photogrammatical

Colin has a lot of time on his hands, and an affinity for swap meet art. Lately he has been on an American Indian jag. His room is filling up with Dream Catchers, various eagle figurines, and more Wolf references than I’ve ever seen in one collection of paintings. He has begun referring to his bedroom only as “The Reservation”. This is a welcome change to what was previously a room full of random swap meet finds and thrift store gems constantly in flux as each week passed. My favorite was an old McDonnell Douglas poster featuring John Wayne that reminded employees: “Security is keeping your plans under your hat.”

Thanks to everyone for the calls and emails. I mean it.

So I’m in Vegas this weekend with my girlfriend and her family. I decided that I just didn’t need to drag my camera and laptop along with me and that my new iPhone’s little camera would suffice. It certainly was lighter. If only it had a built in PocketWizard.

And I can post from the iPhone! Steve Jobs, you’ve got my vote.

Today is Lucy’s fourth birthday. It is a date I picked semi-arbitrarily. I adopted Lucy on my own birthday a year and a half ago. They told me at the shelter that she was two and a half at the time, so it stands to reason that her birthday would fall on my half birthday every year. That’s the power of logic… and math.

Last week my back gate was left open somehow and the Goose (Lucy, Lucy Goosey, Loose Goose, The Spruce Goose, El Goosarino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) took a walkabout while Colin and I were on a carnitas break. Lucy is micro-chipped, but she wasn’t wearing her collar. (She is now.) Around 10pm, after hours of foot patrolling and going door to door with an 8×10, my girlfriend found Lucy’s mugshot on the OC animal control website, thus saving me from a night of uncertainty and bawling like a child. The next morning I went down and bailed her out of the clink. She seemed happy to see me.

Like any parent, I was really only upset at having had to worry, and was just thankful she was safe and coming home.

After a long day of shooting, I have the bad habit of doing an initial edit and dumping everything else into a folder where it will stay filed and backed up and not get looked at again for months. Every so often, while putting off something I should be doing, I’ll scroll through my archive and look at things with fresh eyes. Luckily, I usually still agree with my first edit. But every so often I’ll stumble on an image that either I didn’t have the eyes to see the first time, or that may not have fit into the assignment I was shooting, and it will simply make me happy. I have a folder on my desktop marked HPY (because I wouldn’t want people getting the idea I have feelings) that I file these stray cats into and look at occasionally. Every so often I’ll need a bit of cheering up and little things like that go a long way for me. The first time I was deployed I drew little smiley faces on the white tags behind the tongues of my boots. Nobody knew they were there, but every morning I’d been lucky enough to take my boots off the night before, they’d be smiling back at me. You’d be surprised at how much little things can help when you need them.

I’m frequently told that my family is a lot of fun to be around. I’m pretty sure that has more to do with my siblings than it does with me.

My brother Colin is what can only be described as a “man of leisure”. He lives life on the razor’s edge between total disaster and sultan-hood, and never seems to mind which way he’s leaning. He takes things easy and hugs it out. I have a gut feeling that one day he will fall ass-backwards into a boat-load of money, and I’m just hoping to be there when the fliff starts to fly.

My sister Kate lives a life of road trips and polaroids and dinner parties that last all weekend. She is in that sweet spot in life where none of her closest friends are married yet, so everyone can just hang out all day then sleep over and go to breakfast together. Now, I’m not implying that she and her girlfriends are just waiting around to get married or that if they did the fun would be over. But there comes a time in life where friendships start taking a backseat to spouses and families. That brief window in adulthood where everyone is in it together, that’s right were she’s at. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.

We three are very different, but we seem to be closer than most. I think we banded together early to survive our parents’ divorce. Or maybe somewhere along the line we realized that no one else knew what it felt like to be half Bob Bennett and half Diane Patterson. Either way, we’ve got each other’s backs. End of story.

This is one of my favorite pictures of us, taken a year or two ago at one of Kate’s epic pool parties by Shannon Camerra. As I recall, it took me about two seconds to realize that mustache made me look like an asshole. Sadly, about two weeks to shave it off.

Jessica Pressley is a friend of mine. We first met a few years ago when my little sister’s ex-boyfriend introduced me to her as his new girlfriend. Now, Bill was the only boy Kate had ever brought home that I’d actually enjoyed having around. So I was sorry that that door was shut, but you can hardly blame a guy for moving on. Eventually neither girl was dating Bill, they became friends, and Jessica started coming to family parties. (Bill, if you’re reading this, I still love you buddy and we should hang out. Why don’t you ever return my calls/texts/emails/valentines?)

Jessica is taking a five month photo pilgrimage to Israel at the end of the summer. I’m certain she is going to cause some real distress amongst the Bar Mitzvah set. She came over recently to check out my shiny new powerpack, and she was good enough to sit for me in my bomb shelter.

Shooting a live show is as much about being there as it is about making images. You’re crouched up against a stage. An endlessly shifting sea of chucks at your back. The sweet perfume of warm amps, spilt beer and anticipation hanging heavy in the air. Until, quite suddenly, with a rapid three count, the lights are up and it’s all happening at once. The monitor next to your head starts roaring so loud that all you hear is white noise. And that, is when it starts being about photography again.

Rock and Roll has an allure you can’t ignore. Beyond the music there is a lifestyle of perpetual youth, of living without burdens, a wide open road in a world where gas is cheap and beer is free. That’s the ideal anyway, and you’d be hard pressed to find a man who wouldn’t want to associate himself with it, even if only on a once-every-six-weeks-when-the-dog-is-in-bed-and-the-dishes-are-done basis.

The Bumpers are a relatively new band from the Long Beach area. They’re still a little rough around the edges, but they’re working out the kinks, layin’ down the tracks. I expect good things from them soon.

They have a bass player who didn’t make my short edit this time. Sorry KH, stick Alan in the dark corner on Sunday.

My sweet pup, Lucy aka “the Goose”.

Trying to get this shit to work right is driving me insane!