SCOTT GORDON BLEICHER PHO(BLOG)GRAPHY

Catfish Breakfast. Coming soon.

When Mary Jean
had left this place
she couldn’t remember
the names of
her children.

There were:

eight sisters,
three brothers,
two sons and
two daughters,

one husband
of sixty-nine years

sitting on the back porch
watching the highway
that cuts through
the farm now

and thinking about
Mary Jean.

Earlier this week, I picked up a book of poems by Jim Harrison called Saving Daylight. Good friend of former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser (with whom he published a book of, shall we say, correspondence poetry entitled Braided Creek), Harrison is best known commercially for penning the novella Legends Of The Fall in 1979, from which he adapted the screenplay, and Hollywood added Brad Pitt in 1994.

Jim Harrison writes novels, essays, novellas, and screen plays, is a gourmet cook, a food critic, a zen practitioner, a naturalist and a sportsman, but first and foremost, he is a poet. Saving Daylight sees Jim contemplating time and nature, and the very nature of time. He writes with a blue collar on, and in the hand opposite his pen one would imagine a shovel, or a sledgehammer, or a hunting rifle.

The poems collected in Saving Daylight are colloquial and honest, pastoral and proud, mixed with equal parts salt and spit. Weathered, yet warm. When a line threatens to float from a poem on a white cloud of a daydream or a puff of nostalgia, it is grounded by a cinder block of a universal truth in the next.

Jim looks at a pocket watch, holds it up to the moon, and compares it.

Only he hears both of them tick.

From Adding It Up

Two nights ago I heard a woman from across
the creek, a voice I hadn’t heard since childhood.
I didn’t answer. Red was red this dawn
after a night of the swirling milk of stars
that came too close. I felt lucky not to die.
My brother died at high noon one day in Arkansas.
Divide your death by your life and you get
a circle, though I’m not so good at math.
This morning I sat in the dirt playing
with five cow dogs, giving out a full pail of biscuits.

I’ve spent the last few days putting a new photography portfolio together, the gastronomically-themed Perishables. The goal was to incorporate plated food shots, establishment interiors and atmospheres, chef and restauranteur portraits, and a hint of travel/destination photography under the overarching banner of a food lifestyle collection.

Culinary culture, I like to call it.

You can preview Perishables in all of its low res glory here.

The front cover and a few select pages can be seen below.

Bon appétit.

A BTS look at Sunday morning’s look book shoot for Eubiq NY’s Spring 2011 collection.

Everybody say hi to Shirley!

Susquehannock State Forest is in central Pennsylvania, along the northern border, just south of New York state.

Susquehannock State Forest is located in Potter County God’s Country, with a few tracts of forest stretching into nearby McKean and Clinton counties.

Susquehannock State Forest contains 262,000 acres of woodlands and 89 miles of hiking trails.

Susquehannock State Forest was named after the Susquehannock tribe of Native Americans whom lived along the Susquehanna river.

Susquehannock, adapted from the Algonquian name, means ‘people of the muddy river.’

There are no cellular towers in Susquehannock State Forest. There are no wi-fi hot spots or internet cafes. So how do you write a blog post from Susquehannock State Forest?

With a pen and paper.

They used to call it writing a letter.

We just spent the better part of four days in Susquehannock State Forest, nine miles deep in the woods and even further from any semblance of civilization.

We drank beer. We ate red meat. We shot guns. We filmed a music video. We played music on the camp porch. We watched the sun set over the Lushbaugh. We sat around the fire pit and listened to the old men tell railroad stories and redneck jokes. We lost track of the days of the week.

All was good.

Now it’s back to the city, back to the grind, and back to the editing table. As the music video period piece for Catfish Breakfast begins to take shape, a few snapshots from our woodland weekend can be seen below.

The phone booth.

Camp.

Fire pit.

Chipmunk season.

Got one…

…for dinner.

Moonshine and a magnum.

Rain rig.

Front porch concert.

The can crusher.

Fishin’.

No creatures were harmed in the filming of Catfish Breakfast. Scout’s honor.

Lushbaugh.

Back yard.

Men.

North of Newry.

