Last week, a couple of old friends of mine came to visit me here in New York for a week and a bit. Here's an incomplete list of the things we did while they were here.

• Went to see Landmine Marathon and Salome.
• Shopped at the farmers' market.
• Made dinner and drank wine.
• Saw Heartless Bastards at Bowery Ballroom.
• Imitated my sister Tullia.
• Danced to the DJ stylings of The Roots' ?uestlove at Brooklyn Bowl.
• Looked at art in the Guggenheim.
• Wandered through a healthy portion of Central Park.
• Ate at one of my favorite diners by Columbus Circle.
• Danced until delirious to 60s Soul Music.
• Watched an entire season of The Simpsons.
• Roasted a chicken.
• Drove to Vermont.
• Swam.
• Fished.
• Sent a bunch of logs to hell.
• Ate the biggest marshmallows I've ever seen.
• Drove back from Vermont.
• Ate ate DuMont, which I love to no end.
• Wandered through lower Manhattan until the girls' feet hurt.
• Bought delightful mugs at Fishs Eddy.
• Watched the sun set over the East River and drank wine.
• Sprinkled the week with bacon, egg, and cheeses.
• Had an awesome time.

Really, it was the best trip ever. This summer has been so rad so far I might explode.

We were pretty busy and I didn't really take as many photos as I'd have liked, but therein is the trade off. Do I spend time taking photos a few feet back from the action, or do I neglect the photos in order to be part of the game. In this case, the latter won out, so you only get 67 photos of the time they were here. Not too bad, but not a whole lot, either.

Here's a link to the gallery.

Nina & Robin, New York & Vermont Gallery

Here is a quick selection of some of my favorites.

My prime-lens-only tear continues. After the disappointment I experienced with my old 50 f/1.8 in Telluride, I went out and had an impulsive moment and purchased the 50 f/1.4. Pocketbook lighter, I have to say I am not upset with the purchase. It brings that focal length up to par with my 28 and 85 in terms of handling, making it a much more useful and friendly place to work. Not only that, but if you manage to nail the focus at f/1.4, it looks great. The 50 accounts for 53 of the 67 photos in the set. To me it is obvious which ones are not the 50, but see if you can tell.

Anyway, I love the compositional restriction afforded by the prime lenses. No, that's not exactly right. I love that there is no noodling about with zoom to make me miss a moment. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: primes rule. There is a time and place for zoom lenses certainly, like when your movement will be restricted or when you're shooting a party and you need to be able to cover all sorts of focal lengths quickly. But for the type of photography I do mostly, primes are really nice. First, they're faster than their zoom equivalents. Second, they're less expensive. Third, they're lighter. What's not to like about that? So you can't zoom between 28 and 135 mm. So what? Any zoom with that great of a range that is affordable is a piece of junk. Limits encourage creativity.

Truthfully, I'm not sure I'd think this way if I hadn't spent so much time shooting with zoom lenses, first the Tamrom 28-75, and then the Canon 24-105. The Tamron is long gone, and the Canon gathers dust in the drawer. Who needs it?

JJ and I drove into Colorado on a semi-whim to attend this year's Bluegrass and Country Music Festival. We arrived on the 17th (my birthday) and drove on out of there Monday the 21st. We logged 2400 miles of driving over the course of 4 days, all of which I did. It was absolutely epic.

The festival itself was totally amazing. Of course, I took photos the whole time. I only hit about 330, which is low for me, but I was doing a lot of partying and hanging out and whatever that got in the way of my efficient photo taking. Oh well. I had a blast.

On the way back, we had to take a detour around the Grand Canyon because of a fire raging outside Flagstaff. We'd seen the beginning of the fire on our way through the first time, but it has gotten so out of hand that they closed off 13 miles of highway just a few days later. Smartly, we stopped and got out to sight-see at the Grand Canyon and we lucky enough to experience it completely filled with smoke from the nearby fire at sunset. Pretty god damned awesome.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Check out the whole gallery here:

Telluride Bluegrass and Country Music Festival Gallery

As far as thoughts on technique, I decided to shoot with only primes. Seeing these dudes walking around with their huge zooms and crap gave me a delightfully smug shudder of pleasure knowing that I was probably taking nicer looking photos than they were. But I might just be an arrogant prick. Whatevs.

