Tag Archive: JJ


Barcelona, un viaje por una boda, 2011

Filed Under: Galleries, Photography by The Space Pope — 2 Comments
September 27, 2011

This is the first set of photos I’ve posted to The Black Laser since July of last year. Holy crap! Where has all the time gone?

To be honest, I’ve not felt very photographically motivated for some time and I even considered not bringing my camera with me on the trip to Spain. But, I am glad I did. Nothing like yanking you from your typical surroundings to get the old creative juices flowing. Also, jamon.

I’ve posted the whole gallery here instead of giving you a separate link because my other Flickr plug-in seems to be broken and I am not sure why. That’s pretty annoying, but this new way will work just the same.

Hello, piggies!A woman surrounded by porcine heaven.Picante!Barcelona and some folks.A little snack for the wandering.Sagrada Familia.Sagrada Familia's cubist Jesus.Jota-Jota not making a face.The rear of Sagrada Familia. Gaudi intended the scaffolding.Our first Spanish beer.Trouble Crew 2011.Some buildings before we realized we were lost.A street from that same walk.Stairwell ditto. So many hills.Pink!A panorama of the highgrounds of Barcelona.Burn, baby.A hill leading up to Parc Güell.Kids sitting on the cross rocks.Jota-Jota making pee pee.Crowd at Parc Güell.Gaudi's funky buildings.Don't remember the names of these guys, but they were awesome.Gaudi's marketplace.The marketplace again.Jota-Jota making a face.ALL SUBWAYS SMELL THE SAME.Urban art.Mark and Luca.Jamie and Luca.Like father like son.Carina.Pigeons in their shack.The pigeon shack.Approaching the castle.The castle.Again, slightly lower.Hanna.Inge.Karen.Björn.Trouble Crew 2011, 2.The chapel.The interior.A reverse.Baila! Baila!Baila! Baila! Baila!Ahhhh, abrazos.Illumnated in the doorway to the house of God.Spectators.They're looking up.Mom reads.Mark, stop staring.The nephew reads.AHHHHHHH.Inge and a soft focus Natalia.Janina and child.Janina and child 2.Confetti. Woo.Lady and Tramping it.Luca enjoys the cake.Canta!Dragon hides behind the Cult of Jobs.Clap clap clap.Group photo minus 1. OOPS.Look! This is a phone.Luca rides dad.Here, horsey, eat!Aviva.Walking quickly away from us.HIEEEEEE.The group prepares for departure.Monserrat from the ground.Going up el Aeri.The bottom of the town.Another track leading up.From the mountainside.Purty.Higher up yet.Jota-Jota claims the mountain.I sass it. Booty booty booty.A horrifying statue. I wish I had it in my house to give me nightmares.The front of the basilica.Inside. OOOOH, gold.The organ that looks like guns.Killer lens flare.We all prayin and shit.Yup, more prayin and shit.We never made it to the cross.Hi, trees!Hi, building of some sort!The museum.The courtyard of the Olympic stadium. Geometric!Some sort of outer spacey needle dealie.Pillars. But not Pilars.Damn, son.A corridor in a garden whose name I don't recall.A fountain.A statue.

Thoughts: don’t have too many. There are some nice photos here, and some really nice photos here. I am quite pleased with the edited set, down from nearly 600 photos. My photos look as much like my photos as they ever have and it’s clear that I am not seeing things all that differently than the last time I was motivated to take my camera out. I did try and focus on making sure I didn’t have too many redundant photos in the set, something that has been a weakness of mine in the past.

As a document of my trip through Spain goes, the photos are nice and that’s all I could hope for.

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Hiatus While In España

Filed Under: Thoughts by The Space Pope — Leave a comment
September 14, 2011

Dearest Black Laserites,

I am here to announce that the site will be on hiatus for the next 9 days while I am away in Spain with JJ making bad decisions.

Enjoy your day lives and come on back the week of 9/26 (26/9 for you dirty Euros) for more of my regular Black Laser goodness. I love you all.

I’ll leave you with this:

Sir, you're going to have to put that in the overhead compartment.

Sincerely,

The Black Laser.

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Diplo’s “Percão”

Filed Under: Music, Music Videos by The Space Pope — Leave a comment
August 17, 2011

I didn’t know Diplo had any videos at all, but this morning JJ sent me a video of a bunch of big booty Brazilian girls modeling. Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” was set behind the video. The video also showed a DJ which made me think of this Diplo track so I found it on Youtube and sent it to JJ. Then I watched it and it’s pretty good, so here we are.

Wasn’t that an amazing recounting of events? I know, I know. I blow you away daily.

The video for “Percão” features chicks shaking their asses, favelas, nightclubs, dogs, and dudes with no shirts on. Basically everything that City of God taught me to expect of Rio. And if the track doesn’t make you want to move, you should probably check to see if you’re breathing.

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This might be the greatest e-mail I’ve ever received.

Filed Under: Thoughts by The Space Pope — 3 Comments
May 7, 2011

I got this last night around midnight. I guess, technically, that makes it this morning, but whatever.

I do not know how to spell. Anyways had a semi-drunk conversation with a random high school head tonight. They asked if i still talk to you. Blah blah the best part was when they said so is he still emo? My super quick response was i think that the only person emo in a conversation with joe is the person recieving his back lash and i guess you were there once.
I fucking hate the bay area and everyone here. I need to leave and never return

You wish you got e-mails this awesome.

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Telluride Bluegrass and Country Music Festival 6/17/2010

Filed Under: Galleries, Photography by The Space Pope — 1 Comment
June 23, 2010

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.

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Hypocrisy’s “Weed Out the Weak”

Filed Under: Music, Music Videos by The Space Pope — Leave a comment
April 23, 2010
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My friend JJ this morning was sending me some genuinely awful glee-club, choral crap on YouTube. It was so terrible, in fact, that I need to cleanse my sonic palette.

I used this track by Death Metal stalwarts Hypocrisy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I also hope it is as successful in pushing out that choral crap as it was for me. Holy shit, JJ, that stuff is terrible. Why have you been watching it?

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