Quality Control

I'm going to start marking some of the photos in my photo-a-day project to "friends only" on flickr. The majority of them have been pretty sub par and lazy on my part and I don't want them clogging up my feed. So only the good ones will be public from now on. This will put a bit more pressure on me to preform. This is retroactive.

The color and the shapes

To prevent the rotting of my brain, I went to the Whitney today to see the William Eggleston exhibit, which closes in a few days. I'm really glad I went to see it. I could never see myself taking any photographs like he does. He captures something really unique in things that are mundane and seemingly uninteresting. A lot of times, I would glance over such things and never think to photograph them. I have done photographic essays and documentaries before but I would never capture like he does. Just a different approach and way of seeing.

That is something I am starting to explore on my long weeks between freelancing, or as Cecilia calls it, "premalancing." I'm looking at interesting ways to photograph around my house, which I find very boring as a photographic subject. I have always been thinking of my house in broad perspectives- the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, etc. In that sense, the house is unphotogenic. With that in mind, I have decided to start simple and reduce everything to the basics: colors and shapes.

We'll see how this goes.

Here are 3

Polaroids I took late last summer/early fall that I haven't uploaded till now.

Me

"I put on my overcoat and walked into winter, my teeth chattered rhythms" -Death Cab

I haven't done a self-portrait in years - since my senior show. I find my house to be really terrible to photograph in because I'm here all the time. But also because in the past few years, it's become "my parent's house" to me. I had always had the idea to try and take a photo in my living room with the light coming in from the windows but was too lazy to do it till now. The photo above is the result.

I have so much art work I've acquired over the years that I want to put up but can't because we have limited space and my mother has all of her acquired art up. Plus, it would be really disjointed to have art my friends made next to traditional Chinese art.

We also don't have a lot of space and there are too many background distractions that would take me forever to move to compose a photo in my style. But now that I have time, I'll probably try to set up my strobes and find some interesting compositions to do some self-portraits again.

oh nine is off to a really shitty start

Today I was laid off... and then rehired to freelance for the magazine I hold so dearly. What does this mean? Less time at work and more time to photograph!

That's what I'd like to say. In reality its too cold to photograph and I'll probably just stay home and play videogames and try not to spend money. Having this come after the holiday really sucks since, you know, I would have probably not bought have the shit I did last month.

Speaking of videogames, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), one of the oldest gaming publications, got sold today and pretty much laid off the entire staff and shut down the magazine and only the online portion will remain. They laid off at least 40 on the staff, which meant they kept like five people. So I don't even know how they will have content to provide for the webite (which I don't read). I only listen to their podcasts, which there will be no more of. No more podcasts for me to listen to on my morning commute anymore. Well, if I had a regular morning commute. ZING.

Year in Review: Music

I feel like there weren't too many really, really good albums last year. Since I don't keep up on music and the albums I've listened to last year aren't really that diverse (white people with beards and guitars, lolz) I'll just list some of the stuff I enjoyed last year.

Black Kids - Partie Traumatic
This has been a mixed bag in the press (The L's music editor hates it), but I like it. The songs are upbeat and fun to listen to. I don't really mind that their sound could be compared to the Clash. It's good driving music.

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
I don't hype myself up for Death Cab releases anymore. Their albums are always strong, but the last 2 releases have always been missing that little something that pushes it over to greatness for me. Where I'd usually listen to their albums for months, I've only listen to this one for like 2-3 before moving on and going back to it occasionally, all the while skipping over the ones I don't want to hear.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
This really seems like a 1997 release, because it was all the rage before the record officially came out last January.

She & Him - Volume 1
The only way I can describe this is that it had me at hello. Literally. Half way through the title track, 'Sentimental Heart', I already knew I would love this album and it didn't disappoint. I can't decide if this or Vampire Weekend is album of the year for me.

The Disappointments of 2008

Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Like his last album under Bright Eyes, this album has like 3 really, really good songs, but the rest are unlistenable to me. All his songs are just starting to sound the same to me... which is a shame, They all sound like rejects from A Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, but without the heavy synthesizing. Does that make sense?

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Whatever the hell influenced Rilo Kiley's last album obviously made it's way to Jenny's sophomore effort. The 2 songs she posted on her myspace as a preview before this record came out, 'The Next Messiah' and 'Acid Tongue' were great and also gave a false impression that the rest of the album was in the same vain. Instead it looked like a calculated manuver to hook in fans of Rilo Kiley pre Under the Blacklight. Which is what the album sounded like - a follow up to Under the Blacklight.

Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreaks
The College Dropout was phenomenal. I feel like all his albums have gotten progressively "worst". Not to say they were bad, Late Registration and Graduation were both decent, just not as good in comparasion. I'm not into the whole Auto Tune thing here... it makes him sound like shit live (see the SNL preformance he did to promote 808s). Also, why is it cool that Kanye can go all "emo" on us and people still eat this shit up like it's gangsta to be heart broken? Can't wait till my friend puts out his album 909s and Goodtimes.

Year in Review: Photography

It's all about the light quality.

My favorite photos that I've taken this year (in no particular order) -


Andrea hates this photo but I love it. "Looks like this could be in Elle" - Becca


I wish film was not so expensive and inconvenient to shoot, otherwise I would have done a lot more of it. I want to make prints of the above two photographs but going to a color darkroom is a huge hassle, not to mention I don't even know how to print color. At least, I wasn't taught but I pretty much know how it works and can probably just wing it if I ever find myself in a color dark room.


Funny and weird and confusing all at the same time. I wish the light doesn't die so fast every time I go to this beach.


Kendall knows how to pose, like for serious.




I shot both of these on the same day. It was just one of those day where everything came together really well. The thing is, the lighting that day was not anything spectacular, I just used it to my advantage. Dana's photo was through seer observation for days looking for a place that had light being filtered through so it wasn't too harsh. It was high noon summer light! So I went into that one knowing where I wanted to place her.

The Edith didn't start so well, I couldn't find a good location with good light. We walked around for a bit and I found a good spot to back light her- again, it doesn't look like it in the photo at all, and that is what sets these two photos apart for me.

Overall, my output in 2008 was higher than any year since when I was in Italy and I'm really happy about that. I've had many, many lovely people to shoot and for the most part the people at the L went along with my shenanigans.

For 2009, I want to do some more elaborate studio shoots and shoot new people because lord knows I've exhausted my immediate circle of people to shoot. Not to say I'm not grateful for them, but fresh faces would be welcomed. Afternoon photo shoots with new people are one of the greatest joys for me- shooting and getting to know someone at the same time - the entire process is just great.