My beloved 85 f/1.8 performed as amazingly as ever. The 28 f/1.8, though harder to use, worked nicely as well. But the poor 50 f/1.8 really had trouble nailing focus. Enough so that it ruined a bunch of photos that would otherwise have been just fine. Looking through the first two days of pictures today, I regretted sticking with the 50 both days because of the sheer number of just-out-of-focus photos. It made me angry. I will be purchasing the 50 f/1.4 as soon as I can not for it's slightly faster aperture, but for its improved autofocus. I refuse to let a shoddy, cheap shit lens, ruin another photo. If my photos are going to be ruined, I want the fault to be my own.

Either way, I think there are some good photos in the set. Enjoy.

Here I am on the tail end of some major life changes and I feel like something is missing. I'm settled in my new apartment, my finances have leveled out after the move, I've been working regularly, and playing a lot. The transition into this new phase is basically over and I'm starting to feel a little antsy about it. Not antsy about the transition, but antsy about what's next. That familiar tightness in the chest is back, that feeling that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not creating enough, that I'm wasting such valuable time as I'll never have again. Hedonism has become dull, a chore, a worn out play-thing destined for the bottom of the toy chest. All the playing is a nice distraction from life when I'm stressed and stupid and trying to avoid my feelings (as I've been doing since the beginning of February), but when I'm not really avoiding anything all the hedonism does is inspire feelings of guilt and shame. Loss? I don't know. Maybe that's too strong a word. It makes me feel bad and dumb.

After cranking out the piece for Hunter earlier this year and my subsequent rejection, there has been this tiny little whisper in my brain chanting its disheartening mantra of "Fuck it," which is a terrible attitude to seeping through your subconscious. Astute Black Laserites will notice that I've posted nary a single photo all year. It's May. You'll also notice that I've not posted any other writing besides the Hunter piece. And that I've made ZERO progress on the three music videos I've assigned myself for this year. Pathetic. This year's theme is flailing around, begging for attention, and I can't seem to muster it. What is my deal? I'm trading my work time for play time as a way to rebound, but it's not having the affect it should. Quite the opposite, I think.

With this warm weather anxiety firmly gripping my chest, I've been thinking of a few simple ways to change things up, to put my brain into a different place. Let's explore, shall we?

• Buy a bicycle - I really want one. I think it would be nice to have one to ride around on in the summer time. On the other hand, it's been 15 years since I've ridden a bicycle regularly and riding one around NY scares me more than a little. It's something I need to overcome.
• Lose a little weight - Nothing drastic. Just a little. I could stand a little definition. It will help me feel better, no doubt. I don't really know how to do this, but maybe the bike will help.
• Read more - This is another weird thing. I think I've read maybe 2 or 3 books this year? Again, it's May. That is a surprisingly low number for me. I like reading a lot. It makes my brain function better and helps me write.
• Work less - I've been working nonstop since October and I'm ready not to work for a little. I can afford it. Thankfully, most of June and parts of July and August I'll not be working. Super.
• Pick up the guitar again - It's been a million years since I owned and played a guitar regularly. I'd like to get one again and flex that part of my brain so long dormant.

All in all, not an insurmountable list. With any measure of diligence I should be able to accomplish these things and they will open the flood gates of my brain so that I might be able to get some damned work done when I'm not working. What is this crazy work compulsion I feel about? Weird. Anyway, I'd like to work more.

And lest this come off as some whiny bitch and moan session (it's not intended to be), here's something I find inspirational.

After seeing my apartment last weekend, Mike and I wandered and met up with some friends so a rooftop barbeque and beers. It was the spiritual start of the summer.

Nothing too special about this set. Just some photos of friends on an entirely mellow day.

Because I am SO excited, Michael and I went over to my new place on Saturday to measure and decide where I want to put the furniture I need to purchase. Fun! I also took the opportunity to take photos of the place so I could share with all my loyal readers out there in Interwebsland.

Pretty neat, eh? I think so.

Now that February is clipping along rapidly, my application to Hunter is finished and submitted, and I have had a moment to think about the results of last year's theme, the time has arrived to discuss 2009 - The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories. I know that you were all super excited for yet another text-heavy Black Laser posting in which I muse about things that matter to me but probably don't matter to you. Isn't the internet wonderful?

