Where Words Fail, Music Speaks

I've never been great with words, so music has always been a particularly important form of expression to me. A good song can be felt and understood by different cultures regardless of language barriers. Lyrics are an added element to music, but a great song should be felt without any dependence on understandable words.

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
― Victor Hugo Quote

Mucho Gusto

This seems to be the only place outside of my head that I turn to whenever I want to contemplate the goings on in my life. Having said that, I feel like I've contemplated enough.. here are some pics from recent shoots:

A Draft in the Attic

Finally got internet set up this morning. I'm pretty excited. These pictures are of my friend Greta. We did a spontaneous mime shoot on the roof of my studio and this is what we came up with. Random news; a spaceship was flown around in circles over Los Angeles today prior to being dropped off at LAX and I shot a bunch of photos of it. They're still on the memory card, and I haven't gotten a chance to copy them to the computer and see how they came out, but I'll probably post a few here tomorrow.

Gramercy CLUE

My friend is making a customized version of the board game CLUE to be the apartment building we live in with a few different residents as game characters. Here are the photos we put together:

Trying to Keep Up

I'm about to leave to visit my friends Jen and Johannes in San Francisco and will probably be taking some pictures, so I figured I'd post a few older ones before I get there.

This is yesterday's sunset from my backyard
Lo at the bottom of an animal cage stairwell at an old zoo
Greta wearing an awesome dress we found at Fishy Finds
Greta again sitting on some creepy stairs in an abandoned 3 story house we found
Justine wearing a dress made by my friend Jordan

Sometimes You Need

I was thinking about Artificial Intelligence last night and what would classify something as being a living entity. I used to do a lot of computer programming and have written programs that read and write data, but never anything that was able to rewrite it's own code. In order for something to be artificially intelligent, it would need to be able to do that. It would need to evolve itself in a successful way to function and survive the same way that animals have evolved themselves through trial and error and by passing on their successful genes for who knows how many generations. The thing my mind stuck on though is "trial and error". Making mistakes is part of our nature, as it helps us to grow and adapt. Also, maternity pictures:

La Belle Dame sans Merci

I've been having some trouble sleeping lately. I'm pretty sure it's because a pack of crazy dogs starts barking every morning at 6am. I'm hoping for good things this Monday, mon. Today. We'll see!

I saw Coraline on TV a few days ago and it mentioned the Beldam. I've heard that term used before in the distant past, but couldn't remember from where or when. It is an old synonym for "witch" or "hag", but it originates from an old poem by John Keats about a woman "borne of faeries" who enchants a knight with her beauty. He takes her to her hut on his horse, where she sets the knight asleep. In his dreams, there are ghosts who tell him that he has been enslaved by her just as they were. Then he awakes on a cold, lonely hillside. It turns out there are several paintings about this poem and I happened to have one hanging on my wall for the past 10 years.


This is my friend Sophie

Night After Night

Occasionally, I'll spend some hours listening to music and reflecting on friends and family members who have passed away. It usually ends up not being an enjoyable thing to think about, but it reminds me that I'm human and won't be around forever. It's important to keep that in mind.. be a productive, contributing member of society, get a job with people that make you happy doing something you're okay with, and remember to show those that you care about how important they are to you. Oh, and take awesome pictures of your friends:

Medusa Model-1

Here's a picture of the flame thrower from the movie Bellflower:



And my cousin's movie is coming out in France soon! Here's the trailer that the distribution company came up with. The car and background are from a photo I shot, but they added Evan and Milly in behind the car, along with the flames and all the text.

Imitate the Great

I did a shoot with an incredibly nice and talented actor from Australia named Josh. He had a lot of incredible ideas for us to try out, and one of them was to attempt something similar to the style of a great celebrity photographer named Nigel Parry. Here's one of the shots we came up with.

Picking the Forbidden Fruit

I'm not sure what the point of these pictures was. My friend Melissa is spending a few days at my place while she does a modeling gig in LA. She's from the San Francisco area (two hours north, actually). Her hair is purple and she had leftover makeup on from her modeling gig, so we shot a few pictures in my living room. I had a purple backdrop that I thought might be neat with her hair, and I thought red and green would contrast nicely in the picture (hence the apple and vines). I was originally going to use a flower, but I put it in the freezer and it destroyed it. Anywho, the apple worked fine I guess. I put blue gel on a strobe on the left side of the picture to make the shadows blue.




dog interrupting :)

Hollywood Starlets

Here are some old timey dames that I took pictures of yesterday. I haven't had a chance to edit them yet, but they'll be in black and white eventually


Audrey Hepburn


Marilyn Monroe


Lena Horne


Judy Garland


Rita Moreno

Lucky Montuckey

Two of my friends from Montana have been staying at my place for the past week. We spent the night in a ghost town out in the desert, ate ChiChi's pizza, Campos breakfast burritos, happy hour sushi at Love Sushi, wandered around China Town, spent an evening at Griffith Park observatory, spent a day at the beach and watched the sunset, saw a Milk Carton Kids concert at the Largo, went rock climbing, hiked out into the hills behind Moorpark to take pictures at a bathtub, filmed bits of a soon-to-be music video, and watched several movies. There are hundreds of pictures and videos, but that feels like too many to post. So here are two.