The website of a sardonic but delightful photographer who dabbles in writing. Don’t take everything you read here too seriously.
As we were watching Dancing with the Stars last night and Lance Bass’ shoe fell off in the middle of a performance, I couldn’t help but think that I wish this had been a couple seasons earlier, and instead it had been Heather Mills’ prosethetic leg sliding across the dance floor.
You can hate me now.
These are from a shoot I had a couple of weeks ago with a model who came down from Chicago.
His facial features seemed very Roman, he reminded me of a bust of some caesar. And as you can see, he also had another particular asset that is probably the best of any of my models to date.
Violet was sitting on the cat perch looking out the living room window. And so I looked and there was this massive fucking bird in our backyard.
It spent about a minute staring into our wood pile. (There are chipmunks living in there.)
But what it would want with a chipmunk is beyond me. I’m telling you, this hawk (eagle?) looked like it would come up to me knees. I am not sure even Lucy would be beyond it’s capabilities to take down.
Earlier this week, a blogger from New York (who will remain anonymous) made a Red State crack. I asked, “Who is in a Red State?” He replied, “You are.” I suggested that he go to the Internet and study his map more closely.
“Indiana was blue?” He asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh,” he said. “Well what about gay legislation?” He asked.
“Defeated, last spring,” I said.
But for whatever reason, he told me that he still plans on calling this a Red State.
But really, there’s this: Last week, we voted for a Democrat for president for the first time since 1964. A majority of our US Congresspeople are Democrats. Seven months ago, we defeated an anti-gay marriage amendment. And every state representative that opposed the anti-gay marriage amendment was reelected (very easily, actually). At least three new gay-friendly representatives were elected to join them. And, Indiana now has openly gay elected officials in four counties: Allen (Ft. Wayne), Hamilton, Marion (Indianapolis), and Monroe (Bloomington).
Even on social fronts, things are changing. Indianapolis is going to get public transportation. And I heard this week that we’re actually — finally — getting a food co-op.
Could it BE that Indiana might be at a crossroads, and that we might actually be becoming a “liberal” state, like the civilized parts of the Midwest?
I said yesterday that I can’t go to the rally against Prop 8 on Saturday, but I really do hope there is a good turnout. We need to have a good turnout. Now, with what could be a wave of liberalism sweeping the state, they need to see that we’re here, we’re paying attention, and we’re not afraid anymore to stand up. Actually, in this day and age, if there are still gay people here who don’t want to speak up for their rights, at least a little bit, I’m afraid that I don’t want to know them.
I’ve said to my friends that ever since waking up last Wednesday, things in Indiana just seem a little different. The sun has been shining a bit brigher over the state, and people’s faced looked hopeful, again. Jay and I have been having conversations, too. Maybe we’re on what we can call a “five-year plan.” I still have no intention of living the rest of my life in Indiana. But Indiana isn’t done with us, yet. Working for Obama being successful at it, seeing the tides changing and seeing this growing gay and liberal activism, I don’t want to leave any time soon. It’s kind of an exciting time to be here.
I’m just passing on some information here, but on Saturday (November 15th) there will be a protest at the Indianapolis City-County Building at 1:30 as part of a nation-wide protest against the passing of California Prop 8, the amendment banning gay marriages. I suggest you go.
I won’t be there, personally, because of a longstanding appointment I have on Saturday with two models who are travelling to my studio from Minneapolis. And I’ll admit that my heart wasn’t into this protest in the beginning, but I think it’s important to have a good showing in Indiana because it’s likely that the Republican fundies in our statehouse are going to try to reintroduce a marriage-discrimination amendment here when the session starts in January. They need to see that we are willing to come out against this issue, and they need to realize that if we’ll take to the streets for California, we’d be back tenfold if this comes back to our own state. So please go, if you can.
There’s more here, http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/.
Back before we bought our house, when we lived in an apartment close to the cool, urbane neighborhood that was full of college boys and potential models, the gym that I went to had about five guys working there who were all just adorable — cute but muscular, slightly furry, all under 26 years old and all under 5′5″ in height. Once after coming home from the gym, I was talking to Jay and I mentioned “the five hobbits that run the place,” and that’s how it started. This phrase stuck with us and ever since then, we both referred to the management at my gym as “the hobbits.”
And so I would come home from working out and Jay would always ask, “Were the hobbits there?” Or we would be sitting in the Starbucks across the street from my gym and I would point out the window at passersby and say, “There go two of the hobbits.”
Then we moved, and I stopped going to the gym with the college boys and potential models and started going to another gym, which has a lot of dads, cops and military accountants. For a few months one of the hobbits came to manage my new gym. If you ask me, he was the cutest of all the hobbits, and I learned that his name was Logan and I was working on getting up the nerve to ask him to model for me. But then he found a rich girlfriend who apparently wanted a stay-at-home man, and so before I could ask him, Logan had quit to become a houseboy.
Shortly after this, Jay joined my gym and now we work out together. This gym has a far more diversified staff in age, sex, and height, and so our definition of “hobbit” has broadened to include any muscular boy who’s under 26, shorter than us, and working out. There is a group of 3-4 hobbits that work out together on Monday and Wednesday evenings, and another hobbit who comes with his wife and places her on a treadmill while he goes back to the weight room. There is a new hobbit at our gym who has a can that’s so nice that it literally made me stop in my tracks once, open-jawed and staring, when he got on a hyperextension bench and bent over.
Back when Jay joined the gym, we got really into working out for a while. Back in August and the first part of September, I’d even go so far as to say that we were both really into going to the gym, and I was starting to show physical and mental signs of actually getting my muscles back. Then the campaign kicked up and work got in the way and some other things happened and what became a routine became a place to go once a week. And now, I have to confess that I haven’t been to the gym at all in about three weeks. But the election is over and I promised myself that the first new commitment I would make was to myself; we are going back tomorrow after work.
Not being fat, anymore, can be the motivation. That, and the hobbits.
Here’s something I haven’t taken the time to tell you. Remember the kitten that we were watching for Jay’s mom? She’s still here. It appears that she’s staying.
Jay’s decided that her name is Violet. And she’s too nice to be living in a dark, cold, stinky, dangerous garage. And she’s made friends at our place.
So that makes it three cats, one beagle, and a few fish.
Really, this time, that’s it. We’re done now.
Three of the blogs that I link to in the right column announced this weekend that they’ve published their last posts. I’ll confess that the title of my list of blog links, “Blogs I Browse,” is a bit of a lie: There are a few sites in there that I haven’t visited in years. But I keep them because they keep me.
At the same time, for some strange reason, I get a small thrill out of deleting a dead blog from my links list. It’s like there is a part of me that pictures myself slowly ticking items off the list as the sites close, one by one, until eventually I am the last blogger standing. And then I’ll know that I can finally quit, too.
One of my favorite things about being a photographer happens when I get into my archives and look back over old photos that I’ve taken, and find one that I breezed right past at the time following the shoot but then suddenly fall in love with months — or even years — later. Like this portrait of Pierce Daniels, which I took in July of 2006. It’s clear that I didn’t give it two seconds of attention back then, but upon serendipitously finding it last week, suddenly it’s become one of my favorite portraits. I love it. I love the lighting. I love that his hair is messy. I love his expression: it’s natural and unposed, he’s not quite smiling and it’s a little awkward but he still looks handsome; or it looks like I may have caught him talking.
Something else that’s likely is that for whatever reason, it didn’t represent what I wanted to capture then, but it’s now a perfect example of what I’m in the mood to create. It’s a keeper.
