Bozeman here I come! I leave tomorrow afternoon for Vegas and then hop a plane early Sunday for Bozeman. I land around 10:30 in the morning and have a shoot around 12:00. I have recruited a couple of assistants from MSU to help out with the shoot. Hopefully Zak can help out too! Finishing packing in what now seems like the tiniest suitcase ever. I had to cram my Zeus power pack in there, which cut my space in half. I almost bought a new carry on bag tonight but I'm broke enough as it is.

For the flight I'll have my Crumpler Brazillion Dollar bag with my laptop, 5D mkII, both lenses, and all necessary reading material and music for the trip. I'm checking my Pelican case full of lights and Mafer clamps, and a suitcase with my power pack, and what clothes and necessities I can cram into it. I love how lighting comes first, and clothes and toiletries are an afterthought. Tomorrow I need to crank out a couple more photos for Raquel, and e-mail Laura's headshots. I'm still determined to make it to the LACMA for the Vanity Fair exhibit, so I'm going to try to go to the show at 3 on my way out of town. Somewhere in there I need to finish cleaning my room and bathroom because Bassett's guests are staying in my room while I'm gone.

I'm seriously debating trying to pack my Wacom tablet... hmmmm.

It's FRIDAY! That means I can release the Sleep District promos! So here you go. I'm so happy with how these turned out. I can't wait to work with more bands who will let me make composites like this!

I'm really enjoying VIMBY lately. VIMBY stands for Video in my Backyard. Filmmakers go out into their community and make mini docs on artists, tattoo artists, photographers, designers, and any other sort of creative person you can imagine. I just found this one of Grunge Photographer Charles Peterson, and it's really cool. Check it out.

VIMBY - Charles Peterson

Funny how things change so quickly from terribly bad to amazingly good. Today I woke up to my roommates cooking an incredible breakfast. I had a good meal then headed out to LAX to pick up my friend Andy Bloxham who is in town for a conference. He's an amazing photographer and has taught me a lot over the last year. I met him at SPE last year, and it makes me wish I had the time and money to go this year.
On the drive to the airport a got a text from another great band wanting to book me for promos. March keeps looking better and better. Tonight Andy and I went and saw The Wrestler and it was great! I strongly recommend you go see it. It's intense. I got out of the movie and had a voicemail from my friend Nic about my portfolio I sent to Capitol Records. It was a good message... more on it when I know more about it. Don't want to jinx myself again.
Now it's time for bed.

Today turned out to be pretty productive and enjoyable. I finalized more stuff for my Montana trip. Now I'm photographing my good friend Brandon in Bozeman on the 1st for his DJ business. It should be a LOT of fun! We're thinking mobster suits, and shooting records with a shotgun... photoshopped of course... Gotta love Montana, where you can drive down the road with a shotgun and no one bats an eye.

Stuff is booking up pretty solidly for March! I'm feeling really good about it. Ten days in Montana, then shooting Vogue in the Movement for Avant, doing new promos for Goodnight Sunrise, a shoot for Radash Clothing (I love trading for sweet clothes!) with Goodnight Sunrise and Brittany Flickinger (The girl who won Paris Hilton's new BFF). If there's time we'll even be doing a music video for Goodnight Sunrise while they're here! I'm really excited about the prospect of doing that because it's something I've always wanted to get into. Somewhere during march I'll be shooting a great band from Buffalo New York called Settings. They won the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands back in December, and their live show blew me away. I'm excited to work with them!

I've spent the majority of the day churning out Sleep District's promos. I am so pleased with them so far! It's like my Strange Instances series threw up on my band promos! SO COOL! I'll be throwing them onto the blog the day the band launches them, so keep an eye out. But here's a little sneak peek...

I'm a big fan of using Flickr to upload all my images instead of the Blogger uploader. Neat! Anyway, yes it is almost 4am but I just had to photoshop this one image of London before bed. His face is priceless. Videos from Sleep District's shoot in the morning... er afternoon?