I recently hopped a train to Red Bank, NJ to photograph chef Adam Sobel- creator, owner, and…..driver of The Cinnamon Snail.

The Cinnamon Snail is the country’s first 100% vegan food truck, currently servicing Hoboken, NJ and soon to be making the rounds in Brooklyn.

An in-depth interview with Adam (and a few of the images below) can be found here, on Kitchen La Bohème.

Kitchen La Bohème.

The Bohemian Kitchen.

It’s a vegan pure vegetarian food blog that I’ve been shooting for lately.

A vegan food blog, you say?

Yep.

Well, Scott, are you vegan?

Nope.

Are you, at least, vegetarian then?

Not even close.

So, a carnivore taking pictures for a vegan food blog?

That’s right.

But why?

For starters, because vegan food doesn’t taste like cardboard. Or the back of a postage stamp.

Because I’ve had soy sesame seitan that could’ve fooled any carnivore into thinking they were eating General Tso’s Chicken from Wong’s Wok (real place).

Ok, maybe not the most flattering comparison, but what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t miss the meat.

Because, although I cannot resist the temptation of the cheeseburger, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to eat healthy.

And why the distinction between vegan and pure vegetarian?

Because the term vegan can be off-putting for some, weighed down by it’s perceived elitism and the expectation of its practitioners to be the poster children for a Birkenstock-wearing, bicycle riding, downward dogging, third eye opening, crystals on the windowsill-of-the-universe lifestyle.

Because vegan has become a collective movement as opposed to a personal choice.

Because vegan has become a stereotype.

No, you don’t have to go on Phish tour to be pure vegetarian. You don’t have to live in a Volkswagen Westfalia or make a pilgrimmage to Burning Man or burn Nag Champa or learn how to blow glass or know what your spirit animal is.

You just have to make a commitment to healthy, pure, and organic eating habits.

And you have to love cows.

You do love cows, right?

Right?

(Orecchiette with Smashed Peas, Hot Veggie Sausage and Tofu Ricotta)

Houses in the window.

Come for the tacos, stay…for the tacos.

The music video for Jake Hill’s ‘Snow Up On The Mountain’, taken from his third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow.

Happy birthday to you.

Tom & Joe’s has the best Breakfast Mess. Ever.

There, I said it.

Now if you happen to be the skeptical type that has to see eat to believe, then you can hop on The Pennsylvanian (with an empty stomach) from the Amtrak concourse at Penn Station, get off fourteen stops later in Altoona, walk three and a half blocks to Tom & Joe’s, do what you have to do, walk back to the train station, jump on an eastbound Pennsylvanian, sit down, and loosen your belt. When you arrive back in New York City about six hours later, you’ll still be full.

Two eggs, scrambled. Home fries. Ham. Bacon. Sausage. Onions. Green peppers. Cheese. Toast on the side. That’s the Breakfast Mess with everything. I don’t need my bacon in strips and I certainly don’t need my sausage in links. Just throw it all together, cook it up, pile it on a plate, and hand me a fork.

Tom & Joe’s is the gastronomical heart (clogged arteries and all) of a dead downtown in a dying railroad town. Tom & Joe’s opened in 1933. Tom & Joe’s doesn’t open for you. You come when Tom & Joe’s is open (8 am to 2 pm, usually). Tom & Joe’s didn’t move to the strip mall. Tom & Joe’s doesn’t wear khakis. Tom & Joe’s won’t let you date its daughter. Tom & Joe’s takes credit and debit. Reluctantly. Tom & Joe’s likes your kids. Bring them. Tom & Joe’s deserves a visit from Guy Fieri. Scratch that. Tom & Joe’s doesn’t need Guy Fieri’s bleached spikes and backwards sunglasses and SoCal cool.

So here’s to the next 77 years of getting all of your daily allowed caloric intake at breakfast, hot black coffee, white buttered toast, mixed berry jam packets, and waitresses with more attitude than hair spray. Almost.

Every time that I ride the rails homeward for a small town respite from the concrete jungle, I make time for a visit with my grandpap. He’s got a lot of great stories to tell, and he always likes to hear about what I’m up to in the big city.

