Had lots of good stuff today. I had some meetings and made some connections i wasn't expecting. Finally met John Dolan. Great insight. Good conversation.

I didn't shoot a ton today. Little stuff. Around town. I forget.

I had the pleasure of meeting Holger Thoss and chatted with him for a good while. I've got a meeting with Redux tomorrow which is exciting.

Photographed today: Holger Thoss, various skylines, some other stuff I forgot about.

Shot some people on the street today at 59th & Lex as well as an old friend while getting a drink.

Meetings tomorrow.

The city makes me miss the cold. The good cold I mean. The kind that isn't just rain and high winds and tornado threats. Snow (not as much ice) is a nice bonus.

Today was spent doing not a ton. Now I'm tired. Shot various things around LIC today.

Shot day two of the annual report today. Amazingly it was decidedly not overwhelming and actually went better than yesterday. It Was, however, COLD AS SHIT. The day may have gotten over 32 degrees and the ground stayed pretty hard all day (though the ice eventually melted in sunny spots).

Positive: Stephanie's friend from London, Maggie, just moved here (the same day I flew here, oddly enough) and I ended up buying her friendship hiring her as an assistant which proved a very good idea. Plus, bonus new friend! She's great and I am glad to have finally met her. Thats her above.

God I'm exhausted. Shot day one of annual report today outside in central park in 36ish degree weather. More on the way tomorrow!

Shoot one tomorrow.

I shot some bike skeletons today in queens and tried to get this dude on the lomo but only got one blurry (ISO 100) shot and it was my last frame on the roll. He was kind of awesome. Super talk white guy with a bald head and broomsweep mustache. Looked maybe 40 and was thing, wearing fat albert branded overly large clothes.

Shot various travel related things. The shot i HOPE will come out is this dude sleeping on the ground in the Charlotte airport.

So, it is day five it seems. Just like last year I immediately have places to go and things to do which will almost assuredly put me off schedule a bit for electric lion. I had a lovely hang out time with Tammy and Jamie tonight and look forward to getting back to africa to work on the things they create.

It was unbelievably foggy this morning and I took of my skyline. I shoot that thing all the time. You could only see to the BTW building today. Fog Fog Fog.

I also shot caleb this evening playing one of my ukes. He is already in love.

New York tomorrow. Kind of nervous.

Another shot of David today.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty crazy and I can't predict the regularity of the posts. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a friend (two...well..three technically as the second is pregnant) about the planning of an overhaul to this blog as well as poptpop.

Tuesday I head to New York for meetings and an annual report to shoot. I come back mid-next week and have a few days to gather my stuff and, do laundry, and head to Atlanta. There, I am hoping to slip in a couple of meetings on Monday and get on a plane that night en route to Uganda.

I'll be gone to Africa from the 19th through, if all goes as planned, the 30th. I am heading there thanks to Simon Cyrene (the non-profit side of Slaughter Group) to create tons of promotional photographs for a non-profit I think is really doing tremendous work in Africa called DIG (Development in Gardening). I'm bad at summarizing so here is the blurb from their website to explain exactly what they do.

DIG is a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to improve the health and well-being of HIV-positive and other at-risk individuals in developing nations. We do this by teaching the skills and providing the infrastructure to create sustainable community gardens, thereby empowering people to improve both their nutrition and earning potential.

Suffice it to say I am _very_ excited to be connected to this. I'll be on the ground really for about 6 days so I'm obviously going to be busting ass to cover as much ground as possible in such a small amount of time. The subject matter will range from Portraits to "products" (ie the foods they have produced) to photos of Jinja to the travel it takes to get there to the people involved in making it all happen. Lots of "to"'s just then.

My point is that, thankfully I'm going to be Way busy. At least until February. After that, I'll probably knock on your door to see if you need any photos taken.

Photos I took today include a few of my Mom which are typically taken at times she'd rather not be photographed (she crashed on my couch last night and I took a few snaps of her still curled up in the blue blanket on the purple couch right next to my huge windows. I hope they will be interesting. She will no doubt hate them. I also shot Stephanie a bit at home and David and Chris while reading at Starbucks. I'd love for that sentence to have ended "...at Urban Standard" but they aren't open on Sunday, nor would they have been open the whole time I would have liked to have been there. I digress.

P.s. there was a totally shady dude down in the parking lot below my studio. Acting super sketchy getting in and out of his car and looking up at the windows. Just sayin'.

P.p.s. these shots of David (and other things that aren't him per se) are for his new album. Release date TBA but I'm sure I'll blog about it when it is out. Just for your fyi.

So this is Michael, though really for my purposes he is called Mcharles (distant cousin of Chostagev). This is the son of my cousin Jamie and her husband Kent and you see him on his first real day on his new thomas the train bike. I know little about this thomas person but i understand he's a hit with the ladies.

The kids went to bed and the construction of the bikes began and I couldn't help but be reminded of when I was like five years old and I got a bike for my birthday. It was a badass Huffy and it magically appeared AFTER presents had been opened while I was eating cake things. It was clearly magic and not my dad slipping it up the stairs while I attempted to get all the candle wax as far from the cake as possible with a single breath.

Today, Jan 2, I shot Steph around the apartment and Rob here at the studio as well (nerd notes: with lomo, NC160 rated at 100). Further, Steph and I painted the huge rolly wall flat white for a good base to shoot against while in the studio (when I don't need a seamless). I imagine I'll shoot on that a ton in the future. At least that was the goal of painting it.

