It's Great To Be Alive

A grand day out at the American Museum Of Natural History results in me spending hours loading Polaroids to Flickr. I didn't think I liked the un-color-corrected Type 89, but I guess I do after all. Especially this,



Anyway, ducks and cats and dogs and fossils and other mammals abound in Richard's Menagerie.

Listening to Drive By Truckers, A World of Hurt

If you still think about each other and smile before you remember how screwed up it's gotten
Or maybe dream of a time less rotten
Remember, it ain't too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into it with everything you got

SUNY Purchase

I was up in Purchase (so sayeth the title) today to do some stuff for Pepsi Corporate and had lunch with Cameraman D. (dry personality, like mine, and all around good guy). We talked about this and that like most of us do when we've nothing to do before working and I snapped this one off. Of course, the Polaroid back is always a conversation starter and so we chatted about that for a while. I told him the reason I brought it out was because of the warm weather and how the emulsion was freezing the last time I tried to shoot with it and got into the particulars of shooting with something with no viewfinder and how the tendency leans toward centering the subject. I also told him that I didn't want to become one of those photographers who's nothing more than an advanced amateur.

On the way back I stole this on the West Side Highway.

Hooray! for sale!

My good and dear friend Matthew Hollister now has a book for sale at, TheHolster.com containing work from and related to his group show at The Proposition Gallery this past winter (Yes, I know winter is still going on. That's not the point). Also contained within are works from Sam Friedman, Phil Lubliner and Sakura Maku.

Please view the cover:


(Image not mine)

The price is a bargain at $10.00 USD and was printed in a limited run of 500.

Strong

I had forgotten today was a holiday and almost missed my train to HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY to work for PBS slinging boom for some public-forum type show that I'd never seen or heard of before. At least I didn't have to hump my full rig out onto The Island. The day was zero-sum, sadly -- I had spent roughly the amount of my paycheck to get to Hempstead, buy breakfast, take a car from my place to the train station and purchase this little number,



so I could listen to myself as I boom'd.

On the plus side, I got a ride back home in the crew minivan -- after I had purchased the round trip ticket to Brooklyn, of course. THESE THINGS HAPPEN. In related news, my right arm is killing me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY CHINKS

I think Chinese New Year is the only holiday celebrated by that side of the family that isn't totally Americanized -- and even then it's not like we're out setting off fireworks in the street or baying at the moon so even I wonder if it's even a celebration. CNY does end the four-month blitz of red envelopes, however, and all that entails (Thanksgiving through multiple Birthdays, X-mas, "good grandchild awards," and the New Year).

Above and below is Mee Heng Low -- my family's restaurant. Though the business is no longer run by us, the building is still owned by us, and for all you perverts out there wondering, it translates to "Most Savory Place" or somesuch.

Bad Things Happen In Threes

Dominique



I've been on this kick for a while now, possibly just to make myself feel responsible when it comes to editing my stuff -- restrict it to a 3-image set. This gesture is empty and pointless and gets me into trouble when I do event coverage and I give the client three times as many selects as they really need... and they decide they want them all. Anyway, there are two more for this set on the Flickr site.

Back to the subject at hand -- I remember one of my professors (whose opinion I still trust) mentioning that one of my short films was 'shot spot-on, but... I don't know about your pouty friends in it.' Now in their defense I'll claim that it wasn't that my friends were particularly pouty but rather that I shot and directed them poorly. Then there are the subjects you can't direct, like this one, that you can wind up and let go.

Suzie

Fuck the Heatherette Afterparty. I finally got a few decent frames of my Sphinx.



(Techie Richard: Another example of why I should move to the newer digitals -- my fondness for ramping the gain up and open rather than carry around a strobe pack.)

Marc Jacobs and Stasis

Got backstage at the Marc Jacobs show yet again and I'm in a bit of a rut. The picture above... well, I've taken it before, and it seems like the whole event was compressed anyway (and not in a good way; i.e. 'starting on time'), so I fell back on safety shots that I knew would work.

I guess these things happen, and it looks like this season will be a wash for me; officially I'm only on for two more days and I haven't even made it into the Tents yet, and if I DO go, I'll have to go on my own.

On the plus side, the crew and I snuck up into the balcony of the Armory, which might have been the best place to see this particular show, what with the living tableau,



Irrespective of nothing: CINDY SHERMAN WAS AT THE SHOW AND SHE LOOKED AT ME.

Oi.

PR Lady: You should meet this girl on stage now! She's going to be the next Gwen Stefani?

RG: WHAT.

Pr Lady: She's AWESOME!

RG: WHO?

Pr Lady:

RG: OOOOOHHH...