And it usually seems that, with each visit, we open up an old photo album and I listen to him reminisce- usually about The War, but sometimes about a fishing trip or an old dog that he had.

He might have trouble opening a pickle jar sometimes and he can’t read the paper too well these days, but he sure can tell a story, decades old, as if it happened last week.

There are a few specific photographs that always seem to make the rounds. Two of which you can see below.

My grandmother and grandfather in Washington DC, 1943.

On my last visit, he lamented the fact that these two prints were in such poor condition, fingerprinted and folded, smudged and scratched, and that he considered taking them to Wal Mart to have them restored.

Nothing against the retouching prowess of the kind folks pushing prints at the Wal Mart photo processing counter. Heck, they might even know a few Photoshop tricks that I don’t. But I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t take quite the personal interest in restoring these images to their original condition, so I tasked myself with the project.

Below you’ll see the images as they were given to me. Hopefully I’ll have a pretty respectable before and after to show in the coming weeks.

Coming soon.

Vacancy.

Jake Hill will be playing The Living Room on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Thursday, May 27th in support of his new album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, which will be available for purchase at the show and is now available as a digital download at Amazon.

You can read a nice write-up on the album and Jake’s inspirations at the Wicked Local Plymouth blog.

Hope to see you at the show.

A little while back I had the distinct pleasure of working on a two-day shoot with friend and Grammy-nominated organist Cameron Carpenter. The focus of the shoot was to create a number of striking image options for the covers of his soon-to-be-released double album, Cameron Live!




The CD portion of the set contains a live concert recording from The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City, while the accompanying DVD sees Cameron filmed in high definition while performing in studio, and takes you on tour with concert footage from Berlin and New York.

Cameron Live! is now available for preorder over at Concord Music Group, where you can listen to samples and read a suitably in-depth and impassioned preview of the album that ends with these thoughts on the dual covers:

For the DVD, the cover is suitably outrageous: Noel Coward meets Janis Joplin in her backstage dressing room (actually, Carpenter photographed in his New York East Village apartment). Flip the album over to find the other front, in stark contrast: Carpenter in jeans, silver boots and a t-shirt that proclaims MUSIC IS IT, reminding the listener that despite his attention to detail on the outside, it’s what they see and hear on the discs inside that matters.

More than one, actually.

Just a stone’s throw from the Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts is Wood’s Seafood, an end-of-the-pier seafood shack and fish market that you’d expect from any harbor town, but especially from this harbor town, because this harbor town is America’s Hometown.

After passing on a refreshing dip in the Governor Bradford Inn’s fish-shaped pool,

then feeling a pang of disappointment in my patriotic heart when I saw the glorified zen garden that houses Plymouth Rock (follow the signs, walk to the railing, and look down),

I turned and headed back along Plymouth Harbor with my sights set on the sea-salted grey building at the end of Town Wharf.

…

Here’s how the story goes:

Mr. Wood was a pilgrim. He came here on a boat with other pilgrims. The pilgrims met the Indians locals and wanted to invite them to dinner. The pilgrims wanted turkey. Mr. Wood wanted fish.

Whereas Mr. Wood was thinking that a high energy and heart-healthy dinner rich in Omega-3 fatty acids would make for a nice first impression, the pilgrims had other, more nefarious plans.

When the Indians locals inevitably slipped into tryptophan-induced comas, the pilgrims would slaughter them and immediately begin erecting strip malls and clearing forest for landfills, and they’d build a casino or two for the remaining Indians locals to run as sort of a consolation prize.

Mr. Wood digressed and lived out his days catching fish on Plymouth Beach, blissfully ignorant of the genocide set in motion by this first Thanksgiving.

…

Ok, that might not be exactly how the story goes (Mr. Wood was a merman from the lost continent of Atlantis), but Wood’s Seafood is the destination of choice in Plymouth for buttery lobster rolls, fried clams strips, steamed mussels, and creamy clam chowder in styrofoam cups.

Or should I say, clam chowda.

Four states in four days.

It’s been a busy week, riding the rails and rolling down the highway, shooting commercial interiors and editorial portraits.

