10-19-2010

This giant praying mantis watched me the whole time I took pictures of it. I don't think it liked me very much. I wonder who it was praying to.

Creole dinner at Battiste & Dupree with Nicole, Joel and my friend Chris from England. Junior the owner/host/chef gave us all gifts. Then I gave a tour of Cleveland to show places to Chris. We ended the night here at the Velvet Tango Room for fancy cocktails.

10-18-2010

Nicole got glow in the dark candy.

I'm not usually into awe-pretty-picture landscape photos, but autumn in the midwest is like Natalie Portman pretty. One, two, and three.

It's kind of hard to exactly explain the nature of Nicole and my relationship when no one else is around, but it involves activities like me encouraging her to do stuff like this so I can take pictures. Needless to say, things are pretty much perfect in our relationship.

10-17-2010

I have this now. No apologies.

My beloved taco stand. I could literally live in this chair right here for my whole life and be happy. She would cook fresh tortillas for me every day (this is by far my favorite picture I've taken from the day, and probably the past few months...but I'm having black and white month).

Speaking of pictures I've taken in the past few months, I've been considering putting together a zine/site/collection of all the portraity shots of friends that I've taken with film (if you've hung out with me at all, you know I'm always good to stick a camera in your face, so I have tons of shots like that). I don't know if anyone would be interested in this at all other than me though since they're my friends. I think the people in the pictures might like to look at it too just to see themselves, but I don't know. In anycase, here are some more.

Doug.
Victor and Dave.
Danny.
Baby Mike.
Marshall.
Adam.
Lou Dobkins.
Russell.

Not really portraity, but Nicole found wild grapes and got super excited. She loves wild grapes like I love tacos.

10-16-2010

So I've been (recently failing at) not eating meat for ten and a half months now. Generally I do a good job unless I'm traveling where there's special food I can't get locally, or if I'm with people and don't want to be a baby about only eating vegetables and tofu. It's become a weird OCD thing now where I feel like I'm cheating on my girlfriend if I eat meat...even though said girlfriend doesn't exist. Well, once a year I end up in a far away suburb for a weekend doing stuff with friends. Down the street, there's a super authentic Mexican grocery that cooks super authentic mexican food on flat top outside of the store. This is very much what I imagine heaven will smell like. That being said, I took a weekend get away from caring about my body and ate as much delicous grilled meat as I possibly could. I don't think I like any food in the whole world more than street-food tacos with corn tortillas, cilantro and onions. They also have a full bar of salsas and other toppings that I'm pretty sure are home made.

If you know the story behind this picture, it's pretty funny. If not, it's pretty lame.

10-15-2010

Apparently this is how Cleveland preserves its Natural History.

This is a $90,000 VCR. I will never possesse this amount of money at any point in my entire life.

Night Moves.

10-14-2010

10-13-2010

My desk is like watching cartoons made out of paper.

The weird evil pod thing from 10-4 has dried out and gotten more weird/evil/pod thing-like. It's starting to split open too...which makes me suspect that it is beginning to hatch and will unleash something evil into the world on halloween.

10-12-2010

Jared on Jared violence.

10-11-2010

Adventure Time is one of my favorite shows on tv rightnow, and Marceline the Vampire Queen is my favorite character on the show. Tonight was start of season two and I got really excited when I read that it was going to have her in it...too bad the episode wasn't very good. Hopefully the rest of the season will be better. To make up for it, I made a bag of popcorn and watched my #1 favorite show on tv.

10-10-2010

Nicole and I decided that today would be a good day to take pictures with film. But first, every good Sunday starts with brunch. Then we went to go look for colorful leaves, but they weren't quite colorful enough for us to really get excited about. Speaking of color, her new hair kind of makes her look a little mid-90's emo now. So since the leaves weren't photogenic, we attempted to take more exciting multiple exposure ghost pictures instead, but that didn't work out so well either.

Since Nicole was feeling rich, she decided to go pumpkin shopping again even though she got one last Sunday (10-3). This time, she selected an even huger pumpkin than the one she got last weekend.

