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 seitanthat 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 thetemptation 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Just finished putting the, well, finishing touches on the 100% Official Scott Gordon Bleicher Photography Facebook Fan Page. Whew. Say that ten times fast.
While juggling.
Chainsaws.
Blindfolded.
Luckily for you, you don’t have to be an expert daredevil sideshow performer, risking inadvertent amputation, to become a fan of my photography on Facebook. All you have to do is follow this link!
So it seems that I’ve finally jumped onto the microblogging bandwagon. I don’t know what’s next……a live streaming, real-time feed of my thoughts via USB cable coming out of my ear, posted directly to your computer monitors and smartphone screens like some ultra-personal, stream-of-consciousness infomercial?
If only I could hire Billy Mays to sell me, to package my personality and professional skills into a shrink wrapped, focus group approved, three-easy-payments product of a charming young man and creative photographer.
Rest in peace, last of the pitchmen.
…
Well, until the Matrix reveals itself, Keanu Reeves will remain more “Ted” Theodore Logan than The One, and we will continue to microblog our last lunches and LOST Season 6 theories via Twitter.
Long time, no post! Just moved in to a new loft space in Brooklyn- high ceilings, huge windows, hard wood floors. And with the moving comes the packing and unpacking, the cleaning, the organizing, the reshuffling of routines…and unfortunately, the unintentional neglecting of the blog.
So what better way is there to get the blog rolling again than with a few snaps of the new digs! I look forward to being able to use this space for studio work, and even trying to work with the beautiful natural light that streams in through the banks of factory windows in the morning and afternoon.
To any current or prospective clients- forget the rental studio, we’ve got a new place to shoot!
Posted: September 24th, 2009
Categories: Miscellany
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Comments: 1 Comment.
I’ve recently self-published a magazine through MagCloud entitled Tokyo Juxtaposed. The issue contains juxtapositions of photographs that I took while aimlessly wandering around Tokyo (dérive, anyone?), many of which can be seen in the Travel portfolio on my website.
I’ve included a few extra diptychs in the magazine in order to ensure its limited edition collectibility. In theory.
Click on the cover below for a preview of Tokyo Juxtaposed and for information on how to purchase a copy.
Welcome to the maiden voyage of the good ship Scott Gordon Bleicher Photography Blog! After much prodding from fellow photographer friends (I’m looking at YOU, Mr. Furman) and some initial hesitation by myself, I finally dip my toes into the warm, lapping waters off the coast of the blogosphere. (The recent purchase of a Canon G10 for blog snapshots also helped to turn the tide.)
As the bottle breaks upon the glistening hull, we turn and wave to the crowd on the pier…