Wednesday found me in Eastern Pennsylvania, Thursday it was Southern New Jersey, and today- upstate New York. Tomorrow I’ll be on a bus to Boston followed by a train to Plymouth for Jake Hill’s album release party, so I figured that now would be as good a time as any to reveal the final artwork for In The Mountain’s Shadow.

The physical album releases tomorrow, April 24th, and the digital download will be available through iTunes the following week.

No matter the means, the end is sure to satiate your thirst for cautionary bluegrass tales, belligerent 12 bar blues, jangly CCR-esque country rockers, bittersweet coming-of-age acoustic ballads, and/or traditional hoedown foot stompers.*

My suggestion? Pick up a physical copy of the album, at the very least for that sweet album cover.

(*Catfish Breakfast, Baby Wears A Pistol, Down From The Sun, Tickertape Parade, and When The Moon Is Gone, respectively)

I just wrapped up postproduction on the music video for Jake Hill’s Down From The Sun, the lead track from Jake’s forthcoming third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow.

I may have spoken a bit prematurely when, in a recent post, I proclaimed Jake to be The New Man In Black. After watching the video below I think you’ll agree that I should have crowned him as the new King of the Canadian Tuxedo.

Enjoy.

The recent purchase of a two thousand gigabyte external hard drive for photo archiving purposes has lead me down the tedious road of making back ups of my back ups. A small pleasure I’ve found in this process has been the rediscovery of old images, some of which I shot while on a cross country road trip nearly a decade ago.

I found a handful of black and white film scans, ranging from Yellowstone to Yosemite, from the Badlands to Canyonlands. It is possible that these images, heavy on film grain and contrast, may have been tinted by the distorting lens of nostalgia- but coming across them again after a few years has allowed me to see them with as objective an eye as possible.

I’ve crisscrossed the country by auto and aero a number of times since (even once by train), but this inaugural expedition remains the most memorable: setting out with not much more than a paper map, a full tank of gas, and many rolls of film, intent on coaxing the ghosts of Lewis and Clark from their roadside tombs, rolling down the interstate in an old jeep like a four-ton Sacagawea with a manual transmission.

Camping out in national parks, eating at gas stations, getting rooms in cheap motels every once in a while just to take a shower; inspired equally by Jack Kerouac and John Muir.

I returned with a widened world view, or at least with wide opened eyes, amazed by the country’s sprawling geography and varied topography.

Maybe something can be said for the act of getting lost to find one’s self, of searching for a place to belong and realizing that you belong everywhere, and no where; that your place is the space in between. And that old standby about it not being the destination but the journey that holds true significance? It is tempered by more truth than I knew at the time, and still rings true to myself to this day.

Westward expansion began, in earnest, with the California Gold Rush of 1849. The first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line in 1914, one year after the first transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway, was formally dedicated.

In the near-century since the age of the automobile unofficially began, the idea of the open road has become firmly entrenched in our collective pop culture subconscious- a romanticized symbol of the American Dream, synonymous with the notion of freedom and adventure, and roads leading west have held the promise of challenge and discovery, of a new life, of a second chance.

In song and cinema, in literature and legend, our highways become hallowed, the west remains wild. And upon returning east, if we do return, we realize that the true westward expansion is an expansion of the self.

Yes please.

A message in a (Miller High Life) bottle lapped up on the shore of Pho(Blog)graphy Island early this morning while I was out making my daily rounds with the metal detector. Still can’t find that Sac that I lost.

Anyway, the message was from the home office of the Cape Cod Bay Arts & Entertainment Division located in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. Official word is that Jake Hill’s highly-anticipated third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, will release on April 24th, accompanied by a release party and two performances from Jake and his troupe of traveling troubadours.

The festivities kick off with an all ages show at Kiskadee Coffee Co. in downtown Plymouth at 6 pm, followed up by a late evening show for the old folks (21+) at The Guru, 9:30 pm.

The very same information that I just wrote above can also be read below, albeit syntactically varied and superimposed over a very man-in-black-esque portrait of Mr. Hill with his weapon of choice, photographed by yours truly.

