Thursday, May 26, 2011

Goletaville-Day 12










So, it finally happened on Day 12. The subconscious agents of whomever's dream I'm in finally recognized they had a foreign element in their midst. "Eradicate...Eradicate...Eradicate" they seemed to moan with each approaching foot step that pervaded and reverberated through every pore of my being like the polluted acid rain of a paranoid future that hungrily waits in the shadows with tensed jowls, an iron lung, and pockets full of the lonely spoiled meat of our precarious and misguided times.

One of the reasons I like going out at sunrise to photograph is that there aren't many people or distractions which allows you to get into a sleep deprived coffee fueled right-brained zone/fog/cloud/antiseptic mist/what-have-you. Most mornings the few people you do run into just give you a tired head nod that says, "Oh you're up too? Yeah, it's way too early." It's like there's some sort of unspoken club. Most times. The morning of day 12 was a bit different.

As I was in my own world taking pictures of cracks in the pavement, garbage, and leaves in the parking lot of the nearby Ralph's I noticed a woman in her car smoking cigarettes and talking loudly on her cell phone. I started to get a strange vibe from her, but decided that it's all in my head and I should just ignore it. Several minutes later as I was smashed against a wall taking pictures of it, getting the real "nitty-gritty," figuratively and nearly quite literally becoming one with this wall, I hear a voice break through that beautiful golden silence of the morning. It was a voice as soft and soothing as a styrofoam cup full of broken glass, vinegar, and bees, that said, "Excuse me, I go to this school here. What are you taking pictures of?"

First of all, there's a school here? I thought this was a Ralph's parking lot. Secondly, my brain had a difficult time trying to comprehend the juxtaposition of those two statements. At first I thought maybe she was taking a photography class and had a photo question, but I didn't detect that sort of curiosity in her voice. Maybe it was the use of the word "of" that threw me. What did she mean "of"? She'd been watching me, she'd seen what I'd been taking pictures "of," so that couldn't be what she really meant. Then I thought, actually, what a great question! What am I taking pictures of? And immediately I felt very distant like I was from another planet. I wasn't prepared to answer that question in the context of that situation. At that moment it seemed too pretentious, and maybe somewhat naive or just maybe a heaping of grandiose self-importance onto what I am doing, to say, "I'm taking pictures of humanity and the way our identity is manifested and reflected in the evidence we leave behind, like tire marks on the pavement, or the way those plastic crates were stacked and then fell over." And that probably would have made about as much sense as what I was able to stutter out in my 7am delirium and confusion, which I put as eloquently as a styrofoam cup full of broken glass, vinegar, and bees, "ohhh...light, shadows, shape, uhm...abstract compositions."

She seemed to accept that answer, if a bit confused, and I suppose that sounded enough like I was actually doing "something." But her response was beautiful. I'm still reeling in its understated profundity. She said, "Oh, ok, cuz I was scared." And that's it! That's the big looming unspoken force that can envelope you every time you go out to take pictures. It's that feeling that what you're doing is being perceived as something "bad" or "dubious" that causes an awkward self-awareness that is completely detrimental to the process of what you're trying to accomplish. That's the feeling you always try to keep outside the door. Don't let that monkey into this party! And something like that always seems to happen just when you're starting to let that element go. Once you've convinced yourself that it's all in your head and that's not how people perceive what you are doing. Once you let your paranoia go someone comes over and goes, "here I think you dropped this."

And who or what is responsible for such a nefarious perception anyways? Is it just a heightened sense of awareness people have when there is something unusual happening in their environment? And what does it say about our society? Are we that paranoid? Is the act of capturing light onto something tangible like film or a computer chip so powerful that it can induce fear? Is that a rational response to have? Is picture taking such a strange and unnatural thing to do? Is it my beard? Do I need to start wearing a shirt that says, "Don't mind me I'm not weird or anything I'm just a human being. Would it make you more comfortable if I shaved off the beard?" And thank God I don't drive a mini-van anymore. Or maybe I just need a t-shirt that says, "DON'T LET THAT MONKEY INTO THIS PARTY!"

So, anyways, that was Day 12. And this is what I take pictures of.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

An Anachronistic Pause

In the future I think we will be so inundated with technology that this is how all portraits and self-portraits will look. This picture is from breakfast the other day. On the left, in the mirror, is Charlene's hand showing me a picture on her phone she took of me taking a picture. On the right, outside the window, is the Pacific Ocean and chairs.

Goletaville: The Soundtrack Vol. 2

Sex and Candy- Marcy Playground
Fade Into You- Mazzy Star
Brick- Ben Folds Five
Runaway Train- Soul Asylum
Wonderwall- Oasis
Fake Plastic Trees- Radiohead
Lump- Presidents of the United States of America
Been Caught- Stealing- Jane's Addiction
Self Esteem- The Offspring
Daughter- Pearl Jam
Bullet with Butterfly Wings- Smashing Pumpkins
Cannonball- The Breeders
Low- Cracker
Feel the Pain- Dinosaur jr.
Novocaine for the Soul- Eels
Sink to the Bottom- Fountains of Wayne
Bad as They Seem- Hayden
Supernova- Liz Phair
Sick of Myself- Matthew Sweet

I'll just start this off by apologizing for the advertisements at the start of some of the videos. I'm trying to find videos that aren't Vevo, but sometimes that's all youtube's got or it's the best quality video. However, I will say, I should be watching more of these videos for this project. Videos were so strange! At times I wonder just how much these images and lyrics influenced me. Sometimes I think they influenced me more than I realized. For instance, during this time in high school when I was taking pictures I felt I "saw" more (or pre-visualized more) in B&W, but now I am being more attracted to color for the first time. Seeing these videos and their usage of color I think maybe I was influenced by them. It only took another 16 years for it to surface. I'm thinking particularly of the Mazzy Star, "Fade Into you" video, "Sick of Myself," "Fake Plastic Trees," and there's a couple others. It's interesting to see how the '80's usage of gels and color effects started to become more sophisticated at this time.