In case you missed it, here is my original statement of intent for 2009.

Photography.

2009 was wildly successful for my photo work. Not only did I hit 5017 out of 5000 photos, but I really do think that my photos got noticeably better over the course of the year. I've throw together a gallery of some of my favorites from the last year. There's no rhyme or reason for the selections; I just went through 2009 and picked a bunch I liked. They are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

I took a lot of good photos and a handful of great ones. I feel much more confident with my tools than I did before. I learned and experimented and limited myself. Tremendous success. We'll see how many photos I take this year. I've hardly touched my camera since the year began because I was working so hard on my graduate school application, but that will soon change. Making photos is fun and rewarding, even if I don't make a damned dollar doing it.

Here are all the galleries I've posted on this site. Anything tagged "Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories" is, obviously, part of this theme.

Writing.

The results of my writing last year are much less clear. In one quantitative manner, it was only a partial success with only 38 of 50 short stories being written. Even once I lowered my goals in terms of word count, I was unable to get as much done as I had strived for. There is no excuse really. I missed the mark and that's it. It's disappointing too, because once I really got down to it, I was able to crank out piece after piece. Between the middle of November and the end of the year I wrote 36 of my 38 short stories. If you do the math, that works out to an average of 6 stories a week for 6 weeks. Not bad at all.

And that's the rub. More importantly than whether or not I met the quota I set for myself in December of 2008, in terms of my skills as a writer, I think that 2009 was a complete success. Writing as often and as much as I did undoubtedly helped my writing. "Duh," you say, but it's true. I believe that whipping through those short stories made me a stronger writer. It's one thing to know that practice makes you better at things, but it's entirely different to have experienced it. I am sure that the writing I did last year contributed directly to the quality of my creative submission to Hunter this year, which is quite clearly superior to the work I submitted last year. And that is awesome.

I'm still not that great with writing about myself, though.

Check out all posts with the tag "Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories" to see the work I did.

Going forward.

This year I've already written 1 of my assigned 12 Finished Short Stories. I've not yet done any real work on the music videos, but it is only February and there is time. I hope to continue the roll I started in November when I decided that all the worrying I was doing about the quality of my work was preventing me from doing any at all (stupid). I've got more writing to do and photos to make. It feels great to make something out of nothing, and I hope all you lovely readers of my tiny speck on the face of the Interwebs will continue to read and look. And if you don't, at the very least, I enjoy it all and that's really what matters.

It has been a little while since I last posted photos, but that doesn't mean I haven't been taking them.

On one of the first really cold nights of the season, we all decided to going sing karaoke. It was totally epic. I'll give you a million brownie points if you can guess who in the group was singing musical theatre. Hint: it wasn't the photographer.

Here is a link to the whole gallery.

Karaoke Gallery 12/11/2009

Here are a few of my favorite photos.

Don't you want to come sing karaoke with me now?

December is upon us and about to crest, leading us into the descent of 2009. This means the end of the first decade of the 21st century, an utterly meaningless metric, but one that has provided me with no fewer than four "Greatest Metal Albums of The Last Decade" lists. Not bad. Everyone seems to like Mastodon's Leviathan, which I've never really listened to. I'll have to give it a go.

And with the fading of 2009 another year's theme comes to an end. The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories, though not yet through, has been a success as far as I am concerned. With the express purpose of getting me to be consistently creative and come out of the year with some work done, the year has been a resounding success. While I am not yet at my quota for either task, I am confident that within the next few weeks I should be able to make it. 50% of the stories are finished at 92% of the photos. Pretty good. I have a lot of writing to do and a few photos to take, but we're in the home stretch and I feel good about it. Let's not also discount the film I am cutting right now and all the time and effort poured into this site for my 10 readers. I love all of you.

With three weeks left in the year, it's time to think of my theme for 2010. In my statement for the Theme of 2009, I discussed some previous years and the efficacy of those choices. I'm not going into it again here, but I'll sum it all up and say some were hits and some were clear misses. Last year I described a good theme as being "broadly applicable with recognizable short term goals". I still think this is a good way to evaluate a potential theme, but I'd like to add that the theme should have demonstrable results, that is, I should be able to show something for my efforts. The best way to improve myself is by doing. All the thinking about something in the world won't make you better at it. You have to get out there and get your hands (proverbially) dirty. It's old wisdom, but true.