If I can make it back to the mainland, possibly by smuggling myself onto a passing freighter or clinging to a raft made from an old car door and empty milk jugs, then I’ll see you April 24th in Pilgrimville. Would be an epic entrance if I managed to dock at Plymouth Rock.

You’re welcome.

(Sayonara.)




Tokyo Juxtaposed came down today after an extended exhibition at Supercore in Brooklyn. Thanks once again to Hiko, Yoko, Hideki, and the rest of the Supercore staff for having us, to Loud Objects and Nori for their tag team performance, and to everyone that came out on opening night and showed their support.

If you couldn’t make it to this one then I hope to see you at the next one.

Thanks again.

I wrapped up a project this week with New England-based singer/songwriter Jake Hill. Over a two day shoot we completed the cover for Jake’s soon-to-be-released third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, shot a wide range of promotional portraits, and filmed a video for lead single and album opener ‘Down From The Sun’.

While I can’t reveal much along the lines of final album artwork and the video is in the very early stages of post-production, I have posted an outtake from the blooper reel below. Do take note of the high production values.

In The Mountain’s Shadow releases on the 24th of April. Check back then for a reveal of the album cover and video, and a record review will follow shortly thereafter.

In the meantime, you can head over to Jake’s MySpace music page and preview two tracks from the album now- ‘Blowin’ In From Newfoundland’ and ‘Unlock My Door’.

It’s been a slow week here on Pho(Blog)Graphy Island, and the natives are enjoying some much deserved R & R after last month’s beachfront property overhaul, which proved to be a massive undertaking (but now my hut has wi-fi, and a mini bar!).

On days like these when the sun is high and the tide is low, I find myself gazing out at the endless blue expanse of the ocean the internet and wondering what my fellow photographers are composing and exposing back on the mainland.

With the recent reveal of this year’s PDN 30 and much of my cerebral cortex being devoted to the pre-production of a rather ambitious multimedia project coming up next week, I turn to my peers for inspiration.

So it is with a subjective eye (well it is my list) and a slightly incapacitated frame of mind (too much ‘coconut water’ from the mini bar) that I present to you the first annual (maybe) SGB 10.

Congratulations to the winners. You deserve a handshake. If ever meet you.

Josef Schulz

Kevin Cooley

Alejandra Laviada

David Emmite

Alec Soth

Edgar Martins

JJ Sulin

Kyoko Hamada

Brian Ulrich

Andrew Hetherington

Midtown yoga.

Shirley & Co. over at Eubiq NY have updated their site with some new looks from their Spring 2010 collection that I recently shot for them. Follow this link to see what you should be wearing in the city come springtime (if you’re a contemporary young urban male, that is).

A recent commercial interiors shoot for Superpages led me to the ghoulishly-named neighborhood of Gravesend in Brooklyn. Much to my masochistic dismay, Gravesend is home to more Chinese restaurants and Kosher markets than haunted houses and fog-shrouded cemeteries.

A ten-minute walk east from the Q train on Avenue U will lead you to a well hidden Brooklyn gastronomic tradition which has recently been outed on an episode of Man v. Food.

Established in 1938, Brennan & Carr is a wood-stained, brick-walled, Irish-named eatery serving up pub grub from a bare bones menu posted to the wall and printed on the placemats, doing so in the vaguely musky ambiance of a turn-of-the-century Bavarian hunting lodge.




What you come here for is the roast beef the hot beef sandwich, dunked- bun and all, in au jus. If you’d like, you can have another ladleful poured over top, at which time the sandwich becomes a soggy, beefy, salty, fork-and-knife-only affair.

I manned up for my inaugural Brennan & Carr experience and ordered the Gargulio burger- the hot beef sandwich plus hamburger patty, sauteed onions, and gooey melted cheddar cheese. And yes, the whole sandwich was dunked in it’s own broth.

The plating, the idea and the execution are simple. The resulting sandwich is an epiphany for carnivores, and for your taste buds.

Next time you find yourself in Gravesend (because I know you always go there, you know, for the Kosher markets, the Chinese takeouts, the tanning salons, and the Russian nightclubs) make sure you stop by Brennan & Carr for a hot beef sandwich. Have it dipped. If you’re daring, go for the pour.

