RANDOM FILM SCENES IN DECEMBER 2009

MARY J BLIGE

Filmed & Photographed Miss Mary J. Blige.  Absolutely love her.

MARO AND THE MUPPETS

I took this photo after the Muppets did their interviews. It's always a big production that includes a director to direct the Muppet poses and a "realness" assurance director to make sure the Muppets look alive. Wouldn't want anyone to think they're not real.

THE FRIDGE

Even with a really big effort to keep my white fridge clear of clutter...somehow in the past year...the fridge has spawned stuff...but stuff i really like...and that stuff has become my mood board for ideas, thoughtfulness, reflection and inspiration. The fridge essentially acting as a conduit containing all those elements for me to ponder all at once as i grab a can of diet soda - thus satisfying basic needs and emotional ones. I call that efficient!

OUCH.

FANG

TORI AMOS

PRETTY IN PINK

the journey back to LAAAAS VEGAAAAAS

Last week I worked the Nascar Stewies Award show in Las Vegas at the RIO hotel. It brought back a lot since I spent my early teens in Vegas and it was also the beginning of my passion for photography. I got my first camera at 12 years old after seeing my cousin holding a Pentax k1000 with a huge chunky lens. I had never seen a woman carrying around a camera like that. In the early 80s, you didn't see a lot of women carrying SLR cameras. My mother had a 110 camera that she used quite a lot but nothing of this proportion. I didn't have friends so i spent most of my time alone pensively walking around the desert with my Yashica Fx-3...I had asked (begged) my parents for that Pentax but ended up with a Yashica which is the cheaper entry level brand. One of the happiest moments in my life was when my brother and i sneaked a peek at our christmas gifts a week before christmas. I saw a white and blue box with the Japanese word Yashica. I was so happy and i couldn't believe it. It was very adult gift for a young girl. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. From 1984 on i spent years spending my parent's money and any allowances or coins i could find at the bottom of my mom's purse on photo printing. Everything was about photo developing. It was a weekly occurrence. To my mother's dismay, i created hundreds of bleak lifeless photos of the desert and strange rocks...then i moved on to photos of my brothers and their friends. This was my world for many years until after college when i finally broke my shyness problem and met friends of my own. Here are two pics of my first camera and yes it's pretty beat up but sits on the top shelf of my book case. We're talking 29 years old so Yash sits there battered up in retirement.

Thanks to my metaphysical Mama, the poor man's SLR Yashica was one of the most important gifts she could have ever given me in this lifetime.



I had taped an Exposure table to the bottom of my camera to help me with f.stop calculations. Kodak would provide these tables inside the Film box that your cannister of film would come in. Remember those days?


My mother's original 110 Camera. ITT MagicFlash Telephoto Camera

DREAMING OF PHOTOGRAPHS

I had another dream where i'm walking around taking these incredibly beautiful photographs. Each time i have one of these dreams, i wake up being disappointed. i don't know where i'm at while taking them, it always seems to be somewhere strange and unfamiliar but each photo is a perfect composition, a story with depth and beautiful layers. No faults or imperfections...just pure beauty and im not critical of them like i usually am. i love and hate this experience...in one sense i know i'm seeing something beyond what i could possibly find in a normal day to day but at the same rate, i wake up and to my dismay i realize it never happened. The first few minutes of waking up..groggy and eyes barely open, there is still some glimmer of hope that it may have really happened...and then when i finally wake up...i realize it was only a glorious dream of photo perfection. These dreams always feel magical...as if there is an extra level of control beyond me and a divine timing of the elements that form the photograph...each image comes together effortlessly like magic. This is what i strive for everyday - to create magic in each photograph i take, while asleep or awake.