Another aspect of my yearly theme is that once complete the theme should continue into the next year. I intend to take another 5000 photos and write 50 more short stories next year and to keep a counter of those on the right hand side. But since they're a secondary goal, I won't be killing myself to get them done. My primary focus will be the Theme of 2010, of course.

But what is the Theme of 2010? I don't know yet, but I have some ideas.

• The Year of 3 Music Videos - In September, I wrote about building a body of motion work. Amongst my various bodies of work, my film & video work is easily the most poorly represented. I have plenty of photos to share and fewer but still ample stories, but how many pieces of motion work have I posted here that I have done? If you answered "Zero", you'd be correct. And it's clear I like music videos and the music that supports them. The only real drawback to this theme is that each video is a big project in itself and to get behind would certainly spell doom for this theme. There are a lot of steps involved though, so perhaps it could still fit the pattern of work posting I've established with The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories which would help me stay on task and stay honest.
• The Year of 12 Short Stories - "But, Joe," you say, "didn't you just do The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories? What's with cutting the quota down so much? Are you lame or something?" No, I'm not lame. Instead of writing 500 word chunks, these 12 short stories would be much more finished pieces, actually receiving—GASP!—revisions. These would be multiple-sitting efforts. I think the one per month pace would allow for some breathing room, and let me think about the work more. In terms of length, let's call them somewhere in the range of 5,000 to 15,000 words. This year the longest thing I've written is about 3000 words. It was the first thing I posted for this year's theme. The Biker Kills a Mexican. That one took me a few nights at the computer, but received no revisions. I'm proposing 12 stories of at least double the length. It's a good amount of work, I think, but manageable.
• The Year of the Novella - Here the idea is to write the longest single thing I've ever written. I like the novella, it's like a long short story, or a baby novel. I suppose it depends on which direction you're coming from. It would be an exercise in developing something more thoroughly than I ever have before and sticking to it. The SFWA defines a novella as a piece between 15,000 and 40,000 words, but other definitions go as low as 10,000 and as high as 70,000. That's certainly a fairly broad range and suitable for work throughout the year. Maybe this could evolve into The Year of 2 Novellas in order to keep me busy. If I wrote 500 words a day, my current per-day volume of work, then 70,000 words would take 140 days. Average in some days without writing, and we're still looking at barely half a year. Just something to keep in mind.
• The Year of 3 Screenplays - It has been a long time since I've written for screen, but that doesn't mean it's not something I still care about. Writing is writing. Writing 3 feature length screenplays of roughly 120 pages each would be a great way to get back into it. I've got some ideas boiling around the back of my brain that would be great for films. I just need to get them out and onto (electronic) paper.

I think that in those suggestions, somewhere, lies the theme for 2010 that will make the year a great one. Perhaps I combine Short Stories and Music Videos, or Music Videos and Novella, or Music Videos and Screenplays, or Short Stories and Screenplays? The cross disciplinary approach worked well enough for me this year. When I didn't write, at least I could take pictures. When I could take pictures, at least I could write.

Anyway, food for thought. I need think about this a little more. What do you all think out there in Black Laserland?

I never ever delete photos. Well, that's not entirely true. I almost never delete a photo when in the field, and NEVER delete a photo once it's made it onto my computer. The only photos I will delete from my camera while shooting are the "Oops, I pressed the shutter button with the lens cap still on" type. Everything else, even if maybe it doesn't look at that exciting then, I keep and evaluate later. The difference between how a 5616 × 3744 RAW looks on a rinky dink 3" VGA resolution screen and how it looks on my color calibrated 1920 x 1200 24" monitor at home is often night and day. On the tiny screen you can get a rough impression of what's going on in the photo, but there is no nuance. I really only ever use it for checking exposure. You can't check focus on the damned thing, so why even try? There have been so many times that I've taken a photo, thought it to be a total discard, only to look at it later and realize that it's much better than I'd thought. Good I didn't do the hasty thing and delete the photo I was iffy about in the field.