I’m ready for seconds.

The natives have been toiling away here on Pho(Blog)graphy Island, replacing the thatched roof of my seaside hut and making a throne for me out of palm fronds, beer cans, and coconut shells.

Oh, and I began field testing a new blog design today. It’s a customized version of Minimalist 1 by Joey Robinson over at techdesigns.co.uk.

Minimal to a fault, or smart and svelte? You be the judge.

Tokyo Juxtaposed- my series of photographs pairing cultural and aesthetic imagery from modern-day Japan, went on display last Thursday at Supercore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A small opening event marked the occasion. Old friends came out to show their support, new friends were made, and a good time was had by all in attendance.

The evening was anchored by the marathon beat/noise mashup of Loud Objects vs. DJ Nori, which allowed the juxtapositions to extend from the images on the walls and the projections on the ceiling to the sounds filling the space, and turned a darkened room into an intimate mixed media environment for a small crowd.

Below you’ll find a selection of snapshots from the evening followed by a few low resolution high definition (what?) video clips.

Thanks again to all who attended, to Katie, Kunal, and Nori for their sonic foreplay, and to Yoko and the rest of the Supercore staff for having us.

Hope to see you at the next one.

Domo arigato.

Long Island City, Tuesday Morning.

As seen on the ceiling, Thursday evening, at Supercore.

So we’ve made it to the bleary-eyed Friday conclusion of Tokyo Week! here on Pho(Blog)graphy Island, and the survivors are fed up with pressing the button every 108 minutes. (If you don’t know, you’ll have to start with Season One. Trust me.)

Thanks to everyone who attended the opening last evening, and an extra special thanks to Katie, Kunal, and Nori for entertaining the crowd and to the staff of Supercore for having us.

Check back next week for a recap of last evening’s festivities, replete with images and HD video clips, and be on the lookout for a possible weekend bonus tomorrow.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to a weekend filled with Los Hermanos chorizo tacos, alternating between the new Hot Chip and Spoon albums, a little Modern Warfare 2 Free-for-All, and heated message board ‘discussions’ concerning reincarnated Sayid’s supposed infection and possible possession by Jacob’s nemesis aka The Smoke Monster Guy, if that really was Claire, and which of the parallel timelines is reality.

Oh, and your T.G.I.F. diptych is below.

Namaste.

After countless restless nights and days of breathless anticipation, the moment has finally come. Tokyo Juxtaposed + Loud Objects, 7pm, Supercore, Williamsburg, Brooklyn,

TONIGHT.

Hope to see you there, although, the weather should prove an adequate and believable excuse if you are unable to attend. Heck, I don’t even know if I’m gonna go, still digging out from Snowmageddon.

Your Thursday courtesy diptych is below.

Hump day diptych: Progress.

Diptych of the day: Asakusa Attractions.

In recognition of The Tokyo Juxtaposed Photography Exhibit Opening Party Gala Celebration Event and Potluck Dinner Sleepover emceed by Mr. Kunal Gupta coming up later this week at Supercore, I’ve declared this week to be:

Tokyo Week! here on Pho(Blog)graphy Island.

(The natives are doing sake bombs as we speak.)

Each business day of the work week I’ll be posting a new photographic juxtaposition for your carefully measured objective consideration, ones that will not be shown at T.T.J.P.E.O.P.G.C.E. & P.D.S. (see above) and may or may not be available in the magazine.

As for a quick update on Thursday’s goings on, it’s looking more and more likely that there will be some sort of projected video juxtapositions on a loop for your attention-deficit-disordered viewing pleasure and there is the distinct possibility of a continuous, amorphous set by Loud Objects, like the bastard child of a radio transmitter and a seven layer cake.

(By the way, none of this is confirmed so don’t tell anyone.)

Your first free diptych of the week is below.

Dou itashe mashite.

The Honeymoon.

Loud Objects!

Unfortunately it looks like Tristan (aka ‘The Cute One‘) will not be in attendance as he is currently ‘out of town.’

Allegedly.