Random memories here are: "Low"- Cracker, it seemed Mtv would play that video a lot of early mornings as I was getting ready for school, and now it's sort of surreal that the LA landscape depicted in the video isn't so foreign to me; "Daughter"- Pearl Jam, there was a guy on my bus, the "bus clown" if you will, who would sing that song but changed the chorus to "move over butter", it was pretty funny; when "Fake Plastic Trees" came out it was Radiohead's highly anticipated follow up to "Creep" and I remember it wasn't really received that well because it was so different from what they had done before, but I thought it was great, little did we know just how different and weird and great they would become; "Self-Esteem" was totally cashing in on the "low self esteem" vibe of the music at the time, it does capture it pretty well, but it's such a Nirvana rip-off even down to the "yeeeeaaaahhh" chorus; "Brick" (yes, some songs from 1997 snuck in, oops!) reminds me of my first stint in Lawrence when I first started college, some frat guy wearing khaki shorts, Birkenstock's and a backwards hat (one with the frayed bill) pulled up next to me in a jeep at a red light once blasting that song and it just kind of summed up the place for me at that time, in other words, kind of lame, but I kinda like that song...and I'm kinda lame. Or is that just the themes within the music influencing my self perception?! Such is life.

Monday, May 16, 2011

More from Day 11-Echoes of Miming and Mimicry


 In these two shots from Day 11, I like how the abstract shapes within the shot of the damaged fence mimic the shadows on the gravel in the shot above it, which is not a shadow of a fence at all, but a row of individual triangular bicycle racks. These two scenes were found just around the corner from each other. The fence was in the alley of the bicycle shop that had the bike racks. Strange how close these two similar random and abstract shapes were to one another in this big old great big world. More shots and experiments can be seen here.

Goletaville-Day 11





Goletaville-Day 10





These seem to me to have more the appearance of strange monsters.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Goletaville: The Soundtrack Vol. 1

No Rain- Blind Melon
Bound for the Floor- Local H
Friends of P- The Rentals
Undone (The Sweater Song)- Weezer
Buddy Holly- Weezer
One Headlight- The Wallflowers
6th Ave Heartache- The Wallflowers
Beans- Nirvana/Kurt Cobain
D7- Nirvana
Opinion- Nirvana/Kurt Cobain
Fell on Black Days- Soundgarden
Black Hole Sun- Soundgarden
Unsung- Helmet
Stars- Hum
Pepper- Butthole Surfers
Longview- Greenday
Today- Smashing Pumpkins
Selling the Drama- Live
It's a Shame About Ray- The Lemonheads
Cumbersome- Seven Mary Three


So that's Volume 1 of 4 so far. These are the songs that are once again pervading my existence. I didn't choose these songs so much because I liked them or not. The criteria was more about the songs being in someway connected to a memory. Take for instance "Cumbersome", not a song I cared for at the time, but the rock radio station I listened to occasionally in Killeen, TX played them all the time. So like it or not I remember that song being on the radio on a warm Texas night (still my favorite nights of any place I've lived. There's just something in the air) as I drove home from my first job in my first car, a 1964 Chevy Bel-Air. So it is connected to that time of new found freedom and that looming sense, and uncertainty, of "the real world" being just around the corner. So memories like that.

I did have to draw the line at Alanis Morissette, Madonna, Janet Jackson, etc. Even though their songs were everywhere back then I just couldn't do it. These songs are closer to defining me in some sense, even if I didn't like all of them at the time. Actually, I'm finding that it's the songs I didn't like so much are the ones that take me back to the time of '93-'96 most, probably because they act as a sort of time capsule since I haven't listened to them since.

Of course I was discovering other music, too, during this time. I spent a lot of time combing through my dad's record collection listening to The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Roling Stones and just starting to get really into The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper at first, and then The White Album just blew me away and is still one of my all time favorites). However, those songs were not quite connected to the rest of my generation and that moment in time. So these songs are sort of a bridge between me and what was going on at the time in a larger sense.

Don't worry, there are still three more volumes to go, but this should be enough to get us all going for now.

Friday, May 6, 2011

More from Day 9



These are images I took before the clouds moved in. Here you can see the pier from where I took the shots in my last post.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Goletaville-Day 9




I was shooting the clear sun-filled sky at the Goleta beach and pier when these clouds came sweeping in. Pretty amazing how the environment can change so quickly. I'd been wanting to get some seascapes just like this for some time. Glad I was there that morning.

It should be noted that these images are an homage to Hiroshi Sugimoto and his series on seascapes, which can be seen here and many other places on the web. I highly recommend checking out all his work. This exercise was not about originality, but about emulating someone and something I admire so that hopefully somehow the experience would improve my work. Sugimoto creates his images using an 8x10 view camera, which means his negatives are 8x10inches big. Compare that to the roughly 1 inch 35mm neg! That also means his images contain a lot more visual information and subtlety. He also captures his images using long exposures. I did my the "lazy" way. I used a digital SLR and utilized camera movement to get my images. However, if these images were any bigger the quality would start to fall apart and you could see just how dusty my sensor is! His can be printed large and beautiful and they are real art, I'm still just practicing.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Goletaville-Day 8





This project is turning out to be a bigger monster than I expected. I'm 3 weeks into it and it feels like it's just getting started. It's turned into something completely different, and all in ways beyond what I could have hoped for. I'm not sure where this project is going, all I know is that I want to keep doing it. By now, the inmates are definitely running the asylum.

As always, more from the day can be seen here.