So far so good this morning. I got a healthy 9 hours of sleep, and woke up not feeling like death! I rolled out of bed and ran down to the farmer's market and scored a cup of coffee, a loaf of whole wheat, some amazing cheeses from the Greek cheese man, some pomegranate jam, and almond blossom honey. Breakfast was incredible to say the least. I'm going to work some more on the makeup images for Goodnight Caulfield, and then head to Barstow for the show. It will be good to see the Victorville crew, I've missed the crap out of those guys!

I'm going around the issue with Blogger's photo dealie. Here are some images from my Flickr account.

I'm going to break down if 2009 keeps up this trend. For those not keeping track here's the shit timeline...
Last Thursday the 12th...
Shot with Raquel, then Photoshop started crashing for no reason. I equated this to be the fault of the new ram.
Saturday the 14th...
Took my computer to the Apple store to remedy the problems my Mac was having. It didn't work, so I backed up as much as I could and had Bassett clean sweep my computer.
Sunday the 15th...
I started to have trouble finding files I needed... then realized they were just plain gone. I thought they were only the Photoshopped images, and that I still had the raws so I'd be fine.
Monday the 16th...
Thought the images had to be somewhere. Then realized a lot of images were missing from several band promo albums. Albums that I ALWAYS back up. Always. Especially when my computer is acting up.
Tuesday the 17th...
Josh was here so I shuffled him around the town on no sleep for two days, and almost forgot about the shit show of my computer. I also learned in here that Goodnight Caulfield needs images by Friday for AP, and more images by Monday for Revolver.
Thursday the 19th...
Panic. Take my computer to a friend who is a programmer to run recovery software on my hard drive. High hopes. Come home to discover the screen of my laptop is screwed up like someone dropped it.
Today...
Sit down to re edit all of the promos that I had deleted to find that the raws were also deleted. A whole file gone. A whole file made up of all the images that were "keepers".
I want to die. This week has been so bad that I started taking my arthritis drugs because if this doesn't make it flare up nothing will. It all reminds me of finals in 2006 when I got that terrible eye infection, my car rolled out of the garage into a parked car, and my computer and external hard drives crashed simultaneously.

Sometimes when I lack any motivation to be productive I take a shower thinking that will help. I did that today and it was honest to god one of the only hot showers I've had so far this year. We have to find out what the deal with our hot water heater is.
Anyway I got out of the shower, and thought about doing something, then waited around for Vanessa so I can sign paperwork, and she never showed up. Then I fell asleep on my wet hair and now it's so ridiculous looking that I'll probably have to take a shower again just to get it back to normal. I tried going back to sleep for a second time, and failed again. I want to hit restart on today, I'd restart by turning off my phone and not being woken up after four hours of sleep.
Tonight is most likely going to be spent rebuilding one of Goodnight Caulfield's promos which was somehow not backed up when we reformatted my computer. I'm going to supplement it with a couple of my Spanish Peaks beers I found, and then if all goes as planned pass out relatively early.
Tomorrow I'm driving to Barstow (2 hours) to shoot a show there. I hope more bands book, because going for $150 is sounding like a lot of work. Then I drive home, edit more, and then I'm shooting London's band Sleep District, and going to see my Lorene Drive friends and hang out with Kyle at Slide Bar. Sunday should be a good day, as long as I can make it to Sunday.

In other news Sam started a blog, and this makes me happy!

These are from last night's show at Chain with Vogue in the Movement and Bidwell. I had fun, I always like shooting at Chain. After the show I went and met up with my friend Kyle who is in town, and after watching some Ali G show and being a vegetable for a couple hours drove home. Didn't get to sleep until around 5am, and was bombarded with text messages from 9:30 on. Now I can't sleep and I'm still trying to get any lost info off of my hard drive. I'm giving up hope, and trying to get the serial number for my masking plug ins so that I can start over.
To top off my fantastic week, yesterday I opened my laptop and the screen is all messed up with weird lines running across it. I don't think this week could get any worse technical wise, knock on wood. My brain feels like jello.