Later that night, we got hungry and decided to go to the Happy Dog (this is a pretty common occurance). But apparently it has the potential to frequently become a very uncommon occurance. One time when we went (6-23) we were supprised by a random performance by the Cleveland Orchestra. This time, in addition to a concert, we randomly stumbled into a friend's wedding-post reception-after party by accident. Additionally, college friends from out of town, and friends I hadn't hung out with since college were there.

P.s. It's incredibly dark in the Happy Dog, which makes it very difficult to focus/not shake. As a matter of fact, I think this was the only picture I took all night that wasn't totally blurry/out of focus. So I'm going to go ahead and blame the dark for all the blurry pictures, and not because I had too many of what Nicole is holding. You believe me right? So, sorry if my pictures suck...I still like them anyway.

10-9-2010

Today we went for a fourteen mile bike ride on a path that goes under big bridges. Yay! Bridge! On the way, I may or may not have had a small accident involving a tree stump, my front brake, flying like a lead bird, and the gross black swamp that runs next to the path. Luckly there are no pictures of what may or may not have happened, but let's just say that it was far worse than the 3-21 Swamp of Sorrows incident.

The day quickly improved when I recieved unsolicited bribe money in the mail from some survey company. Then we had a "say farewell to summer weather" (probably) last dinner on a patio for the year at Momocho.

This picture of a classy gal shopping for 40s is my favorite picture of the day, but it doesn't count for black and white month.

10-8-2010

Light and shadow patterns this morning.

These are pretty much bricks of drugs to boys. Then my morning consisted of this, this, and this. Sometimes my job is pretty much amazing. And it all happed a few feet from this.

The end of the day inspires fun with high energy high contrast photography (i.e. standing on the desk to be right by the overhead light). It seemed like a good idea at the time...

High contrast badassery.
High contrast gigantism.
High contrast I don't even like Redbull.

Film things:
...that Ryan is the best.
* gallery is exiting the Cleveland art scene.
Nicole only window shops in windows that match her outfits.
I like this one.
Owl eyes.
Bear eyes.

10-7-2010

Nicole got super good Cavs tickets as an early halloween present from her job. So we went with Tony and Barb to see Moondog (the only real star left on the Cavs). We saw really big guys put balls in holes and saw my new favorite big guy, a seven foot tall asian. The biggest asian I've ever seen in my whole entire life. There were also lots of vendors, but this guy was Nicole's favorite (oh yeah, she has black hair now). Other favorites, and I think one of the only real reasons to go to sporting events, included junk food and vegetarian junk food.

Ok, so this is where things get real serious. At every basketball game that I've ever attended since I was a little kid, they always have guys that throw things into the crowd. It's like the pop-flys of basketball that you wait the whole game to maybe have a chance to catch. I ain't caught nothing never (though I do have a childhood recollection of finding a gross discarded mini-basketball under the dirty seats that I picked up and refused to throw away regardless of the spilled beer-germs growing all over it...this may have even happened at the Mark Price-era Colosseum). Tony clearly has better fortune than I do, and fulfilled every child's dream of catching a tee shirt at a game. Granted it may not have been the most attractive shirt and was more than likely the wrong size, but it was pretty much like catching gold.

Other notables were some fameous guy that everyone seemed to care about but we had no idea who he was, and the peppy but not-so-intelligent cheerleader that forgot her choreography and dropped her pom poms...more than once.

Then we went on a mission to harass Moondog. Though plush (and sweaty), Moondog doesn't understand the concept of focal length and minimum focus distance. At all.

P.s. There may or may not be film shots to add to this post later. Film is just better.

Barb.
Tony.
Someone please photoshop me into where my coat is...I'm too lazy.
My favorite big asian.
Well this one's just kind of hard to explain.

10-6-2010

Leading lines.
Light Christi.
Dark Christi.

I got some medium format film back today because I'm (gasp) selling one of my cameras and I wanted to test it out to make sure everything was still wonderful. Since I paid an ungodly amout of money to get these shots developed, I felt it necessary to put at least some of them on here. Plus things are just nicer on negatives this big.

Butterflies.
Fancy.
Window.
Double exposure.
Colorful house.
Plants.
Halloween preparation.