Anyway...back to Michael.

I have no idea really what is happening in this photograph. Jeremy and Rob. Some window blinds. A jones soda.

I shot a few test shots of Steph today on the new wall. Took it easy today.

Can I just inform you...I've eaten SO many Oh's in the last few days.

More to come later on this...but for now Electric Lion, Mark II, Photo One will speak for me and my current list of goals.
Expect more more more.

So here it is. The end of year one of electric lion. Part of me doesn't really want to write much but I feel obliged to myself to have some words written down for future reference, so like this entire project, here is another self-indulgence.

I may never have mentioned why I started this project. There isn't a clear reason, as such, but Stephanie likes the photos I take and had on rare occasion requested i send her photos. I.e. take a photo for her and send it to her on a consistent basis (a simple and symbolic way to stay connected when living far away). The desire to do that mixed with a sudden fire inside me to work...and work Hard started the idea. I grabbed my camera and took mister toad over to bryan's house and ended up photographing his kid noah. I arbitrarily chose a name, arbitrarily decided to host it on blogger.com instead of my normal site, and randomly decided to host the images on flickr because I wanted to be a bit more involved on that site. And that was electric lion's start.

I set up rules for myself. Let's see how I did.

1_ must take a photo on any given day - pretty sure i did this. if i missed a day, i'll give myself a break since its a leap year.
2_ photo i post isn't necessarily the shot for the day - this happened the majority of the time.
3_ film + placeholder stuff - this happened a lot too, but mostly after I amassed enough images i'd just post something else. rule 2 took a life of its own. i never made a rule that i HAD to note what i shot that day...i just had to shoot.
4_ goal = classic photos, not gimmicks - at a glance, i think i actually pulled this one off. really all that means is I didn't create a photo with a technique that would embarrass me later in life.
5_ not internet = not an excuse - check it...i went back and made up for all the days i missed from not having access.
6_ day missed = project over - this puts rule 1 more in stone. i feel good about 1 and 6.
7_ self portraits okay, if a touch lame - i count only 4 i'd really call a self portrait in the whole project. there are a few more than that with me IN the shot, but they weren't s/p technically speaking. i may have taken a couple more than this over the course of the year as well, but it looks like only 4 of 366 qualify. nice.
8_ enjoy the process, push yourself, don't be an asshole - check, check, and i HOPE check. i dont feel like an asshole, so lets hope thats how it translated to everyone else too.

I'm pretty happy with it. The idea was simple enough. Take a shot, try not to make it suck, be honest. I think this project serves well as a glimpse into what my life looked like this year. Lots of [the same] friends [over and over], some family, my sister going through chemotherapy, delving into the world of 4x5 finally, which lead the way to developing said 4x5 film, a LOT more travel than i expected this year (the job at the beginning of the year took me all over the southeast and I actually followed through on a whimsical joke-promise about taking a trip with john yam, as well as an impromptu visit to portland to visit garrett and helen), a lot of fun work for mental_floss, some time in new york, a lot more time with steph, reconnecting with people, and of course, taking pictures no matter how mundane the day may seem. There were quite a few shots that turned out a lot more interesting than i'd ever have expected which is encouraging to me to continue shooting all the time. There were plenty that didn't come out how i wanted them too but that's just how it goes. The serendipitous joy of finding photographs I love in unexpected places far outweighs the disappointment of the failure of a single idea.

Here are some favorites and some notes on those images (remember, these are notes for me...I don't expect you to care):

Day 028 - this is a perfect example of a shot I took for posterity because I was in the village in the winter and it was snowing. it is a shot I would be happy to find in a shoebox at an estate sale, as weird as that may seem. It ended up being slightly more special (in an additionally morbid way) because I photographed Taylor Shaw while I was up there and he shared with me a song he'd just written that contained a line "spread my ashes over manhattan".

Day 060 - I really had fun photographing Matthew. Not much else to this...I just like the shot and enjoyed making it.

Day 071 - all I need is to see Jamric in this hat, metering a llama, in the snow. it is really all i need to see.

Day 110 - This represents to me a particularly good example of learned adaptation mixing with instinct and style. The setting for this photo was Way less than what par should have been but it ended up fruiting (fruiting?) one of my favorite images from the regions campaign. I'm proud of this image on a number of levels. It also makes me appreciate having a stylist on hand to make choices about color. the red shirt was by way of chatham.

Day 150 - Not sure what to say about it. Just love it.

Day 219 - an especially successful 4x5 polaroid. alan with a hairicane.

Day 232 - despite the lomo being in its last gasps of breath, this shot came out to be very pretty. pretty for pretty's sake. I wish I had taken it from the beach.

Day 286 - Lush + Alabania. Shot that makes me happy.

Day 337 - Come on. It's kevin with a huge bomb. Also it was a very fun shot to create.

Day 351 - More shooting with instinct. Really this one is on this list because I think its beautiful but more importantly it tells me I worked hard the whole year and even in December I produced photographs I love.

So that's it. End of year one. Any requests or ideas for Electric Lion Mark II?

Here is Steph and David. It seemed appropriate to post a photo of stephanie. Now to go take a photo for today.

more david. i plan on having a long rambly blog sometime soon reflecting, if predictably, about this project.

david in shreveport outside of a place called BIG D'S BBQ. the atmosphere was hysterical.

mom + mashed potatoes