Edit: and apparently Blogger hates me too and won't post photos. Awesome.

This week has been crazy! Sunday I photographed my second cousin Laura, battled my computer all day, and felt generally like crap. Monday I trucked out to Palm Springs to visit my friends and fell asleep on the couch until 5am when we decided to drive home. Of course we got stuck in LA morning rush hour and didn't get back until almost 8am. I had a meeting with Avant at 12, and my friend Josh showed up at 1. Josh and I went out to Fullerton so he could get a tattoo from London last night. It was great to spend some time out there.
Today was bipolar. Josh and I woke up and had an amazingly wonderful breakfast of vegan eats at Green Leaf on Hillhurst, then bounced down to Amoeba Music. That store is AMAZING! You can honestly find any album, poster, vinyl, or t-shirt you could ever want. I can't believe it's taken me this long to go check it out. After we left we went down to the Natural History Museum to look at all the stuffed animals, birds, and fish. It was super fun and I always enjoy doing things that make me feel smarter in the end. We made it back to Silverlake and got some chai tea from Casbah. I popped into the liquor store where I found... DRUM ROLL... SPANISH PEAKS RASPBERRY HONEY ALE! It's seriously the first time I've found Montana beer in LA! I was so excited, and I'm totally going to be on the look out for more friendly black lab faces in the beer cases at Big Mac's.
After the beer win, we came home, and I sat down to e-mail some promos out to Goodnight Caulfield, which they need for a magazine article... and discovered them missing. So rather than freaking out I called Aaron from the band Abeline, who happens to be a computer science major, and I'm taking my iMac out to see him at school tomorrow where he's going to run some programs and try to pull any info out of my hard drive. God I hope they aren't gone forever. That was so much work! I've spent most of this evening booking more work for March, and working out details for next weeks Avant shoot, and another Avant shoot in March the week I get back from Montana. There is no down time, that's for sure.
Tomorrow Josh leaves, then I take my computer in, edit as much as I can in a couple hours, go meet up with my friend Kyle who is in town from Billings, and go to Bidwell and Vogue's show at Chain. Friday should be fairly mellow... I might go see Murder by Death as a chill out present to myself, but only if I can find a concert buddy. Saturday I think I'm booked to shoot a show in Barstow, and then Saturday I'm shooting London's band's promos before going to see Lorene Drive at Slide Bar. Next week my friend Andy flies in for a conference, and then I think my head is going to explode. If not Lorene Drive and Vogue are playing at the Knitting Factory on Thursday, and a couple of bands wanted to meet me there to talk about booking shoots.
Here's a couple of pictures of London tattooing Josh, the final awesome fern tattoo, and a little video because my camera can.

Oh man I can't seem to set a straight schedule. After yesterday's shoot with my second cousin, I passed out at 5, woke up at 7, then drove out to Long Beach on a whim to see my friends in Abeline play. After the show we packed up and drove an hour to Rancho to hang out at Eric's house. Around 2am the talk turned to freaky stories about their haunted recording studio, and got me way to freaked out to drive home. So I crashed on the couch around 4 I think. I woke up at 10 drove back to LA, got a call from my friend John from Sleep District inviting me out to Palm Springs for a get together at his house tonight. Got home, tried to take a nap, but people wouldn't stop texting or calling me. Gave up on napping and watched Nip/Tuck on Hulu and refused to get out of bed.
I feel almost normal now. I think I'm going to give Germain a haircut, then regroup with a shower and head out to meet some new people in Palm Springs.
I'm meeting with Bradley about next week's Avant Magazine shoot in the morning... Tomorrow Josh AND Kyle get here! Then tomorrow night I'm taking Josh out to see London and get his fern tattoo, and take some pictures for London while he works. Then hopefully over to the Slide Bar to meet up with the Fullerton crew for a while before heading back into town. Thursday is Vogue in the Movement and Bidwell at Chain, and Josh takes off for San Diego.
Long week ahead that's for sure.

Forgot to back up an album titled "Friends". I am a friggin idiot sometimes when I'm stressed out. Luckily most of those pictures exist in Facebook land, but GAH!

