinea pigs and to help me get my bearings in the new space. With new posts coming your way faster than a runaway Prius, here’s a incredibly quick rundown of what I’ve done with my down time:

These first three photos were shot for the February issue of Tribeza magazine – the piece featured local musicians who have residencies at restaurants around town. First off are Ethan and Doug, 2 members of “The Moonhangers,” a band that pays regularly at Lamberts on 2nd street. Next is Kris Kimura, a regular at Eddie V’s. Check out the article online on pages 84-87!

This photo tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Roswell.

On a creepily vacant and very, very long stretch of road between Roswell and Albuquerque I spied these two fabulous signs…fabulous for entirely different reasons. A word of warning to any future road-trippers that may take this same route – do not even think about leaving Roswell for Albuquerque without a full tank of gas! That’s what I did, tisk tisk, and I finally came across a gas station with my on-board trip computer giving me a total remaining range of 12 miles…with about 40 more to go to the I-40 junction and the next station. Lesson learned.

I finally made it to L.A….and this happened. I’ll try to explain these 3 photos, and I will fail miserably. In short, my friend Lydia (below) wanted to make a video for her friend Crystal’s rehearsal dinner…when they were in high school they apparently both loved “Money Ain’t A Thang” by Jermaine Dupri and Jay-Z, so of course the only choice was to remake that video, with Jay-Z and crew replaced by Lydia and her friends. I shot the video (my first and most likely last video gig) and stills, and below is just a tiny sample of what we created. It was incredibly fun, and very, very, very ridiculous. If you’re curious enough and enter the right search terms our masterwork can be found on YouTube, but I won’t post it here lest I be held directly responsible for amazing you to death.

This may look like a rather pedestrian photo of a nice house, but oh my, this is not just a house…this is THE house that was used as Fisher and Sons funeral home in what I call “the greatest thing ever put on film,” a.k.a. the amazing t.v. series Six Feet Under. This was pretty much the highlight of my entire trip.

The composition here leaves a bit to be desired, but what more can you expect of a photo taken with an iPhone at 2 a.m.? I just had to share, as I was really impressed with this healthy cake that we found at a Ralphs grocery just east of 101 on Hollywood Boulevard…it said that it was healthy so I ate like 11 of them over the course of a week.

This truly awful thing actually exists…somewhere in Arizona at a ridiculous roadside attraction called “The Thing.” I’m not sure if they left it in the bag because they were scared of it or if the person responsible for stocking that section was just incredibly apathetic.

Back to Austin, and back to photos that weren’t taken on cellphone cameras…this is my friend Amber, one of the aforementioned people that donated their time to help me test countless lighting setups in my new studio space and scout out some cool new locations in the surrounding area. I think we were quite successful…and with that, I now plunge headfirst into the heart of wedding and portrait season, stay tuned!