May 22, 2007
May 22, 2007
Guess what? I'm back! After much anticipation, here are a ton of photos from Idiotarod 2007, a shopping-cart race put on by the Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association (COBRA). It's things like this that make me totally happy to be in New York. Except presently I'm in Providence, recuperating from my 1st year of grad school. (and New York)
Union's web guy organized a photo competition recently, the theme being "Union springs eternal." I won second place with this image, which is super exciting! Although almost every other photo was of the lovely flowery tree in the quad... but that's life. It is a nice tree. I'll be getting a bit of gift certificate and I think I'll try and find a little mini tripod.
Oh hey! I had a birthday recently, and bought myself a swanky new Canon 30D. I am super excited; we're still having new-camera love, my camera and I. I'll get some of my new stuff up in the next few weeks, for now everything was taken with my Rebel. Its auto-focus was totally dead, and in the last month or so it stopped telling me what was in focus at all... maybe it can be fixed and find a new home, but it was high time for an upgrade.
In other (non-)news, I just wanted to point out that I have prices listed for prints on the buy page, for those of you who've been asking. Email me here to order anything.
February 14, 2007
So hey, here's some massively-belated Good Shots of '06 That Never Made It Online. As might be obvious, I'm insanely busy. Amazing trip to Appalachia, with Union's Poverty Initiative (pictures from which will be up... sometime...), and I'm back in the midst of classes. Which are really wonderful, this semester, but I'm taking a full course load and I'm insane. But I'm also taking a ton of photos for the Union Call (our student journal). There's also been some talk about an editorial position at some point, which I am hoping I can make time for. Oh yeah, and we're writing a book about the Appalachia trip, including a piece of mine and probably a bunch of photos. Did I mention I'm busy?
November 21, 2006
One of my favorite things about NYC is the frequency of random street festivals. Sometimes they're a pain when you're trying to get somewhere and have to dodge crowds of people wearing Brazilian flags, but mostly they're pretty great. Folks here are so caught up in routines, busyness, running late because of the vicissitudes of public transportation, that the forced break in routine can be pretty amazing.
There are so many people here that of necessity we put ourselves in little boxes — we don't ever get anything like real privacy, so we have to pretend. You pretend not to see the man picking his nails on the subway, pretend not to hear your upstairs neighbor having really loud sex, pretend the girl walking behind you is not having a huge fight with her boyfriend on the phone. But that's the only reason the barriers are there, it's not that new yorkers are particularly more sullen than anyone else (I don't think). When you choose to drop the wall, to ask directions or for whatever else, people can be very nice. On my way to church in Brooklyn on Sunday, I got off the D just as the R pulled in across the platform. I didn't have time to figure out which direction it was going, so I asked a girl who was about to get on, who confirmed it was the right one. We both got off two stops later, and as we walked up to the street, she said, "You know where you're going from here? 5th ave that way, 3rd ave that way."
Last night on the bus (on my way to a super-amazing date at Film Forum) there was an older married couple sitting behind me. They were "arguing" loudly the whole time, which seemed more like him being horrible and obnoxious and kind of abusive and her just telling him to shut up and leave her alone. I got frustrated and put my book away, and I heard the husband say, "She's thinking she's never gonna get married, listening to us." I turned and said, "Actually, I'm impressed she puts up with you." When I got up at the next stop, I walked between them to the door, and as I passed her she muttered, "Don't ever get married."
October 14, 2006
Because this is a truly amazing city I live in, I took a break from studying the other day to buy groceries and ran into a breakdancing show. It was a Saturday evening in Union Square, so unexpected things weren't entirely, you know, unexpected. But this is what I love about this place.
Also, I've been taking some photos for The Turning House, which is the student journal at Union. My debut will be some shots from the Marcus Borg lectures this weekend, which is pretty sweet in itself. Also we might see some of my other random Union pictures. So that's fun, and is a great excuse to pick up the camera, which is languishing under my busyness, as with everything non-school-related. I believe next up is the Day of the Dead celebration...
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September 23, 2006
I gave in to the temptation, the succulent lure of the Apple company, and bought myself a new MacBook. It is pretty much amazing, though I haven't gotten to experience its full glory — the extra RAM I bought for it is languishing in the UPS facility in the Bronx, because apparently they fail at delivering things. I should have it on Monday, though.
Anyway, this is my convenient excuse for not updating. The new baby (her name is Deborah - gee, I'm not taking Old Testament 101...) is having a tough time handling herself with 512 MB. Let alone iPhoto or Dreamweaver, or (YHWH forbid) both. So, that and my insane amount of work. Because, you know, that wouldn't be enough of an excuse. Assuming that I even need an excuse, which is debatable.
BUT one of my classes is "Christianities and the City," and our homework last weekend was to go to Queens and wander around. Observe, take field notes, note instances of Christianity, and (for me) take pictures. There was this wonderful warehouse covered in graffiti, which I believe is home to the art collective 5 Pointz (as seen here — PS1 was unfortunately closed when I was there, so probably I'll have to go back soon.) It was really gorgeous, and sort of a religious experience for me, in a way; actually the same way as when I went to see the Fort Thunder building before they tore it down to build the Staples. I was standing in the parking lot on a rainy evening with this boy Kevin I barely knew (he works at Tealuxe now, go say hi!) just overcome with emotion at this beautiful instance of totally organic creative energy, chained off and empty. (Empty of people, anyway. I'm sure they left a lot of stuff stapled to the walls.)
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September 4, 2006
Crazy! So in the last two months since I've written here, I've moved to New York and started grad school. Yayyy Union Seminary, WHAT! (And a ton of other stuff, but that seems to be the major thing.) I'm having lots of fun with the NYC street photography, because really, there's just so much going on. I really want to get my LC-A fixed so I can carry that around too — it's really better-suited to random pictures of people &c. It's just missing a few of the tiny screws in the front, but it's making it so I can't really open the lens shade thingy. Must email the lomography.com guy again.
So, hopefully my school schedule will allow me to update more regularly. I'll try and schedule these things in... Anyway, here are some of the aforementioned NYC street photos, along with a few Providence pictures I didn't get up before I left.