Edit: Also forgot to back up iPhoto. So I lost all the pictures from the past two years that I shot with my little Power Shot. This weekend just keeps getting better and better. Stupid stupid STUPID!

A couple pictures from today. The huge mess of packing my computer, my new set up, and the CULPRIT DEMON iPOD!

Today...
I went to the Farmers Market only to discover that the ATM on the way was broken, so I couldn't buy anything
I tried again to fix my computer, and backed up everything and filled up my entire external hard drive.
I took my iMac to the Apple Store, they worked on it for an hour and a half, I brought it home to discover all their work had solved absolutely nothing.
I replaced my Ram with the old 1G stick and it solved nothing.
Bassett reformatted my entire hard drive, which did not solve the iTunes problem.
Started to wonder if all this suffering is just because my iPod hates me.
I spent 10 minutes sobbing because I thought I had deleted my entire second semester thesis.
I spent two minutes searching for it and found it on the external in the wrong folder.
Now I'm having another beer, and backing up files from the Caboose external onto my new external Martin, so that the files will be saved in three separate hard drives.

I'm sick of today and now I'm drinking another beer and trying to forget it ever happened. Next step reinstalling all of my programs and hardware. Woo, CS4...
Beer me.

For some reason Photoshop decided to work again. My iPod still refuses to sync though so Mr iMac still has a doctor's appointment.
Anyhoo here's the first finished image from yesterday's shoot with Raquel Marmor. I found her through Model Mayhem along with our make up artist Tiffany Saxby. Both girls were amazing to work with! I originally just wanted to shoot for a composite I'm going to do using an image of Raquel, but we kept shooting for Tiffany and Raquel's portfolios after I had what I needed. I'm really stoked with the results, and can't wait to start on the composite when I have some free time.

So I'm having a nice rainy day sitting in front of Mr iMac backing up everything I care about onto my Lacie hard drive so that Bassett and I can restore the whole thing to a new clean slate. We're hoping that will fix the problem and save me the hassle of driving my computer all the way to the Glendale Galleria to most likely have the Apple people do exactly the same thing. It's times like these that I really wish I had set up Time Machine on my computer... le sigh, oh well.
Music's done, now on to backing up photography!

All Ram is not created equal. I found this especially true after my Mac crashed for about the ninth time last night, now refuses to restore my iPod, and won't save anything in Photoshop. It used to be slow as hell, then everyone told me to just upgrade to 4 gig of ram from Fryes, now it just doesn't work at all. I'm totally pissed off.
I'm taking it into the Mac store tomorrow where I'll probably just end up having to fork over $300 on their brand ram. SO PISSED OFF!

So I printed about a zillion portfolios last month... here's some pictures because I have really really pretty portfolios...




One of them looks like it's made out of iPod, and the other one looks like it's made out of sheet metal. The third, plain ugly black one, is still floating around the black hole of EMI, in post Grammy nothingness.
Oh and in case you were wondering, this is what Five Hundred dollars looks like.

Whoa. So I sold a print for Faith in Fame already! Thanks Justin, if he's reading this...
Excited to see where the project goes, and how many people jump on board. I might spam this blog with links to it, so I apologize in advance.
My friend Zach leaves for Germany tomorrow for a month. Jealous. I want to go on a trip! In March heading up to Montana, but stuff is booking up steadily for that trip. Funny how I have to go BACK to Montana to book stuff. HA!

Matt brought home a really really expensive daylight balanced continuous light by Profoto the other day. Thing cost probably around four grand, so of course we played with it. This is Nick van Atta, my friend who is part of the great Montana migration to LA.

FAITH IN FAME PROJECT
This is something I'm going to try out and see if something comes of it. I think it could be an interesting project.
Here's my first post to the blog...
Okey doke.
Let me explain this project here. I happened upon another photographer with a PayPal donation button on the side of their blog. It's not the first time I've seen this either. Bands, artists, lazy people all seem to be jumping on the mooch train. I don't agree with this. Why should someone be expected to give you money for nothing? It doesn't make sense to me. So in response I'm starting a project called the Faith in Fame Project. How it works is you send me $30 and I send you a print.

