Friday, July 25, 2008

best of the cell phone pictures, part 1: bored at work


i've compiled my favorite cell phone pictures from the last couple years, and will be posting them in installments. the first part in this series of an indefinite number of parts, entitled "bored at work," details the less productive moments of my retail career.

"the impossible torso"

liby, nikki and i, acting as live models for our halloween merchandise.

"fake booby, or monocle?"
"freight day"
""

the contents of a piggy bank are heard splashing across the counter. nikki rushes to the rescue, fully aware that i would strangle the child should i have to count its multitude of coins.

"shoe sale"

"fifteen dollars of pain"

(untitled)

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

sell stock with me

i’ve come up with a plan for making extra money: selling stock photography. i applied on istock and they accepted me, which i honestly didn’t think they would. my confidence in the quality of my sample photos diminished significantly over the course of my application. the next hurdle is getting my photos approved. it seems they have some pretty intense standards, so we’ll see.

on saturday nikki and i rode bikes all around downtown, and i started building my stock portfolio. she assumed the role of creative consultant, giving me ideas on what to shoot. we went to the farmer’s market, lurked around taking pictures and pretending to be tourists, then rode around the north end looking for yard sales and checking alleys for trash picking.


she showed me this amazing house that i’d never seen before, it’s covered in art and just oozes awesome…looks like it might be a commune.


we went to the hollywood market (my first time there) then to the co-op, where nikki tried sushi for the first time and we both bought fantastic “wheat meat” veggie roasts, along with lots of other treats.




it was a tough bastard of a slog back home, in the hot afternoon sun with full tummyboxes. she rode the streaming strumpet, whom i recently covered in green glitter:

one of the nice things about hanging out with nikki is that she accepts the responsibility of explaining my odd behavior to people. here i am wandering around a gas station, taking pictures of a pay phone, gas pumps, a yard sale sign, and some interesting textures i found on the ground…and i wouldn’t even think to explain myself. “she’s not actually crazy, she’s just taking stock photography.” only one of those statements was true, but both were appreciated.

saturday night was my very last shift at joann fabrics and crafts. it was hard leaving, after 2.5 years, i felt pretty nostalgic…eric gave me a going away card that most of my coworkers wrote sweet little notes on. i’m going to miss working with just about all of them. on the plus side, i no longer have to deal with corporate bullshit or nasty customers.

today the editor where i work offered me a story to write, about the altered toy project. i’m quite excited about it. i’m going to make a few toys to donate, too—although, the fact that they’re all being donated to the children’s home makes things difficult. my instinct is to construct some very disturbing toys, but for political reasons that may not be a good plan.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Saturday, July 5, 2008

éclat de rire

i absolutely suck at taking pictures of fireworks. i forgot to set the aperture at the right setting, and despite half an hour of frustratingly shitty photography during which i could have realized my mistake, i only thought of it this morning. plus the view was obstructed by trees because i was up at the train depot. lesson learned.

nikki got some much better photos using just my little point and shoot camera on night setting. but even better than her fireworks shots were the ones of us playing with the dollar store glow bracelets i bought that afternoon. she was able to fit them through the flesh tunnels in her ears and wear them like earrings. then she linked all six of them together and twisted them around in the air while i took pictures.





i think this is my favorite non-glowstick shot of the night, a bunch of kids playing with sparklers while their mom took a picture.

bug porn


i'm not sure why this happened, but i'm really glad it did: http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/