Of course, shooting RAW and never deleting anything means I have a tremendous need for storage capacity. Fortunately for all of us, I have 3 8gb compact flash cards I use which have proven to be vastly more capacious than I require over the course of a day, often longer. Whenever the 5DIII comes out, I'll need to upgrade my cards, no doubt, but by then 64gb cards will be cheap and easily accessible, like 1gb cards were when I got my 20D in 2004. Ah the inevitable march of technology. It makes me want to buy a 35mm camera, a film scanner, and just go analog. One day when I have more reliable income again, I will do that. Not as a replacement, but as an addition to my current setup.

I don't know why anyone out there other than my dad would care about this, but I was thinking about it after reading something on the internet and thought I'd share. I'm always interested to learn about how people work since it often provides insight into the work itself. And if not, it's fun to talk shop.

Last month my brother, his wife, and their child Sienna came to visit me in New York. It was an adorable trip and we hung out and danced and played and ate and ventured through the city without a care in the world. I also took a bunch of photos. Surprise surprise!!

Here are some of the best of the set.

Here's the whole gallery!

Mikey, Leah, and Sienna visit New York Gallery - 10/11/2009

And even better, a bonus video!

For these photos I took out my much maligned 50mm prime, the unbelievably cheap piece of glass I got with my first camera. I thought, then, that it would be a great tool for learning, but I ended up using my Tamron 28-75 much much more. However, the Tamron is long gone and replaced by a superior lens I use more and more rarely, and the 50mm is still sitting in my drawer. I never really liked using the lens; it felt clunky and inelegant compared to the zoom I was used to shooting with. It didn't behave like I wanted it to, and I had a hard time achieving pleasing results.

But that was then, and this is now. Now, I have much more experience shooting with primes, so I thought maybe I ought to give the little 50 a second chance. I am glad I did because, for such a cheap shit lens, it is capable of making quite good photographs. I used it a lot in this set since it's super light and we were wandering all over the place and I didn't want to carry around a bunch of heavy shit.

I am still not entirely satisfied with the clunky auto-focus, but that's about it. Sure it's soft wide open, but what isn't? I kind of like that. Having everything in super sharp focus is for illustration and technical photographs. Life's not in focus all the time, so why should my photos be? Right. I can definitely see upgrading to the slightly more expensive 50mm f/1.4 in the future just to have the more advanced auto-focus mechanism. There's no reason to go L for a half-stop difference, though, especially with the fine high ISO performance of the 5D2. Stay tuned for further developments from the little lens that could.

"Oh those pictures are dope. But it's because you have such a nice camera."

"Yeah, that's right, I just manually set aperture, ISO, and shutter speed, composed based on desired effect and available light, focused, chose the proper lens, picked the exact right moment to release the shutter, picked the nicest photos from the set, and developed them so as to extract the most detail possible and further enhance the effect I had in mind when shooting. The camera really does most of the work."

Montreal is awesome. Only there for 36 hours, our trip felt much to short, too rushed, to get a good feel for the city. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time there and wouldn't hesitate to go back. It's funky. It's French as hell. It's got a thriving metal scene. And the motherfucking Portuguese lady who took the chicken I ordered and chopped it into bits with the meat cleaver? I was in love. And I had an insta-stomachboner.

There's nothing too special photographically about these, but they're good and I feel like they captured the essence of our brief, wild trip in the great white northern wastes of Canada.

Here's a link to the gallery.

Montreal Gallery - 07/25/2009

Clearing out the back log a little more. These were taken at a barbecue we had at Rhianna and Mike's old apartment. It was just a few of us, yet I managed to take some surprisingly good photos.

Here are some selects.

Here's the gallery.

Rhianna & Mike's Barbecue Gallery - 07/05/2009

Clearing out more of my backlog, here's a small set from the last time I was in California. I think these were all taken with my beloved 85mm. I just love the texture it imparts, the beautiful edge blurring, the extremely shallow depth of field, and the way it distorts things when used wide open on subjects that have lots of depth, a field of thistles, for example.

Here's the whole set. I couldn't be bothered setting up a page for only 14 photos.

Yum. Burritos.

Here are a few of the photos I took while in Oregon. They are mostly uninspired I think, but some of them are nice. I don't know, I guess I just wasn't on those days. I really just wanted to get these up since they've been sitting on my computer since June.

Here's the whole gallery.

Christina's Graduation, Eugene, OR Gallery - 6/13/2009