Ok... what's the catch?

Well along with your $30 you attach a note that includes five things you like, and five things to describe you. I take said list and go out into Los Angeles and photograph something I think that you'd enjoy based on your lists. If you don't attach a list, I'll go out and photograph something completely random that I think is crazy awesome! I send you your archival inkjet print, post the image to this here blog, and blam, destroy the file on my computer! GASP! So you, the buyer, has a one of a kind original image by me the photographer.

Here's where the "Faith in Fame" part comes in. Think about it, if I become crazy famous for my work, you have a one of a kind piece that is signed, numbered (1 of 1) and you can do with it as you please! Sell it, hang it on your wall and brag, give it to someone, throw it away, whatevs, it's yours!

That image will only exist in three forms, your print, and artist print for myself, and on this blog. Future generations will look onto this blog and go "Grandma! You are so cool!" Ok maybe not really... But it could happen.

So what are you waiting for? Be the first to put your Faith in my Fame!

I started a new blog for my Mom...
It's going to be a humorous little blog dedicated to the really random things that go on in my house.

New look. I'll probably change it in the next couple of days. I don't really like it, but I couldn't stand how it was cropping photos and videos like it did. And on that note, I'm addicted to www.blogotheque.net lately. They do guerrilla style video shoots with some great indie artists. It's what I want to one day start doing with bands after a photoshoot if I can convince them.
I'm in love with their shooting style and how they find these incredible acoustic spaces. The one with The Arcade Fire is the most incredible thing ever, same with Yeasayer's video. But this one is for mom...

#89.1 - R.E.M. - Until the day is done
by lablogotheque

Ugh. I slept horribly last night! Bassett decided to do laundry at 2am and my GOD our washing machine sounds like a rocket ship, and it's right against my bathroom wall and closet so it's amplified all over my room. I was almost asleep too, then vrooooorrrgghhhh!
I had a weird dream/ nightmare last night too. In my dream I got a ton of poorly thought out tattoos, with lots of bright colors that were all the opposite of what I would ever want. I had some sort of totem pole on the back of my left arm, and something on my right about cupcakes. Oh and the worst was a Hawaiian themed Montana tribute all around my entire right calf and shin. It was pink and had all these flowers, and an outline of Montana, and it made no sense. It went all the way from my ankle and sleeved up to my knee. I hate leg sleeves! It was god awful and I think seeing that one is what made me wake up. I've had nightmares like this before, and I think they're brought on by seeing people around here with terrible, poorly thought out modification decisions. I always have to wake up and look at my arms and legs to make sure it was just a dream, then breathe a big sigh of relief when the bad tattoos aren't there.
I remember part of the dream I was sitting talking to someone, and I had gotten all my white tattoos colored in. Whoever I was talking to said "Oh it's too bad you got those filled in, you used to be so original... now you just look like everyone else" GAH! It was such an awful dream! I'm glad it's over, and that I do not and will never look like this guy...

Ta Da!
I finally finished this one for Goodnight Sunrise. I miss these kids.

Today was actually a really good day... GAH!

Here's the first finished image from my shoot with Goodnight Caulfield on Monday. The next couple of images are way crazier and involve Mary Poppins and falling pianos. Keep an eye out for those.

NEW TOY! I picked up a Rosco Light Pad the other day. It was a total impulse buy, which I bought with the express purpose of making stuff glow in images. So today I made my lap glow and tested it out. It's awesome and I want to get more of them!