Did you just hear that? That was the sound of the collective heart of a throng of prepubescent Jersey City middle school girls breaking. Sad, sad day indeed.

But hey, we’ve still got Katie and Kunal! Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Right?!

So look for 2/3 of Loud Objects to bring their unique brand of no bit lo fi chip tune mad scientist circuit bending with silhouetted hands projected on a wall tomfoolery.

Ready your eardrums, prepare your eye sockets, and save the date:

Tokyo Juxtaposed + Loud Objects @ Supercore
Thursday, February 11th, 7pm
305 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn

To hold you over for now, I’ve posted some outtakes below from the nigh-infamous ’stretchy blue fabric’ photo shoot debacle, the one that broke my light stand, left Kunal with a permanent limp, and got Tristan a parking ticket and a pair of chafed forearms.

Katie walked away unscathed. Way to take one for the team Katie!*

(*Not all of the information presented above may be entirely true. In fact, quite a bit of it might be made up.)

Next month I’ll be showing a select number of photographs from my Tokyo Juxtaposed series at Supercore in Brooklyn.

The opening event is set for Thursday, February 11th at 7pm and the show will run through the middle of March.

There will be drinks (of the caffeinated and the alcoholic variety), there will be live music of one kind or another (to be announced soon), there will be professional networking, there will be Japanese tapas,

and hopefully, there will be you.

See you there.

(Presented Jackanory style.)

Rise and shine.

Make coffee.

Take a shower.

Coffee’s done.

Gear check.

Breakfast #1.

Check for updates here.

And here.

Travel light.

Out the door, down the hall.

Buenos dias.

Bushwick foyer.

The neighborhood.

A one-eyed beetle.

She’s seen better days.

The station.

The turnstile.

The train.

Mind the gap.

Morning commute.

Morning chaos.

Topside.

Morning paper.

Cafe Fresco Latina.

Pastry options, but no egg sandwiches.

Coffee #2.

Egg sandwich attempt #2.

Breakfast menu.

Egg sandwich success/breakfast #2.

Hail a cab.

This one.

Buckle up.

Back seat driver.

Arrival.

(Public Service Announcement)

Waiting in the lobby.

Which way?

This way.

Down the hall.

Around the corner.

Final destination.

Some assembly required.

The goods.

The set.

The looks.

The talent.

The shoot.

For the past year, I’ve been shooting residential interiors for Airbed & Breakfast, a web-based service and marketplace ‘allowing anyone from private residents to commercial properties to rent out their extra space.’

Although still a relatively new service, as of this writing Airbed & Breakfast already boasts listings in 108 countries and 2,174 cities, has been featured in The New York Times and Time Magazine and on CNN, amongst many others.

I cover the New York City market.

(Mental note: Get them to start sending me to those 2,173 other cities.)

…

Though it hardly sounds like a glamorous photo gig, the steady work has allowed me the unique opportunity to step into the homes of an interesting cross section of New Yorkers, from Brooklyn hipsters to Wall Street investment bankers to Barry Manilow’s drummer, and photograph….

their bedrooms.

Listings on the AirBnB online marketplace include ‘vacation rentals, private rooms, entire apartments, bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels, castles, treehouses, and many other traditional and non-traditional accommodations.’

While the bulk of my photo assignments have fallen into the traditional accommodations camp, a few of my favorite spaces/shots can be seen below.

…

So the next time you find yourself on the road, be it for a business meeting or an escape from business, try staying with the locals instead of the Hiltons.

You just might save some money and make some friends along the way.

To update my blog more frequently. In the meantime, welcome to

The Future…

Merry belated.

I’ve been soundtracking my end-of-the-decade tree trimming and chestnut roasting to the delightfully tipsy interpretations of holiday standards by the master craftsman, Bob Dylan.

Christmas In The Heart marks album number 47 for Dylan, and the first Christmas album of his nearly six-decade career which has seen a late renaissance of sorts since 1997’s Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind up to last April’s Together Through Life.