February so far has been insane. Monday I shot Goodnight Caulfield and the pictures are going to be so cool it's ridiculous! You can tell I haven't been working much by how weird my ideas are for the post process. Yesterday we were shooting some talking head stuff on my 5D for what I can only describe as Google Earth on crack. Then I met with a lovely model named Raquel for an art piece I've been wanting to do, then it was off to The Slide Bar to see A Hope for Home, the band that crashed here last night. Tim and I wandered over to a bar a block away and ran into pretty much all of my friends in LA... in Fullerton. Small world. Then back to the house to unwind, Matt FINALLY got back from Montana, and Bassett got back from work and we chatted and long story short I went to bed at 4:30 again. UGH! Today I shipped out my portfolio and mailed the images to Major from the Aqua lounge last week, then got an e-mail from an editor I'm meeting with tomorrow asking me to bring a portfolio... after I had just shipped it. SO back to Samy's I went to spend another $170 on a portfolio and paper to print the third one in a month.
WHEEEW!
Tomorrow is the meeting, the a Vogue in the Movement show at The Viper Room, and then Friday through Sunday I'm working at The Grammys. I'm so sleeping all day Monday.

Sooooo tired! OH MY GOD!
I stayed up way too late talking to my friend on iChat last night, urrrrgh. Now we're shooting some sort of commercial or something in my living room... and it's really loud and Bassett is sleeping, and I feel like a jerk.
I want to go back to bed.

This blog usually pertains to a lot of my ranting, and this entry isn't going to be different. I'm going to rant on "fauxtographers" shooting live at shows. Leslie came up with the word Fauxtographer and I thought it was so brilliant, that I'm adding it to my vocabulary. On with the rant...
Last night I photographed my great friends in the band Run Doris Run while they played at Chain Reaction. They opened for a couple of larger acts from Arizona, This Century and The Summer Set. The show was sold out and had a great crowd. Security is pretty lax at Chain and there's almost always a slew of people backstage without proper wrist bands, or clearance and last night was the same except for this time the slew of people were all armed with shiny new Canon Rebels. There were two other photographers who seemed to be there with a purpose, and I've seen them before, so I paid them no mind, and they are exempt from the rant.
What drove me to the brink of murder were the kids on stage with absolutely no reason to be there! When shooting live I like to adhere to the unspoken rules, and these kids had no idea what stage etiquette should be. I didn't have much problem during Run Doris Run because they were opening, and since they asked me to be on stage, I hid behind an amp for most of the show. Before This Century I asked the lead singer if it was cool if I took pictures, and he looked at me bewildered and said "Sure, I don't care". I gave up taking pictures half way through their set because of the other six chicks on stage holding their little Rebels and pretending that they knew what they were doing. I didn't even try to fight that crowd for The Summer Set. See image above, all those people on the left thought they were supposed to be up there. I saw two people working and the rest were holding cameras and dancing! It was ridiculous.

I was so peeved by the end of the evening I started making a list of the unspoken rules of stage etiquette in my head. I've narrowed it down to these...
7. Having a camera in your hand does not give you the golden ticket to stand on stage. Ask permission first, and only shoot from stage if you're supposed to be there! Usually the best photos are from the crowd anyway... just saying.
6. Be courteous to the crowd, no one is there to see you on stage, they paid to see the band. Be respectful of that.
5. Ask the band if you plan on using flash, and only use flash if they say it's okay. Getting blasted in the face with an off camera flash sucks a lot when you don't expect it.
4. Only use flash for the first three songs! This is probably the only spoken unspoken rule. If you're shooting professionally, this is what security will tell you. Use it at small shows too, and deal with it.
3. If another photographer is there and wants to trade places for 30 seconds do it. Be courteous.
2. Stay out of the way of the band! Once again, no one there came to see you. Hide behind an amp if you can, and don't walk across the stage during a freaking song! I've seen that happen so many times since I came here it's been driving me nuts.
1. WEAR EARPLUGS! I can tell you from experience that losing your hearing from shows sucks. I'm 25 and I've lost almost 40% of my hearing, and it's all from not wearing earplugs until I was 21. I carry them with me at all times on my keychain, and I never ever EVER shoot a show without them.

So there you have my rules. I want to print them out on little business cards and hand them out at shows to clueless chicks with cameras. But hey, last night was still a fun time, and I got that top images of Run Doris Run which is printing for my portfolio as I type.