And fear not, voice coaches, Christmas In The Heart features more of Dylan’s old-man-punched-in-the-throat-with-barbed-wire, tonsils-pulled-with-needle-nose-pliers, a-pack-and-a-half-a-day gargle and croon, albeit this time backed by saccharin-sweet harmonies, layers of syrupy nostalgia, and a quickly filled quota of jingling bells.

If you don’t flat out enjoy the album, you can at the very least debate with your fellow egg noggers the depth of Dylan’s objectivity during the recording process, as Christmas In The Heart continually teeters on the brink of ’so bad it’s good’ on a number of tracks that seem the result of an ill-fitting Santa suit, a half-drunk bottle of bourbon, and a late-night-on-Canal-Street karaoke machine.

It’s not until the rollicking barroom brawl/moonshine ho down of late-in-the-album track Must Be Santa that you get the idea that Dylan is in full control here, masterfully implying a measure of sly self-awareness and self-deprecating humor, as he toes it incredibly close to the line of Kmart portrait studio Santa Claus with a crying toddler up until the epiphany of this wool-pulled punch line.

As Stephen M. Deusner perfectly put it in his review of the album for Paste Magazine: “Musically, it’s wonderfully bad; conceptually, it’s just wonderful.”

This is one lump of coal that I wouldn’t mind finding at the bottom of my stocking.

Below is a shot from a weekend shoot with Yuki Mark Lim- former fashion stylist, current bedroom linen designer, private New York City realtor, entrepreneur, owner of a Jack Russell Terrier named Walter, and all around cool guy.

Yuki is the owner of Apt 168, a short-term boutique apartment rental agency. His website, apt168.com, is in the middle of a pretty significant aesthetic overhaul, and his contact-page-portrait will look something like the one below when the new site launches early next year.

I wasn’t sure if I had a place for his portrait in my portfolio, but I liked it enough to show it, and figured that I’d show it here.

Q. What could possibly make for a better Christmas gift than a copy of Tokyo Juxtaposed?

A. Fruitcake.

Oh. Right.
…

Tokyo Juxtaposed, my self-published ‘zine chock full of aesthetic and cultural photographic juxtapositions from my early summer jaunt to the land of the rising sun, is still available for purchase over at MagCloud.

And it’s on sale!

While a copy of Tokyo Juxtaposed certainly makes for a great Christmas gift, it DOES NOT make for a great stocking stuffer. (Please, gently place the magazine into the stocking, preferably with a cardboard backing in a plastic sleeve, taking care not to bend its edges or crease its pages.)

And if you live somewhere in the six boroughs (I’m looking at you, New Jersey), I could meet you (along the L) and sign your copy for you, that way it would, you know, have my signature on it.

Or maybe you’d buy one if I told you that the other THIRTY ONE pages that you CANNOT preview at MagCloud were filled with hentai.

But they’re not, so, tough luck.

Pervert.

I’ve been having a good time over the past month shooting, editing, and uploading snapshots from my iPhone with an app called Best Camera. After experimenting with photo apps on the iPhone, pro photographer Chase Jarvis designed Best Camera to be, well, the best camera app available.

And I have to say, he nearly got it perfect. (sliders on the app’s filters and a photog directory on the site please!)

What is probably the coolest feature of Best Camera is not it’s ability to snap and edit a pic with over a dozen photo filters like Contrast, Vignette, and Frame, not the app’s ability to automatically upload and share your pic on social networking juggernauts Facebook and Twitter, but the perpetually updating online gallery of images shot by other Best Camera photographers around the world.

At thebestcamera.com you can see a live feed of images as they are uploaded, can vote on your favorite images, and can filter images by the best of the hour, day, and month. And each Best Camera photographer gets their own gallery page which, over time, I can see building into a nice little visual diary for myself.

If you happen to not be following me on Twitter (why not?!) and are not a friend of mine on Facebook, then you can follow this link to my Best Camera portfolio. Check back often because I plan on shooting and uploading with Best Camera frequently.

Granted, the pictures in question are merely two-megapixel snapshots, most of them poorly exposed and overly noisy, but there is something honest about the imperfection of the image, the impressionistic factor, the immediacy of the moment and the ability to share it instantaneously.

Also, I like to take pictures of my food before I eat it.